Archives for May 2015

5 Powerful Rituals of Mentally Strong People

05.31.2015 by Marc Chernoff // 60 Comments

5 Habits of People With Remarkable Mental Strength

“Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.”
?Maya Angelou

“My dad is a blind cancer survivor. He lost both his eyes when he was in his early 30’s to a rare form of cancer. Despite this, he raised my sister and I, and took care of my mom who was in and out of rehab for alcoholism and depression. My mom is a fully recovered alcoholic now, my sister and I have graduated college, and my parents are still together and back to being happy. I’m certain none of this would have been possible if my dad hadn’t been such a resilient, positive force in our lives. My dad’s mental strength literally saved our family.”

Those are lines right out of an email I received this morning from Kristin, a new course student of ours (I’m sharing this with permission). Her portrayal of her dad is both inspiring and a wonderful reminder of the importance of inner resilience. With enough mental strength, an ordinary human being can be an extraordinary hero.

And you don’t have to be born mentally strong either. You can develop this vital trait with practice. Here are five key things people with remarkable mental strength do daily:

1. They use passion and love to fuel their drive to get the hard things done.

Life is not easy, which is why you have to do hard things to be happy in life. The things no one else is doing. The things that frighten you. The things others can’t do for you. The things that make you question how much longer you can hold on and push forward.

Because those are the things that define you. Those are the things that make the [Read more…]

9 Things You Should Do Every Day Before 9 A.M.

05.27.2015 by Marc Chernoff // 78 Comments

40 Powerful Mantras to Help You Think Positive

The morning is enormously important. It’s the foundation from which the day is built. How you choose to spend your morning can be used to predict the kind of day you’re going to have.

When I awake in the morning, my mind gradually gathers, and I begin to move as the early morning light is just starting to seep through the windows. My family is still sleeping. It’s a peaceful beginning.

I stretch, have a glass of water, start the tea kettle, and practice a gratitude meditation for ten minutes. Then I enjoy a cup of tea as I read one chapter of a good book. And finally, I write for an hour before the busyness of the day begins.

Once my family awakes, I pause to join them for a short time and we follow some simple morning rituals together too.

This is just a rough sketch of my mornings, and they make me happy.

It wasn’t always this way though. I used to awake in a hurry, rushing and cranky before stumbling into work and errands and meetings. It was awful, but it was my life. I didn’t know any better, so I didn’t think I could change things. Thankfully, I was wrong.

I’ve changed my mornings, so they work for me and not against me, with just a few simple rituals. And I’ve shared these morning rituals with thousands of coaching clients/students over the years, and many of them come back to me a month or two later and say, “Thank you!” Perhaps they will help you as well.

1. Get an early start.

If your mornings are chaotic, the simple solution is to get up a little earlier than the chaos. This, of course, starts the night before by going to bed a bit earlier too.

Adjust gradually, wake up just 10 minutes earlier each week for [Read more…]

40 Powerful Mantras to Help You Think Positive

05.24.2015 by Angel Chernoff // 88 Comments

40 Powerful Mantras to Help You Think Positive

When things go wrong, don’t go with them.

“I don’t want to feel overwhelmed. I’m tired of the anxiety and stress. Too often my mind is consumed with negative thoughts and my body is filled with physical tension. It hurts. I don’t want to feel like this. I don’t want to feel like I live in a whirlwind of exhaustion 24/7. I don’t want to just ‘get by’ day to day…”

Those are the opening lines right out of a live chat session I had last night with a long-time reader and recent course student of ours. I’m sharing this with you today (with permission) because, in slightly different words, I’ve literally heard this same message from coaching clients, students and readers 1,000+ times over the past decade.

Can you relate? To an extent, I bet you can. Sometimes we all can.

Whenever I’m coaching someone who shares these feelings, I gracefully shift their focus from what they don’t want to what they DO want. Because I know that what we focus on grows stronger in our lives. I remind them that their life story is an expression of who they believe themselves to be – the thoughts and words they choose to express themselves, gradually shapes the core of their identity and destiny.

