July 09, 2019

How to Use Visualization Properly to Achieve Goals and Success

July 09, 2019/ Ahmed Dawn

Proper Visualization Techniques to Attract What You Want

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on July 31, 2011

Visualization is nothing but using our imagination to make dreams or what we want come true. Our mind is behind every success in our life and proper visualization unlocks mind to work to its fullest potential. Visualization is not a new concept. Since the beginning of mankind, we have been using visualization – either with or without our knowing in our subconscious mind. In prehistoric times, hunters and gatherers used to draw their vivid hunting scenes on the cave wall. Fighters were also seen to draw their fights on the ground or on a wall. Both of these visualizations would become reality in later times. Today, I will discuss how to use visualization the right way to achieve what you want and attract success and prosperity.

Visualization is simply a technique for imagining or creating a mental image of something we want to obtain in the future. Yes, it’s just like daydreaming and daydreaming can make your dreams reality. However, you need to use visualization techniques properly. When you envision something you would like to achieve a goal or anything in the future, don’t concentrate on only the outcome or end results. Instead, focus on both the actual process the makes the outcome possible and the outcome itself. Your visualization should be a balanced combination of both process and results. Don’t focus on any one of these too much or too little, leaving the other one.

Let me give you an example to clear up what I mean by a balanced combination. Currently I am working on my second book “Save Now.” So, seeing “Save Now” published is my goal. How do I use visualization the right way to make this happen? I am creating a mental picture of the whole thing. When envisioning the process of writing this book, I am seeing myself going to a coffee shop and working a few hours to write this book. I am seeing myself working even harder during my vacation as I have a full-time regular job. I am seeing myself going to an isolated location and stay in a hotel for a week or two to work on my book without any interruptions. There are many other details – but these are the main elements of my mental visualization of the process part. How do I envision the outcome or result part? I imagine that “Save Now” has been published and make its place to Chapter’s bookshelves (just like “Invest Now”). I also imagine that A Dawn Journal readers across the globe are reading and discussing about “Save Now” … and much more like these.

Just visualizing what you want will not do anything unless you take action. Use visualization with hard work and positive mental attitude to reach your goals. Visualization can be a powerful tool to help our mind to go beyond its limited circle, to change our limited thoughts are beliefs, and to create necessary behavioural change to work towards achieving our dreams.

July 07, 2019

Dressing For Success

July 07, 2019/ Ahmed Dawn

Importance of Dressing For Success

Yes, it is a common thing you will hear from various self-help gurus, but the thing is that it does work. When you dress for success, you are dressing to appear as the person you want to be. For example, if you get up in the morning, put on the shirt that you have been wearing for days, which is wrinkled, and sweatpants, well you are not dressing for success. You are dressing to be someone who does not plan to do much that day, and that is exactly what is going to happen. You are not driving yourself because you are showing an image of yourself as someone who is lazy.

Now, look at someone who dresses well, wears suits or nice blouses and carries themselves well. What do they have? Well, the one thing they have, that you need, is confidence. They dress confident because they are confident and that is what dressing for success is all about. So, how do you go about dressing for success then? Is there a trick to it? No, there is no trick to it, it is just about doing the following.

Look at the people you admire and how they dress. Determine what it is about that that you admire, and what about the way they dress you like. At this point you don’t copy what they are wearing, but you understand why they are wearing what they do.
If you like that a person dresses as an individual, then you should to, so you can reflect who you are by what you wear. However, if the person dresses in a suit that is well-ironed, then you should look at dressing the same way because you want to ensure you dress as a professional. The professionalism is what you like, hence that is what you want to emulate with how you dress.
Buy clothes that you can afford that reflect not who you are but who you want to be. If you want to be a professional businessperson, then dress the part. If you want to be a confident musician, then dress the part. That is all you have to do.

Dressing as a professional and dressing with confidence changes you. When you look in the mirror wearing a dirty shirt, with unkempt hair, you will not always feel good about yourself. However, if you look in the mirror and see a well-dressed individual, you will be happy with what you see and you will want that person to be who you are. Hence you will try to become that person. You want to be the person you see in those clothes, on the inside, and that is what dressing like a professional will do for you.

It does not have to cost a lot to dress for success thanks to cheap deals on the internet, just make sure that the person you are dressing as is the person you want to be. Don’t dress like you think people want you to dress, dress for success as the person you want to be.

June 28, 2019

How to Catch Up On Backlog Tasks

June 28, 2019/ Ahmed Dawn

Handling an Accumulated Backlog of Work

I have a schedule for most of the tasks I perform on a daily basis. I know exactly what I am going to be doing on each day of a week. For example, I know what my assigned tasks are for next week’s Monday, or even for next month’s Monday. This strategy works out to be perfect because instead of doing one big task for hours, I break it down into days and I don’t feel like I am doing something that is draining my energy and taking too much time. The main problem with this strategy is that if you skip a day (due to an appointment or some unexpected events) or a week (due to vacation or business trip), you will be overwhelmed by the accumulated backlog of tasks and it will not be easy to get back into the flow again. How can you handle situations like this when you are way behind?

