Free self help from a powerful 1st lady

Let's take a few words from a very powerful old lady. This lady was a wealth of wisdom and many of her ideas have been borrowed from and expanded upon in many of the best self help books that I have read.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the wife of U.S president Franklin D. Roosevelt. But she was no ordinary First Lady. In many ways she became a pioneer.

She was the first woman to speak in front of a national convention. The first woman to have a syndicated column and to earn money through lectures. After the death of her husband, she didn't disappear into obscurity.

Instead she continued her work and she became an American spokesman in the U.N. There she played an important part in creating The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In a survey by Gallup she is one of the most widely admired people of the last century.

What did she learn through all that? Here are just a few Eleanor's awesome thoughts on life. (Keep exploring thois website for more information on the best self help books in the world).

1. You need to face your fear.

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

Reaqd this fantastic best selling self help book by Susan Jeffers - Feel the fear and do it anyway...

It becomes easier to be bold when you learn to use fear to your advantage. Every time you face a fear you gain the three important qualities above. And the next thing that comes along will be easier to handle.

If you have to handle a big fear, whatever it may be, and later realise you actually survived it, many things in life you may have feared previously seems to shrink. Those fears become smaller. They might even disappear.

And you might think to yourself that what you thought was a fear before wasn't that much to be afraid of at all. All is relative. And every triumph, problem, fear and experience becomes bigger or smaller depending to what you compare it to.

2. Do what you feel deep down is the right thing.

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

Whatever you do, there will always be some people who criticize you. You can't avoid it. Well, perhaps if you never do or say anything. But how much fun would that be? And would that even help? Probably not, because then they'll just complain about you never saying anything.

Criticism doesn't always come from what you do. It's quite often about the other person. Maybe s/he needs to vent jealousy, bitterness, anger or frustration. Or feel a need to show that his/her point of view or belief is the right one. Maybe money is tight or the cat was run over last week. So whatever you do, people will always be able to find things in your life to criticise. There is not much you can do about that. So you might as well do what you feel is right for you.

3. You have the power. Even if you might not always feel like it.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I've slowly come to realise how powerful this thought is. And how useful it can be when you actually start to use it. But coming around to this thought, to accept that you really control so much in life can be a bit counter-intuitive and difficult to grasp. It can take some time.

But you choose and you control how you react and feel. So even though what anyone says to you, it's up to you if you want feel inferior or down about it. Achieving this amount of control over yourself takes some training of course and isn't something you master in a weekend. But as you realise that this thought is true and apply it to your life a world of possibilities starts to slowly open up.

But how do you let criticism and negative thoughts not get to you? One way is to not care too much about what other people think (regardless if it's positive or negative thoughts).

4. Focus on the constructive and positive.

"It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness."

To keep complaining about your circumstances, what happened to you and how mistreated you were is - after the initial experience and reaction - pretty pointless. Not because you shouldn't complain and it's bad behaviour in some way. But because it's not useful for you.

People don't like complainers so if you go on and on they might stop listening. Or start to avoid you. Complaining won't solve your problems either. What has happened has happened.

Complaining isn't that useful for you. It's much better to put whatever happened behind you, to make a plan and take action today to improve today and tomorrow. This might sound corny.

But you choose what you want to do.

You can choose to continue complaining and become addicted to the feeling and experience of it. And get a strange satisfaction out of complaining.

Or you can choose to use your time and energy for something better, more fun and exhilarating than complaining.

5. Give happiness.

"Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give."

This may sound like an empty cliché but it surely works. One of the best ways to become happier is simply to make others happier

When you make someone else happy you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you.

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. And so the two - or more - of you keep building an upward spiral of positivity and happiness.

So be smart and bold, take more trips down a road less travelled than it should be. Focus on giving happiness instead of zeroing in on receiving it. It's better for everyone