Positive Thinking - Why Change Your Habitual Thoughts

By Adelaide Kwaning

"Such as your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts"-Marcus Aurelius

In other words, what Aurelius is saying is your thoughts become your actions and your actions your habits. Thus, if you want to change any habit, you must first start by changing your thoughts.

Psychologists and self help fanatics have long since been preaching this message. Yet, many people fail to heed this good advice. Perhaps it's because despite the fact that people want to plan, most folks are doers first and thinkers second. This wouldn't be a problem if the success of any action was not dependant on the motives behind it.

However, everything we do has some reasoning behind it even if we are unaware. The trouble is most people are just that-unaware. They are not conscious of the habitual thoughts that are making up their character.

For example, if you wanted to lose weight simply to appear more attractive then you have not tuned your mind for long term success. What happens after you lose the weight and you don't feel anymore attractive than you did before you lost it? Chances are you will go back to your old habits.

However, if you wanted to lose weight to become healthier and live a better lifestyle, you would then be training your mind for long term success. Because staying healthy, requires long term motivation.

Before you can create new habits and true success, you must change your attitude and thinking about whatever it is you want to accomplish. Change the way you think about something and you can change the way you feel about it. In most cases, this results in changing the actions that follow these feelings.

If you want to change your size, you have change the way you think about your body, not just your weight but your body as a whole. Your weight is merely a symptom of your habitual thoughts.

The same applies if you're in debt. Do not just change your spending habits, but change the way you think about money. Once again debt is a symptom: a consequence for the way you've been thinking about money.

In order to relieve yourself of any symptom - debt, obesity, low self esteem, whatever - you have to be ready and willing to convert your mind and commit your heart.

This, for many, is much harder than just running on a treadmill or doing affirmations in front of the mirror. Because changing your thoughts means you first have to admit that you have a problem. You need to become introspective and start having some serious conversations with yourself. While we can admit to not being perfect, not many people want to own up to their problems. But understand that you can have a problem without it damaging the amazing person you are.

You may be thousands of dollars in debt, but you're not a bad person. It's just that you have not learned how to develop your thinking so you can build a healthy relationship with money.

Same goes if you're an addict. You, as a human, are not bad, but you do have bad habits and this is probably the cause of bad thinking.

The number of resources for changing your thinking is plentiful. SmartSolutions-ezine, for example, works on encouraging people to work from the inside out, regardless of what you're facing. Because loving yourself enough to make the mental change, is the first step to true success.

Website: http://www.smartsolutions-ezine.com/you-smartsolutions.html
Adelaide Kwaning is an author and publisher. If you would like to learn how to develop positive, successful thinking visit her website today and subscribe to her newsletter http://www.SmartSolutions-ezine.com

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Positive Impacts of Smile Makeovers

By Matthew Candelaria

The American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (AACD) regularly sponsors research into the effectiveness of cosmetic dentistry procedures, and they have found some surprising results. An earlier study showed that the vast majority of Americans (99.7%) believe that a smile is an important social asset, and 96% of adults believe that an attractive smile makes a person more appealing to members of the opposite sex, but more recent findings have given depth and breadth to the earlier findings.

Study Setup
A statistically significant and racially diverse group of Americans were shown a series of pictures of eight individuals either before or after undergoing cosmetic dentistry smile makeovers. The group was divided in half, with each seeing a group of pictures containing one picture of each individual, either before or after undergoing the smile makeover. The changes for two of the individuals were considered mild, for two they were considered moderate, and for four they were considered extreme. None of the pictures showed people with missing or visibly rotten teeth, however. They were then asked to rate the pictures on a scale of one to ten to say how much the person in the picture was:

· Attractive
· Intelligent
· Happy
· Successful in their career
· Friendly
· Interesting
· Kind
· Wealthy
· Popular with the opposite sex
· Sensitive to other people

Results
So how many of these characteristics saw improvement as a result of cosmetic dentistry? All of them. Not only did it make a difference in all cases, but in all cases it made a statistically significant difference. That's right. Not only does a brighter, whiter smile make you seem more attractive and popular with the opposite sex, but it also helps in more unexpected ways, making you think that you are intelligent, kind, and sensitive as well.

The categories where people benefited the most from cosmetic dentistry were:

· Attractive
· Popular with the opposite sex
· Wealthy

Perhaps not surprising. The areas where people improved the least as a result of cosmetic dentistry were:

· Kind· Happy
· Sensitive to other people

Again, not too surprising, but we should remember that even in these cases, getting a smile makeover made a statistically significant difference in how the people were perceived.

