How many times have you been ready to “Go for it,” but stopped because you heard a voice at the last second saying something like, “Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t do that!”

Wasn’t it strange how the voice was so loud and unmistakably clear, but when you looked around you couldn’t find anyone?

The dialogue we carry on in our own heads is sometimes the most destructive and motivation killing stuff!  Heck, with friends like yourself … who needs enemies?

These voices are like a mirror reflecting the experiences, thoughts, words, information, and most importantly, the people we hang around.  Personally this is very exciting to me and as I think back over the past 20+ years I can almost point to individual decisions I’ve made that have significantly affected the quality of those internal conversations.

I’m not a big fan of dwelling on the past, but when you can look backward for the sake of accelerating your progress forward, I think it can be translated into amazing progress.  Some of the events that can be life changing and drastically change those internal voices are as follows:

Avoid contact with negative people.  You may notice that I touch on this quite a bit … and I do.  I’m sure you’ve noticed that married people look alike, talk alike, have the same facial expressions and so on.  You don’t share blood, or DNA, but you certainly take on the qualities of those you hang around most of the time.

If the content of your conversations are overwhelmingly focused on all your problems, aches, pains, or about the things you hate in the world … you’ll attract more of that into your life.  After all, that’s what you think about and talk about all the time. The universe will reward you with those things you focus on with emotion.

You can try to chalk that up to some crazy new age garbage, but it’s absolutely true! Trying to disprove it will only cause you more pain.  Unless you are a masochist, I’d encourage you to avoid associating with negativity at all costs.  It’s not easy to avoid, but it’ll be much easier than dealing with the pain you’ll receive by continuing the association.

Make a decision to only pursue what you are passionate about.  This decision will help you avoid lack of motivation, feelings of boredom, and the pain of spending the majority of your life doing something you hate.  If you’re spending the majority of your time  pursuing what you love, you’ll find it very difficult to be negative very often.  Passion causes excitement and can eliminate depression.

Make a commitment to become the best at what you do.  Happiness in life doesn’t have anything to do with the amount of money you make, or what your profession is.  It’s most important for you to find joy, feel rewarded, and feel as though you are making a contribution to the world.

If you are following your passion and make the decision to be the best at whatever you are doing, your thoughts will center around what it will take to accomplish that, and there won’t be much time to fall back into the old negative, self defeating voices of old.

Listen to personal development material daily.  I’d love to think all of us our strong enough to change our  lives completely on our own, and there might actually be one or two people out there who can, but it doesn’t make any sense to ignore the lessons other people have taught us through sharing their knowledge and experiences.

I believe we should immerse ourselves in personal development.  This will ensure our focus is on getting better and once we train ourselves to continuously move in the direction of becoming the best human being we can possibly become, those voices will begin to change and reflect that focus and positive action.

Look for the positive in everything. This isn’t easy, but with a little practice you will begin to easily identify much more positive than the negative that comes from any event, no matter how horrific the event.  I understand many people will attempt to challenge this because it’s extremely difficult to dig through the pain, sorrow, and after effects of some of the horrible things we experience in our lives.

I challenge you to get in the habit of intentionally reflecting on each event in your life, and identifying positive outcomes that have occurred following the pain.  Sometimes the positive happens right away, and other times it takes years to materialize, but there is always positive and you’ll definitely find it if you look.

When you hear those negative voices in your head … ignore them, get excited, and move ahead!  Many times those self defeating voices occur because we are doing something that we’ve never done before.  That move out of your comfort zone will be met with resistance similar to when you stretch a rubber band, and similar to the rubber band, the more you take action that gets you out of your comfort zone, the larger it will expand.

Make the effort to reprogram yourself to get excited when you hear those voices, and be proud of yourself for doing something to ensure you don’t live a life of mediocrity.  Do great things and learn to be your own best cheerleader, instead of your own worst enemy!