Your ego is defined as your sense of self esteem or self importance.

Now, here is a conflict to think about (and perhaps this has been tripping you up on your journey towards your success).

We have been taught that it is good and necessary to have a high self esteem. We have been taught that every one around you will only esteem you as highly as you esteem yourself right?

A low self esteem or self image is a negative thing, and a high self esteem or self image is a positive thing – right?

Well, yes and no.

Yes – you need to be confident of who you are (God’s creation and God does all things well) and of your abilities (given to you by God) and skills. You need these to reach you goals and dreams in life.

No – your focus should be on making a difference in the lives of others – not on what YOU need.

Herein lies a major key to your success in life and business –
which is:

Your focus! The question is: What is the dominant object of your focus?

1. Are you focused primarily on your own success and the success of your business (making money)? You are likely to fail.
2. Are you focused primarily on helping people and making a difference in their lives (first and foremost)? You are likely to succeed.

It is that simple.

So when we take a look at today’s affirmation from the 210 Day Affirmation Challenge by John Di Lemme, we not advocating you have to crush your ego, or lose your self esteem. No, the key lies in your motives for what you do.

Are you primarily focusing on pursuing what YOU want in life? This does not mean you have a high self esteem. Rather it means you have a high ego. Your focus tends towards being selfish.

Are you primarily focusing on finding ways to help others get what THEY want in life? Remember what Zig Ziglar is famous for declaring:

You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want

This is the meaning of today’s affirmation:

I am learning to lose my ego every day.

And the reason you WANT to lose your ego every day, and begin to focus more on blessings the lives of others is that this is one of the secret keys to YOUR success.

Really it is not a secret. It could be more aptly described as an overlooked key. But it is a VERY important key.

I am learning to lose my ego every day.

Here is the slide that illustrates today’s affirmation.

Today’s Challenge:

• Dare to take some time to take a real look at the driving motives of your life.
• Ask yourself, am I honestly motivated by desiring to make a difference in the lives of those around me? Or is my main motive all about me?
• My question to you: What are you prepared to do about any wrong motive you may discover in your life?

I believe in you, and I know that:

Further reading:

Why focus on others first

Put others first and you will be blessed also.

Resource:
Every affirmation in this 210 Day Affirmation Challenge is authored by John Di Lemme, founder of the 210 Day Lifestyle Freedom Club Be sure to check out this challenge and download your free motivational mp3s and mp4 from here as well.

Successful living is positive living.

Positive Living is when you have health in your body, in your mind, in your finances and in your relationships.

This is why the affirmation we are looking at today is so important. Affirmation #144 of John Di Lemme’s 210 Day Affirmation Challenge declares:

I am living a Healthy Lifestyle

This is an excellent affirmation to memorize (and easy to memorize), and speak out loud to yourself every time you find yourself tempted to do something that would not have a positive result in your mind, your body, your relationships or your finances.

Remember that affirmations alone will not lead you to achieve your desired goals. You need to add ACTION to your words!

However you will know that action alone will not lead you to achieve your desired goals either – it takes strategic action and that is why it is so important to create a roadmap for yourself.

Your roadmap to your life of positive living (success).

Paint yourself a picture in your mind and then with diagrams, words or however you like to make notes. This picture will depict what positive living will look like for YOU.

You might include things like:

• how much you weight,
• how you feel when you wake up each day,
• how sharp your mind is,
• how you react to life situations,
• how you relate to your loved ones and friends,
• how free you are financially to decide what to do each day, and most important of all: what difference you can make in the lives of those around you and in the world.

Remember the greater the freedom you are living in the greater the freedom you will have to make a difference in the lives of others. Your health is a VERY important ingredient in your freedom.

This picture that you have painted for yourself (with words, diagrams of illustrations) is the beginning of your road map to success. Now you are beginning to visualize what positive living (success) looks like for YOUR life, you need to nurture this vision with your words. Words like:

I am living a Healthy Lifestyle

Today’s challenge:

• Take some time to visualize what the positive living lifestyle will look like in YOUR life. Write your vision down.
• Write down the areas in life where you would most like to make a difference. This is a heart issue. Follow your heart, and ask yourself: who’s life would I most like to change? This will more likely be a group of people rather than an individual.
• Write down some ideas of how you plan to make this picture a reality.

This is the beginning of your road map to your success.

Resource:
Every affirmation in this 210 Day Affirmation Challenge is authored by John Di Lemme, founder of the 210 Day Lifestyle Freedom Club

It is not too late to get involved with this challenge. Go to the Lifestyle Freedom Blog Click on the menu at the top that says “Affirmation Challenge” to get involved. Determine to stay faithful to this challenge, and I guarantee you it will change your life.

No, true success is being able to do what you want, when you want to do it, with whom you want to do it, for however long you want to do it. (quoted from John Di Lemme).

Here is a secret: You will not be able to reach this lifestyle without applying some focus, discipline and diligence to the pursuit of your dreams.

Well, this should not really be a secret, but if you look around you and see so many people chasing their fairy tale dreams (for example: success the easy way – win the lottery), you would think that the genuine way was a secret.

Hindrances to Positive Living:
The biggest hindrance to living in the positive realm where faith rules is FEAR.

Fear very often reveals itself with excuses. This is why today’s affirmation (which is #119 of John Di Lemme’s 210 Day Lifestyle Freedom Club Affirmation Challenge is so important.

When you repeat this affirmation, you are also making a decision to look fear in the face and resist it.

