Making strong decisions is at the core of being a good CEO for your life. The CEO must be the primary direction maker and taker. Making decisive decisions is critical to defining your path and being able to take action.

If you want to have the life you desire. You need to make the decisions today that will bring you closer to that goal. Not sure you are making good decisions right now? If so try a few of these strategies for better decision making:

Fail Your Way To Success

Assess your failures, what can you learn from them? Ask yourself what you learned about yourself after the failure. Did you listen to your guy or ignore it and later experienced regret?

Often we can truly start to understand ourselves through our failures. We can begin to identify our weaknesses or tendencies that may not serve us as CEO of our business.

Own Your Strengths and Outsource Your Weaknesses

Make better decisions when you with your strengths rather than against. As you identify weaknesses look for ways to outsource activities that play to those weaknesses.  For example, if maintaining your website is a hated task and a time suck for you, you can easily hire a virtual assistant to handle those tasks.

Stop The Blame Game

It can be easy to beat ourselves up after a mistake or failure. When you find yourself going into blame consciously stop and refocus. 

You can't change the past, so choose to move forward. You may want to asses what you learned as previously mentioned or simply focus on moving forward.  Tackle the next item on your to-do list.

Tip The Scales To Make Better Decisions

Weigh the choices to improve your decision making. There are a number of ways to weigh choices, consider:

• Playing out the choices in your mind. Walk yourself through each decision and what the consequences could be.
  
• Consider what the worst case scenario is. Does that scenario make the choice and absolute no-go or is it acceptable.
  
• Keep the end goal in mind. Is the choice in line with your 1, 3 and 5 year goals? If not it probably isn't the right choice.
  
• What does your gut tell you? Our intuitions are amazing and often this "gut feel" will point us in the right direction.
  
• Are you overly emotional about this decision? If so, don't make it right now. Give yourself time to calm down and then come back to the decision making process again when you are calm.
  

Which improvement in decision making will you implement today? Share your plan in the comments below.

If you have goals you want to accomplish in this life it is essential mastering your mindset. When you master your mindset you are programming the course so that even when you turn on autopilot, you will continue towards your destination.

I bet you want to continue on to your destination (goal), even when your thoughts are on a different subject. I know I do. Hopefully, it is clear to you that I strive to help people optimize their lives. Even when I'm working on a new skill, such as video creation, I want my mindset focused on the main goal of helping people optimize their lives, rather than distracted by the new software or technology I'm working with.

A mindset it where your focus is and how you feel about it. If you have a set of goals you are focused on but you don’t think you can accomplish them your mindset isn’t very good. However, if you spend 15 min every morning, like Ann, aligning with your goals in a positive focused way you will automatically move yourself towards success.

When you've mastered your mindset you will automatically act and react in a way that is inline with the outcome you desire. Your thought and actions will move you towards this goal because you've trained your mindset.

Achieve maximum results by defining your mindset

If you aren't clear on your goals this is absolutely your first step. A great way to start defining your mindset is to start mind mapping what it is you want. Choose a few main areas of your life to start with, a few examples are: Home, Family, Parenting, Finances, Career, Lifestyle. Now start drawing out a mind map of what you want in each of those areas. Spend about 20 minutes brainstorming, no idea is wrong. Set a timer to keep yourself on track in this exercise.

Now study the mind maps you've created. Are there themes throughout the mind map? Does a need for recognition, freedom, authority, or something else keep cropping up. If you see something like money continues to come up, ask your self it money is really the outcome or if it is a means to something else you want, i.e. Freedom.

Now take your most common themes and see if you can craft a mindset that will enable you to reach that goal. E.g. if you want more recognition ask yourself what would you need to do to get the recognition you desire. Do you need to outperform others, out serve others, or simply put in more time to get that recognition. You may end up with a statement like this that begins to define your mindset: In order to achieve the recognition I desire, I will provide great value to my employer by being the go to person for answers in my company and always conduct myself professionally on the job.

Surround yourself with happy, positive people to achieve mindset mastery quicker

Those with a negative mindset can drag you off course. Surround yourself with those who are positive. Those with a positive mindset will be supportive and help you see the possibilities and successes. People with a negative mindset will only see struggles and throw roadblocks into your path.

If you have co-workers who don't believe you can achieve the recognition you seek (from our previous example), limit the time you spend with them. It is far to easy for their doubt and negativity to begin to derail your progress.

You won't even realize you are reinforcing your mindset when you use visual images

Our unconscious mind drives much of our behavior. Use visual cues and reminders to reinforce your mindset with this unconscious brain. A vision board is a great way to do this or simply creating a slide presentation with images of what you want.  Write down your top goal and post it somewhere you will see it many times each day. Good locations are the bathroom mirror, on your monitor, in your wallet, or even on your smartphone or computer background image.

