In yesterdays post, New Years Resolutions Gone Bad, I shared with you my perspective on new years resolutions and why I don’t personally believe in them.

What I’d like to suggest you do instead is make New Years Promises…

The Power of Promises

Think about the times in your life you’ve made a promise to someone. More often then not, did you keep it or break it?

In my own experience, I’ve found promises to be very powerful: They’re like binding agreements with myself and the person I am making the promise to.

What if instead of setting goals, we made promises to ourself?

Personally, I believe it to be a very powerful method.

The Cause is You!

You know from New Years Resolutions Gone Bad how important your mindset and your subconscious is in achieving your goals. What that really boils down to is this:

‘Who you are and how you act and behave on a daily basis plays a vital role in the achievement of your goals.’

If we overlook the importance of improving ourselves from the inside out, then we are neglecting an essential part of goal setting.

Think about this: When a person merely sets a goal to lose weight, they are starting from the external source, not the internal. If instead they set the goal to develop and nurture the mindset that it will take to create consistent action to achieve their goal of losing weight, then they will be setting themselves up for success. This goes for any of your goals…

What do you think might happen in your life if you began your goals by making promises to yourself in regards to who you intend on becoming more of this year?

You see, the achievement of your goals is an effect. The cause begins with YOU!  Yourself! Who you are!!

So how about making a promise to yourself of who you intend on becoming and being more of this year?

My New Years Promises

Want some ideas? Need to see what I mean to fully understand? Here’s an example of what my New Years Promises are to myself:

• Practice more love, compassion, and understanding to my friends, family, and people I encounter on a daily basis.
• Acknowledge to myself everyday that I have a responsibility to positively impact the lives of those around me.
• Continually acknowledge to myself that I am in charge of how I respond to every situation.
• Cherish and appreciate all the love and support my family and friends provide me.
• Pursue my dreams with thunder and lighting!
• Keep my goals and targets in my line of sight everyday.
• Let go of excuses for not achieving or pursuing my targets, goals and dreams.
• Treat my body and mind with love & respect, listen to and acknowledge its needs on a daily basis, and do whatever I must to take great care of it.
• Donate 5-10% of my monthly income to a charity, foundation, or cause.
• Continue to entertain people I meet and hang out with and get them to laugh their asses off.
• Defy the Odds.
• Do whatever it takes to memorize this list of promises by next week, and be able to recite them with ease.

The focus on who you are and intend on becoming will undoubtedly be the cause for what you are able to do and accomplish this year.

Take Action Now:

Take some time and brainstorm the promises you would like to make to yourself for this year (or month! Customize it to your desires!).

Let your mind flow and just write out whatever comes to mind. Once you’ve done that, look through those ideas and select the ones that really resonate with you. You may want to come up with this in one hour, or sit on it for a few days. Listen to your intuition and let it guide you in creating these promises.

Once you’ve made those promises, respond to this post with what you are declaring to the world. post it on your Facebook and twitter updates, and post it on your websites.

Finally, if you feel this article has positively impacted you and will help another, please share it with them so they can experience similar ‘a-ha’s’ as you just have!

I have often been asked why I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions…

After telling someone I think resolutions are bogus, I’ll witness the clocks spinning in their head as their thinking, “Huh? But Why? Why wouldn’t you want to set goals every year?”

Allow me to explain through a short, but very powerful story… (more…)

Tonight I felt quite inspired to read up on some of my past articles and see if I could learn anything from them.

You see, through the process of teaching, the teacher is able to learn a tremendous amount.

In fact, sometimes, through the process we come up with ideas and concepts in the spur of the moment which can even be somewhat new to us: teachings that are important for both the reader and the writer to review and embody.

Instead of giving you a full new post for you to read today, I’d love for you to review one of my former posts. Below are the three that I read tonight. Read the title and short description, pick one that resonates with you, and enjoy:

How to Achieve Success Through High Expectations: Have you ever thought to yourself, “I would love to achieve those goals…but I don’t expect them to come true…” ?? Here is a fantastic way for setting your goals, maintaining high expectations, while also being flexible for the universe to provide as it sees best.