So let me ask you this:

How have you written your story so far? Have you put your thoughts and words to positive use? If I eavesdropped on your self-talk or your conversations with others, would I hear statements that create happiness, or statements that refute it?

Your ability to write a positive life story hinges on your language. It is your inner and outer verbal expression that makes your joy possible and that infuses your life with purpose, meaning and vitality.

So today, I challenge you to replace your negative thoughts and words with positive alternatives. Take a look at the quotes below that I have selected from our blog archive. Pick one (or more) of them that relates to your present troubles, and use it as a mantra by repeating it to yourself every time you feel negativity creeping up inside you.

If the grass looks greener on the other side… Stop staring. Stop comparing. Stop complaining and start watering the grass you’re standing on.
Satisfaction is not always the fulfillment of what you want; it is the realization of how blessed you are for what you have.
Sometimes you just have to look back at your past and smile about how far you’ve come. [Read more…]

7 Reasons it’s Time to Move On and Embrace Change

05.20.2015 by Marc Chernoff // 64 Comments

9 Addictions 90 Percent of Us Struggle With

Change isn’t part of the process; it is the process. The bad news: nothing is permanent. The good news: nothing is permanent.

Today, with the help of a friend, Brian Gardner (check out his inspiring site), we made the first design change to our site in nearly a decade.

Yes, a decade.

If you think about how drastically the internet and technology has matured in the past ten years, it’s impossible not to wonder why we didn’t update our site design sooner.

All details aside – and there are plenty of them – the answer is: Resistance to change.

Sure, in the past we’ve preached about prioritizing content over design. And yeah, it wasn’t broken, so we didn’t absolutely need to fix it. But these rationalities were just covering up the fact that we were stuck in our comfort zones.

In this subtle, yet obvious way, we weren’t practicing what we preach. But thankfully we finally caught ourselves and came to our senses.

And as we rolled out the new design this morning, I couldn’t help but appreciate the synchronicity of this short email from a coaching/course student that popped up in my inbox at the same exact time (I’m sharing this with permission):

“I just wanted to send a quick note of thanks. Today marks a full year that I’ve been eating right and working out regularly, which is, as you know, something I resisted for years. This time last year I weighed 312 pounds. When I saw my weight on the scale at the doctor’s office I knew it was time for a change. And after some much-needed coaching from you and Angel, a year of exercising my willpower, and using no dieting pills or gastric bands or anything, I went back to the doctor’s office for my annual check-up. ‘199 lbs,’ my doctor said. ‘You know, your positive lifestyle change just added roughly 10 years to your life expectancy.’ My 9-year-old daughter, who came with me, grabbed my hand and said, ‘I look forward to spending those extra years with you, daddy.’”

Wow! Talk about a beautiful reminder to embrace positive change in your life.

Yes, you may feel resistance, like Angel and I did with our site’s redesign. It may not be easy. But we all have to stretch our comfort zones and move our lives forward.

The truth is, living is a risk. Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared sometimes, then you’re not doing it right. Don’t worry about mistakes and failures, worry about what you’re giving up when you don’t even try. Worry about the life you’re not living and the opportunities you’re forgoing, as you merely exist in the safety of your comfort zone. Give yourself permission to be one of the people who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them and grew into your strongest self.

That’s what I wish for Angel and me, and that’s what I wish for YOU.

So in a general sense, here are some good reasons it’s time for all of us to embrace change and move onward…

Everything changes, whether you embrace change or not. – If nothing ever changed there would be no sunrise the next morning. Most of us are comfortable where we are even though the whole universe is constantly changing around us. Learning to accept this is vital to our happiness and general success. Because only when we change, do we grow, and begin to see a world we never knew was possible. And don’t forget, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. So embrace it, and realize that change happens for a reason. It won’t always be easy or obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it. [Read more…]