Past Experiences - The Hiccup To Your Future

Are you one of those people who hang onto past experiences and let it define who you are? Did you know that when you hang on to the past you let it determine your future? You may believe you will never experience it again because you have learnt from it, but what you are really doing when you relive the past is put all the pieces in place to repeat history.

An experience gone badly that you rewind and play again and again in your mind is reliving the experience, emotions and all. Every time you replay what happened and wish you could have done it differently, your imagination runs wild and will try to create different outcomes. Each outcome you imagine, although not real, will send a jolt of emotions throughout your body. You will believe it is real, because the emotions are real.

The process of rethinking negative experiences and creating a number of different outcomes will only condition your brain into believing what is not true. Unfortunately, your brain does not know the difference between true and untrue it only knows what you tell it to believe. When you experience a jolt of emotions because your imagination ran wild, you essentially condition your brain into believing the experience is true.

Thinking in this way will have the following consequences to your future:

1. When the environment becomes familiar and you recognize similar feelings, you will approach it with caution if you approach it at all. If you do approach it you will try to minimize the impact by controlling the situation, and if you don’t approach it for fear of repeating history, you miss out on a potential opportunity.

2. You fool yourself into believing what is not really happening. You draw upon your past experiences, including the untrue ones, as you try to avoid repeating history. You will be adamant that something is happening that in reality is not really happening and you risk losing what you do have. You self sabotage for fear of history repeating itself.

In both cases you miss out on the real opportunity and history is repeating itself and will continue until you break the cycle.

You learn from past experiences you don’t take it with you into the future. You learn why you got burnt: I allowed someone to take advantage of me because I craved his or her attention. You learn why you are afraid: I was unprepared for the event so the feedback was negative.

The problem is never them, you’re the problem. History will repeat itself until you learn from your past rather than taking it with you. Flip the experience upside down and look at yourself. Ask yourself, “Why did I allow that to happen?” If you start by saying he or she and are looking for someone to blame other than yourself, start over again.

Bruno LoGreco Life Coach, Mentor, Motivational Speaker, TV Personality

Good Luck, You'll Need It To Become Successful

It makes me laugh when I overhear people say, you need to be lucky to succeed at life. That’s the biggest cop out if I ever heard one. Don’t get me wrong I do believe in luck or I should say, I believe you get back what you put out into the Universe. If this translates into luck then I too believe in luck.

Everybody knows someone who believes you need to be lucky to succeed. These people work really hard. They get things done. They hardly push anything off for another day, and will spend many hours doing extra work seeking recognition and expecting a reward. They become passionate about their work and share the level of difficulty with others. But the moment something doesn’t go in their favor, like a job placement, a promotion - anything, they lose their steam and feel unlucky.

And then there are those who are lucky. These people put out into the Universe what they want and they go after it. Lucky people know a job placement or promotion will come down to statistics, just like a lottery game. What lucky people do is increase the odds in their favor. They let others know about their ambitions. They speak to their strength and feel confident in an interview. They speak to their boss throughout the year and express an interest in growth and are not afraid of criticism and to try something new.

Everyone agrees that everyone is an individual. Everyone has his or her own brain and thoughts and will act according to their principles and objectives. Then there is no reason for anyone to believe that another person can read your mind and know what you want. Successful people don’t become successful because they dream it and hope one day someone will give them an opportunity. They are successful because they work towards it and share their ambitions and dreams with others. Before Madonna became famous she made it known what her ambitions were, so did Donald Trump and many more.

Lucky people increase their chances at success because they are not afraid to let people know what their ambitions are. They are not afraid of rejection or judgment, nor are they afraid to fail. Failure to them is an opportunity to learn something new, and with some luck you might land on something unexpected. So if you are someone who feels unlucky, make a wish and go after it. Good Luck!

Bruno LoGreco Life Coach & Mentor

Is False Information Instilling Fear In Your Mind?

Negativity is a limiting behavior. It prevents you from achieving your goals and living life to the fullest. It instills doubt in your mind and can destroy your confidence. It will create fear and false beliefs - roadblocks and obstacles that really don’t exist. It will limit your chance at succeeding at the very things you want to do.

