How often do you laugh in each day?  As you are beginning to see a few wrinkles appearing on your face, are they laugh lines or scowl creases?

Laughter is good for us, according to several medical studies. Laughter has been demonstrated to reduce pain, relieve stress, restores hope, lowers blood pressure and is easily transmitted to others. Have you ever seen an argument come to an immediate halt when someone starts laughing or says something funny?

Our world is a difficult place to be living for many people. We are dealing with an economy that is struggling to turn around, with wars and rising violence, and with prices rising much faster than our raises in income. We can sit and feel sorry for ourselves and worry or we can learn to find humor in life and face the world with hope.

The next time you begin to feel overwhelmed or stressed out or frightened or in pain, find something to laugh about. Whether it is the antics of a child or a pet, a silly movie or television program, or even something totally inane, learn to laugh. Laughing helps us gather ourselves to cope with the bad times and heighten the joy of the good times.

If you can’t find anything else to laugh about, try laughing at yourself.  Try to see yourself as others might see you over the course of the day. I can almost guarantee you will find a source of laughter.

“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

I don’t know or know of any human being who has not made mistakes. Some of us think we make more than others; some think we make less. Mistakes are simply a fact of life. Like failure, the question is not if it happens – the question that matters is what we do with it. We can allow our mistakes to be teaching or learning moments or we can dwell upon them and become paralyzed by fear and doubt.

No one likes to admit that she or he is not perfect. I don’t know where the notion came from that allowed people to think they are perfect. I’ve found nothing in the writings and teachings of any religion or philosophy that argues that people are intended to be perfect. Until we can recognize our fallibility and learn to handle mistakes with grace, we will never learn.

You can move beyond your mistakes by recognizing them, learning from them, relegating them to the past and moving forward with hope and confidence. This is the path that will lead you to fulfilling your dreams.

Tell us how you moved on after a mistake.

“Anyone who never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
– Albert Einstein

A focus on accomplishing your goals and fulfilling your dreams is essential to success. We all know that; but that focus is difficult for many of us to maintain. There are often voices in our memories or in our lives telling us we cannot succeed, calling us failures, or undermining our self confidence in other ways.

Here are the first three key steps to moving beyond the paralysis of memory and demoralizing messages:

1. Remember that everyone has experienced failure at some time in her or his life. Failure feels bad at the time, but it can be a very positive experience for the rest of your life. If you are constantly reviewing your failures, stop and think about what you learned from each failure and how it made you a better person.

2. Once you have extracted the positive from each failure forget it. Whether you can simply tell your mind to stop reminding you or you need to do something like writing down each failure on a small piece of paper, putting it in a box, and burying it or taking it to the dump, get rid of it.

3. If someone in your life is constantly throwing your failures in your face, have a talk with that person. Explain that this behavior is hurtful and that you will not tolerate it in the future. If necessary, create a penalty system you use every time that person brings up a past failure. This will help the person recognize and correct the behavior.

Please check back next week for the next steps. Share how you handle defeating thoughts here.

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
– Marcus Aurelius

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

Achieving your dream is a matter of keeping it always in sight and making regular and steady progress toward the goal. Do not compare your dream to the dream of another. You are not the same people with the same resources of skills. Do not compare the size of your dream to that of another’s dream. What is a great challenge to one may be impossible for another.

If you encounter a failure, re-think, re-group, re-fortify, and re-start. A failure does not necessarily mean you are pursuing the wrong dream. It might just mean you are pursuing it in the wrong way. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, re-strategize, and continue on the way. You will learn something valuable from each small failure, and you will learn something valuable about yourself from each renewed effort.

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.” -  Confucius

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

How do you plan to re-start? Share your dream here.

A big dream takes you all the way to where you want to go.  Sometimes we are afraid to dream BIG and to aspire to accomplish BIG results. And sometimes that fear causes us to settle for taking smaller steps toward smaller goals. This can be a good strategy if there is a clear and obvious next step from the first small goal to the next. Achieving small goals can move us gradually in the direction we want to go.

