If you’re feeling like your career, relationships and social life are spiraling out of your control it’s time to get back into the driver’s seat and set things back on course. It’s not as difficult as it seems, and starting is the hardest part. Once you have some momentum you’ll start to find the peace of mind that you’ve been longing for.
Here are some tips to help you get started:

1. Improve your Health
Get back to the gym and start making headway towards improving your body. Eat healthy and make sure that you’re getting enough water and rest each day. Make this one of your highest priorities as you will immediately start to feel better and have the increased energy and motivation to tackle some of the bigger obstacles ahead.

2. Be Consciously Grateful for what you Have
In the morning take a few minutes to remind yourself of everything that you have. There are people out there with far less who would give almost anything to have what you have and take for granted every day. Appreciating what you have today will help set your mind at east to realize that your situation likely isn’t as bad as you may think it is. Once you’ve freed your mind of these negative thoughts, you’ll be able to harness that brain power towards more positive and productive goals.

3. Speak Up!
If something is bothering you, it’s time to stop thinking about it and take action. Speak up and ask questions to those around you. Getting up the courage to speak is the biggest challenge – rarely will there be a situation that comes from your assertiveness that is scarier than first asking the question in the first place. Like tip #2, once you do this it will free your mind from worrying about invented fears and let you get back to being focused on the things that really matter.

4. Remember Few Things are ‘Always or Never’
Ever had a thought like any of the following: ‘ He’s always late,’ ‘It’s never fast enough,’ or ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ The truth of the matter is that few things in life are ‘Always or Never,’ but when you repeatedly think this way, the world reflects your belief and it may really seem like things are ‘Always or Never’. When you find yourself thinking like this remember that it’s not the case and you should look forward to the situation surprising you with a more positive outcome.

5. Release Your Negative Thoughts
If you find yourself with a negative thought, do your best to release it or plant an opposing positive thought in its place. An example of this would be to think ‘I’m so fat’ when you look in the mirror; as you’re thinking this, your mouth will likely form into a frown to mirror your inner thinking with your outward appearance which compounds the problem. Instead of this negative thought, when you look at the mirror say to yourself ‘I’m healthy and vibrant’ and smile at yourself as you think this thought.

Remember to smile at yourself, even if you have to fake it in the beginning. It won’t be long before you naturally feel good looking in the mirror, even if you do have a few pounds that you haven’t yet worked off, and the more you keep this thought the sooner your inner thoughts of healthy and vibrant will match your outward physical appearance.

6. Not Everything is About You!
When you hear a group of people laughing, don’t automatically assume that they’re laughing about you. You’re not so special! Most people are too busy worrying about themselves the same way that you worry about yourself to spend any time thinking about you.

When you notice yourself projecting your negative thoughts of fear and rejection into the minds of other people realize that it’s your own imagination that’s creating this anxiety and then release those thoughts so you can get back to thinking about more positive and important things.

7. Reach out and Touch Someone
Improve the relationships with those around you with a little old fashioned human contact. Shake hands when greeting or leaving friends and give a hug to those close to you. If your relationship is on the rocks you will be amazed at the responsiveness that some additional and unexpected human contact will have. Try it out today!

8. Join a Special Interest Group
Take a hobby or new skill that you are interested in learning and then find a group of likeminded people to join and share ideas with. There are so many benefits to doing this, but I think the biggest one is that you will enrich your life by adding more people into it who will expose you to many different and amazing possibilities that you would never have been possible on your own.

9. Offer your Experience and Time to Others.
The term ‘volunteer’ must have some negative connotation as I know very few people who do traditional ‘volunteer work,’ however the amount of people that I know who help people is enormous.

If you’ve been keeping your personal experience and expertise to yourself it’s time to give back to those around you – and this doesn’t mean spending time in a soup kitchen if that’s not your style. Host an information night, help someone advance in their career, or start a blog to share your ideas and insights to those who do not yet possess the knowledge that you do. These are just a few examples, but helping other will help you to feel good about yourself as well as expose you to new people who will in turn help and enrich your life.

10. Change your Location to Break Through Mental Blocks.
It’s possible to focus so much on a problem that it really is possible to make a mountain out of a mole hill. A good way to combat this is to suddenly and unexpectedly change your routine or environment. Let’s say you have some piece of writing like an essay or report that you need to finish, but have been struggling with. Instead of staring at your computer and watching the clock tick down to the deadline, grab your notes and head out to a coffee shop or park.

