Unlocking Your Highest Potential: It all Begins and Ends with the State of Your Mind.

Hello Folks! 

I never cease to be amazed by how much I’ve changed in the past five years. Before, I was painfully timid, insecure, and hopeless about my dreams and future direction in life. A decision to change and a fresh new perspective on my faith drastically turned things around, and now I’m on this inspiring journey to unlock my highest potential and purge negativity and needless suffering from my life. I also have more confidence and motivation to pursue my dreams without fear or self-doubts. And even when I have to endure life’s harsh reality, it hardly perturbs my laser focus on where I want to go and what I want to accomplish. Today, I want to share the first of seven things I’ve learned about unlocking potential. I hope these posts will serve as reminders for whenever we find ourselves lost and wandering, but never hopeless.

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It all Begins and Ends with the State of Your Mind.

Before you dive into all the steps available out there to increase your productivity, maximize the output of your time, or even understand what you want to do with your life, you have to make sure your mind is in the right state to foster all those dreams, motivate you to act, and charge forward like an angry elephant when everything in life tries to push you back into mediocrity and boring existence. Several days ago, I started reading Overachievement by John Eliot, Ph.D. during my subway rides to work. I’m more than two-thirds done with the book, but already I’ve taken away substantial points he makes about what sets exceptional people apart from ordinary people; what the smart overachiever does over the burnt-out and zealous underachiever. I can’t reveal too much, but I’ll give you enough so you can read the book yourself. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, exceptional, highly successful people are able to reach their highest potential by possessing what Eliot calls the “Trusting Mindset” as opposed to the “Training Mindset” of the mediocre.  The “Trusting Mindset” is in the moment and pays no attention to judgment, second-guesses, criticism, over-analysis, rationality, result-orientation, or impatience. It’s not something as superficial as blocking out all these things that are ever present in your mind, but rather zeroing on what needs to be done right now without allowing the rational part of your mind to interfere and undermine the legitimacy of your actions.

Patience, letting things happen, instincts, acceptance, playfulness, and an empty mind are some of the tenants of the “Trusting Mindset”. Ever notice that when reading a really good book, you are chin deep into the moment that when some unfortunate soul comes up to tap you on the shoulder from behind, you jump like you’ve just seen a zombie ready tear at your flesh, or in my case, I become a harpy and yell, “What do you want?” The “Trusting Mindset” is like that except you’re deep into whatever it is you’re doing to achieve your dreams, and anything that isn’t part of helping you get to your destination is irrelevant. 
          As you can guess, the “Training Mindset” is all about the components that the “Trusting Mindset” ignores as it achieves success. The “Training Mindset” has it place when you’re in school or going through the training you need to achieve your dreams, but when it’s time to perform you have to leave the “Training Mindset” behind and take hold of the “Trusting Mindset.”

There’s more. Eliot says exceptional people don’t put on many different suits for the many different occasions in life that come up. They have a mind focused on achieving whatever their dream may be no matter the obstacles, no matter what people say, no matter the number of failures, and no matter their external conditions—they have that scary confidence that they will make it. Again: I. Will. Make. It. 
         Another thing: exceptional people relish and utilize stress for their success. Not worry or anxiety, but stress: the butterflies in your stomach kind of stress; the high stakes; the numerous eyes on you, watching your every move; the feeling that your guts are boiling; the heartbeat in your throat; and your mind high and alert in the moment. This is not the time to get yourself relaxed and de-stressed, it's time to go with the flow and act! It is exactly at this moment  that the “Trusting Mindset” is essential because the minute you lose yourself in analysis, results, being calm and rational, and double guessing, you fall and fall hard. 

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Before I end on this segment, I also want to add a little of what Celestine Chua has to say from her amazing website, Personal Excellence, about your state of mind when achieving your dreams. One of her most important points is to channel your inner desires to motivate you rather than rely on external factors for motivation and inspiration. Sometimes you try to change your settings by moving from one place to another, or even leaving the country, but you still have the same problems you left behind in your previous location. It doesn’t work. No matter where you go, you can’t escape yourself. Or other times you force discipline into your life, think that if you get rid of your laziness, or even stop thinking negatively, you’ll achieve your goals or dreams. However, the steps you take to counter these problems are short-lived, and you eventually return back to where you started. You have to make an effort to understand the deeper meanings behind the culprits that cripple your actions and dreams or drown you in a negative mindset. Once you target the root of the problem instead of tackling surface obstacles, you can move on confidently to your destination. The big difference is now you move forward and act without feeling bored, unhappy, or worried because the purpose you’ve uncovered fuels your actions.

