Success and Self Improvement Audio Books

Leisure Audio Books have recently launched their website containing over 6000 audio books which are available for immediate download on to your MP3 Player or IPod.

They have a good selection of Self Help Audio books which include books on motivation, success, personal growth, time management and interpersonal skills.

Best sellers include:

• The Awakened Mind System by Dr Jeffrey Thomson, which uses pulses of sound combined with a lush ambient soundtrack. As you listen, your own brainwaves begin to reflect the Awakened Mind pattern
• How to Dejunk your Life by Dawna Walter - An inspirational guide to fighting clutter and sorting your space.
• Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell - A look at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly.

Visit Leisure Audio books for the full selection.

Don't Worry Be Happy!

Almost everyone have heard the hit single 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' by Bobby McFerrin. The song has a very catchy way of conveying its message of being happy to everyone. Bobby Mcferiin's simple message surely made a lot of people by telling them not to worry.

Living a happy, resilient and optimistic life is wonderful, and is also good for your health. Being happy actually protects you from the stresses of life. Stress is linked to top causes of death such as heart disease, cancer and stroke.

One of the better things ever said is - 'The only thing in life that will always remain the same is change', and in our life we have the power to make the necessary changes if we want to. Even if we find ourselves in an unbearable situation we can always find solace in the knowledge that it too would change.

Social networks or relationships are essential to happiness. People are different, accept people for who or what they are, avoid clashes, constant arguments, and let go of all kinds of resentments. If arguments seem unavoidable still try and make an effort to understand the situation and you might just get along with well with

Happiness is actually found in everyone, increasing it is a way to make a life more wonderful and also more healthy.

To be happy is relatively easy, just decide to be a happy person. Abraham Lincoln observed that most people for most of the time can choose how happy or stressed, how relaxed or troubled, how bright or dull their outlook to be. The choice is simple really, choose to be happy.

There are several ways by which you can do this.

Being grateful is a great attitude. We have so much to be thankful for. Thank the taxi driver for bringing you home safely, thank the cook for a wonderful dinner and thank the guy who cleans your windows. Also thank the mailman for bringing you your mails, thank the policeman for making your place safe and thank God for being alive.

News is stressful. Get less of it. Some people just can't start their day without their daily dose of news. Try and think about it, 99% of the news we hear or read is bad news. Starting the day with bad news does not seem to be a sensible thing to do.

A religious connection is also recommended. Being part of a religious group with its singing, sacraments, chanting, prayers and meditations foster inner peace.

Manage your time. Time is invaluable and too important to waste. Time management can be viewed as a list of rules that involves scheduling, setting goals, planning, creating lists of things to do and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

Laugh and laugh heartily everyday. Heard a good joke? Tell your friends or family about it. As they also say -'Laughter is the best medicine'.

Express your feelings, affections, friendship and passion to people around you. They will most likely reciprocate your actions. Try not to keep pent up anger of frustrations, this is bad for your health. Instead find ways of expressing them in a way that will not cause more injury or hurt to anyone.

Working hard brings tremendous personal satisfaction. It gives a feeling of being competent in finishing our tasks. Accomplishments are necessary for all of us, they give us a sense of value. Work on things that you feel worthy of your time.

Learning is a joyful exercise. Try and learn something new everyday. Learning also makes us expand and broaden our horizons. And could also give us more opportunities in the future.

Run, jog, walk and do other things that your body was made for. Feel alive.

Avoid exposure to negative elements like loud noises, toxins and hazardous places.

These are the few simple things you can do everyday to be happy.

And always remember the quote from Abraham Lincoln, he says that, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

Are you Associating Yourself with Successful People?

The people you associate with - whether on the job or socially - can have a positive or a negative effect on you.

Some people see life in a positive light and are natural motivators. If a positive person asks you how you're doing and you say, "Not well at all. I've had this cold for a week now," their response is something like, "I'm so sorry. I bet you'll be good as new and feeling better in no time!" A negative, demotivating person may respond by saying, "I know what you mean. A cold like that can ruin your whole week. If you're like me, it'll probably take you a whole month to get over it!"

You associate with some people not by choice but simply by circumstance. You can't choose your coworkers, for example; sometimes you have to do the best you can to work with and get along with them as well as you can. But, you don't have to associate yourself with negative people at breaks, lunchtime, or after-work events. Find ways to remain pleasant, but don't spend too much time with those people.

Instead, surround yourself with people who make you feel goodabout yourself, people who notice the positive things instead of the negative. Everyone has said on some occasion, "I just feel inspired; I feel better about myself and my future when I'm around so and-so." In other words, choose to associate with people you want to be more like.

Articles on how to Increase Attention Span

I thought it was about time that I wrote some articles on how to increase attention span.