Love inspiring quotes? Use them to master your mindset and reach your goals, no brain tax required.

It is easy to find many fabulous quotes that speak to us about motivation, inspiration, success or another sentiment that helps us. Write the ones that speak strongly to you and reinforce your mindset in a notebook you keep handy at all times. Refer back to these quotes often when you need inspiration or just have a few minutes. Will those few extra minutes standing in the checkout line be better spent by checking Facebook or by reinforcing your mindset?

Share your thoughts on this article, The Secrets To Mastering Your Mindset, below.

Find The Missing Piece To Your Happiness

By: Lori Thayer

Do you feel like is a missing piece in your life? I know I've felt that way. The missing piece can gnaw at you, leaving you feeling bereft and out of sorts. Let's find the missing piece to your happiness.

Mindmap for your missing piece

Take out a piece of paper, set a timer for 20 minutes and create a mindmap to find your missing piece.

If you are unfamiliar with what a mindmap is check out this article on how. While you draw your mindmap to find the missing piece consider these questions:

• What
• Who
• Why
• Where
  
• When and
• How

Now that you have your mindmap look for patterns. If you had one area come up more than any other in your mindmap consider what change you could make in your life to improve that area.

For example, let's say finances came up throughout your mind mapping. First narrow it down to whether it is a lack of finances, a desire for more money, mismanagement of money or another angle.

Now that you've narrowed down the topic you could say you've found the missing piece. Too simple, I say, let's keep digging.

Let's do another mindmap just focused on this angle, say a mismanagement of finances. Ask yourself the same questions:

• What
• Who
• Why
• Where
  
• When and
  
• How

Once again look for patterns and what answer shows up again and again. Begin to address that issue.

After you've addressed that issue check and see how you feel. Is there a new piece that is missing for your happiness?

I bet there is. We are built to always want a bit more. Life is fluid and ever changing. We need to adjust and move with it. Use this exercise to determine where to focus your attention if you want to continuously make improvements in your life so you can be happier.

What areas of life kept coming up for you; finances, relationships, life balance, health, or something else? Share your results in the comments below.

5 Ways to Find More Time to Enrich Your Life

By: Lori Thayer

Is there so much you want to do and learn but you can't seem to find more time in the day to get to it? Maybe it is new skill or hobby you want to learn or a course you want to listen to. Recently we discussed just what enrich your life really means.  In this article we will focus on 5 ways to find more time to enrich your life.

If there isn't more you want out of life you can stop reading now. There isn't any reason for you to find more time for enrichment. Many of us are interested in so many things and have a hard time finding time for all we want to learn. If that is the case, continue on.

Make Your Drive To Work More Interesting

The majority of us have a commute to work. Make better use of that time by listening to programs that focus on a subject you want to learn more about.

Not sure where to find things to listen to, check out these resources.

Make It A Family Activity

Find more time by doing enrichment activities with the whole family (or even your friends). Sometimes it can be difficult to find more time alone, however if you include the whole family in your enrichment activity everyone can benefit. Each member has a chance to learn new things and create great memories through the shared experience.

Take turns picking the enrichment activity to do together. Some great options are: 

• Visit a museum
• Attend a play
• See a free concert in the park
• Do a family activity such as an obstacle course you must work together to complete
• Cook a meal together as a family. Give each member a task or course to complete and work together. Add some special touches to the dinner setting to make the enjoyment of your efforts even more fun.
  

Take A Walk

Take a thirty minute walk during the day to get some exercise and enrich your life through an audio program. Of course you can listen while at the gym or during a bike ride as well.

Skip the News

Instead of listening to the news in the morning listen to a TED talk or a video program that you've been wanting to see. These can be easy to queue up on your iPad while brushing your teeth and fixing your hair.

Alternately, cut out 1 hour of TV each week. If you spend 4 hours a month on enrichment activities instead of watching an hour long TV show how could your life change?

Meditate During A Bath

Instead of just doing nothing, use your downtime deliberately. Sometimes we need an absence of any stimulation.

Draw a bath and take a moment to pamper yourself. While in the tub spend 10-20 minutes meditating. Close your eyes, enjoy the feeling of the water and relax. If you need help with meditation I highly recommend the Silva program.

Interested in more ways to optimize your life? Receive regular tips to be more efficient, save time, enrich your life, and connect with others here: optimize your life.

Lori Thayer is passionate about finding ways to optimize your life so you can live your best life. Don't miss a tip, optimize your life by signing up today.