Degree of change
Not surprisingly, if the change between pictures was classified as "mild," usually entailing only tooth whitening, or "moderate," which included whitening and possibly some minor reshaping with tooth bonding or porcelain veneers, the subject experienced a significantly lower boost than those whose change was classed as "extreme," including a high degree of whitening, a high level of tooth straightening, as well as gum recontouring.

Gender Bias
Again, perhaps not surprisingly, women received a higher boost in the categories attractive, popular with the opposite sex, and wealthy than did men undergoing smile makeovers. The only category in which men saw a bigger increase after the makeover was successful in their careers.
To learn more about smile makeovers and what they can do for you, consult the website of Bay Area Cosmetic Dentistry, serving Fremont, Oakland, Sunnyvale, and San Jose.

Positive Thoughts

By Marc F.

Positive Thoughts
A lot has been written about the effects of our thinking on our life. By now many people know that in some way or another their thinking affects their life.

We hear things like: “Think positive, there are two sides to the coin, the glass is either half empty or half full”. Does this sound familiar? And yet, how many people, including yourself, have you encountered who you would truly classify as positive thinkers? Probably not many, right?

As soon as we get up in the morning we usually get busy doing things and let our thoughts flow freely as the day unfolds. The amount of information our brain processes in a day is unbelievable. Therefore, it is not easy to constantly monitor our thoughts and make sure they are always positive. Unfortunately, reality is such that not everything we see and hear is positive, even if we’d like it to be.

Where we can make a true difference, however, is in the way we process both positive as well as negative information. Try and be more conscious on the effects information has on you. For example, if you see a beautiful tree, flower, car or whatever it is that strikes you as being beautiful, acknowledge it and make a conscious positive comment to yourself. Something like:
“Wow, what a beautiful tree”. Every time you see something you like, make a positive comment about it. Try and do this for a week. This will create positive energy and make you feel good.

But what do we do with negative information? Let’s acknowledge that this or that happened and make a conscious decision on how much energy we want to invest in processing the information.
For example, the less energy we put into thinking that Mr. Rude insulted us, the weaker the effect of the thought on our life. Every time you notice that you’re about to process negative information, make a conscious decision on how much energy you want to put into it and stop the thought process from affecting you. Try and do this for a week too. It will minimize the amount of negative energy in your life and leave more energy for positive thoughts.

The kind of information we’ll encounter during the course of a day is sometimes hard to predict. The way we process information, however, is under our full control.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Published with permisson of Inspirized - ©2007 Inspirized ®, www.inspirized.com

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One Magic al Tip to Transform Your Daily Dialogue: Positive Verbal Language Makes All the Difference

By Asma Fayyad

Most of us are victims of negative emotions and that is certainly reflected on our daily communications, the verbal and the non verbal. Every morning we fall prey to food allergies, nightmares, sleeping disorders, pains and aches of the previous night. You see the world through rusty and hazy goggles; you wonder "when will I ever feel better about my life".

You start shouting at your husband, children and start posing a cinched nose towards everyone. You forcibly draw a smile on your face and start pretending that you are getting through the day just fine.

That is when you are in great danger of committing verbal abuse. You will tend to abuse your own verbal skills. Most people mistake being direct and honest with being negative and rude. You can always say the truth in a better way.

A simple example comes from your daily life. Let's assume that you want your husband to place his tooth brush back on the holder, what would you normally say? "Honey, please don't leave your tooth brush on the sink?" or "why do you always leave your tooth brush on the sink, can't you simply put it back on the holder?"

The minute you start your word with “DON'T” the person will stop listening to you, no matter how useful your feedback is.

Instead say something like "it would be a lot more hygienic if you kept your tooth brush away from the sink, it gets messy there. There is a holder on the shelf, you can put it there once you are done brushing"

This will sure take longer to say but note that there is not a single negative word in the sentence. The tip for today is

Start your talk with a positive word and lead your listener to understand rather than command him/her to do something.

Watching your mouth, minding your language not only means to avoid abusive words and expressions, it means "STOP, THINK, CHOOSE, then SHOOT" you hit your target better this way.

Author and Publisher of the ImageZine Newsletter; Asma Fayyad: Women Empowerment Consultant. Founder of The Imagecians: Women Total Solutions, to guide and inspire women re-claim their freedom of choice. Life is full of hard facts and situations. My methods allow women to discover and explore the secrets to living a full and joyous life – freeing them to make conscious decisions about their true nature and inner values, to actually reclaim their mind, body and spirit. Sign up for the ImageZine Newsletter, get a FREE SPECIAL REPORT and discover secrets that were not revealed before. http://www.theimagecians.com
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