Tag Archive for personal development

Can You Learn To Control Your Behavior?

June 30, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

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Can You Learn To Control Your Behavior?

You want to change and control your behavior. This is a big part of personal growth and development.

Or you might want to learn more self-control.

Boy with bad behaviorYou want to better manage your time, lose weight, or manage your money. You can do any of these things when you change your behavior in some way.

But changing your behavior is harder than most people think. which is why so many people have a hard time sticking to New Year’s resolutions. So, what’s the best way to learn to control your behavior?

Let’s take a closer look at all the things that influence your behavior.

 

What Controls Behavior?

We know certain things are bad for us or not in our best interest, but we keep doing them anyway.

There’s not a person among us who doesn’t know that getting enough exercise is important for our health. Yet we’re currently facing an obesity epidemic.

So, knowing what you need to do is not enough in itself to change our behavior.

A Goal

Having a goal is an important component to changing behavior. Without a goal, there’s no clear destination to work toward.

A goal provides you with motivation and a clear path forward. Having a goal makes your behavior more important to you and helps it clarifies what you want to achieve.

Goals should be realistic and attainable. And you should set a time frame for achieving them.

A Plan

Now that you have a destination, which is your goal, it’s time to develop a route, which is your plan. To get to where you want to be, you need to determine the precise steps you’ll take.

Your goals dictate your eventual, final behavior change. And your plan includes all the incremental changes you’ll put into your life to form a daily routine.

This is the game plan toward changing your behavior.

The Right Mindset

A realistic and specific goal and a plan for achieving it are both necessary for behavior change. But without the right mindset, you’re not likely to reach permanent change.

You have to believe that you can change your behavior. Know that you have the power and will to make this change that you believe to be important.

Controlling Your Emotions

Your emotions also play a significant role in your behavior. When you’re upset, depressed, or stressed, you can neglect the behaviors you know are good for you.

You’ll lean toward the ones that make you feel better. We use our behavioral choices to help overcome negative emotions.

Learn to identify and then control your emotions. This is essential for controlling your behavior.

Otherwise, you’ll find your best efforts at behavioral change sabotaged by negative emotions.

Putting it All Together

So, if you want to change your behavior long-term and enact real change in your life, here’s what you want to focus on. First, you need a decisive, realistic goal about what you want to change.

Then you need a plan for a gradual working toward this behavioral change.

You need to track and adjust your attitude and mindset about this new behavior. Be sure to keep your thinking positive and goal oriented.

Also pay attention to your emotional state.

Learn to handle emotions in a productive way. Don’t let them get in the way of your efforts

Combine these points and move closer to making lasting behavior changes.

JohnK 6-30-2025
chiforyourself.com

 
 

Stick figure hears about changing behaviorOverheard: “To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior”

                                                                        ~Maxwell Maltz

 
 

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You CAN Break Bad Habits

June 16, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

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You CAN Break Bad Habits

Have you been trying to break a bad habit for a long time? You read about how to do it and give it a try.

But, time and again, you keep repeating the same bad habits.

Are you eating the wrong foods? Are you smoking and can’t seem to kick the habit.?

Before you start working on how to break your bad habits, GenuLines suggests you think back to how you started them.

What kind of mindset did you have at that point? Were you a teenager who wanted to fit in?

man with bad eating habitYou could also be overeating because you’re stressed out about your job.

Once you’ve identified how your habits started, it’s time to determine how important they are in your life. The correct answer would be, “they’re not important.”

But, they are important, or you wouldn’t continue those habits.

Try to list why they’re important. In other words, why do you need to continue with your bad habits?

 

If you get to this point of clarity you’ve turned the corner on breaking the habit. The reasons are important but don’t dwell on them and beat yourself up.

You can’t do anything about the past. It’s best to move on and try to stop continuing the habits.

The Key to Change

Stop  bad habits by replacing them them with good ones.

If you’re a smoker and you have a craving for a cigarette, go out for a jog. Jogging can work for bad diets as well by taking your mind off your cravings.

You can deal with poor eating habits by having accessible fruit and vegetables.. Ideally, you want to have these ready-to-eat, and place them right next to junk food.

Of course, getting rid of the junk food in the first place is a great way not to have it within reach.

The next step in breaking habits is to realign your mindset. You need to focus on what you’re gaining by not continuing the bad habit.

For instance, if you’re having a problem with alcohol, try to keep focused on the way you feel without alcohol. For most people, that’s better.

You can break bad habits. It does take some effort.

But, your life will change for the better, if you’re willing to put in the effort.

JohnK 6-16-2025
chiforyourself.com

 

stick man hears about habit changeOverheard: “Don’t let your sins turn into bad habits”

~Saint Teresa of Avila
 

 

 

Article image by Artem Podrez: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-holding-burger-smiling-4728880/

 

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Prioritizing Your Life 101

May 5, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

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Prioritizing Your Life 101

When living your life for obligations and commitments, it can be difficult to prioritize what is truly important. Without priorities, everything becomes essential and urgent, or nothing does.

