We're strongly influenced by people, thoughts and atmosphere around us. We absorb energy of what we allow into our space. Hang with people who have same life focus as you. Cut short draining conversations. Give extra time to interactions that are exhilarating. Switch to more inspirational reading that activates best aspects of your character.

Shift Your Outflow

Get rid of energy drains. Resolve any issues that you have been brooding about for a long time. Bury hatchet with friends and relatives. Praise people rather than criticize. Detach from need to be right-and from habit of judging or controlling others. Catch yourself verbalizing self-defeating thoughts. Stop labeling yourself while you're at it!

Shift Your Space

Clutter: The Silent Energy Sucker! Clutter has a real physical effect on your energy levels. You don't need to clean out your garage or closet all at once. Just take 15 minutes a day to de-clutter some aspect of your space. Get rid of old, dead things you don't use anymore. Add new, fresh elements to your life. Feng-shui all areas of your earth adventure. What's on outside is a reflection of what's on inside. What about outdated relationships? Activities that no longer thrill you? Habits which have ceased to serve a purpose?

Shift Your Environment

Get outside. Connect with nature and open spaces. Even in a city you can find a park and some greenery. Breathe in fresh air and stretch your legs. Lie on your back, clear your mind and follow clouds drifting by. Listen to grass grow. Watch flowers bloom!

Shift Your Body

Move your body as much and as often as you can all day. Active, physical movement will center, balance, ground and revitalize you. The more you participate in life, more life-in form of love, money and health-will flow through you. Hike, jog, skip, swim, garden, cook, sing, skydive, quilt or paint. Let your body dance you. Play music that speaks to your soul.

Shift Your Vibration

Spend part of each day in silence so that you can hear Spirit speak to you. This can be an active meditation-like yoga, tai-chi, walking, running, knitting, or petting an animal-as well as a quiet sitting mediation.

Shift Your Pace

Most of us feel like we are victims to time-when in reality we control how we use our time. Slow down. Rushing has become a way of life for most of us. Gear down your walk. Slow down your speech. Take a moment to breathe. Set tempo so that you can enjoy doing whatever you're doing.You will see dramatic positive results.

Shift Your Age

Play on ground like a baby. Fly a kite, roll in grass, or build a fort like a kid. Laugh with delight for no reason like a child. Dance all night like a teenager. Sit on a mountaintop like an old sage.

Shift Your Style

Under promise and over deliver. Give yourself more time to complete a project than you feel you'll need-and deliver it early! Learn to say no when an activity isn't intuitively right for you. Focus on thriving, not just surviving. Your days will not feel as frantic. You'll feel more fulfilled and happy!

©2004, Keith Varnum. All rights in all media reserved.

Now I know that’s only a tiny amount of money to lose on a business venture, but still it’s difficult to describe how awful those first two days were. Here I was, giving my best shot at Internet marketing, and I was crashing and burning. I came within a hair’s breadth of pulling plug and walking away from whole thing.

But I hung in there, and third day I cut a profit. From there, I refined my ad campaigns, gradually increasing my profit margins, day after day after day.

See, failure isn’t all bad. I learned valuable things those first two days. I learned what I was doing wrong, and I refined and tried again.

The truth is failure is first stage of success. The Wright brothers didn’t soar with eagles first time they tried to fly. Edison blew up hundreds of light-bulbs before he ‘cracked code’. Every great achievement of humankind was initially marked with failure before it met success.

So next time you hear a nagging little voice asking, “What if I fail?” take time to answer question. If I fail, I learn. If I learn, I can refine. If I can refine, I will succeed.

And always remember this: The successful people are people who got up one more time than they fell down.