Self help and self improvement are things we work towards throughout the course of our lives. If you are new to this process, you may get a little impatient at times, but do remember this – you cannot get your self esteem low overnight and neither can you get it alive and kicking in a day. So work towards self improvement patiently and diligently. Once you make it a habit to be good to yourself, you will slowly but surely begin to see a positive change in every aspect of your live, be it at home or in the office, be it a personal relationship or a professional one.

As adults we often become so accustomed to our negative ways of life that it takes more than just a simple one day effort to change that. More often than not, you will not succeed in your self help plan unless you make yourself outlines and guidelines to work within. Just like a business plan, it wouldn’t work if you go to step ten before you’ve completed step two. So, be patient and work through the different stages of self improvement at a steady pace.

We have to accept the fact that with whatever you wish to achieve in life, there is something that you would have to lose in the bargain. The good news is that when we want to achieve good things in life, we need to do away with the bad ones. If we are on a path where we are battling alcoholism, then we need to make sure that we keep our selves away from people and places that cause us to consume alcohol. Here are a few steps that define the stages of self improvement:

A. Defining your goals

B. Transforming your decision into actions that help you on your path to success

C. Keeping the goal always in sight

The third is where most people fail. Many people lose the willingness to remain on the path to self improvement after they achieve a minor success, or sometimes a minor failure. In the former case, they feel that they’ve done enough, and fall right back into the ditch they just got out of.

Self Improvement is not an issue that can ever be closed. The minute you lose control of your self help, you are right back where you started from. So keep your goals always in sight, and when you reach one goal, make yourself another positive goal to work towards. You need to look within and ask your self about what positive goals you need to accomplish for your life, and this should not be something that you stop asking your self after the first success.

Not everyone believes this but the emotional and mental aspects of a person, when combined, leads to better self improvement.

Emotions love to dominate our actions and reactions, even though we do not want it to happen sometimes. The society often see emotions as a sign of weakness, so people are used to putting them aside and focusing on the rational aspects more and more.

No matter how strict and logical you may be, you will always feel. One way or another, someone or something will get through you.

Positive emotions are a lifelong goal for many of us concerned about emotional health and self improvement. What is more important; the amount of money you made during your life or the times you laughed out of sheer joy?

People tend to put their positive emotions behind their negative feelings. This is one of the biggest problems that people come across during their lives.

There is no clear way to ignore a negative experience and try to replace it with a positive one. Life just does not work that way.

For example, when you were a child, if your goldfish dies, you would be heartbroken. Your parents will probably buy you another goldfish but the sorrow is still there.

Things get even more complex when you become an adult. A fight with your spouse the night before will affect your entire day. You will go to work angry, tired, and your mind will wander. On the way home from work you will not notice the sun shining and you would not be tempted to stop at a roadside stand to pick up some fresh fruits and vegetables.

All this because that one negative thought has contaminated the way you perceive the reality around you.

In this moment you will realize finding a safe place to relax your mind will do wonders for your emotional and mental improvement.

That place is relatively easy to find. It can be an actual place or an imaginary location. The best idea is to totally lose yourself in it.

Let us say you have a problem on your mind and it just would not go away. Go bowling. Do not know how? Just give it a shot.

Get caught up in the game. Your mind will drift away from the negative thoughts that dominated your last hours or days and start processing a whole new kind of information.

A safe haven can take many forms. It can be a song, a movie, even a person or animal. The main thing is allow yourself to get completely involved with this new activity.

You might still get flashes of the problem every now and then. Ignore it and get even more absorbed in what you are doing.

When the bowling game, the song, or the movie ends you will abruptly return to reality. You will probably want to retreat back to the safe place. Do not do it.

The safe place exists only as a helping hand, not as a solution to your life’s problems, may it be a small or big. It serves only as an escape route.

You will return from your safe zone with an increased energy level. You will feel better about yourself and gain more confidence. You will see that any issue can be resolved.