Creating a negative mindset is easy. All it takes is one negative force within your environment; friend, family, teacher, anybody you spend time with, and you will easily adopt their negative views. Unfortunately, if you already are a negative person you will easily identify to the negativity and adopt it into your own internal belief system.

Negativity is often spoken with authority, it fools you into believing it is true. A naysayer could impart his or her wisdom, and if you have no prior experience with the subject matter, you may take it on as your own. With no supporting facts, you adopt their perspective - right or wrong, and begin to operate according to the naysayer when discussing that subject matter.

It won’t be until you attempt to go after something you want in life, this is when your negative self-talk - your mind chatter, will prevent you from trying or moving forward with the things you want for your life. You will be unsuccessful. Not because you tried and couldn't achieve a desired target, but because of the fear that has been instilled into you with no proven facts.

After your first, non-attempt, and perceived failure, you will have your own negative experience to contribute to the negativity within your environment. And without a doubt, you will believe something did not happen that you wanted, although you never tried, and you will impart your wisdom on to others. This is how negative behavior perpetuates throughout your environment.

1. Take inventory of everything you want to accomplish in your life.
2. Next to each one write what is holding you back from accomplishing it.
3. For each fear, write the worst-case scenario, the one holing you back from tacking it.
4. Ask yourself if the fear is based on fact or something you learned from someone.
5. Take inventory of all the negative people in your life (Friends/Family/Teachers).
6. Next to each person write his or her worst complaint/fear.
7. Review your list of fears and verify if the fear is your own or a fear that belongs to someone on your list of negative people.

Bruno LoGreco Life Coach & Mentor

Don't Let Fear Turn You Into a Procrastinator - Especially if You're a Perfectionist

The first step to addressing procrastination is to admit that you are a procrastinator. Being a procrastinator doesn’t necessarily mean you are lazy. Some procrastinators are also perfectionists. They will only do the things they do well and with accuracy but won’t do the things that they do not know how to do because they fear they cannot live up to their own expectation – perfection, so they put it off.

Past experiences will play a role in procrastinators. If you have experienced a negative outcome with something you put your heart and soul into you will be less likely to tackle something of the same nature in the future for fear of failure, and possibly judgment. You will most likely only lean towards things, which you know you can do well.

There could be many reasons why you procrastinate. The objective is to learn why and understand what you fear. You may be putting things off because you just don’t know how to execute it. Maybe you did have a bad experience and were judged by your peers. Perhaps you’re an over achiever and by not producing something of excellence, frightens you.

Once you identify the cause, you will need to take action. You will need to face your fear head on. Most procrastinators are not aware that it does take a few failures before they will learn a new skill. This is the only way you will learn and grow as an individual.

At the end of the day if you decide to continue putting off tasks for whatever reason or fear, the truth is you already failed, yourself and possibly others. If you continue down this path eventually you will become stagnant and one day wakeup feeling stuck.

Bruno LoGreco Life Coach & Mentor

Can Harmony Exist In The Mind of The Insecure?

At the core of every human being is love. Everybody wants to be loved unconditionally by friends, family and their soul mate. But there are those who need greater support and validation – the insecure. These people often sabotage their chance at living a peaceful and harmonious life because of what they believe about themselves and their perception of others.

The insecure think about their dislikes and weaknesses more than they think about their redeeming qualities. When anyone thinks about their negative qualities more than their positive, they burst the bubble that houses their confidence, and reduces their self-esteem to rubble. The insecure often look towards their loved ones to boost their self-esteem with encouragement and support. However, even those words seem hard to believe in the mind of an insecure person.

An insecure person will mostly think about the negative aspects of his or her life. They replay past experiences in their head over and over beating themselves up for what they think they should have done instead. With so many negative thoughts floating around, they believe that their loved ones do not accept them for whom they are and push them away. It’s easier to push loved ones away sooner rather than later so that they don’t see through the insecurity and learn about all the flaws. In the mind of an insecure person, they rather distance themselves first before they get hurt again.

Insecure people with low self-esteem feel vulnerable in a relationship. They think the love they are getting from their mate is conditional and could end at anytime. So they sabotage the relationship so they don’t get hurt and move further away from the peaceful and harmonious life they long for.

Bruno LoGreco Life Coach & Mentor