LIFE THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH

"Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress."
Nicholas M. Butler, American Philosopher

Creating your ideal self and life is determined more by our self-concept than we realise. When you focus on understanding and developing a new and positive self-concept, you can firm up your God given destiny.

So how do we discover our self-concept?

Determine Your Direction
The first part of the self-concept is the "self-ideal." Your self-ideal largely determines the direction in which you are going with your life. It guides the growth and development of your character and personality. Your self-ideal is formed by a combination of all the qualities and attributes that belong to the people that you most admire. Your self-ideal is a description of the person you would very much like to be if you could embody the qualities you aspire to have.

Strive Toward Excellence
Throughout your life, you would have seen and read about qualities like courage, confidence, compassion, love, fortitude, perseverance, patience, forgiveness and integrity. Over time, these qualities have instilled in you an ideal to which you aspire. While you may not always live up to all of them, you will find yourself continually striving to be a better person in light of the qualities that you value. In fact, everything that you do on a day-to-day basis is affected by comparing your behaviour to these ideal qualities and how you subconsciously strive to be consistent with them.

Clarity is Essential
Successful men have very clear ideals for themselves and are very clear about being excellent in every part of their work and their personal lives. Unsuccessful men don't give the subject very much thought. One of the primary characteristics of successful men in life is that they have very clearly defined ideals and they are very aware of whether or not their current behaviours are consistent with their ideal behaviours.

Set Challenging Goals
Part of your ideals are your goals. As you set higher and more challenging goals, your self-ideal improves and crystallizes. When you set goals for the kind of person you want to be and the kind of life you want to live, your
self-ideal rises and becomes a greater guiding and motivating force in your life.

Your Future is Unlimited
Perhaps the most important thing for you to realize is that whatever greatness anyone else has achieved or become, you can do or become as well. Improvements in your self-ideal begin in your imagination, and in your imagination, there are no limits except the ones that you accept.

What is your ideal vision of the very best person you could possibly become? How would you behave each day if you were already that person? Asking yourself these questions and then living your life consistently with the answers is the first step to creating your ideal image.

ACTION EXERCISES
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action. Firstly, dream big. Set big, exciting, challenging goals and ideals for yourself in every part of your life. Allow yourself to imagine a wonderful life ahead.
Second, think about how you would act if you were an outstanding person in every way; then practice being this person. You'll immediately notice a difference in your behaviour and you will begin to shape the ideal you.