Learning to prioritize is an essential life skill that you need to learn, regardless of your age or what you’ve already accomplished in life.

priorities listWithout priorities, life becomes a series of reactions and aimless wandering. With a focus on what’s important, though, you can achieve your goals and live the life you want.

For active prioritization to help your life, GenuLines suggests envisioning what you want and where you want to go. Without a clear goal, it’s difficult to know how to get there.

Vision, therefore, becomes an essential first step to prioritizing.

 

A popular way of prioritizing your daily and weekly tasks is to rank each regarding urgency and importance. These are two separate qualities that are important to understand.

Urgency means how quickly it needs to get done, while importance is what is meaningful for your happiness.

Here’s how tasks might look using these categories:

• Important and urgent tasks are meaningful to you and have time constraints that require immediate action. These types of activities are often unexpected, which contributes to the urgency factor.

Without proper planning, though, lots of things can end up in this category.

• Not important but urgent tasks are usually the mundane tasks that keep life moving forward. Emails, meetings, and appointments that represent obligations end up here.

Having a lot in this category means your life may be running you instead of you running your life.

• Tasks that are not important or urgent are ones you can consider eliminating from your life. If your job or personal obligations fall primarily in this category, it may be time to reevaluate how you’re spending your time and what is important for you moving forward

• Not urgent but important tasks represent areas where you should be dedicating your time and prioritizing tasks best. These represent tasks that say you are in charge of your life and doing things that matter to you.

Being clear about your goals and values will help you spend more time in this last category and remove the clutter in your life that’s leading you astray from your goals.

And understanding how to categorize your activities can help you recognize how you are spending your time to determine if it is in your best interest.

Yes or No

Remember that everything you choose to say yes to in your life is a potential opportunity for you to say no to something else. Saying no to unnecessary obligations in your life gives you more time for those things that are important to you.

Saying yes to what matters means you are spending your time on things that are a real priority for you, not something else.

It’s important that your priorities are not just for your long-term goals but also for the day-to-day activities that drive our lives.

It can be hard to avoid distraction, but being clear about your priorities each and every day will help you achieve your dreams in the long run.

Reflect often on areas where your activities are not matching with your outlined priorities, and make adjustments to eliminate distractions in your life.

By choosing your priorities, you are designing your future, your vision for yourself. If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will do it for you, and that’s no way to control your life.

If you want to start living the life you want to achieve the goals you most want, make yourself and your tasks most important.

JohnK 5-5-2025

 

stick man hears about prioritizingOverheard:  “Action expresses priorities”

~Mahatma Gandhi
 


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Success Takes Longer Than You Think

April 7, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

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Success Takes Longer Than You Think

Big Goals. Large visions for your life.

Any major success you move toward. It’s no doubt going to take a lot longer than you think.

It’s part of life.

You get a good idea about something you want to be, do or have. And the idea captures your mind and emotions.

The honeymoon phase is awesome.

Young man wants success

You daydream and brainstorm your exciting new idea and its world of possibilities. You’re energized and GenuLines is ready to help you take on the world.

But if you’re new to all this keep in mind that you have some work ahead of you. Scaling a mountain isn’t quick and easy.

Looks Are Deceiving

Sure, from a distance, the mountain may not look that big. It looks like pretty smooth terrain and a manageable grade when you stare at it from a distance.

So you sprint to your starting point.

That’s when the work begins. And reality starts to sink in.

MOST people don’t make it far enough up the mountain to put skin in the game.

They quit early enough that the pain of investment isn’t harsh enough. The sting of quitting isn’t harsh enough.

But if this goal is something that you REALLY want then your first step is the “investment phase”.

You have to put in enough effort to reach a point where quitting would be more painful than continuing.

Once you reach this point, you gain a whole new perspective. The struggle doesn’t go away, but it takes on a new form.

You find a sort of peace and “sense of knowing” during your struggle.

You know you’ll make it to your goal though you don’t know how long it’ll take. But it almost doesn’t matter because you no longer count the cost.

You’re only focused on the path.

This is an easy metaphor to understand. But it applies to anything in life.

Make it a point to nurture your dreams. Have big visions and give yourself permission to dream even bigger.

Then, make CERTAIN you stay with it. Get to the point where turning around is no longer an option.

Even though it’ll likely take far longer than you think to reach your peak.

JohnK. 4-7-2025
chiforyourself.com

 

stick man hears about successOverheard: “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”

                                                             ~Robert Collier

 

Article image by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/yelling-formal-man-watching-news-on-laptop-3760778/

 

 

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You Can Define Your Perfect Morning

March 24, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

 

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You Can Define Your Perfect Morning

As I sit down to prep this GenuLines blog post a new morning is starting. I have my own way of approaching each day.

I call it my daily regimen.

How about you? Is there something you want to do that would make a big difference?

A habit you can do on a daily basis?

It could be in any area of your life. From exercise and healthy eating to working on your relationship with your kids.

Sit back and imagine your perfect morning. It isn’t stressed or rushed.

picture of beautiful morning

Best of all it’s a day when you have time for everything on your list.