To end, just remember that the state of your mind can be your most powerful ally on the course to achieve your dreams, or, if you’re not careful and aware, it can be your greatest enemy.

Next week’s topic: Don’t be Afraid or Embarrassed by Your Dreams.

How about you? How do you get your mind in the right state to achieve your dreams? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for reading,

Sammy  :)

 © 2013 C.S. Severe All Rights Reserved.

Send Negativity to Hell! S is for Strategy.

When I was a kid, I used to be scared out of my wits by hitchhiker seeds: those brown, spiky little balls that resembled bugs with claws and hooks. Chills gave rise to goose bumps on my skin and exclamations of “Eww! Eww! Get if off!” whenever those pesky little seeds clung to my socks, pants legs, or sleeves. 

Annoying little buggers

Don’t ask me why, maybe I was slow, but I had a hard time getting those seeds off me. Now, I just brush the little suckers off, no problem. You know what’s like that? Negativity.

Negativity clings onto a person worse than a bear trap because sometimes we don’t do anything about it. I used to be that person that let negativity fester, grow, and get worse until it finally crushed me under its weight and invited its big brother depression to join in on the party to tear me apart and slow me down. The worse part? I let it happen. That was not cool.  Faith and prayer played key parts in uplifting my spirits, but one other essential component included making a decision: I refuse to live this way anymore.

I’ve learned to have more appreciation for attitude and the power of the mind. I sincerely believe despite whatever issue, big or small, manageable or terrifying, neutral or miserable, a person can wade through it all unscathed and stronger if she takes control over her mind and attitude.  A lot of negativity is delusional thinking anyway mixed with endless worry that leads you absolutely nowhere.  Who wants to live life feeling stuck? Progress is what it’s all about, especially the progress I want to see in my life. And even better, I have all the power to create and achieve that progress. Like Captain Planet used to say, “The power is yours!” That reminds me. I remember talking to this teenager about Captain Planet and she told me she didn’t know what I was talking about. Sheesh, kids make you feel old.

Can't believe she didn't know who I was! 

Anyway, moving on! Chucking negativity helped me because now I can go about achieving my goals without focusing heavily on my alleged limitations or external surroundings. I want to share with you some work I’ve done for the S in ESPER. S stands for strategy. You can learn more about all the guidelines for strategy by going here on the Personal Excellence site by Celestine Chua.

Strategy:

1.) What are the resources and information necessary to accomplish my goal?   

• Homework on writing a book, plotting, characters, writing well, writing suspense, action scenes, descriptions, setting, cliffhangers, foreshadowing, rewards for readers, etc. 

•  Homework on securing an agent, writing query letters, and pitching my book in the most effective way.

• Homework on promoting myself as a writer through social media. How can I improve in this area? What are some resources available to help me that won’t hurt my wallet?

• Anything else?

2.) What are the obstacles that stand in the way of my goal and how can I overcome them?

•          Making time to write.
•       Yes, I know I don’t have a full-time job and thus have the luxury of more available free time than most, but you’d be surprise what poor time management can do to a person with too much free time. I need to figure out how to manage my time in ways that will maximize my productivity.          

•       Distractions from Daily Life: internet, low priority tasks, phone calls, food, basic needs (JK on those last two ^-^)
•      Possible solutions is to disconnect from the internet when writing, but I love listening to Spotify when I write, and that requires the internet so what to do? Resist the urge to check my email? That doesn’t always work too well. When I really really want to get some writing done, I turn off my wi-fi and listen to tracks on my Itunes or listen to the Relax Melodies app. So, there is always a way to bypass the obstacles to overcoming your obstacles. Does that make sense?   
   
•      Let people know that I’m working and not available so they don’t disturb me

•      Convince myself that those low-priority tasks tugging at my cuff for attention like annoying little brats will get done when it’s their turn, but right now, it’s time to write.

3.) What can I do differently to achieve my goal?

• I’ve had the goal to finish editing my novel numerous times before and failed. So whatever methods I used before isn’t going to give me the different output I desire. This begs the question how do you go about writing a book differently? Writing is writing, right? Well, I can change my settings. I usually write in my room, which contains many distractions: bed, video-game consoles, telephone, etc. I can also change the time that I write and see how that works in terms of output. I can stop listening to music altogether when I write. It might be a big distraction that I’m not even aware of yet. I can go on and play around with all the different ways that I can write until I find the methods that increase my output. Since I have yet to query agents, I can keep whatever strategy I have set-up and change it up when the silence proves to be deafening after three to four months. Or less. :)

Well, that’s all for today. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the strategy for achieving goals.  

Thanks for reading! :)

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Underemployment Sucks! So Make Your Own Path: E is for Establish.

