This Is the 1 Thing Richard Branson Wishes He Could Do Over Again

This is so critical to success and innovation that, if it were possible, Richard Branson would turn back time to do more of it.

Success is not all about strategy, and it's not all about who you know. It's about your ability to dream big. Dreaming drives innovation and creativity. It inspires us to explore the seemingly impossible. It puts people on the moon and behind the wheel of cars that drive themselves. People who dream make all things possible; so much so, that even Richard Branson wishes he would have done more of it.

"Sometimes I think, what if this is all a dream? This excites me," says Branson. "I'd quite like to go back and plot my life all over again, and have even more big dreams." If Richard Branson wishes he would have spent more time dreaming, why shouldn't you do more of it? When was the last time you kicked back to allow your mind to explore a world of possibilities--or better yet, impossibilities? Consider these points and give yourself permission to dream big.

Don't be self-conscious about dreaming big.

Innovative entrepreneurs master the art of dreaming because they know that dreaming isn't just measured by the outcome. The journey toward your dreams brings inspiration, teaches valuable lessons, and sparks even greater ideas. Don't be self-conscious about dreaming, or about people thinking you're too idealistic, and not serious enough. "Don't betray your dreams for the sake of fitting in," says Branson. "Dreamers move the world forward."

Don't judge yourself.

While I launched my business coaching practice 15 years ago, I recall that it took me exactly six months to realize that, while the mind of an entrepreneur is his greatest asset, it is also his greatest obstacle. "Don't allow your self-talk to be judgmental," says Branson. "Look at the world with wide-eyed enthusiasm, believe you are more powerful than the problems that confront you and dream big."

For every doubt that runs through your mind, counter it with a reminder of a past success. Take inventory of everything you have going for yourself and recall the accolades of current and past clients or customers. These things will help to reprogram your brain and achieve a supportive, positive mindset.

Allow your mind to drift.

Counter-intuitive to advice you'll find in every productivity book or article you will ever read, drifting off opens the mind, creating a gateway for even more ideas to emerge. Just roll with it; your rambling brain may discover something that even you had never considered before.

Be scared; it's a good sign.

Yet another popular Branson quote, "If your dreams don't scare you they are too small." There's always some level of risk when your dream takes you out on a limb. Branson believes that people who have big dreams may be scared but never scared off. Whether you risk failure, money, criticism, or the loss of hope. If you don't take a chance on yourself, your dream will remain only a dream.

This is where strategic mastery comes into play. Dreamers sometimes have a difficult time with strategy, so enlist help. A great dream drives collaboration, so let others in. How are you going to make your dream a reality? Break your goals down into measurable, actionable steps and take them one at a time.

Visualize your dream to make it a reality.

When you engage in visualization, you enhance motivation, increase confidence, improve motor performance, and prime your brain for success. Fight the belief that you are "doing nothing" when you spend time visualizing your dream. Imagine, in as much detail as possible, that your image of the future has already become a reality. Engage as many senses as possible by focusing on things like how the air smells, the clothes you are wearing, the details of your surroundings, the sounds you hear, and most importantly, how you feel as you live out your dream.

Here is the most important step of all: Open your calendar and schedule a time to dream. Otherwise, you probably won't do it at all. Whether it's five minutes, an hour, a day, or an entire vacation built around dreaming, do everything within your power to make it happen.

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THIS IS HOW YOU SHOULD START YOUR DAY - Best Morning Motivation

How To Turn Your "What If___" Into A Positive

"A study by Jason Moser and his colleagues at Michigan State University, and published in The Journal of Abnormal Psychology have found brain markers that distinguish negative thinkers from positive thinkers. Their research suggests that there are in fact positive and negative people in the world. In their experiments they found people who tend to worry showed a paradoxical backfiring effect in their brains when asked to decrease their negative emotions, which Moser said, "suggests they have a really hard time putting a positive spin on difficult situations and actually make their negative emotions worse even when they are asked to think positively." ~Psychology Today June 30, 2014

Christopher Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford University and co-author of The Man Who Lied To His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships, argues that we tend to see people who say negative things as being smarter than those who are positive. Thus, we are more likely to give greater weight to criticism than praise. ~Psychology Today June 30, 2014

The most frequently used negative statement is "What if___?" When someone is uncomfortable, unsure, afraid of something that he/she is contemplating or is being asked about, the immediate response is; "What if___?" What if the sky is falling? What if I fail? What if I can't do it? What if nobody likes it? Any negative perspective under the sun can be tossed up.