My simple solution is that I let go the days or week I missed and start again from the beginning of the cycle. Let me give you an example to make it a little clearer. My workout schedule is something like this:

- Monday: Yoga

- Tuesday: Lower Body Workouts

- Wednesday: Squash

- Sunday: Upper Body Workouts

Now, if I miss one day, there is no point in me doing the rest because each of these is part of a program and they complement each other. So if I miss one day, instead of going to the next day it makes sense for me to start it all over again from day 1.

Another example should make it even clearer. Instead of writing a full article in one sitting, I break it down into parts and write a little bit every day. Let’s say I am scheduled to write an article for the Entrepreneur Journey site this week. I would write a little bit daily for the whole week to make it a complete article. Now, if I miss a couple of days in the beginning or in the middle, there is no way for me to finish the full article on time. So, instead of pressuring myself, I would set aside writing for that week and start again the next week.

The strategies mentioned above may or may not work for you – depending on how you handle your daily tasks. If you like to tackle one big task at a time, this may not work for you. In that case, you need to come up with other strategies to get rid of your backlogged tasks. However, if you handle smaller tasks daily like me, take a break if your are off schedule – you will be surprised to see the renewed level of energy and enthusiasm when you restart your cycle after a few days of unexpected but calculated break.

June 26, 2019

The Importance of Time Management in Personal Development

June 26, 2019/ Ahmed Dawn

personal development has to sync with Time management

Time Management and Personal Development

One of the biggest reasons that people do not achieve anything in their lives is because they get lazy. Another big reason is that people say they simply do not have the time. A person will say they would love to learn a new language, but they just do not have the time to do it. This is incorrect and a cheap way out. It is a way for people to keep from bettering themselves because it is a good excuse. In fact, you do have the time because it comes down to time management. In order to practice good time management, you need to do the following:

Make a list of the things you do in a day that are done every day. This can include making meals, getting ready for work, going to work, being at work and spending time with the family. Add all this up and determine how many hours that is.
Add in eight hours sleep and then subtract the total from 24 hours.
See how many hours you have at this point. Those are hours you can use for personal development

So, if you spend eight hours at work, one hour going to work, one hour getting read, one hour preparing meals and three hours with the family, you get the following amount of hours: 14. Add in eight hours and that comes to 20 hours, which leaves you four hours every day that you can use to better yourself. Four hours multiplied by 365 days means that in one year, if you keep to a schedule, you have the potential to use 1,460 hours to better yourself, that comes to a whopping 60 full hours per year. That is a huge amount of time you can use to change who you are and to better yourself. Granted you will not use all that time for personal development. Movies, walks, sports will all take time out of that but even cutting that in half you get one full month of time to better yourself. That is a month you can use to lose weight, learn a language and more and all it takes is scheduling your time properly. Should you sit on the couch and watch television instead? Sure that is okay, as long as it fits into your time management scheme, however don’t let it become a habit or your decision to better yourself will fail to the background.

You need to make yourself a time budget when you are trying to better yourself personally. This will tell you how much time you can spend on something and you cannot go over budget. You got five hours of television a week? Well, use them wisely. You can’t go over with a financial budget, and you cannot go over with a time budget. That is what bettering yourself comes down to, having discipline to make the commitment to change who you are and what you are.

June 24, 2019

How to Better yourself

June 24, 2019/ Ahmed Dawn

Do Not Be Lazy When Bettering Yourself

Betting yourself is not easy work. The process of changing who you are is not a quick-fix; it is something that must be done over time. You cannot do this overnight, but you have to take time and follow a long personal journey. It takes time, it takes effort and it is not something you can do if you are not driven to do so. Changing yourself involves a lot of work, and you cannot be lazy. If you are lazy when you try to better who you are, you will not better who you are. You may think that you are bettering yourself, but you are not. You are just changing your perception of who you are, but not actually changing who you are. Being driven is an integral part of bettering yourself, and you cannot be lazy with it.

Here are some ways that you can do to ensure you stay driven with bettering yourself.

1. Don’t push yourself too hard. If you are trying to lose weight and you decide to go to the gym every day, you are going to push yourself to hard. This will result in you becoming lazy because you won’t want to do it anymore. A better solution is to go to the gym three days a week. That way you will be able to lose weight, while not pushing yourself too hard.

2. Make good goals for yourself. When you have goals, you have guideposts that you can achieve. The thrill you get from achieving a goal will ensure that you do not become too lazy with bettering yourself. The only thing here is you do not want to make goals that are unrealistic; otherwise you will get lazy and not achieve them.

3. Be accountable to others. If you are accountable to others, and if you have told people what your goals are, they will keep you from failing. They will ensure that you are going to achieve them and that in itself will keep you from becoming lazy. We all want to show others that we will be able to achieve something that we say we will achieve. When people think that you are going to fail, you want to prove them wrong. If they are watching you, you will make sure that you achieve what you said you will and that will keep you from becoming lazy.

Being lazy when you are trying to better yourself is the worst thing you can do for yourself. You will decide it is too hard to better yourself and you will not want to get up in the morning and meet your goals. The minute you become lazy with personal development, you have failed in your tasks. Laziness is one of the biggest killers in the world. Laziness keeps people on the couch, away from exercise, it keeps people from achieving things and it leads to many diseases. You do not want to have yourself fail because you were lazy, that is embarrassing.