Change is an inevitable part of life, personal growth as well as improving self esteem. Without change, we experience stagnation, depression and even death. Change is the only thing that brings progress, and yet, it is often what we resist and fear the most! As the world around us changes, we must learn to change with it or else we will experience confusion, frustration, stress and anxiety.

Yet, we can practically turn our fear of change into a constructive, energizing force for bettering our life. There is always risk involved in doing something or achieving desired goals and the only way to succeed is by acting and doing. For that we need to conquer our fear. So, remember every fear is an opportunity to grow.

To be effective individuals or leaders, we must be able to embrace change, both professionally and personally. So often, we get stuck doing things the same way (again and again), and hoping for different results and hoping it will work if we just try a little harder. This is called insanity. We often resist the idea of changing our course of actions, because a new path would be foreign to us and we afraid of the unknown. We usually prefer the comfort zone, which is known to us rather than doing something different. It is satisfying our need to avoid facing the fear, yet it preventing us from a long term growth.

To truly achieve our goals, we must ask ourselves, “Where is it that we want to go, what are we doing to get there, and what is holding us back from being there now?”  Once we know what we need, we need to make decisions and act. To be more successful we need to evaluate our actions and if needed we must do things differently. The future we will experience is the result of the choices we make this moment. To create a better future we must begin to see change as an opportunity and choose to live with courage and commitment.

Developing the courage for change will help you to create a future that is more successful and fulfilling. Walt Disney shared this belief with us when he stated, “all of our dreams can come true- if we have the courage to pursue them.“

Coaching (Life Coaching, Career Coaching, Executive Coaching) is a one-to-one relationship with a pro­fessional coach/consultant who helps you clarify and articulate what you want most from life and how best to achieve it. Coaching helps you create the results you want in life, work, relationships, and spiritual growth–in spite of the obstacles you encounter.

Life coaching helps you ap­proach life, not as a series of problems to be solved, but as opportunities to create what you truly want. Living life from a creative stance ena­bles you to produce results with optimal effort and less stress, and much more enjoyment.

If you are doing well in life but recognize that you could do better, coaching may be beneficial. Coaching helps you transcend self-imposed limits and bring out the best in yourself. Coaching is particularly helpful if you have an overly complex life, work too much and play too little, want to change careers, start your own business or enhance an existing one, or want to downshift to a simpler, more healthful way of life.

Yet, it is important to note that coaching is not a substitute for therapy. It is not for people with serious emotional or mental problems who would benefit most from intervention conducted by a professional psychotherapist. It is about creating results, not dealing with crises or deep seeded emotional pain or hurt. And while coaching focuses on the present and the future, it can assist to change perspectives or attitudes resulting from troublesome past experience.

The key to continued success in life and work is not just to clarify goals, need and direction, but also to produce motivation and momentum, particularly, the ability to produce results even when motivation is low. Regular coaching sessions with a professional coach can help you sustain action through tough times, learn from setbacks, and discover your inner resources and strengths as you persist toward your goals.

Perfectionism can be a big obstacle. It can slow you down, even keep you from accomplishing what you want. So, stop struggling to be perfect – it’s an unachievable, unhealthy goal. Below please find few tips to overcoming perfectionism and living more fulfilling life:

• Acknowledge your achievements. In the endless quest for perfectionism, you completely lose track of all that you have achieve, and all the progress you have made. To combat this, keep a chart for your milestones, and each time you achieve something, jot it down on your chart. Each month, review how much you’ve created and achieved. You’ll be surprised how much you’d been overlooking, blinded by those perfectionist ways. Learn to appreciate and honor your effort, the journey, and your accomplishments.
• Set Goals and take action towards them. What have you always wanted to do, but didn’t because you were afraid of failing? Don’t worry if you fail and have to try again. Accept mistakes; learn from them and despite feeling bad, move on to what is actionable. Reflect on how this process of learning from failure applies to other areas of your life. Focus on your positive attitude and effort, which will lead you toward fulfilling life.
• Set realistic expectations. A shortcut to misery is setting completely unrealistic expectations for your work. It’s good to have ambitions and aims for your work, and to push yourself to do the best you can. Perfectionists have expectations and goals that simply can’t be met! To overcome perfectionism, you need to balance great expectations with reality. Accept that your limits – and other people’s limits – are real. You simply can’t create perfection.
• Stop comparing yourself to others. We are each unique in our talents, abilities and personalities. When you compare yourself to others and wish you were as creative/talented/successful as them, you completely overlook your own strengths and abilities. It’s great to be inspired by other people, but use that motivation to fuel your own work while you focus on your best.
• Recognize the ideas are directions, not absolutes – Continue to hold your ideals and set goals because these serve as growth-levers and motivation sources. The goals are not the problems – it’s the attachment towards the goals which you need to work on. Accept your goals as directions to work towards and not absolutes which you need to achieve. Commit yourself to pursuit your goals. However, it does not matter if you do not reach the goals because the goals are just pointers toward where you want to be. They are not who you are or who you should be.
• Enjoy the process and look at the big picture – The big picture matters more than the tiny details. The process is the longest part of achievement – enjoy it! Find ways to lighten it up – learn to laugh at yourself, take things positively, rest/eat/sleep/play when it is time to, take part in enriching recreational activities.

