The two biggest sources of negative that can affect your goal achievement are 1) your friends and family and 2) yourself. Let's think about your friends and family first.

Family and Friends

Remember the article about getting help? I talked about how important it is to share your goals with people you know who will be encouragers. These people will not make fun of your goals, and they won't tell you that you can't succeed. You want to eliminate the influence of any discouragers you know. If you have friends or family members whose attitude is always "I can't," or "It's too hard," or "It's not worth it," they would be classified as discouragers. You don't need their influence on your thoughts.

Now I know you can't just eliminate these people from your life, especially if they're family members. But, I wouldn't choose to share my goals and my action plan with them. They might make fun of them or put them down. At the least, they won't be vocal about telling you can do it. So, talk about something else with them. Don't give them a chance to bring negative into your mind and attitude. After a while you probably won't want to hang out with them much anyway. Why? Because you're going someplace, and they're not. You'll find it much more comfortable to be with other people who are going places and accomplishing things.

Yourself

Who do you listen to the most each day? Your spouse? Your parents? Your teacher? Your co-worker? No, you probablylisten to yourself more each day than anyone else. You are listening to your thoughts, and you're listening to every word you speak...directly from your mouth to your ears to your brain! Whose words does your brain trust more than anyone's? Your own.

You need to focus yourself on positive thoughts and words in every way you can. Here are three ways to help accomplish that.

• During those quiet moments where you are just thinking, or dreaming, think about how good it's going to be when you reach your goal. Think about the progress you're making. Think about how far you've already come on your path to the goal. If you're experiencing challenges, concentrate positive thoughts on what you're doing to overcome them. Don't think about how hard it is! This will help keep you in a positive frame of mind.
• When you're talking to other people, talk about positive things, even if they're not related to your goals and what you're doing. If someone starts complaining about something, change the subject or go talk to someone else. Who knows, maybe you can help this person start thinking positive thoughts instead of negative and end up being an encourager to them.
• Talk to yourself. There's a whole field of study about how effective "self-talk" can be. Maybe you start just by reading your positively-written goal statement to yourself several times a day. Maybe you write up some positive affirmations about your progress, your life, or yourself and read those aloud a few times a day. Aloud? Yes, it's important that you hear yourself saying these things. Remember: From your mouth to your ear to your brain…and the next step is to your belief!

Summary

Become attuned to what you're hearing every day. If it's negative, try to eliminate it. If it's negative and it's coming from you, replace it with positive thoughts and words. This whole series is about change. Eliminating negative from your thoughts and words will pay huge dividends. You'll believe in yourself more, and you'll enjoy conversations with others because they are uplifting. You'll become even more the person that other people want to be with because you'll be lifting them up too.

In addition to all that, you'll increase your ability to achieve your goals!