A Simple Formula for Being Happy Regardless of Circumstance: Seemingly terrible, terrible things happen in life. It’s an unavoidable fact. People die. Houses burn down. We lose investments. It happens! Here are some great methods for rolling with the flows and maintaining happiness through anything that comes your way.

The Blessings of Failures: This is one of my personal favorites. Throughout life most of us have somehow developed the belief that failure is a terrible thing to happen. I ask you though, is it really? Read this and you’ll learn how all the failures you’ve ever had were simply blessings in disguise.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to see an old and very dear friend of mine whom I had an extreme falling out with many months ago. At the time I felt he had done something that was literally, an atrocity. What it was though is irrelevant for this article, as this is about forgiveness…

What I will tell you though so you can understand how hard it was to come to this place is that what I believed my friend had done is something I think very few could forgive another in their entire life time. In fact, many people would probably hold the anger about it until the day they die.

Now that’s not an ego identified realization where I think I’m some kind of holy Buddha who has super powers. Not at all. On the contrary, I believe anyone can develop the power of forgiveness if only they choose to have the desire.

We have a choice in how we experience everything in life.

While I originally wrote my thoughts and feelings about this experience in my personal journal, I felt it was a vital experience to share for the benefit of others.

If this story can inspire just one person and help them receive the gift of complete forgiveness for another, then my job is complete.

Here’s the story:

(more…)

To all my dedicated readers, Twitter followers and Facebook friends,

Many have wondered where I disappeared to these many months. Without any notice I stopped writing and seemed to have left the earth.

I assure you though, I am still here.

Living, examining, experiencing, and loving life.

I have so much to share with you, though I still have yet to find the words to express it.

While I have taken a hiatus from writing & teaching, I promise you I will be back.

It may be soon.

It could be months.

Who knows, it could even be years.

What I do know though is that now is a time for more than knowing, teaching and sharing; its a time for experiencing and putting into practice what you do know. A time for reflection and application.

If you’re one of my dedicated readers, I believe you’ll understand what is meant by this.

Understand that all the knowledge in the world won’t make up for living it.

For those of you who are well in tune with the transformational industry: it’s time. Set the books aside for a bit; hold off on the blogs. Realize that you don’t need to go to seminar after seminar after seminar.

Put into practice what you already know.

Until you’ve emptied your cup, you can fill it no more.

As my dearest mentors shared with me from Ghandi once…

‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’

I hope you’re all well.

We’ll talk soon.

–Sean Patrick Simpson

p.s. As I have not been posting, I went ahead and disabled the mailing list and e-course you see on the right side of your screen. If you would like to start receiving updates when I begin posting again, feel free to send me a quick message at sean@themindsetapprentice.com and I will be sure to add you to the spread sheet. Be well my friends.

Image courtesy of flavio.takemoto

Earlier last month we discussed the blessings of failures and how really, failures are actually opportunities! Today we discuss failures even more, and take a peak at one of the most famous men in the history of the United States, and how despite his many set backs and failures, he became a legend…

Have you ever been disappointed in your life because you failed at something? How about because you had a tough set back?

What was your reaction?

• Did you give up?
• Did you let go of your dreams?
• Did you give into the belief that happiness and success is meant for some people and not for others?

No matter what, everyone is going to face disappointment at some time in their life. Knowing that it is inevitable, the question we must ask ourselves before it happens is “what am I going to do when that disappointment occurs? What am I going to do when I have that set back?”

Let’s consider our mystery man for today: one of the most famous people in the history of the United States who had a tremendous amount of setbacks we would consider terrible!

Who is this mystery man? Let’s see if you can guess…

At age 7 his family was forced from their home and he had to help support them.
At age 9 his mother died.

At age 21 he failed in business.

At age 22 he ran for legislature and lost; lost his job; and was turned down when he applied to law school.

At age 23 he started another business on borrowed money but by age 24 went bankrupt.

At age 25 he was engaged to be married and his fiancé died.