This could mean having time for a long shower. Or going for a run before breakfast.

Or having a few minutes to connect with your spouse over breakfast.

There are a lot of “maybes” but the key is to start with what’s most important to you. Then think about how you could fit it into your morning routine.

Dream On

Remember, you’re only dreaming and imagining at this point. You’ll work on figuring out where to find the time to fit it in and how to make it all work out later on.

For now paint a vivid picture of what your new morning could look like. Get very clear on what you want that perfect morning to look like.

Imagine it in as much detail as possible. (And I would suggest you keep all this to yourself)

Write it down somewhere so you can refer to it as needed. In short, define your perfect morning.

Why is this so important?

Because you can’t start to make any meaningful changes until you know what your goals are.

You need to know your destination before you can start to pick a route and figure out how you’ll get there.

That’s what today’s task is all about.

It’s figuring out where you want to get to. Don’t stop until you have it figured out and firmly pictured in your mind.

JohnK 3-24-2025
chiforyourself.com

 

stick figure hears about a perfect morningOverheard: “Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it”

~Richard Whately
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Why You’re Not Happy (And How to Change This)

February 10, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

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Why You’re Not Happy (And How to Change This)

So you’re reading this while you grapple with feelings of discontent in certain areas of life. Especially when it comes to being happy.

I get it.

Quick fixes and hacks don’t deliver and don’t help your mood. The changes they bring don’t last.

Their temporary highs don’t give you genuine fulfilment. Enter GenuLines and our ways to point your life toward fulfillment.

The truth is, your life isn’t a circumstance beyond your control. Your happiness and fulfillment are not accidents or the result of external factors.

happy smiling character

They/re a direct result of the choices you’ve made in the past.

The law of cause and effect is undeniable: every decision you’ve made has led to where you are today. Your thoughts, more than anything else, have shaped your life.

Your thought patterns and the way you choose to think have created the circumstances you’re in. And here’s the good news: you have the power to change your thoughts and, in turn, change your life.

As humans, we’re incredibly adaptable. We can thrive in most any environment, no matter how challenging.

But we often forget this power and allow our circumstances to define us.

We become victims of our own expectations and standards. We forget that we created those standards in the first place.

One key to happiness and fulfillment lies in recognizing that you have the power to choose. You can choose to focus on what you can control and scale up from there.

You don’t have to be held back by your current circumstances.

So, where do you start? Focus on the areas of your life where you’re doing reasonably well – the areas where you have control.

See if you can improve them, broaden them, or expand your area of control. From there, you can tackle the more challenging areas that may be holding you back.

Remember, your life isn’t a fixed landscape. It’s a dynamic, ever-changing environment that reflects your choices and decisions.

Choose to focus on what you can control and adapt to your circumstances and you can create a more fulfilling and happy life.

Don’t wait for external circumstances to change; change yourself by changing your mindset. You have the power to choose.

And with that power comes the ability to create a life that truly reflects genuine living.

JohnK 2-10-2025
chifoforyourself.com

stick man hears about being happyOverheard:  The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions”

~Robert Louis Stevenson
 

Article Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/yellow-cube-on-brown-pavement-208147/

 

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The Importance Of Your Mindset In Anything You Do In Life

October 21, 2024 Uncategorized No comments

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The Importance Of Your Mindset In Anything You Do In Life

There are two distinct approaches to this thing called mindset. And the outcome of each type of thought lies at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The first is a “fixed mindset,” while we call the second one a “growth mindset.” Read on as GenuLines shows you which brings more success in life.

Sign reads mindset

The “fixed mindset” tends to see skills, potential and abilities as pre-determined. So, you can’t improve on them.

The growth mindset is open to the idea that there’s always room for improvement by way of working at it.

The “fixed” category tends to make you feel powerless. In the growth category there’s more optimism about who’s calling the shots so to speak.

But there are a few other big differences in these two attitudes.

The main one is how you view mistakes or obstacles and your attitude toward them.

For example, if you have a fixed mindset, you’re quicker to get discouraged by your first setback. The growth mindset and its optimistic attitude help you “make the best of it.”

Any negativity can turn into a chance to learn and grow. Are you getting the idea that the fixed mindset doesn’t leave much room for growth?

But wait, there’s more!

For one, there’s knowing that your mindset can have a major impact on your health and well-being. A depressed and discouraged attitude can suppress your immune system.

You’re more prone to illnesses. And you might take longer to recover from what your defeated attitude brought you.

With a growth mindset you tend to be sick less often- and happier too.

Experts on the subject agree that you have control over your attitude. Their consensus is that it’s smart to switch out of a fixed mindset.

And you can do it in any phase of your life.

This is good news if you find yourself stuck in the pessimistic fixed mindset. Your fatalistic attitude toward accomplishments and success don’t have to be permanent.

You can always improve.

John K 10-21-2024
chiforyourself.com

Stick figure hears about mindsetOverheard: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

                                     ~ Earl Nightingale

 

Article image by Brian Jones from Pixabay

 

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