This may sound like a simple thing because if you want to remember something, you surely just have to pay attention to it. However, the most common reason healthy adults forget is because they don't manage to focus. Just being easily distracted can account for memory lapses no matter what age you are..

Attention is one of the most sensitive aspects of the intellect. This means that it is quite vulnerable to being disrupted. In order to soak up information so we can later remember it, we must be mindful and focus on what we are trying to learn. Sometimes the problem isn't that we forget, but that we don't "get" what we want to remember from the outset.

Does this sound easy to you? It is. But think for a moment of all the things in your daily life that you really don't pay attention to. Consider the following questions about information we encounter every day:

* Where did you park the car the last time you went to the Grocery Store?
* What color is at the bottom of the stoplight?
* What letters, if any, are missing from the telephone dial?
* How many light switches are in your house or apartment?

How did you do? The chances are you don't know the correct answers to some of these questions, even though these are things that you come across, sometimes frequently, over the course of a typical day. Why? Because we are not always mindful of things we do or see every day. Only by focusing our attention can we adequately acquire information and have it later when we need to remember it.

Can we improve our attention? Absolutely. How? Here are two basic habits we can develop to improve attention and maximize memory fitness immediately:

1. Be Aware - If you are aware that you are hearing or seeing something you want to remember, you will be more likely to pay attention to it, to "get" it, and to "have" it later when you want to remember it. Increased awareness of the need to remember will increase your attention toward that information.

Have you ever lost your car in a parking lot? Or forgotten whether you turned off the oven?

Imagine if you had been more aware that you needed to be mindful of where you parked or whether you turned that knob. If only you had thought to yourself, "Okay, I need to pay attention now so I will remember what I'm doing." Being more aware in those situations would have encouraged you to pay closer attention and made it more likely that you would remember that information later.

2. Make the effort - Next, you must try to focus your attention. Being aware that you need to pay attention without making the effort to do so is like sleeping with the unread text book under your pillow the night before final exams. It never worked, did it? Well, the same rule applies here. It isn't enough to know you must be mindful of something you want to remember: You must then do it. So when you park your car at the mall and want to be able to find it a few hours later, simply make the effort to look around and pay attention to where you are. Most likely there are some signs or other landmarks to help you remember where you've parked.

Come back soon for more articles on how to increase attention span.

How to overcome your Fear and Find Success

Imagine telling a significant role model in your life something new and exciting. An idea or event that has stimulated you both mentally and physically. It can be anything from trying out for a dramatic play, joining a sports team, beginning a new career, starting a new marriage, losing weight, developing a new outlook, changing your image, or continuing your education. Instead of receiving an encouraging comment, what you hear instead is: "That's ridiculous," "You're always daydreaming," or "You'll never make anything out of yourself."

Negative statementslike the ones mentioned above can create fear of failure and fear of rejection within a person. This situation can leave an individual on the receiving end feeling helpless. Negative attitudes create barriers toward individual accomplishment. The implicit, or unspoken message, is: "Whatever gave you the idea that you are motivated enough?."

Do you remember a time when you or a friend finally made the team but the coach left you sitting on the bench? What kinds of feelings did you experience? Humiliation? Insecurity? What will it take for you to get off of the bench and become the athlete, the person, you truly want to become. What's preventing you from speaking up and letting the coach know that you're one terrific person, and given the chance you'll prove just how unstoppable you really can become.

Sitting on the bench, and not asserting yourself, is like being in a play without acting out the part. Do you go through life without getting involved one-hundred percent? Maybe it's because you believe you might fail, or even succeed, at what you set out to accomplish. Do you set yourself up for failure and sabotage your success by telling yourself that you can't perform well? Is it possible that you allow unproductive and negative vocabulary to dominate your thoughts? Negative self-talk takes away your motivation and is an inner barrier that must be eliminated.

Here are three ways to overcome fear of success:

1. Continually tell yourself that you welcome challenges. Stand ready and willing to challenge yourself to your maximum capacity. Move forward in your communication by deleting all negative self-talk.

2. Believe that whatever you set out to accomplish, you will give it one-hundred percent. Stop providing excuses to blame yourself, becoming disempowered from achieving your goals and increasing your self-esteem. Believe that your "pride of accomplishment" motivates you to eliminate all the "shoulds," "oughts," and "musts," from your vocabulary.

3. Be the best you can. Continually "see" yourself in an evolving way. Stretch every mental, emotional, and physical fiber within you. Believe and feel that you are one dynamite, ecstatic, and powerful person. Remember, your beliefs impact the way you feel and act.

A Winning Attitude Makes a Difference

A winning attitude can take time and effort to develop. An important part of this development involves forming positive statements about yourself to replace the old, negative thoughts. As a small child, you happily went about doing whatever children do - tasting, exploring, and learning. You were without thoughts about what you could or couldn't do, so you tried many things.