At age 26 he had a nervous breakdown and was in bed for 6 months.

At age 28 he was defeated as speaker of the state legislature.

At age 33 he ran for congress and lost.

At age 38 he ran for congress again and lost.

At age 44 he ran for the U.S. senate and lost.

At age 46 he tried for his party’s vice president nomination and received less than 100 votes and lost.

At age 48 he ran for the U.S. senate again and lost.

At age 50 he was elected the president of the United States of America.

Who is he?

Abraham Lincoln!

He is a man we have heard about many times through history lessons, documentaries, biographies, television shows and movies.

What would have happened if when his mother died he gave up hope in life, stopped taking care of himself, and became homeless?

What if at age 21 he realized that he was a failure and really shouldn’t try to do anything ‘big?’

What if at age 48, he decided to withdraw from politics?

Really think about that for a moment. Literally. Imagine how different life would be if this one man did not exist in the history of the United States and the world.

Now think about yourself. How different might the world be 200 years from now, if you give up on your goals and dreams?

Really think about THAT for a moment. Literally. Imagine how different the lives of our descendants would be if this one man, or this one woman…YOU, did not exist…if YOU gave up, and did not pursue your life’s purpose.

Next time you have a setback, I recommend you remind yourself of Abe! Then ask yourself, “have I persisted as much as Lincoln did?” … if the answer is no, I suggest you keep moving forward!

You want to know how to become a legend? You never give up. Ever.

Credits: Thank you to Alex Mandossian who referred to Abraham Lincolns successes and failures on one of his teleseminar secrets modules — and thank you to the person who had a website with these Abraham Lincoln facts, whom which I unfortunately can’t remember the location of the site (I copied and pasted the Lincoln facts into a word document months ago and did not keep track of the link)

In todays post I have some very important lessons to share with you on living a life of non-judgment, and viewing your experiences from multiple angles, rather than just one…

A few weeks ago I went to the gas station and observed a pretty poor customer experience from the attendant within the gas station.

I went inside, gave my credit card and said, “$25 on #11 please…” The guy took the card without acknowledgment, eye contact or answer, put it through the system, and gave the card back to me without a word.

In my mind I was just thinking, ‘I wonder how many more dedicated customers this man would have if he gave the people who walked through his door great energy and a hearty welcome?”

When I filled up my gas tank, it stopped at about $21, so I went back inside to retrieve the change from the attendant. The moment I asked for it, he looked confused for a moment, then asked me (more…)

Have you ever had the attitude of, ‘When I commit to something, I STAY committed and I will stick with it until the end no matter what!!” ?

Is that attitude a good one to have?

Most I imagine would say yes! How couldn’t it be? It demonstrates the incredible quality of commitment!

While commitment can indeed be great, I encourage you to consider another perspective for a moment…

See, commitment can actually be dangerous. So can persistence, dedication and other qualities that on the surface appear to be grandeur.

To demonstrate this point, I’ll share with you (more…)

Transformational video content streaming to you online in high definition with no buffering?

Learn essential skills for creating an incredible life and achieving financial freedom in less than 1% of your day?

The first online community that houses a faculty of over 100 thought leaders with millions of dollars worth of content and growing?

Shoot…you’re not going to want to skip this blog post…

The Transformational Matrix

Have you ever seen the Matrix? In it we see Neo at one point getting unplugged from the Matrix, looking Morpheus in the eye and saying, “I know kung fu!” In just a few moments, he was programmed with a new skill!

As our world continues to progress exponentially (more…)

It’s official, I’m playing with Brian Tracy’s team. Yep! Sure am, some call it working, I call it playing. Today I’d like to share with you an interesting story of how I planted the seeds of this nearly 2 years ago, let it go and let it be, and how it has now come to fruition.

First though, let’s discuss the Law of Attraction a bit…

Have you ever noticed various intentions of yours come to fruition in your life in mysterious ways?

I can tell you I’ve noticed it many, many times. And it seems to me the more I notice it, the more it happens.

Creating Your Powerful Intentions

The Law of Attraction says that (more…)