What if you flipped your negative perspective to positive possibilities? What if the sky is waiting for me to soar? What if the Universe is conspiring to help me create success? What if I can do it? What if people are waiting for what I offer?

Any positive perspective under the sun is true. What if your health is better? What if you help others to find their dreams? What if life as you know it now changed and is better? WHAT IF this is your big success?

WHAT if is isn't easy? You will learn many things. WHAT IF it takes longer than you thought it would?? You will learn perseverance. You will learn patience.

Turn your 'What if___? to work for you and invest in yourself, invest so you can get where you desire to be.

Where will you be if you continue on the path you're on right now? Look at the truths of the matter. Would you be in a better place? Would you realize your goals if you continue the status quo. As Einstein aptly said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results."

What if you take the step to contact me to talk about your future? What if you learned how to create your dreams and desires? What if you created Financial Freedom?

Don't allow your negative 'What if___? sabotage your life and future.

Three strategies to transform negative beliefs to positive beliefs:

• Identify your most frequent negative beliefs.
• Use Interrogative Self-Talk instead of negative beliefs.
• Focus on Incremental Progress, Not Perfection.

The majority of people have difficulty identifying negative beliefs or noticing when it is operational.

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The Magic of Visualization!

Vision -- What Are You Doing Today Towards Achieving Your Vision?

Every man who accomplishes things sees first in his mind what he wishes to do. He puts away all doubt. It makes no difference how small or how large the thing you want to do may be; if you have an unlimited confidence in your ability to do it, you will do it. - Charles Fillmore.

By definition, vision is a future orientation, a broad stroke picture that serves as the basis for making decisions or taking actions towards achieving the vision. In order for a vision to become a reality, there are certain elements that must be present.

Most importantly, the vision must be anchored in truth. If there is no or little truth, the vision will not be obtainable. For example: If a client says that she wants to be an opera singer despite the fact that she truly can't sing--can't carry a tune, has no pitch, etc. it's not impossible for her to achieve some level of singing ability with singing lessons. However, the struggle and the reality is so far fetched, that it really doesn't make sense to have this as an aspiration.

Accordingly, it would be important to find out just what she would hope to gain or could expect her life to be like as an opera singer. Upon investigation and exploration, it would be discovered that she loves to be on stage, get attention, and perform in some way. Those qualities can be used in many ways besides being an opera singer - and surely would be anchored more in truth.

It is also important that the vision is aligned with your purpose in life. If she wants to make this world a better place by sharing her talents and gifts, then singing would probably not be a wise choice. On the other hand, if she chooses some form of teaching and reaching many people so that she is sharing her ideas and wisdom, she's probably aligned with her purpose. Perhaps some form of public speaking might be more appropriate.

A vision must be exciting and compelling. If not, there is no incentive to take steps towards making it happen. If she chose to have a vision of becoming a nurse and caring for sick people when in fact, she doesn't particularly enjoy being around sick people, it's not going to pull her forward to wanting it to become a reality. In fact, there will most likely be lots of struggle and sabotaging along the way. Could it be a possible vision with truth? "Yes, but..." She could learn nursing and she could care for sick people, and it does align with her vision of sharing talents and gifts, BUT for her, it's not exciting or compelling. Therefore, the chances of her finishing the necessary course work aren't great and even if she did, it would feel more like drudgery.

So in creating a vision, it's important to think about what experience you would like to have. It would be helpful to notice and check if it's anchored in truth - for you. Does it align with your purpose? Is it compelling and exciting to you? Could it pull you forward and be an incentive and is it motivating you to wanting to take steps towards it?

