The bad news is that you can’t just make those negative, toxic thoughts go away. Here is good new: You don’t have to make them go away. You just have to disagree with them.

THE NUTSHELL: To your Should Monster, say, “I see you; I hear you; and I disagree with you.”

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LESSON SIX: See Greater Possibilities.

Any motivational speaker will tell you that in order to succeed, you need to be open to positive. Learn to see and seek greater possibilities. Take time to develop clear images of your goals. Take risk (and it will feel risky) to practice expecting positive outcomes. When necessary, utilize a simple slogan heard repeatedly in program of Alcoholics Anonymous: fake it ‘til you make it.

Too often, we know much more about what we don’t want than what we do want. If we stop there, we will not have any idea how to change, and frequently we will return to safe haven of familiar, those old patterns of thinking and behaving that we have already proven to be ineffective. Set you sights on specific goals, your specific goals.

THE NUTSHELL: Once you identify something you don’t want, put into words, and into a visual image, something that you want instead.

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LESSON SEVEN: Remain an Independent Thinker.

Trust no one who will tell you they have THE answer, THE way, THE plan, THE diet, THE anything. There are probably as many different approaches to genuine self-improvement as there are people, or at least as many different approaches as there are hucksters (like me) on their soap boxes telling you how to do it.

This lesson is a word to wise. Take in information --- from this article and from any other sources that seem potentially credible --- as raw material, raw material to be processed by your own good judgment. Accept nothing at face value. If an idea, a method or a technique appears to have value for you, take it off shelf, hold it in your own hands, examine it, try it on, or try it out. Make adjustments according to your own good thinking. Accept it as your own “by decision,” not “by default.” Use line-item veto; you never have to accept anything all or nothing.

THE NUTSHELL: I will respect your opinion. I will trust my judgment.

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LESSON EIGHT: Work from inside out.

To insure that I am pursuing a path of personal responsibility that will lead me to success I seek, I keep this slogan in mind: “The first part of any conflict that I must solve is that which is between me and me.” This is not to say that I will not have legitimate “external” problems with you, or my wife, or boss, or colleague. And this is not to encourage old codependent (and self-victimizing) approach of habitually opting for self-blame. When I remember to begin by resolving what is between me and me, I am effectively practicing principle Stephen Covey emphasizes, “First Things First” (Covey, 1989), and being congruent with simple and powerful truth that growth always moves from inside out. Growth in its literal sense is expansion. Expansion moves from inside out.

Consider ripples in a pool of water when a pebble is dropped in. Now picture it this way: The pebble is dropped in water, and somewhere far away from pebble, slight ripples begin to form, moving inward toward point where pebble was dropped. The ripples become more and more prevalent as they move in toward center point where pebble hit water.

It is a strange image, isn’t it? It is an image that will make no sense to us because it is not based on reality, or at least any reality that we know of yet. We can agree that to expect ripples to move from outside in is ridiculous, and yet that is exactly what we are expecting when we wait for others around us, of for our circumstances, to change before we do.

THE NUTSHELL: The change I seek always begins with me.

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AND ONE TO GROW ON

Put any or all of these eight lessons into practice in your life, and I will guarantee that you will see a change for better. But give lessons time to work. One problem that most of us ---if not all of us --- face from time to time is impatience. Remember that perfection is out of question as long as we are walking around in this human skin. Remember also that there are more often than not many ways to “get it right.”

Then, to quote an old Roger Miller song (You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd): “All you’ve got to do is put your mind to it, knuckle down, buckle down, do it, do it, do it.” Therein lies ninth of these eight lessons, and very likely most important lesson of all: In end, it is persistence that will always pay off.