Its amazing how labels can affect your mind. Today, has been calculated to be ‘Blue Monday’, the most depressing day of the year.

If you were to find a friend saying that they ‘felt blue’ you would understand that they were not feeling their best at the moment. If they were to say they were ‘seeing red’ you might consider them to be feeling angry.

However, in reality, these are just colours, it’s the feelings, emotions and generalisations that we have attached to these terms that cause us to feel about or understand the terms in the way we do.

From time to time things happen in life that you can’t control, even when your heart is completely set, sometimes, it’s just not meant to be. You can sit and break your heart, get angry, voice your emotions to whoever answers the phone first, but at the end of the day, the situation is out of your control, therefore no amount of emotion that you throw into it will change those facts.

However, you could look at the change in situation as a new adventure, new possibilities, an opportunity to follow a path that you might not have thought of before and who knows where that might lead, maybe something better than you had ever imagined.

Is having goals important… YES! You always hear that most top athletes and successful business professionals will set goals, however most of our daily decisions are made with a goal or motivation in mind, we just might not be aware of it that way. We eat the chocolate because it tastes nice, we get into the car because we are going somewhere, we sit in front of the T.V because we want to relax. Why would we not want to pursue our success in business or life the same way?

You might want to be the next Alan Sugar, but it’s not going to happen without a set of goals mapped out to get you there. To have a goal is to have a point of focus, a long-term vision can be easily achieved by setting goals, creating short-term motivation, to get you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Our inner voice is who we spend most of our time with, who we listen to the most, but is what we say to ourselves always constructive or more often destructive? How often do you say to yourself, ‘well done, great job!’ Or ‘push yourself just a bit further, you can do it, you’ve got this!’

The more we talk ourselves down the more likely we are to believe it, the more likely it is to come true. But this can work just as well the opposite way around, try being a little kinder to yourself, believe in yourself a little more and you never know what might come your way.

Managing your emotional state can be tough, one minute you’re happy, one minute you’re sad, angry, excited, annoyed, we can run through so many emotions in such a short space of time, it’s difficult for our loved ones to keep up!

The key to success is being able to manage these emotions, being able to keep yourself in what we call a ‘resourceful state’ of mind, by teaching yourself that you have a choice of how you feel, even in the toughest of situations, enables you to stay resourceful whatever you want the outcome to be.

How often do we think about how things might go wrong? How often do we play the images over and over in our minds of everything unravelling, falling apart and not going to plan. We sit and over think about what’s the worst that could happen, negatively escalate the situation without fact or reason, and then we can’t understand why everything went wrong!

What do you think might happen if you thought about what could go right? If instead, you rehearsed everything in your mind going well, how successful you could be. Do you think the outcome might be different?

Why not give it a try, what’s the best that can happen?! Or comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Sitting down to try and put together a website within the enigma that is cyber space, whilst looking longingly out of the window at the beautiful Autumn day that was happening outside, I found that I couldn’t bare it any longer and I dragged our newly purchased Costco bistro set out of the garage and set it up directly in front of the sun, even if the only place I had to put was the driveway! I might have endured questionable looks from the neighbours, but I was so grateful for some fresh air and the warmth of the sun on my face that I felt much more enthusiastic about battling with cyber space!

This got me wondering, how often do we make compromises to ourselves to make tasks a little more bearable, to help feed our enthusiasm or are we more likely to tell ourselves that we shouldn’t do something, we mustn’t, we can’t, we should carry on regardless as to how we feel, as that what ‘ought to be done’. Well what if it wasn’t, I mean, there is no rule book, there is no spoon! Why can’t you compromise with yourself, or give yourself a treat or reward? In fact, why wouldn’t you? You would treat a child, a pet or a partner, why wouldn’t you reward yourself? You can’t always change the tasks that need to be done or avoid battles you might have to face but you can find ways to compromise or reward yourself, perhaps making these things a little more tolerable and even renew your enthusiasm!