by Jeff Burke

Created on: May 10, 2008

We live in a negative world full of anger, hurt feelings, and grudges. Anyone with a positive attitude comes across odd, if not unbalanced. Negativity, if left unchecked, will rob you of every good thing in your life - relationships, personal well-being, and opportunity.

How do we become positive people in a negative world? It takes a shift in our mindset or world-view called a paradigm shift. I'm not talking about individual thoughts, but the filter through which those thoughts are processed. A decision must be made to become a positive person and embrace a new paradigm for our life. Once you have embraced your new paradigm, it is important to understand the relationship between thoughts, attitudes, words, actions, habits, lifestyle, character, and destiny. Our thoughts become our attitudes which becomes our words which become our actions which become habits which become our lifestyle which becomes our character which becomes our destiny. We need a total makeover of our thoughts, attitudes, and words.

1. Thoughts - We are what we think. We can change our thoughts by exposing ourselves to positive input, rejecting negative thoughts, dealing with our anger, and thinking pro-actively.

While we can't use environment as an excuse to avoid change, we must realize that what we see and hear can influence our thoughts. Choose carefully the people you spend large blocks of time with. Do they excuse themselves from positive action by focusing on problems? Do they have a "can-do" attitude? Are they angry, rude, complaining, or overly critical? Show me who your friends are and I'll show you the direction of your life.

Find people you want to become like. Ask them if you can learn from them and if they would mentor you. Most successful people find great fulfillment in helping others to realize their dreams. I have a friend who has been very successful as a financial trader. He mentors others for free. I know because I'm one of his students. Recently I called him with a problem I was having in my financial trading. I thought my problem was a technical issue. Within two minutes he identified my problem as a defect in my way of thinking and emailed me some material that would help me.

He also seeks out world class traders in the top 5% of their profession and asks them to mentor him. You must realize that these traders are worth billions, but they enjoy helping others who admire and look up to them.

Anger is one of the biggest obstacles to personal development. People hold on to

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