Happy Tuesday, folks!

Nearly three months have passed since I returned home from Seoul, South Korea. I left behind a city that I would always remember for its gorgeous mountains; insane amount of coffee shops (one every single block—I kid you not); never ending talking saleswomen wearing oversized white knee socks and mini-skirts as they stood in front of beauty boutiques that blasted K-Pop music to passing pedestrians; the snappy dressers, the wild dressers, and the dressers that elicited the biggest WTF from me and my fellow teachers;

Oh, just another regular day in the subway

the businesses that used random English words mixed up to create the funniest, incoherent phrases or clever ones like the love motel named She'll or the coffee shop called Exorcist Coffee. 

Whaaaaat? That's a motel named She'll.

Have some coffee brewed by your friendly neighborhood exorcist.

I even miss those pesky delivery scooters ready to run me down on the sidewalk; the old ladies that pushed me aside better than any NFL quarterback to get a seat on the train; and hell, even those taxi drivers that drove past me dozens of times at 1:30AM because I stood on the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. Ah, Korea. I miss you terribly. And of course, I miss my students most of all. The friendships I forged there will always remain in my heart, along with the adventures we took through the city and beyond. 

No matter where we are, we'll always be friends.

And who can forget those Saturday nights in the singing room, Noraebanging our hearts out (Karaoke in Korean—yes, I made it a verb)? This is only a snapshot of how I lived in Korea, but I hope it gave you a little sense of what I experienced. 

Back in America: Don't go away just yet, Fall! D:

NOW, I am back here in the ‘burbs, settled and readjusted to American life. (Was there always this many obese people here? We need to do something, country.) I’ve applied to more jobs than I care to count and tweaked cover letters to the point of ad nauseam. The results are a couple of part-time teaching gigs which I’m grateful for because money is money, and that's a whole lot better than a long day at home, being broke with nowhere to go. 

However, I see farther than the life I have now to a place where I have control over my career and achieve the goals and dreams harassing my mind. And this is where the E in ESPER comes in. Remember, ESPER is the goal setting/achieving model from the website Personal Excellence by Celestine Chua that I’m using to finish the edits and rewrites of COT and get it published through the difficult, hyper-competitive traditional publishing route. I’m not crazy; I have back-up plans A, B, C, and so on.

The E in ESPER stands for establishing your goal. 10 components make up this section but I’ll share five. You can find all them here:

1. Is your goal defined in the context of your life purpose?

I believe one of the key purposes in my life is to connect with as many people as possible to share joy, happiness, love, and care. I see writing as one of the ways I can carry out this purpose because it allows me to communicate with a wide audience. I hope that my books can not only entertain, but also inspire and bring joy and happiness to readers, and hell maybe even change the world for the better. No reason not to add that in the mix.

2. Ensure that your goal is a key goal with an 80/20 destination: part of the 20% of goals that will give you 80% happiness.

Hellz yes! I’d be very happy to be a published author. Not much to elaborate on here.

3. Plan for BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goals   

Nobel Prize in Literature. If you don’t go all the way, why go at all?

4. Start with Long Term, then break down into short term:

             

90,000 words in 2 months

45,000 words in 1 month

11, 250 words in 1 week

1,600 words in 1 day             

5. Use positive framing:

I will write a novel I love that is ready to publish. I believe I will finish a novel I love that is ready to publish. Forget my under-employment, pressure from parents to get a real job or go back to school, external environment, pressures from society, and from my own limitation, impatience, and delusions on the lack of ability or talent or whatever that negative voice in my head thinks up to put me down. Purge the negatives. Time will take care of itself. You take care of yourself and your goals. You are not wasting your life because this is your goal, your big effing dream. Life is rich and full of opportunities that you have to create. Continue to grow and take control over your life.

And, that is where I am now. And it feels good. 

YIPEEEEE!

Thanks for reading. :-)

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Channeling Inner Desires to Motivate: ESPER, an Introduction

Hi There!

Are we stuffed with turkey? Or in my case, salmon? :-D I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving day and weekend. If your Thanksgiving was awful, I'm sorry about that. Just remember you can always make better days ahead. You can start with now! :-) 

Happy Happy Joy Joy! Wait, Wrong Cartoon.

Today, I want to talk a little about channeling inner desires to motivate. I mentioned several posts earlier about how I’d learn to overcome the serious writer’s block crippling my writing. I can’t believe that it was only a month ago that deep discouragement over my lackluster progress overwhelmed me. I didn’t think I’d ever produce something that would be published. 

Just replace "Bloggers" with "Writers". My parents reaction to my writing!

