It’s the start that stops most people.

--Don Shula

When you have a great idea, how quickly do you think of a reason you can’t do it?

When something catches your eye, like a sofa that you want, or an online course that you’d like to take, or a good deal on the vacation that you’ve always wanted to go on, or a job opportunity that you definitely ought to pursue, how quickly do you think of reasons why you can’t have or do these things?

For many of us,

the excuses come almost instantly, and that’s because we’ve been trained in many ways to focus our thoughts on questioning whether or not we can actually do something now, in our current circumstances and situations, rather than to focus our thoughts on thinking of ways to get and do what we want.

Maybe we can’t

have or do the things that we dream of right now, in our current circumstances and situations, but if we focus our energies on answering the question of How? We can find a way to take a first step, and then we can build the circumstances and situations to take a second step, and a third step, and so on.

If you find the Start intimidating,

try sitting down and making a list of 20 first steps you can take in your current life to get you headed toward the things that are calling to you.

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Few people, I think, would argue against the idea that words have power.

Words give shape to our thoughts. They speak to our emotions. They carry information, both inward and outward.

Words have the ability to lift us up and/or bring us down. They have the ability to change who we are. When we choose our words, we choose the shape of our thoughts. When we choose the shape of our thoughts, we choose the type of person that we want to be; we choose the kind of life that we want to live. When we make conscious decisions about the kinds of people we want to be and the kinds of lives we want to live, we begin to change ourselves; and by changing ourselves, we begin to change the world around us.

Just as one can work from the inside out to change his/her life, a person can also work from the outside in.

The way to work from the outside in is by making decisions about the information, the emotions, and the words that we allow to enter our subconscious being.

Image Credits: All images are original

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The Words We Choose is a post that generally (but not always) presents a single quote, without context or explanation, in the hopes that the words of the quote will inspire those who are open to its message to become a better person today than they were yesterday.