Procrastination becomes a problem when delaying tasks leads to internal and/or external consequences.  The external consequence may be minor or severe, from missing a meeting to losing your job. The internal consequences also range from minor to severe, from mild discomfort to guilt, shame, self-condemnation and despair.

Procrastination is a habit, a learned response to anxiety-producing situations or tasks. It is an avoidant behavior we adopt when we are to do a task which reflects our abilities and we feel afraid/anxious that we will not measure up. Fear of failure or of success, cultural limitations or imagined disabilities all contribute to a person holding them self back for fear of finding out that they will fall short and thus it will prove without a shadow of a doubt that they are worthless individuals.

Personal competence is the antidote to procrastination and comprises of five elements: emotional strength, well-directed thought, time-management skills, control over habits, and task completion abilities. Therefore, most strategies for overcoming procrastination are based on improving these five skill areas, and involve: improving emotional control and adjusting one’s underlying attitude, focusing attention and thinking rationally, learning executive (self-management) procedures like planning and scheduling, learning habit-changing methods, and acquiring better task completion and problem solving skills.

Aristotle once said “We are what we repeatedly do; success is not an act, but a habit.”

All of us want to achieve a level of maturity, prosperity, success, fulfillment and happiness in life, yet few do. It’s because only few are willing to go through what it takes to achieve such a level.

What separate successful people from unsuccessful ones is their ability to organize their attitudes and actions (called habits) towards a specific goal and purpose. Successful individuals realize that to achieve their goals and prosperity, they need to push themselves and have a lot of sacrifices; challenge their personal limitations and become more skilled in many different areas of their life.

If you want to achieve success, but you don’t want to change and be out of your comfort zone, then you are probably won’t achieve success. Wishing success alone isn’t enough to bring it. You need to want and act upon it despite the challenges, fear and anxiety you might feel.

Remember that you are the driver of your life. You have the freedom and choice to act according to your will. There may be forces outside your control but your response will direct the result that will come out your way. So, develop constructive attitude and act with courage. Your efforts will direct you to maturity, success, prosperity, fulfillment and happiness in life.

Self esteem is defined by Dr. Twerski as a true and accurate awareness of one’s skills, capabilities and limitations. The importance of this is clear – one can optimally adjust or adapt to his reality or environment only to the degree that one’s perception of reality is correct. An incorrect perception of reality is a delusion, and someone who is delusional cannot possibly adjust properly to reality.

If I am delusional about myself, there is no way I can live a happy and productive life. If I happen to be bright but think that I am dull, if I am personable but think myself to be undesirable, if I am handsome and think myself to be homely, I am delusional, and my distorted self-concept precludes an optimal adjustment to life. Indeed, I believe that the overwhelming number of psychological problems that are not of physiologic origin are invariably due to low self-esteem, i.e., to a distorted self-concept in which a person grossly underestimates oneself.

You may say, “I know myself thoroughly, and I know that I am unlikable or dull or unattractive or impersonal. Those are facts, and it’s not my imagination.” However, having weaknesses does not make you incompetent or a failure. The real purpose of life is to become the best person you can become and to utilize your abilities for good.

Healthy self-esteem does not solve all the problems of life. Struggle and conflict is intrinsic to life. Sooner or later everyone experiences anxiety and pain. While self-esteem can make one less vulnerable more durable, it cannot make one ignorant of his feelings and needs.

Think of self-esteem as the immune system of consciousness. If you have a healthy immune system, you might become ill, but you are less likely to; if you do become ill, you will likely recover faster, your resilience is greater. Similarly, if you have high self-esteem, you might still know times of emotional suffering, but less often and with a faster recovery. Its presence does not guarantee fulfillment, but its absence guarantees anxiety, frustration and despair. So, focus on building your self esteem by creating greater awareness and build the skills toward more durable, fulfilling life.

Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

There is a certain set of characteristics that every healthy person has in common. If you are able to understand what some of these traits of healthy people are, you too will be able to adopt these practices and finally achieve some of the success and happiness that you’ve always wanted.