This is how a small escape from a harsh reality can increase your emotional and mental health. Try to do this often and you are on your way to better self improvement.

These days everyone is looking for ways to reduce debt and save money. It is possible to wipe out your existing debt and learn how to live your life within your means.

Here are five tips that will help you on your way to debt free living:

1.    Stop using credit cards. One of the leading factors in the current economic crisis is people buying things on credit they cannot afford. The next thing they know, they find themselves unable to do anything more than make minimum monthly payments.

• Minimum payments will keep you in debt because every month interest continues to accrue on your original balance. A $1,000 balance on a typical credit card can take 22 years to pay off if you make only the minimum monthly payments!

• Don’t fall into the trap of credit card debt. Instead, avoid the hassle and expense by paying cash for the things you buy. If you want a big-ticket item, save the cash before you make the purchase. Only buy when you can afford to pay for the item in full before you bring it home.

2.    Buy luxury items with cash. We all have extras and luxuries we want, but using credit to get them is a dangerous path to take. You’ll get much greater enjoyment from the extras in your life when you pay cash, rather than ongoing monthly payments.

• Nothing takes the excitement out of a new toy or nice vacation more than the large payments that strain your budget month after month.

3.    Create a realistic budget that includes debt repayment. The first step in gaining control over your debt is creating a workable budget. Rather than stifling you, a budget can bring you freedom! You’ll know where your money goes and you’ll set a spending plan so you can continue buying the most important things in your life.

• Your budget should take into consideration all facets of your lifestyle, including housing, food and household items, utilities, savings, recreation and debt repayment.

• If your budget doesn’t include room for debt repayment, there will never be enough money to pay off your debt. Take control of your financial reality by working with a realistic budget every month. Before long, you’ll see your debt diminishing while your savings grow.

4.    Seek the help of a professional credit counselor, accountant or financial planner. The best way to be sure you’re making sound financial decisions is to seek out the help of a financial professional.

• Credit counselors, financial planners and accountants are experts in the areas of savings, debt repayment, investments and tax deductions. Implement each of these areas into your finances to eliminate financial strain and secure a stable financial future.

5.    Negotiate better rates with the banks or credit card companies. Many people assume they have no choice but to accept the interest and finance rates offered by their banks and credit card companies, but that isn’t always the case!

• Talk to the people at your financial institutions. You may be surprised at how willing they are to budge.

• If your credit is in good shape or you’ve made steady, progressive strides to improve it, you may be able to get lower interest rates on your debts.

• You might also receive higher interest rates on your savings, giving you a double shot at eliminating your debt entirely and moving forward with your finances in a positive direction.

You can repair your debt problems and learn to avoid creating them in the future. These five steps will point you in the right direction and get you started on a new path to financial freedom and prosperity!

Self hypnosis is great as a tool for self improvement. When you learn self hypnosis, you may end up surprised at how easy it is to master, and at the same time it makes so many things so much easier.

Most people connect self hypnosis with listening to an audio file that is made for a specific subject such as stop smoking, loose weight etc. etc.

And I admit there is a lot of that floating around out there, but even though it may do the job in a lot of cases, this kind of self hypnosis for self improvement is made in ways that may not be best for every single individual.

To take an example, if you have a phobia and the self hypnosis mp3 or whatever it is, talks you towards what you fear, it could be an elevator ride to bring you down, it will end up not being able to create the needed relaxation, because you will be on edge just by the elevator being mentioned.

So how do you use hypnosis or self hypnosis for self improvement?

To achieve any kind of self improvement the self hypnosis session you go thru, should address and eliminate the negatives connected with what you want to achieve, and preferably create positives instead.

So to get the best kind of self hypnosis it should be designed individually for every person to benefit most from it.

In fact you would be best of if you created the session yourself.

That way you would have a self hypnosis session created exactly around the issues you wish to change, or self improve if you like, designed around the exact phrases that have meaning to you.

So to sum it up, you need to do self hypnosis on your own, in order to really accomplish lasting changes in your life.

