Aspire Higher Especially during the COVID coaster

By Ken Lindner, author of Aspire Higher

The choices that you make can profoundly change your life! The state of your life, your feelings of self-worth and self-esteem, your self-image and your confidence that you can truly effect positive change in your life are direct reflections of the positive and beneficial or the negative and/or self-sabotaging choices that you have made. Think of it this way: Choices are like train tracks. Trains go where the tracks take them and the path of your life goes according to the positive or poor life choices that you make. The FANTASTIC NEWS is that starting today, no matter where you are in your life, you can  jump-start it and elevate your feelings of self-esteem and self-worth, your self-image, and your optimism by making positive and constructive life choices each and every chance that you get!

As an ardent student of decision-making since college and having counseled thousands of individuals over the past 38 years to make tens of thousands of positive life and career choices, I have time-and-time-again observed the following: 1. Your positive life choices can make you feel good/or great about yourself and your life; they can inspire and instill empowering feelings within you of confidence, mastery, and healthy self-love, and at some point, when you have a sufficient amount of these potent feelings, they can trigger your desire to respect, have compassion and empathy for, and sincerely care about and support others. The underlying concept here is that if you feel really good or great about who you are, how you conduct your life, and how well your life is going, these highly potent, positive feelings will organically lead you to want to elevate the lives of others by helping, enhancing, and supporting them. And, the beautiful by-product of elevating others, is that your life, your happiness, and your fulfillment, along with your feelings of self-esteem and your self-image will be elevated as well.

2. There are things in life you can’t control, but you can control your choices, emotions, responses, and actions. Taking constructive control of the things that you can control through your positive life choice-making is confidence-building, masterful, empowering, and elating. All of these are nurturing and wonderful feelings, assets, and blessings.

3A. Your constructive, wise, and beneficial life choices will positively reinforce and lead you to make more and more positive life choices in the future because you truly enjoy the sweet fruits of successfully elevating your life, your well-being, your self-image, and your confidence that you can effect tangible, positive change in your life. Every time you make a positive life choice and enjoy its beneficial results, you are motivated to make more positive life choices, because you love the empowering feeling of being able to make your life far better than it was. Essentially, the success and positive feelings derived from making great choices organically create a hunger within you to experience more success and the empowering and elating feelings that sustained success brings, by making more positive life choices whenever you have the opportunity. 3B. Your negative, self-defeating, and/or self-sabotaging life choices will make you feel badly about yourself as you see the quality of your life start/continue to spiral downward with each poor choice that you make. You also begin to lose confidence that you can make any positive life choices that will elevate you and the state of your life. As a result, you feel great anxiety, demoralized, and hopeless about your lot in life, as well as emotionally and psychologically mired in a debilitating life-funk with no apparent means to escape. And the more you, your feelings of self-esteem, your confidence, and your hope to enjoy a better life spiral downward, the less you feel that you can have or deserve a better life through the choices that you make. So a virulent, vicious cycle is started as you continue to make more and more poor/self-destructive life choices.

Additionally, the “negativity bias,” which is our proclivity to see and be effected by negative things much more than positive ones, which looms in all of us to varying degrees, will exacerbate an already negative frame of mind and feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness.

3C. What you can glean from the above is that making positive, enhancing, and psyche- and life-elevating choices positively reinforce and naturally lead you to make more life-enhancing choices; whereas negative and self-defeating life choices make you feel badly about yourself and that you’re a “loser” or a “victim“ who is impotent to raise the quality of your choice-making and incapable of ever being their best self and attaining their most treasured goals and dreams. As a result, you continue make bad decisions and self-sabotaging choices, as you lack the core-confidence that you can raise the quality of your life. 4. In my book, “ASPIRE HIGHER”, I discuss the all-important concept of being a “solutionary.”  What this means is that when you’re faced with finding a constructive solution to a problem or challenge, you not only find a solution that benefits you, but one that also enhances others. When you make life choices and decisions that elevate others as well as yourself, this process continues to raise your feelings of self-esteem and self-worth, along with your self-image and confidence that you can do amazing things for others—such as endeavoring to understand where they’re coming from, who they truly are, and why they act as they do. Doing this can gift you and the world with beautiful fruits such as mutual respect, compassion, and empathy for others, as well as civility and peace among all people, groups, religions, and countries. It is these positive, caring, and loving life choices that will elevate your life and the lives of others, as well as radiantly illuminate our golden path to world peace.

5. With all of the rampant violence, negativity, distrust, division, racism, vitriol, and Covid-related challenges and losses in the world, debilitating feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, alienation, and feeling emotionally and psychologically “stuck” are pervasive. We all at times feel as if we need to turn to a more positive, uplifting, and inspiring page in our life’s book, and with great optimism and fervor for enjoying far brighter days ahead, jump-start our lives. Additionally, many of us perceive that we are forever shackled to our past, our lot in life, and to an unappealing or demoralizing future. I CAN TELL YOU THAT THIS IS NOT THE CASE! Or put in another, more poetic way, “Be tired, mired, and so uninspired—no more!”

STARTING TODAY, make each and every choice that you are blessed to be presented with—-be it big or small— a positive, constructive, and beneficial one. Baby-step, by baby-step, positive choice, by positive choice, your confidence, spirit, optimism, feelings of self-esteem and self-worth, and your self-image will begin to elevate. All of which will give you the highly empowering motivation to continue to make positive life choices for yourself, for those you love, and for others—whether you know them or not, without any expected payback to you, karmic or otherwise. Making the conscious choice to perform unconditional kind, supportive, and/or loving acts is pure, soul-nourishing “Altruistic Love.” It is the highest of all loves and the most heart and soul nourishing, empowering, and elevating love. It is an everybody-wins-big-time love to be embraced and practiced.

**************************** You can immediately jump-start and begin to dramatically improve your life, your self-image, and your ability to live your very best and highest life, by beginning today to zestfully seize each and every opportunity to make a choice or decision that you’re presented with, and make it a positive, constructive, and enhancing one for you, those you love, and for others. These choices will light-up your life, heart, and soul, as well as the lives, hearts, and souls of those you love and others whom you elevate by your thoughtfulness, kindness, caring, and love. Thank you for taking the time to read my essay. I’m deeply grateful, and may all of your choices be positive and loving ones.

Do you want to Choreograph your Career by Consistently implementing Conscious, Constructive, success-evoking Choices, made with Cognitive Clarity? Learn more about Ken Lindner’s book, Career Choreography: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Finding the Right Job and Achieving Huge Success and Happiness in my article for Thrive Global: “Prepare Your Pandemic Pivot with Ken Lindner’s 8C’s“

Ken Lindner graduated Harvard University, Magna Cum Laude, and from Cornell Law School. Ken’s college honors thesis was devoted to decision-making and he has been an ardent student of the dynamics of the positive life choice since then. Besides “ASPIRE HIGHER”, he has written 5 other books. To learn more, please go to positivelifechoicepsychology.com

 

 

 

 

 

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Tuesday, December 7 at 7:30 p.m.