Image by  Ben Fredericson (xjrlokix) ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='socialbuttons' /] “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” Ralph Waldo Emerson What is holding you back from trying new things and improving your life in big or small ways in your daily life? When you boil it down it is most often not about anything outside of you. Or that is at least not the biggest reason why you feel paralyzed. It’s the fear that gets to you. It holds you back from trying something new for lunch, a new place for the evening out or a new hobby because you feel somewhat afraid that you’ll have a bad experience. So you stick to your usual routine. It holds you back from asking someone for a date or number because you don’t want to risk being rejected or looking like a fool in front of people. So you don’t take the next step. You stay where you are and new directions in your life remain unexplored. This is of course very human. But fear doesn’t have to stop you from exploring life. Now, let me share what I do to minimize my fear and to be able to move from feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed into taking action and moving forward. 1. What is the worst that could happen? I like this very practical exercise as step number one. So ask yourself this question. Really think about. Don’t just think about it for a few seconds. Sit down with a pen and piece of paper, your laptop or cellphone. Write it all out and think about what the realistic worst-case scenario would be. Then write down a plan for how you can come back from such a scenario. This step brings clarity, defuses fuzzy fears and helps you realize that you can most often bounce back pretty quickly even if the worst-case scenario somehow becomes reality. If that only works to a degree move on to the next step… 2. Share your fear with someone. By sharing your fear you can relieve inner pressure. By just keeping it on the inside it’s easy to build it up into this massive nightmare and extremely dangerous thing. By sharing and by getting some input from a levelheaded friend or family member he or she can help you to alleviate the fear and inner pressure. And you can gain a much healthier perspective on things again. If you don’t have someone to share it with or if that only works partly too then move on to… 3. Accept the fear. It is a natural impulse to try to deny the fear when shows up in your life. Perhaps you try to not think about, you try to push it away. Or you tell yourself that you need to focus like a laser beam on the positive. I have found that in many cases it is actually better to just accept that fear – or whatever is left of it after having worked through step #1 and #2 – is here right now (although it can be hard to sometimes convince your brain that this is a good option as it wants to deny or reject what is). By accepting that you feel this way you stop feeding more energy into the fear and you stop making it strong. After a few minutes of fully taking in this uncomfortable feeling and accepting it then it starts to lose steam. It just seems to float away and you feel more open and relieved feelings bubbling up within. 4. Tap into curiosity and focus on the upsides. By now, most of those fearful feelings are often pretty small and they tend come and go. You have processed much of that inner tension and resistance. So you are now at a good point to start focusing on why you want to move towards what you have feared and to open your mind to what you can find out there. Take out the pen and paper and ask yourself: What is the opportunity in this situation? What are the potential upsides I want and can have by taking these actions? What are the potential upsides in one year if I start moving on this path? And in five years? And how will life be in five years if I continue on the path I am now? The answer when it comes to what you eat for lunch or if you want to have a new hobby may simply be that life becomes more fun, healthy, fulfilling and filled with newness and more surprises. The answer when it comes to taking action to make a date happen, to get a new job or to take another direction in college could be that your life changes completely. 5. Take a small step forward. Take it slowly if you like. You don’t have to go all in at once in many cases. Think about how you can move in small steps and slowly towards what you want. Just dip your toes in at first if that feels more comfortable. The most important thing is that you start moving and that you take action, not how fast or how much action you take at first. If you for example want to start your own business work on that in the evening while still working at your day job or staying in school. Don’t let thinking like “I have to go all in and take huge risks” hold you back. Or if you want to try something new today just tell yourself that: Just for today I will try [insert something you want to try]! You just have to do it today. Not ever again after today. You are not signing up for some huge commitment. Tomorrow you may continue on that new path. Or you may not. By not making this into a huge thing you have do but instead just a small step, that you can take and get done as slowly as you like, it becomes so much easier to do what is most important at first: to put yourself in motion. Then, along the way, you can take bigger leaps if you like and speed things up. You will learn through successes and failures (and realize that you won’t die if things don’t go your way all the time). You will quit some things and continue doing other things. But first, make it easy on yourself to take the first step. If you thought this article was useful, please share it with someone on Stumbleupon, Facebook and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