Below here is a short overview of how you create and execute a self hypnosis session:

1. Create a list of goals ordered from the most important to the lesser important goals, and make sure to phrase goals that are measurable.

2. Make suggestions for yourself towards your subconscious mind, make them specific instructions on how to achieve each goal.

3. Make sure you sit in a place where you will not be disturbed, and work on relaxing yourself, mind, body and soul…

Imagine that with every breath you take in relaxation, and breathe out the worries and tensions of the day.

4. When you feel really deeply relaxed say out loud the hypnotic induction, tailored to you getting deeper and deeper relaxed, at some point you may forget to keep saying them to yourself, and that is ok, it means you are deeply relaxed, and ready to induce the positive suggestions from step 2.

5. Start repeating out loud, think, or play a pretailored sound file repeating your positive suggestions over and over for about 5 minutes minimum.

Try to do these 5 steps regularly, preferably you should do self hypnosis daily at the same time interval for best results.

After a couple of weeks measure your results towards your goals, and if you are not moving forward, rephrase the positive suggestions in order for you to keep moving forward towards your self improvement goals.

If you really want to learn self hypnosis to the core, you should buy a self hypnosis book that explains and guides you through the process.

I can strongly recommend The Ultimate Self hypnosis Course, it is thorough and comprehensive on the subject, and it will help you in achieving self improvement with self hypnosis.

Since the beginning of recorded history, stress has been with man. Even the earliest caveman daily faced the stress of simply surviving every day life. From seeking shelter to escaping predators.

Today even though our lives have changed drastically, stress is still with us – we’re just stressed about different things. Some of us are worried about our financial future or the stress of being out of work. Others, who have a job may be facing stressful situations at work. Many people have health related problems and face the stress of dealing with  their illness. Or you may have a marriage that is so filled with stress that it is barely surviving. If you have kids, they could be facing the stress of dealing with bullies at school. Stress is all around us, and always has been. Those who survive are the ones who find productive ways of dealing with stress instead of capitulating to it.

Researchers and scientiests have well documented the effects of stress on the body and mind. Experts in stress management know that trying to eliminate stress from a person’s life is not only futile, it’s arguably not even desirable. So they concentrate on managing stress instead. But why is it that some people thrive under stress and others, in a similar situation, will collapse from it?  There are a couple of reasons why, but the main reason is that a large part of anxiety response is psychological. The first individual has learned how to manage his anxiety so well that he actually thrives under pressure. Likewise, a stress management expert will help you to achieve similar results.

Where does anxiety come from? There’s more than one answer. Many times the cause is a traumatic, life altering event such as losing a parent, losing a child, or losing someone  that you love. But, stress can also be the result of less dramatic life changing events such as moving to a new neighborhood, attending a new school, or starting a new place of work. But just about all forms of stress or anxiety come down to either loss of the familiar or anticipation of loss of the familiar.

In sports terminology, think of the term “choke.” A team starts a season with zero wins. They win one, two, three, and eventually 12 games without a loss. Now they’re expected to win. In fact a loss would mean that they’ve disappointed their families, coaches, and fans. Suddenly as they approach each game, it’s with a feeling of “tightness”, because now they HAVE to win. The next loss has not even happened and yet some of the team members are already feeling tightness. Since the loss hasn’t happened yet, it can only be attributed to anticipation of what will happen if the team does lose. So, in many high profile, high stakes, games you’ll see players dropping balls that they would normally catch with ease, missing goals that they would normally make in their sleep, and passing up shots that they would normally take. In other words, they’re choking.

Superstars, on the other hand, have leaned to manage and focus their stress. They won’t pass up a shot. They’ll insist on taking the shot. They’ll actually want the ball in crucial situations. They will love being in the spotlight in front of thousands, maybe millions of people. Same game, same situation, different player, different reactions.

The important thing to note is that this feeling of confidence or comfort is not related to skill level. Because, we all know people who have little or no talent in their field who are nevertheless filled with supreme confidence in their actions and abilities.