Psychology Simplified On The Ten Essential Steps to Any Achievement

The list of steps that follows are not just vital ingredients needed to give you the best guarantee of achieving your mission or aim. There is an added dimension.  It is the simple order in which they are best applied that ensures you stay on the right track to success. Deviate from that and, believe you me, it is like squaring circles! It makes it much harder!

So Step 1 Is Keep To The Order Of The List!

Step 2: Virtualising The Achievement.

Decide exactly what it is you want to achieve. A vague notion, a fuzzy dream, a wish – none of these are enough. It needs to be the clearest picture in your mind of what you want to accomplish. It needs to be pictured as though it is already achieved. Also, it needs to be seen in your mind and felt in your heart as your own great mission. If it would involve, when completed, your heightened awareness of touch, sound and smell too, then include them in your total visualisation. And most significant, there needs to be no thought or concern at this stage for “How It Is To Be Done”.

Step 3: Review Exactly Where You Are Now - Without The Achievement.

See and feel all the downside elements that at the moment dog you, but which would be gone when you had the success you seek. Then focus completely on that gap between that position you occupy now and what it would be like with your mission completed. Really measure this gap in your mind. But most significantly, DO NOT shrink from it and do not try to make it smaller! This is your “Inspiration Gap”! The reason why it is so important is coming in Step 5!

Step 4 Knowing This Is What You Want. 

Here is one question which requires an unequivocal answer of “Yes”. To prepare for it, first restore your vivid picture of your goal to the forefront of your mind. Now your question is this - with that total visualisation described filling your mind and heart, do you feel you really, really want this outcome? However large or small, does it begin to fill you with passion and motivation to achieve it? Even if you do not know how to achieve it yet, does it inspire you to take action?  If you can answer Yes1 Yes! And Yes! Then go on to Step 5. If not, go back and review Step 1 and question yourself on what is failing to give you that energy and drive. Then, address it and insert it in your picture.

Step 5: Setting Yourself Up for A Fall.

This is the potential stumbling block for many people. It is as though suddenly a flawed sense of reality dawns forcing you to ask yourself ‘how am I possibly going to achieve this? How can I somehow narrow this “Inspiration Gap” between the ‘me’ now and ‘me’ with it achieved?’It must be resisted! Why is this so? Cognitive research shows that with achievement we are drawn to our picture of our goal. In other words we are being pulled by it and we are not pushing to get away from where we are. So it is for this very reason that your picture of your targeted achievement needs to be strong and painted first vividly in your mind. It is why it needs to engender that unquenchable desire and motivation to drive you on. Can you see that without that, you are far more inclined to compromise and find ways tp reduce the gap?

Step 6: Live With The Image Of The Achievement.

Have it emblazoned on your mind and then reinforce it by repetition, by review, by mixing with people who have done it already. Do not share it with someone who you know will denigrate it, or who is bound to see it as unachievable for them. Yet do share it with people who will help and encourage you.

Step 7: Set in motion the behavioural mechanics of planned achievement.

Difficult though it may be to accept, the more you enhance and intensify your picture of your plan day by day, three things happen. First it energises you. Second you become ever more consciously aware of opportunities presenting themselves to help you on your journey. So take them! Third, your sub-conscious creativity has been activated big-time! It has been fed the message that you are no longer comfortable where you are. You now want to be drawn towards where you have planned to be. So it goes to work for you! And the more you live with and feed the image of the achievement achieved, the more your creativity will grow to close the gap.

Step 8.  Self-Belief & Self –Worth.

Constantly reinforce your belief that you deserve the outcome and that you can achieve it. And what about negative thoughts? Don’t listen to them or give them air-time! Neutralise them by vocalising your passion and inspiration to accomplish what you have set out to do! Is that easy? No. Is it possible? Definitely!

Step 9:   Fix an end date for the complete achievement.

It sets a time line within which your creativity will produce the result. Big goals can need years! When I was sixteen, I wanted to be a Member of Parliament. I became one – twenty three years later!

Step 10: Start now

And Good Luck! You will need some, but just watch how you will seem to create your own!

Gerry Neale

Gerry is the author of "Squaring Circles", an intriguing novel which is as much of a voyage of self-discovery for the reader as it is for the hero of the book. Details of it can be found on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk. It is published in paperback ISBN 9780956868824

He writes on psychology and behavioural issues. Articles can be found on
http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com and as an expert author on Ezine Articles on Achievement and on psychology.

Are You A Busy Bee Who Wants To Achieve More By Finding More Time But Can’t?

Then Answer The Big Question! Do you want to achieve more and make more time to do things you like to do? If you can answer honestly, ‘Yes, with me, it is purely time management,’ then there are some great instructional books available to help you prioritise your tasks, bunch telephone calls, do more things on the same journey and many more tips.

Yet if you have tried all that with only limited success and deep down you think it may be something else sabotaging you, then read on!

Could your problem really not be one of trying to improve your time management. Could it be something quite different? Could it be an unrelated inhibiting attitude?