• Excuses justify fear, but in reality they reveal that you are more focused on fear than on faith.
• Fear hides behind excuses.
• Your excuses may seem logical and valid, but stop and analyze them and you will see that they are fear in disguise.

The more you resist a negative voice, the less it will bother you. This will certainly happen when you choose to resist the negative voice by focusing on the positive voice.

This is the strategy of displacement, and is in my experience the most effective way of running the negative thoughts, words and mindset out of your life.

Focus on faith, on positive words and thoughts and there is no room for the negative fear thoughts.

The attitudes and thoughts that you feed with words are the ones that become strong in your life.

You choose which attitudes and thoughts to feed (by agreeing with them, repeating them and living them).

Feed your mind and brain with thoughts and words of faith and your attitudes and mindset will become strong in faith. You will tend to look at obstacles and problems with solution seeking glasses. You are learning to live in the positive realm and success is within your grasp.

Feed your mind and brain with thoughts and words of fear and you will find yourself running from obstacles, fearing challenges and constantly making excuses.

Today’s Challenge:

• Make a decision to become alert to any excuses you may unconsciously be making.
• Make a fresh decision to feed your mind every day with positive words, articles, books, recordings and videos. This is how you give your brain the right tools to enable you to focus on the positive, and consequently live in the positive realm.

  (Have you downloaded your free mp3s from Lifestyle Freedom Club yet?

The more you build yourself up in faith, the less fear will have a foothold in your life.

Resource:
Every affirmation in this 210 Day Affirmation Challenge is authored by John Di Lemme, founder of the Lifestyle Freedom Club.

If you are not involved in this challenge, it is not too late to start. Go now to the Lifestyle Freedom Club Blog, then click on the menu at the top that says: “Affirmation Challenge”.

When you do not believe in yourself you will not feel worthy of the success you desire. Consequently as soon as you start experiencing a measure of success you will unconsciously sabotage yourself.

This can turn into a vicious circle of just beginning to see results and then finding that everything seems to fall to pieces. You will experience this circle of frustration UNTIL you deal with the root cause.

What is the root cause? You secretly do not feel worthy of success. You do not believe in yourself.

This is why affirmation #116 of John Di Lemme’s 210 Day Lifestyle Freedom Club Affirmation Challenge is so important.

This is not an affirmation aimed at showing a display of pride or superiority. Rather, this is a declaration that is aimed at claiming your birthright. You were born a champion remember?

If you do not feel like a champion, here is why: Champions Are Born, Losers Are Made. Make sure you order a copy of this book by clicking here right now.

Today’s Challenge:

• Take some time to look seriously and honestly at your progress towards achieving your goals and dreams.
• Ask yourself: Are there repeat patterns in my experience? (In other words, is there a pattern or cycle of similar experiences in your life?)
• Now ask yourself honestly: Do I really believe in myself?

Repeat affirmation #116 several times with boldness and faith:

Resource:
Every affirmation in this 210 Day Affirmation Challenge is authored by John Di Lemme, founder of the Lifestyle Freedom Club.

If you are not involved in this challenge, it is not too late to start. Go now to the Lifestyle Freedom Club Blog, then click on the menu at the top that says: “Affirmation Challenge”.

If you have not yet reached the place of being phenomenally successful, you will be responding to this question in one of three ways (perhaps with a variation of these words, but the meaning will be the same):

• I wish I were.
• I sure hope so.
• I am certain that I will be very soon. I am diligently developing myself and my skills. I am working my plan and I have faith.

Now, which of these three responses reveal that their owner WILL succeed?

It may be rather obvious which one WILL reach success, right? That is because when you see it in black and white on paper (or digital paper), it is so clear.

However it is often not as obvious to you when you are the one who is doing the speaking. Besides in “real life” you are bombarded with so much noise and conflict of emotions from people around you (and from within), that all too many times you say things without being fully conscious of what you said.

So take some time to think about exactly WHICH of these three describes where you REALLY are right now.

Today is Day 96 of following the 210 Day Lifestyle Freedom Club Affirmation Challenge that I am involved in and blogging about.

Today’s affirmation is short and powerful.

If you have been following along with me in this series of articles you will know that one of the reasons for writing this series is to challenge you to combine ALL of the ingredients together with your affirmations to ENSURE your success.

Repeating words (affirmations) alone will not make you success. It is:

Let’s take a look at the three responses listed above:
I wish - this is the response of a day dreamer. Day dreamers do not act. They expect their dreams to come to them and when they don’t they complain. They may apply some small action (like buying a lottery ticket), but they do not follow any consistent daily plan of training and action.

I hope so – this may also be the response of a day dreamer. This person may also be one who is applying a little of the right kind of action, but it is not consistent.

Added to that his or her faith is very limited. It probably comes and goes with the circumstances that he or she faces.

Hope is still passive. Faith is active. In fact the apostle James in the Bible declared: Faith without works (actions) is dead.

The third response that is listed above is: I am certain! Certainty comes from daily development of your faith, determination and action.

When you are:

• Consistently following a daily plan of personal development and development of your skills.
• Taking time to dream bigger and bigger and creating strategic action plans that will lead you to achieve your dreams.
• Taking daily consistent action that follows your plans.

You can be certain that you WILL achieve your dreams. You can be certain that you WILL be phenomenally successful.

So sow that seed in your mind with confidence by making this declaration:

This will increase your faith and set the stage for you to follow your plan with certainty and you WILL achieve your dreams.