Image by: notsogoodphotography ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='socialbuttons' /] “If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.” George F. Burns “Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.” John W. Gardner Lately I have been very busy with working hard on the final part of my new course, Simplicity. When you are busy like that at school or at work or just in life in general it’s very easy to from time to time fall into a couple of negative headspaces – such as victim thinking, feeling overwhelmed or just plain pessimistic – that make life and work more difficult. In this post I’ll share how I usually to get myself out of such destructive inner places. 1. Releasing the stress. Working out – I use free weight + body weight exercises – is my number one way to release stress and inner tension. If feel whiny or pessimistic then I put in maybe just 25 minutes of free weights as soon as I can (I have them at home so that makes is easier to get going with it). That one step will most often work to feel stronger and better emotionally once again. If that only works a bit I move one to… 2. Shift to a healthier perspective. I usually do this one as the second step. But sometimes I use it as the first step and then I move on to or skip the exercise. If I’m hung up on a smaller or medium sized detail or feel overwhelmed by something then I ask myself a question like: Will this matter 5 years from now? This usually let’s me see that it doesn't. Or that it is a very small deal in the long run. If I fall into victim thinking I ask myself: Does someone have it worse on the planet? Of course. So I should probably just chill out and snap out of the somewhat ridiculous, childish “poor, poor me” thoughts. If I get irritated or angry at someone else then I ask myself: How would I think and feel it if I were in his or her shoes? Putting myself in the other person's shoes helps me to gain a more levelheaded mood and better perspective to solve a situation practically or to let it go. Instead of building a molehill into Mount Everest in my head. If that doesn't bring me fully around I move one to… 3. Focusing fully on rest. I take a time out. I watch some fun comedies like the Simposons, the Office or Community and just laugh some time away. Or I lie down on the couch to read some fun or thrilling mystery novel. And I do nothing more for maybe a half a hour or an hour. This is very important. I basically single-task and just focus on such relaxing – and for me fully absorbing – activities to 100%. This usually works wonders and lets me get back into the work with a relaxed and optimistic mindset again. So find the activities that you get fully absorbed in – some sport, a walk, swimming perhaps or playing a video game – and take a fully focused break when needed. Bonus tip: I remember to keep things extremely simple. This one works when I get overwhelmed for example but is also one of my best tools to keep out of negative headspaces in the first place by focusing on what is helpful and nipping destructive thoughts patterns in the bud. At the very top of a whiteboard on my wall I have written down: “Keep things extremely simple” (I also have this phrase as a desktop wallpaper on my laptop). And whenever I feel I am making a thing bigger or more complicated than it is or I simply become confused or negative in some way I can look at the wall to help guide my thoughts back into a constructive and calm place. If you thought this article was useful, please share it with someone on Stumbleupon, Facebook and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci “Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.” Henry Thoreau One of the most important things I have done to improve my life over the last few years is to focus on letting go of many things and to simplify. Simplifying one's life is as I have understood via emails and surveys also one of the most common aspirations of readers of this website. So for the past few months I have been working hard on a course called Simplicity. This is by far my most in-depth product so far and will help you to practically simplify and improve the most important areas in life such as your productivity & effectiveness, your thinking, your social skills & relationships, your health, your money habits and more. Be on the lookout for more information about this in the next few days. But for today I would like to share a couple of great ideas about simplifying that have been with us for a long time. These are a few of my own favorite thoughts about simplifying your life from the last 2500 years or so. Focus on what is most important for you. Let