Invitation to Experiment:

Create a vision for your life. Include the type of experiences you want to have - include ALL of the elements possible: such as where you will be living, how you will be living, with whom, what type of work you'll be doing, etc. Don't leave anything out from your dream. Once it's crafted, look at the truth in it. Does it align with your truth? Look at your purpose for being on the planet. Does it align with your purpose? And lastly, is it exciting and compelling? Could it motivate and inspire you to take steps to move towards it? If so, take your first step, and then the next. It may at first seem like a pipe dream, but if it's aligned and compelling enough, it can become reality. You may modify your vision along the way, but all the while, you are moving towards a life that truly fits who you are and what you want.

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Taking A Positive Pursuit Toward Your Desires

Your pursuit towards your desires encourages you towards your own achievement. This drives you toward greater satisfaction in your life lays a new blueprint for more positive experiences.

• Do you have a strategy for staying healthy?
• For staying passionate?
• For living some part of your dream every day?
• What does that look like for you?
• What could it look like if you let it?

We're taught not to be too self-important, not to be conceited or think too highly of yourself. Women particularly are programmed to be hard on themselves and judgmental. We're taught that how you look is more important than what you think. You're taught to put the needs of others before our own.

Whatever you believe intellectually, it can be hard to overcome these stereotypes and break out into what is yours to do and feel good about it. To feel confident and purposeful. That said, it's an 'inside job' one you must do yourself. When in pursuit towards your desires begin with valuing yourself, your contributions, your visions, your goals and your dreams.

Small gratifications in your pursuit towards your desires make up the bigger picture of satisfaction. To build your bold and courageous - and envisioned - future. Create a vision board, write it down, and/or take a picture and keep it in your wallet.

When you train a dog, you do it through a series of positive rewards. Eventually the dog learns that if it does this, it gets that. We use food and treats to create positive reinforcement.

Our mind works very much like the dog in this instance; repetition and positive reinforcement eventually create an outcome you desire. You are creating positive experiences; you're 'racking them up' so you can move further and further in the pursuit of your desires toward success.

In your pursuit towards your desires, act by doing this consistently and repeatedly. This creates new neural pathways, trains and re-trains your brain to get more of you what you desire. Through remembering positive experiences, you develop strategies for driving toward greater satisfaction, for staying healthy and contributing to your being.

However, if in the pursuit of the one thing, you desire the most, you begin to deny yourself any fun or free time, and are feeling constantly insecure, unsuccessful, unimportant, and unsafe, you're living your life in a state of lack, hoping one day that you will have an experience that you do want.

Does this mean that you should just work on your state and ignore what is driving you? Not at all!

Focus on what you want

We often need to clear away the dirt and see clearly and it's often surprising how much easier it is to do when there is guidance. Really, when you stop and think about it, most things are easier when you have help, but you seem to think that when it comes to our personal changes - you should be able to do it alone. When you are in pursuit of your desires, yes, you can do it alone, but sometimes you lose perspective on yourself, having no ability to be objective.

This is like a step by step process of cleaning the window - think of it as the window to your soul, or your inner longings, and it can be a profound journey, possibly the most important one you'll undergo. Once you start to see clearly - you will now have the 'what' identified in many areas of your life.

For some, it is like peeling back the layers of the onion, more and more revealing and less clutter as you peel back. For others, it is like cleaning the dirty window of their mental vision. Suddenly daylight streams in, illuminating all that was there, but lying dormant, unseen. For some the process is very quick, for other it's slower. Either way, it's always an exciting process that has a positive outcome.

Learn to discern what's right for you - know or get clear on what you want and then get out of the way as this makes for a life that's rewarding - a life of purpose, passion and clarity.

In your pursuit towards your desires, these are simple questions, but they can give you some real insight into where you resist and where you're open. Often the ideas you have originating in our growing up years. Even if you've changed radically, you still hold the ideas and beliefs from your family of origin somewhere in our heart or head.

It's good to occasionally shine a light onto your beliefs and see if they still serve you. It's helpful to separate out what comes from your head and what comes from your heart.

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