But sometimes the only way to reach our desired destination is to gather the courage to aim for that BIG dream without intermediate steps. Sometimes we must risk failure in order to achieve the BIG goal. Sometimes we must take the risk of falling and trying again to achieve the goal, even if others think our goals are too optimistic or too great a reach.

“Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”        — David Lloyd George

Find out just how far you can go – find out what is in you.  When you dare to dream BIG and you dare to stretch yourself to fulfill your big dream, you will find out what you are made of. You will discover the amazing depth of your passion for your dream, the breadth of your courage and the extent to which you can go to make your dream into reality. You might need the help and the support of others, but that is a bit part of what makes the journey so much fun! By daring to dream BIG and pursuing your dream with your greatest determination and strength and courage, you will probably test your limits and discover that there is more in you than you ever thought.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
– T.S. Eliot

There is a danger in the avid pursuit of one’s dreams – selfishness, self-absorption, self-centeredness. The way to avoid this danger is to always stop to live each day and cherish each friend or family member.

When we value each person for their dreams and hopes and struggles and pain, we deny selfishness a point of entry into our hearts and lives. As important as it is to pursue our dreams, we must remember that the dreams of others are equally important.

There is no comparing of dreams. What might seem grand to you might seem a small dream to another, and vice versa. Never compare dreams. Instead seek out ways to help one another in successfully fulfilling their dreams.

“Perfect good breeding is the result of nature and not of education; for it may be found in a cottage, and may be missed in a palace. ‘Tis the genial regard for the feeling of others that spring from an absence of selfishness.”           — Disraeli

You cannot make progress toward your goals until you take the first step.

The New Year brings to each of us the challenge to just BEGIN. No matter how large or how small your goals and plans, you will not achieve them until you BEGIN.

Gather your support group, gather your resources, gather your courage, and BEGIN. Trust your dream, trust your plans, and BEGIN.

Whether your initial steps are large or small, the first steps must be taken. Only you can take the first steps toward fulfillment of your dream. It will be a great and worthy task, but you must BEGIN.

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute
What you can do, or dream you can; begin it;
Boldness has genius, power magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated;
Begin and then the work will be completed.
            — Goethe

There are always so many things to do. There is work, kids, spouse, grandchildren, friends, housework, and yard work. In January there are winter challenges and tasks – shoveling snow, scraping ice, bringing in firewood, building fires and more.
 
January is also when we start thinking about taxes and about planning for the New Year and honoring resolutions.  If the planning was already done, it is time to begin to put the plans into action.
 
In January there is so much to do. It is so very easy to become overwhelmed by all the things before us. It is also very easy to become so busy doing things that we forget to simply enjoy living.
 
Give yourself time to live, time to laugh, time to play and time to work. Try to keep it all in balance. If balance becomes elusive, give me a call – I can help you put it all back into perspective (203-855-9714).
 
“Prepare to live by all means, but for heaven’s sake do not forget to live. You will never have a better chance than you have at present. You may think you will have, but you are mistaken.”      — Arnold Bennett

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”
– Victor Hugo

Human history glows with the truth of Hugo’s words. Human civilization has progressed through every age because courageous people dared to dream a better future and then dared to make it true. If you doubt it, pick up any novel by Victor Hugo and read the beautiful and transformative stories of those who dreamed and whose dreams shaped the future.

It makes no difference how big a dream might be. Every dream has the power to evoke our greatest strength, our most compelling determination, and our most luminous success. Only those who dream will ever know how big the dream or what effort was required to make it real. But a dream fulfilled will stand alone as a measure of achievement and, hopefully, as a measure of lives improved.

No matter how expansive or how personal you believe your dream to be, it is the sharing of it and the achievement of it that will reveal its true power to create a better future.

Get your FREE Special Report on the 7 Secrets of Highly Successful Big Dreamers and also receive the bi-weekly Dream Big Booster at www.drcynthiabarnett.com