After several days of struggling with an article, I took my laptop to a coffee shop and was able to write not only one article, but three in about an hour and a half. The coffee shop environment got me away from my house and all the mini-distractions that come with working from home and allowed me to focus like a laser beam on the task at hand.

That’s it for now. I sincerely hope that this helps you get back on track as much as it did me.

You’ve read enough books, listened to enough audio tapes and watched enough training videos. Pick a system… any system. They almost all work if you take the massive action that is required.

Before you give up on whatever it is that you’re currently engaged in, take a second and ask yourself if you’re a change junkie. If you are, then you might want to give what you’re working on a second chance and see if you can’t push through the rough times to creating your own success story.

Let me tell you what I did to give myself permission to take full control of my life. A control card is the device that you can use to give yourself permission to do more of the things that you want to do and less of the things that you don’t want to do. It works much the same way as a doctor’s note would. When the doctor says you can drink alcohol or eat cheeseburgers and you use that as your reason for not going out with your friends for dinner, your ability to say no is easy and no one will question you the importance of your doctor’s note.

However when you simply say that you’ll are trying to lose weight or avoid alcohol’s negative effects your rubber arm will be twisted into submission and before you know it you’ll have a mouthful of cheeseburger and be reaching for your alcoholic beverage of choice to wash it all down with. My control card is nothing more than a small business card sized piece of cardboard paper that reads: I am in total control of my life. I alone have the power to choose to live a better life.

I kept a small card in my wallet at all times. I made sure to place it in the front of my wallet where I would be able to read its message every time I opened it. The wallet is a really great place for messages like this. It’s often the spending or misspending of money that leads us down that road of temptation that we know we should avoid. Though this card merely looks like pen scribbled on paper the power that it holds has allowed me to take back control of my life.

You can use control cards in your own life with messages that ring true to you. I have some specific suggestions for creating a message that is both personal and powerful. 1. Choose the area of your life that you need the most help in controlling. This can be stopping addiction, spending less money, taking more free time etc.2. don’t worry about trying to do too much with your message. Each problem is another mountain to climb and by trying to climb too many mountains at once you will certainly become overwhelmed and end up doing nothing.3. Create a short one or two sentence message that gives you permission to choose that path that will lead to your desired outcome. The key here is that it gives you permission to be unreasonable and put what you want to achieve ahead of everyone else’s needs.3. Use only positive words. As a general rule it’s always better to ask for what you want than that in trying to explain exactly what it is that you don’t want. Once you’re finished place the card in the front of your wallet. Replace or remove one of your existing credit or membership cards if needed so that your personalized control card will be easily seen and read each and every time you open your wallet. When you’re faced with a difficult decision or you feel that you’re about to lapse into your old undesired way of acting, just open the wallet and take a look at the control card. Let it decide for you what the best way to act is. Once you feel that you have gained control of the area of your life that the control card is targeting feel free to add a new control card to wallet but do not remove the old one. Keeping your old control cards with you in your wallet will give you additional power if and when you need them again in the future.

Each week of inaction that passes brings new and better ideas, but are they really better ideas? I’m sure that the ideas seem better because they are new, but the thought of coming up with a better idea each week than the previous is a little unsettling. With this kind of thinking it’s impossible to take action because you know that what you think of next week will be far better than what you thought of this week.

In the theme of taking action I decided to do a quick bit of research and find out what the most successful product categories are, choose one of them this week, research it next week, and take action on the following week after that unless the idea proved to be completely unfeasible.

Here’s a small list of topics that I thought of for which someone could successfully market a product or service to help get you started.

Nutrition
Relationships
Home Decoration
Entertainment
Computers
Investments
Business
Personal Development
Organization and Time Management
Weight loss
Martial Arts
Public Speaking
The Internet
Hobbies and Collections
Sports
Home Repair
Cars and Trucks
Religion and Spirituality
Travel
Emotional Issues (Fear, Depression)
Parenting
Education
Career Counseling
Gadgets
Addiction
Languages

This is only a partial list and I imagine that if you start to think about it that you can think of many more possible categories. If this list does not have something on it that personally interests you I strongly suggest that you keep looking. Start by looking at the room around you and seeing what kind of products you have personally bought and surrounded yourself with. Go from room to room and continue making a list until you find something that seriously interests you. If you don’t find anything in your house or apartment start looking outside in the area around your yard or apartment complex. You’ll find something that you’re interested in, just keep looking.

Because your new product will probably be most successful in niche market within one of these larger broader category it is a good idea to select the one that looks the most promising to you and start breaking that down into the possible niches.