Do you find yourself sometimes ruminating, wasting time, procrastinating? Maybe you feel that you could do better or enjoy more success but never get round to it because you just avoid doing all things that you know you should.

And perhaps you generally feel stress and less than positive or silently criticize yourself for not getting more things done?

Nowadays we’re told he who acts is he who succeeds. There are plenty of marketing, business or career gurus whose advice is to take bold action. This makes perfect sense and yet how many of us actually follow through with the advice?

And what stops us getting this stuff going? Is it that deep down inside you know it will never happen? Or that you’ll start but not finish?

Don’t worry, this state of thinking is not uncommon. For example I was recently at a networking event and the speaker generously gave a really useful step by step plan on how to get yourself known for your subject area and get engaged by organisations for talks.

Afterwards I was in conversation with a woman who ran a small business of her own. After a while she declared that the speaker’s advice was great and what a shame that she’d never get round to it.

To me this is typical of how our thinking gets in the way of our potential success. I asked her how she knew this was true. She was surprised by the question and then after a pause her response was: ‘I don’t know. I just don’t think I can do it!’ We talked some more and after a while she realised that if she changed her thinking to how she could do it, a step at a time and what she would need to have in place to take action then actually she could do it. This was a great revelation for her and she left the meeting in great excitement and with a sense of anticipation.

The message I want to get across today is that you really should realise that you can be master of your destiny by mastering your thinking. How might you go about that?

Firstly you’ll have to be aware of when your thinking is leading you down one of those old paths of not so useful thinking. There are many ways and strategies you can apply to achieve this. (Read my blog and you’ll get lots of free advice).

One way is to say STOP when you’re aware that your thinking is negative or unhelpful. Or you could challenge your thoughts – are they true? But the main thing is to apply whatever you choose to use often. It might mean you slow down to begin with but after a while you’ll gather speed and feel a lot more comfortable in yourself and great things will happen. You’ll trust yourself and make decisions more easily based on real world events rather than what might happen or what you think you should do because somebody else said so. You’ll sleep better because you’re less hassled and less worried .

You’ll like yourself more. And guess what? You’ll find that you are acting a lot more instead of wishing you would.