The following is a partial list of habits of healthy, mature and successful people:

• High level of integrity
• Set vision, goals and priorities
• Look at life as a journey for growth
• Develop courage and act despite fear
• Focus on the solution rather than the problem
• Being proactive rather than reactive or a victim
• Focus on opportunities (to grow) rather than obstacles
• Develop organizational, planning and time management skills
• Work methodically, systemically, yet creatively (think out-of-the-box)
• Align themselves with people with positive character
• Make difficult decision and accept its consequences
• Are lifelong-learners
• Avoid procrastination
• Look at the big picture
• Focus on half glass full
• Practice what they preach
• Open minded and open to feedback
• Focus on being wise and not on being right
• Be assertive (not aggressive and not passive)
• Effective communicator and thoughtful listener
• Identify and follow their core values and believes
• Are adaptable, resilient, flexible while embracing change
• Focus on changing themselves rather than changing others
• Develop their emotional intelligence (IE) and Social Intelligence (SI)

By developing healthy habits that you practice continuously on a daily basis, you can increase your chances of living a long and vibrant life. That is why establishing an early foundation of healthy habits can last a lifetime and will lead you to a become a better person who has better life.

Leo Tolstoy starts the novel Anna Karenina with the line, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” There is a great deal of reality in that idea, which applies to healthy, mature individuals. Healthy people exhibit common habits, while the habits of unsuccessful people are all over the place.

Everyone who is successful and fulfilled in life, or who has done great things in their life, has developed proper habits. Developing habits means building the foundation of your character and destiny. Habits are created gradually, slowly while taking small step approach to rich high level of personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

Creating habits is not an easy thing, and require consistent and commitment to do the same things again and again. When you initially learn something the pathways or connections in your brain are weak. The more frequently you think a particular thought, have a particular attitude or act in a certain way the stronger the pathways become, forming an automatic habit of thinking, and doing. When habits are formed, they hold you in the right truck and serve you well.

The key thing to remember about healthy and successful people is that they understand that simply wanting to achieve success is not enough, you have to match this desire with drive, effort, constructive mindset as well as committed to develop healthy habits and practices that would leads you to success and fulfillment. So, take care of yourself by building healthy habits.

The effect of our financial situation and monetary wealth on our well-being is well documented. Today, more than ever, we are impacted by the votality of market situation and its uncertain performance and even its direction.

Normally, after a period that market was moving south, when the market starts moving up, we start feeling sense of hope. While the market continue going up, we feel relief and later optimism, excitement that can reach even euphoria. After a period that the market was moving north, when the market starts moving down, we start feeling the anxiety builds up. When it continues going down, we might be in denial. The feeling might later evolve to fear, panic and even depression.

As such, we cannot overstate the importance of keeping our emotions in check when it comes to the ups and downs of our wealth. We must be aware and accept our difficult emotions when our investment goes through loss in short run, while keeping our focus steady on managing assets and investment with a long term perspective. At times of financial gains, while we acknowledge that a strong rally could continue, it is important to understand that the risks at those times are real and significant. The key to managing the emotions created by the short terms results is to stay focus on the fundamental investment and management strategies which consider the long term objectives.

More than ever, I believe that working with professionals is important to make informed decisions. To reduce uncertainty and risk, using a conservative approach is necessary.  A conservative approach will also prove itself prudent one over time and more importantly will provide piece of mind, and improve our well being and quality of life. If one decides to take high level risk, they might gain high return, but at the same time might suffer high loss. The key guideline to well-being is to make knowledgeable decision while understanding its consequences and implications to our life (considering financial, emotional and other relevant factors).

The following are a few questions to ponder in regards to the meaning of your life:

• What makes you smile? (Activities, people, events, hobbies, projects, etc.)
• What are you most grateful for?
• What is your greatest talent?
• When do you most feel that my life is meaningful?
• What did you do last year that give you strong feelings of self-respect?
• What are the ideals, causes you would be willing to dedicate your life for?
• Do you express your love to those who means most to you?
• What would you change if you could live my life over?
• What would bring more happiness into my life?
• What are the most significant accomplishments you have made in the past five years?
• What are the three biggest mistakes you have made in the past five years?
• What have you learnt from these mistakes?
• Do you have a vision of where you want to be within five and ten years from now?
• State your current life goals?
• What do you do to achieve these goals?
• What can you do in the next year toward these goals?
• What goals can you set for yourself for the next three years?
• What are the three pieces of advice you can give your children?
• Do you implement these advices in your life? If not, why?
• What one decision you avoided making last year?
• What are the most important relationships in your life?
• What can you do to strengthen these relationships now?
• What are three things you would like to change about yourself?
• Which is worse, failing or never trying?
• Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
• Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?
• Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
• If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
• Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?

The above meaningful questions have no right or wrong answers. Yet, sometimes only asking the right questions is the answer. You are the only one that can ask them and answer them.