Recently completed reading “Life Strategies” by Phillip McGraw. Sharing some of my notes.

• Ask yourself: Do you really have a strategy in your life, or are you just reactively going from day to day, taking what comes?
• Problems and challenges almost never resolve themselves; they don’t get better with inattention.
• Forget about being right or winning the argument about who is right. If what you’re doing is not working, change it.
• Sometimes, the hardest part in learning something new is unlearning the old way of doing it.
• You are accountable for your life…If you don’t accept accountability, you will misdiagnose every problem you have…By convincing yourself that you are a victim, you are guaranteed to have no progress, no healing and no victory.
• Bottom line: You are not a victim. You are creating the situations you are in; you are creating the emotions that flow from those situations…You must be willing to move your position, and, however difficult or unusual it may seem, embrace the fact that you own the problem.
• It is at the very core of human nature to blame other people; it is fundamental self preservation to try to escape accountability.
• The bad news is that the burden is on you. The good news is that the choice is yours.
• Abstract thoughts have the power to produce tangible and dramatic physiological events…Your physiology determines your energy and action level.
• Our most active and consistent dialogue is the conversation we have with ourselves.
  The principle of reciprocity simply says that “you get what you give.” The manner, style and level you use to engage people will determine how they respond to you.
• Break out of your habitual doldrums. Climb out of that rut and look around…The longer you have been trapped in an irrational and painful lifestyle, the harder it is to create a new one.
• Knowing what you need to know and knowing how to do it are two very different things.
• If you won’t take ownership of your role in a situation-then you cannot and will not change it.
• Denial, is what kills dreams. It kills hope.
• You can know a hundredfold today than you knew a week ago, but if you don’t do anything about it, you aren’t any more effective than you were last week, in your unenlightened state..Life rewards action.
• Lives move by trends and momentum…If you begin to do different things,..your actions will gain momentum.
• Choose to give yourself the chance. It’s normal to be anxious and afraid, but you can’t be dominated by the fear.
• Identify the filters through which you view the world. Acknowledge your history without being controlled by it..If you continue to view the world through a filter created by past events, then you are allowing your past to control and dictate both your present and your future…You are undeniably accountable for how you react to it ‘now’.
• Get to know your limiting beliefs so well that if one begins to show even a hint of its presence, alarms will go off and you will counteract it.
• Simply put, never in your life are you without problems and challenges.
• Long established fact of psychological functioning is that it is not so much the particular circumstance that upsets the person involved, as it is the violation of his or her expectations.
• You shape the behavior of those with whom you interact.
• Don’t give in to your negative momentum. Require more of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and behaviorally.
• You are your number one worldly resource. Manage it and manage it well.

Best wishes for a happy 2011.

I’m currently reading the book Life Strategies by Dr. Phil McGraw. Thought this would be useful food for thought:

“The ten most significant common characteristics fundamental to human functioning I have identified are:

1. The number-one fear among all people is rejection.
2. The number-one need among all people is acceptance.
3. To manage people effectively, you must do it in a way that protects or enhances their self-esteem.
4. Everybody approaches every situation with at least some concern about “What’s in it for me?”
5. Everybody prefers to talk about things that are important to them personally.
6. People hear and incorporate only what they understand.
7. People like trust, and believe those who like them.
8. People often do things for other than the apparent reasons.
9. Even people of quality, can be, and often are, petty and small.
10. Everybody wears a social mask. You must look beyond the mask to see the person.”