Very soon, an adult undoubtedly intervened, giving you messages like "Good boy!" "What a bright girl!" "No, no - that is bad." We accepted these statements unquestioningly.
Over time, as we hear such statements repeatedly, we develop beliefs about ourselves, and begin to organize them into a belief system. Various experiences reinforce them and we begin to adapt our behavior to conform to them. If you were repeatedly praised as a bright child, you began to believe you were a bright child. Your young mind worked overtime, coming up with new ways to show how bright you were, and to elicit further praise.

In the process of living in that premise, your experience of yourself as bright broadened and took root. Soon there was no longer any question about it in your mind. You probably still think of yourself as a bright child, unless at some point that belief was challenged and you deliberately reevaluated it.

This is the way beliefs are formed and assimilated. As a child, it was a rather haphazard experience - our beliefs about ourselves depended to a great extent on circumstances and the beliefs of others close to us. As adults, however, we have the power to originate beliefs of our own choice. We can replace negative, limiting beliefs about ourselves with freshly chosen alternatives. We can get rid of beliefs that don't support us. In fact, to live our dream fully, a new belief system that enables us to be our best is a necessity. Our old beliefs got us this far; new ones will take us into the future of our dream.

To adopt new beliefs, we can now systematically choose affirming statements, then consciously live in them. They will become increasingly true, until we are certain that that's who we are. So begin by taking a closer look at the way affirmations are formed. An affirmation is a firm, positive sentence designed to convey a message from your conscious to your subconscious mind. It asserts something you know is true, even though it may not have manifested in your life yet. When the subconscious mind receives this message, it goes to work on a subconscious level to align with it and bring it about.

An effective affirmation must always be in first person (I), and the present tense, and must be stated positively, not negatively. So instead of, "I will not catch a cold and be sick tomorrow" (which would focus your mind on the idea of sickness), you could say: "I am radiantly healthy now. My body feels wonderful! I see myself performing beautifully in my dance recital."

Now you have replaced the negative thought with a positive, colorful image. Since the mind can only hold one thought at a time, the thought of sickness is gone, and your subconscious mind has grabbed hold of the healthy idea and has swung into action creating health.

7 Steps towards Positive Thinking

Do you have a bright idea hidden somewhere in the back of your mind that you just can't wait to test out. Of course you're not the only one with the bright idea. So what motivates you to churn those creative, or even inspiring juices to its utmost flavor?

It's always best to set up a personal goal where you can accomplish the most in record time, maybe like mowing the lawn in an hour before the big game on TV. A positive attitude in whatever you do will make things easier, and even enjoyable.

Here are seven tips to help you on your way towards positive thinking.

1. Take passionate action towards living your life by design. Talk is cheap. Action = deposits in the bank of a passionately authentic future. Without it, passion is void.

This is a perfect example where dreams are made of where you start by tinkering with your mind, then with your hands. And if the idea weakens, you can always go back to it later until you finish it.

2. Recognize and embrace the thought that each moment is perfect regardless of its outcome. Every time you hit on something that may appear too extreme, why not give it a shot and see if it will work. You will be surprised to see of there are other ways to get the task done in time. If you are not pleased with the outcome, decide to use that moment to learn from and make the appropriate shift.

3. Commit to yourself as well as those you love to create powerfully a life you can love. Instead of reacting, commit to creating from your heart and soul, out of love rather than fear. The American Dream will always be there, but a dream will still be a dream without motion. Be amazed as the transformation begins.


4. Dwell completely in a place of gratitude. Learn to utilize what you have in your hands and make use of it in the most constructive way. Slipping into neediness will become less of a habit when you repeatedly shift towards gratitude, away from poverty consciousness.

5. Use a Passion Formula of Recognize/Reevaluate/Restore in place of the Shoulda/Woulda/Coulda whirlwind. The former is based in increased knowledge and abundance while the latter focuses on scarcity and lack. As you face people or tasks that may seem harder than scaling the summit of the Himalayas, allow yourself to realize that the task is just as important as giving out orders to your subordinates. You would rather be richly passionate!

6. Believe that you are the architect of your destiny. No one can take your passionate future from you except for you! Create your life authentically. As long as there's still breath in your body, there is no end to how much you can accomplish in a lifetime. The concept of thinking big is all about enjoying your work, which would lead to celebrate a discovery that is born within your hands. Watch everything flow into place with perfect, passionate precision.

7. Keep humor at the forefront of thought, laughing at and with yourself when possible. You may find yourself quite entertaining when you loosen up! I am yet to see a comedian ever go hungry even though his jokes are as 'old as great-grandma'. Life has so much to offer to allow you to mope around in self pity. Humor is very attractive, very passionate: life-giving.

Instead of subjecting yourself to what you will be doomed for, make your path by taking the first step with a positive attitude!