 At first, I thought the culprits behind my procrastination were laziness, lack of discipline, and boredom, but the truth had been fear of rejection and lack of faith in my writing abilities. Understanding these deeper meanings helped me progress to the next phase of achieving my goals and ultimately, my dreams: channeling my inner desires to motivate me to write productively on a daily basis. We all have our unique motivations for writing, and I’ve tapped into mine. It’s been driving me to action like I’ve never experience before in my life. I realized that my inspiration comes from within not from the outside, and I had to clearly identify my purpose.  I credit the website Personal Excellence by Celestine Chua for helping me unravel all these issues. If you struggle with procrastination, self-doubt, or goal setting, I highly recommend it.  Reading Celestine’s writing transformed my focus on life and my writing.

For the next several days, I’m going to share my experiences using the goal-setting/achieving model ESPER that Celestine explains on her website. ESPER stands for Establish, Strategy, Planning, Execution, and Review. I’ve decided to use ESPER to finish editing COT. As I’ve told you before, I made some big changes to COT (changing one of the female MCs to a male) so it’ll involve some rewriting and reworking. I’m very excited about the edits and rewrites I’ve made so far. My novel is bursting with vitality and new energy because I’m finally writing the book I want to read! Not the book that I think others would want. That’s just stifling. Letting go of all my inhibitions and loving the world I’m creating infuses COT with a freshness I didn’t think it could ever possess.

Attitude is key in all of this. Your writing reflects your attitude. If you’re unhappy, fearful or dissatisfied with yourself, then the prose won’t represent your highest potential as a writer. I’m not saying you have to be super high on life to write a great novel because history shows us a ton of amazing writers who suffered from difficult emotional issues. If you don’t believe in yourself and the words you’re putting down, then you won’t convince your readers that your writing matters. And that’s what I desire. For someone to read my book and think: it matters that I’m reading this or I’m not wasting my time reading this book.

I do the same thing.

If you checked out the link on ESPER, I’d love to hear what you think about it.

Thanks for reading,

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A Resuscitation is in Order!

HI :)

Never thought I'd update this blog, did you? It took more than a year, but I am back. This time I've dropped the pseudo-name Sammy Suzuhara. Call me CS. Severe is my real last name and I haven't given it enough credit for its radness. I am still working on Children of Tokua, the new name of this blog. This book has haunted me for seventeen years and finally, finally---no, I really mean it this time-- FINALLY, I am going to produce a finished product. I've made some serious changes that has revitalized the book, along with my interest in writing it.

Before I give you any details of what those major changes are, I want to share with you one essential process that I had to undergo to finish COT. Desire and motivation are very important when writing a book, without them, the thing never gets done. And this is true about any major project in our lives. I've been focused these past few weeks on raising my self-consciousness and performing some deep introspection. I had many obstacles to writing COT but I never dived deep into figuring out what they were. I assumed I was a chronic procrastinator, lazy, not disciplined, etc. And then sometime last week, I haphazardly visited this website called Personal Excellence after listening to a list of inspirational music which I arrived at through listening to Susan Boyle's rendition "I Dreamed a Dream" (Can't get enough of that song! Yes, I know it's a depressing song but it nonetheless inspires me, haha). I highly recommend the Personal Excellence website because it pretty much helped change my attitude toward COT.

I decided to read one of the articles on procrastination and did a self-introspection exercise to understand more deeply why I wasn't actively writing COT. My initial free writing produced some common answers such as: "I'm bored with the book. Hate seeing the same thing repeatedly. I'm lazy. Other things in life are getting in the way. Not enough time to truly write. I don't have enough discipline." I then steadily wrote things like: "I'm afraid of rejection. I'm afraid people will hate my book. I don't think I'm a great writer. I won't get anyone to represent the book. My writing isn't as great as I would want it to be." These were the real reasons why I wasn't finishing COT! In other words, I finally admitted to myself that I DIDN'T think I was a great enough writer for the book. This self-defeating thought and belief strangled my writing. I decided at that moment that I would no longer succumb to it. Taking this action breathed new life in my desire and motivation to write. I want to be a published author. I can clearly imagine myself as published author. I love the story of COT. I love the characters. They are my babies! I can't reject them just because of my own limiting thoughts.

So, I liberated myself from such negative thinking and instead embraced my capacity to write a story my heart desired.

And on the note of discipline, I realized from Personal Excellence, I didn't need discipline to write COT. Discipline is getting something you don't like doing done. I love COT so it should not feel like I'm having an uphill struggle writing it. Attitude is so important. Well, folks, that's all for now. I'll let you know how changed COT in my next post!

thanks for reading,
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