I wonder if you have felt you were busy, sensed you weren’t achieving as much as you should, have used time management techniques, gained yourself more time, yet filled that time saved with yet more similar tasks, so that now you are more busy than ever?

Could it be that you like to feel busy no matter what?

As a child were your parents always busy? In fact were they too busy to stop and think? Do you think you could have imitated them?

Did you have teachers that made sure you were always busy?

Critically, do you feel guilty when you are not busy doing something, no matter what? Or worse, do you find the level of guilty conscience reaches danger levels if you spend some downtime doing something you want to do entirely for yourself?

Then, if you want it, you have gained complimentary membership of the Busy Bees Club! Please turn it down and reflect!

What has been going on? What are you doing?

Could you have become task list orientated, with too little prioritised? As soon as the list threatens to shorten, do you feel you are under performing if you do not refill it?

Truthfully, can any time management techniques work successfully with this approach?

Strange to tell, the solution lies far less in our ability to manage ourselves and far more in our attitude about ourselves. If we lack the external or internal mentoring which says I am entitled to slow down at times, I am allowed to spend time for myself, I can enjoy myself without feeling guilty because the truth is I make myself guilty – no one else does!

So it can be more than a relaxation issue. It can be one of perceived entitlement. We can have disentitled ourselves unwittingly too by turning this into a self-esteem and self-worth issue..

I would suggest to sufferers that they start by looking at their task list and doing a priority check. Ask yourself: ’Which task actually, truthfully and honestly is important to me in my life and which merely appears more urgent?’

This will help you to find that quality time for yourself.

Sir Gerry is a mentor and despite the time since it was first published recommends you read “First Things First” By Stephen Covey

Gerry is also an artist and an author of a cognitive novel in paperback called “Squaring Circles.” Details can be obtained from http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk

The Implications Of Good Teachers -v- Bad Teachers

If bad teaching is a grouse of yours, whether regarding your children or grand children or just generally and you re looking for evidence of the damage bad teachers can cause, then do please go to the link below. It reports the research of London School of Economics and Stanford  into good or bad teaching. Its results are chilling in their scale. The research was conducted for the Sutton Trust founded by Sir Peter Lampl an inspirational sponsor for educational causes

The impact of a bad teacher is equivalent to knocking half the pupils marks off their annual exam results.Conversely a good teacher could add 25-45% to the performance of the same pupils in maths exams.

Astonishingly, replace a bad teacher with a very effective one and that equates to providing an extra year's learning for the pupil.

I would want to pay tribute to and congratulate the thousands of great teachers in any school anywhere. But to the bad ones I would say, "Please be honest with yourself. If for no other reason, you'll  know you are not good because your heart is not in it anymore. Then have the courage to look for a different direction in life and free up your place for someone who can add dramatic value to the pupils lives".

Sir Peter says: "The single most important way to improve the UK's international performance is to improve the quality of its 400,000 or so teachers." I suspect this is relevant to a number of countries!

The link: http://www.fmwf.com/media-type/news/2011/09/focus-on-bad-teachers-says-report/

Gerry Neale
www.squaringcircles.co.uk

Here's A Thing! Chocolate Is As Good As Exercise!

For Chocoholics like me, this could be the best news if scientists have got this right! Apparently dark chocolate comes with chemicals in it which can stimulate the muscles just like exercising - if we are mice that is! It is all down to a plant substance called epicatechin.



http://www.meassociation.org.uk/?p=8073 Check out this link!#

Squaring Circles Author Gerry Neale is in Top Fifteen Of Ezine Articles Writers On Achievement

Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light is Gerry Neale's first novel to be published recently, yet he has in the meantime become ranked 12th on Ezine Articles Directory out of well over a 1000 authors on the subject of Achievement. He has written nearly 70 articles on Psychology, Achievement, Goal-setting, Self Esteem, Happiness and other subjects. They all have a Cognitive Behavioural theme to them.

His Ezine Profile and Article List is available http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Gerry_Neale

He is a great advocate of the use of simple behavioural psychology to alleviate and even neutralise many behavioural issues and would like to see much greater emphasis made on this in schools as part of the curriculum.

For more details on Squaring Circles, go to www.squaringcircles.co.uk

Cognitive Factoid- Good Decision-makers Are Over S!ixty

University of Texas researchers have found cause for Employers to keep over-sixty year olds on the payroll. Over sixty people are better at strategic decision-making regarding the future as compared with those of university age. The younger group is better at making decisions which are designed to produce immediate results.

This stands conventional wisdom on its head. Previously it had been considered that decison-making ability tails off as people get older. The University researchers were not convinced and believed that previous tests had not allowed for the decision-maker taking future choices into account.. They wanted to test for this aspect, given how this so often effects challenges day to day.

Dr Darrell Worthy has written an article on it in Psychological Science and maintains that the understanding of older people is better on how rewards are structured.

Gerry Neale
www.squaringcircles.co.uk