go of the rest. “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” Hans Hofmann “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” Lin Yutang “The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.” Elbert Hubbard There are many things you can let go of. Both on the inside and the outside. I have for example let go of some busy work on the outside. I have greatly decreased the number of times I check email etc. each day and I have learned to use very short to-do lists with only 2-3 of the most important items instead of a dozen items or more. On the inside I do my best to let go of trivial and petty stuff. I let go of negative stuff. I let go of trying to control the results of my actions. I let go of information and old self-images that don’t serve me anymore. I always remember – or remind myself via the white board on my wall – to keep things extremely simple. I’ll mention a small and effective tip for letting go right here. First accept that you are for example stuck in focusing on something trivial. Then let it go. Don’t try to just reject what you are thinking or feeling because that will only make it harder to let it go. By doing all this elimination on the inside and outside there is more room, time and energy for me to use for the most important things. And that makes life so much more interesting and fun. Express yourself in a simple way. “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” Ernest Hemingway One of the trickier things about social skills is to get your message across. One reason why people have difficulty with this is because they use more words than needed. Now, sometimes that can be a good and enjoyable thing. Sometimes it’s just a way to feed your own ego and keep the spotlight on yourself for as long as possible. A lot of the time I think it can be useful to simplify and try to use fewer words. Why? Well, it makes your message clearer and makes it more powerful emotionally because it’s focused. Keeping it shorter and more focused also makes it less likely that people will simply become bored with what you are saying. So, how do you keep your word count down? Be aware and alert. Just being aware of your problem can help you to stop the talking before it becomes excessive rambling. Focus outward. Babbling on too much is also, at least in my opinion, something that often comes from being too focused inward and on yourself in a conversation. If you instead focus more outward you’ll be less self-conscious. This reduces nervous and slightly nonsensical babbling. And if you focus more outward, on the people you are talking to and less on your own glorious voice and golden words you’ll be more aware of what you are saying and how the conversation is going. If you focus on the other people you’ll be more focused on getting through and more attentive to the reactions you bring out. A simpler life is one way to a happier life. “Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.” Edwin Way Teale Society is to a large degree built on getting more. To a degree this can be useful. But it may not be the thing that will solve all your problems. You may not find your answer or happiness in more. It may just alter your troubles and problems. And/or give you more of them. What is already there inside of you perhaps gets highlighted and magnified when you get more. Instead of getting whatever you want when finally making all that money your wanted you may find that greed, jealousy and selfishness within you and in your world increases. You may have thought that when you finally arrived at that place your problems would just disappear. But the ego wants more and is never satisfied. So trying to fill your life and yourself up with more – money, stuff, power, smartness, prettiness, a feeling of being more enlightened than others – and then finally becoming happy may become like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. By simplifying and letting of a craving for more you can make your life happier and easier. Get a life to create a simpler life. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” Confucius “Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.” Katherine F. Gerould Why do people make life more complicated than it is? Well, one answer may be old habits that you need to let go of and replace. Another answer is that your life isn’t really that exciting. So you add drama and complications to make it more interesting and stimulating. That’s at least what I used to do in the past. But instead of doing that you can take the more difficult path and actually get a life. If you find yourself sitting around too much and not having enough to do then it’s very easy to get stuck in thought loops and go into a downward spiral. Simply by filling your life with more fun activities and people you become a lot more relaxed and have little time or patience for complications or drama from yourself or others. So spend less time analyzing life and more time living and exploring it in whatever way you’d like. By doing so you are also often confronted with having to expand your comfort zones and perhaps face a fear. This leads to better self confidence and less fretting about if you can handle things that may come up.

“Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.” “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” “With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.” Even if you are not an American – like me – you’ve probably still heard of Abraham Lincoln. He was the president who introduced and worked on measures to free the slaves and led the country through the Civil War. A war that had just ended when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre. But what can Abraham Lincoln help us with today? Well, here are 10 powerful and timeless fundamentals. I hope you’ll find something helpful. 1. See the positive in people. “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.” “The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.” What you focus on you will find. In a situation, in a person. There is always plenty of good things and plenty of bad things to discover. So you need to keep your focus steadily on what you want to find. Don’t let it waver just because you are in a “negative” situation or someone just said/did something “negative”. If your focus gets scattered, try to get it back into a more useful place as quickly as you can. You can develop whatever view of the world and people that you like. You can go looking for the negative in people and feel a short burst of good emotions as find something negative about a person and feel like you are “right”. Or you can develop a habit of looking for the positive. A habit where you can expect people to treat you in a positive way. Because we do to a large extent teach people how we want to be treated. If we expect other people to help us and treat us well then they are more likely to do so than if we are negative and expect to be treated poorly. This may sound a bit weird, but how we expect to be treated can have a big effect on how the world sees us. 2. Be honest. “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” This is a pretty practical thing. Being honest will for several reasons work better in the long run. Of course, you don’t have to go out of your way to be honest and hurt people though. You can just as well choose to be silent if you like. Here are just a few practical reasons to minimize or just stop lying altogether. Your words aren't everything. Words are only a pretty small part of communication. The rest are body language and your voice tonality. And it’s through those channels that the real you will shine through. People will in some way sense that something is wrong, that you aren't being honest and authentic if those other ways you communicate aren't in alignment with your words. So lying is just a short term solution. Sooner or later people will pick up on it. Poor self-image and stress. Cultivating a self-image as someone who lies will make you feel worse about yourself. You’ll feel like a fake and your self-esteem plummets. And if you on the other hand are honest you don’t have to feel like someone that is trapped or on the high-wire all the time. People really appreciate authentic communication. What separates people is to a large extent the walls that they build up between themselves. When you put aside personas and lies you can build real connections between you and other people. If you remove these walls of insulation then the people or you are interacting with are likely to reciprocate. And so your relationships can improve and are less likely to be damaged by miscommunication. 3. Unite. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Ego excludes and divides. The ego loves to make someone “the other” to strengthen its own power. It want’s to feel “more” than someone else. More clever. Prettier. Cooler. Wiser. Or more like a victim. And by making the other even more wrong in your mind the ego grows stronger. However, the ego boosts of good feelings are just temporary. You have to reinforce them continually, just like a caffeine habit. Consciousness and intelligence includes and accepts. You don’t have to be seduced by your ego’s wish to make people other than you. You can look at the positive in them and at the things you agree about. And be accepting. When your thoughts are buzzing around in your head and telling you to exclude or divide in some way then you most often are listening to your ego. It may tell you that paragraphs just above this one are cheesy and stupid. You may not want to take such thoughts too seriously. You don’t have to. The most useful advice I’ve found so far to get a handle on the need to divide is to not identify so much with my thoughts or feelings. That doesn’t mean that I stop thinking or feeling. It just means that I realize – and remember in my everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through me. And that I am the consciousness observing them. When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out. When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts. 4. Create a friend where there is none. “The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.” “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” This is similar to tip #1 and # 3. But slightly different, seen from a slightly different perspective. It is a helpful and a bit unusual way of looking at people who you might perceive as different or other than yourself. Turning an enemy or someone we don’t like into a friend is difficult because first impressions can be powerful. Our concept of a person can remain intact if we don’t push further and question and explore. But if you get to know someone better you can often find out quite a few positive and interesting things about them. People are often more intriguing than your first impression of them. Of course, since the ego needs to tell you that you are right and someone else is wrong then it can be hard to change your opinion of someone. That opinion of him/her is tied up in your ego and fuels your sense of being “right”. Again, the key and the way out here is to not take your thoughts or emotions too seriously. This can allow you to open your mind to a change in the relationship. Now, how can you make him/her your friend? One suggestion would be to follow tip # 1 and start looking for the positive in the person. Then to take the first step and give some kind of value – like help for instance – to that person. And then to take more steps if s/he is not convinced that you want to change the relationship. 5. Believe in and go after your own success. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” If you think you can succeed then you can. Your belief in your own ability to succeed is essential and does not only motivate you to keep going. You may have heard that you  have to believe that you can achieve something to do it and that the how you will do it will then present itself along the way. Well, that is true in my experience. Whatever you focus on persistently you will find in your world. So be careful what you focus on. Remind yourself to keep your focus on what you want to make solutions and people who can help you “pop up” out of all those things and pieces of information that is the background noise of your world. And don’t wait for too long. Procrastination may just leave you with the crumbs or sometimes nothing really. Taking action is awesome. But taking action with little delay will increase the probability of you actually getting what you want before the window of opportunity closes. So develop a Just do it! habit. Learn to do some planning but then to take action quickly despite what excuses or other negative things your thoughts and emotions may put up in your way. Know that they may just want to protect you from uncertainty and risks. But also know that you are in charge of them and not the other way around. 6. Persist. “Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.” Persistence might not exactly be the sexiest sounding quality. It might not sell a lot of products to people looking for the magic pill. But it is an immensely helpful quality to cultivate and put to use. If you fail, what do you do? You dust yourself off and try again. If the success you are looking for won’t come that quickly – a pretty likely scenario – then you have to persist. Persistence may be one of the most useful qualities one can have. Not only because you will still be out there in a less competitive playing field as lot other people have given up and gone home. But also because developing patience and being persistent will enable you to get what you want. It may just take a little longer than had hoped for. 7. Sharpen your ax. “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.” Instead of just starting to chop with a blunt blade for hours on end it’s a whole lot smarter to first sharpen the blade and then take on the physically harder task of bringing the tree down. This goes for everything. If you are prepared then it will often be a whole lot easier to get something done. Sometimes it can be the thing that separates people that either keeps chopping until they can’t take it anymore and give up and the people who could get the job done. So success is not just about doing hard work. It’s also about sharpening your ax at regular intervals and learning new and better ways to take down the trees in your life. And it’s about remembering what trees you want to take down rather than just any tree. However, you don’t want to get stuck in this stage and never take action. As with all things, you have to find a balance by experimenting. Four suggestions for sharpening your ax are: Educate yourself. Do some research into the whatever you want to achieve. Look for the most common mistakes and smart things people do. Read books and online. Talk to people who have already been where you want to go. Do. Fail. Learn. Do. Knowledge from external sources is great. But to really understand you have to do things. And learn from your own failures and successes. And then do again with your new understanding in your mind. Manage your energy levels. You don’t just have increase your knowledge and understanding of things. You also have to have the physical energy to get things done when you find your opportunity. Otherwise you may just fall into a procrastinating pattern or back down. So workout. Eat enough. Sleep enough. Basic stuff of course. But if you do it consistently then you’ll increase you chances of succeeding when it’s time to start chopping down your trees. With a high energy level it will be easier to persist until you are done. Remind yourself where you are going. A lot of not so important busy work can dull your ax. You need to regularly review your plans and remind yourself of your goals and what you really want. If you don’t keep your eyes on where you want to go you might wind up somewhere completely different. 8. Take a responsibility for your own life. “You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.” “You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” When we are kids people take care of us. They take responsibility. But to become an adult – and not just a kid in a grown up’s body – one has to take responsibility for oneself. There is no other way. Sure, letting someone else take the responsibility may be easier on you. But without taking responsibility for yourself how can you be free? How can you really live up you own potential and dreams? It can be hard to break out of the comfort zone of having other people taking responsibility for us. But if you don’t then you will be trapped by other people’s standards, expectations and limitations. You have to set your own rules for your life. A bit scary. But also liberating. 9. Happiness is optional. “Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be. One big upside of taking responsibility for yourself is that it lets you decide where the standards and limits are set. When you take responsibility for what you do you will also feel that you deserve to do what you feel is right for you, in your life. And our control and responsibility not only goes for what you do out in the world. But also for your thoughts and emotions. You are to a large extent in charge here too. When you realise this then you realise that you don’t have to play along with your old patterns of thinking and feeling anymore. You don’t have to play along with is “normal” or common thinking. You don’t have to take your thoughts so seriously. You can choose to not feel insulted when someone says something. You can choose to not to be angry whilst stuck in traffic. You can choose to see the positive in people. And you can choose how happy you will be. Pain is inevitable in life. But how you choose to process or think about things – and if you let them get stuck in your mind or not – is up to you. Suffering is therefore to a large extent optional. And so is happiness. 10. Live your life fully. “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” This one is just beautiful. And I don’t really have much to add. But it might be useful to remind yourself of this saying regularly. Maybe when you feel like you are veering off track. Or when heading into things like small-mindedness, laziness or complacency. Perhaps you want to write it down and put it in a highly visible place so you don’t forget about it. If you like this post, please share it on Facebook, Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much. =)

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely…” Ralph Waldo Emerson Another morning. Another day begins. You get up too early, stumble into the shower and in somewhat of a haze try to get things together and get work or school on time. But by applying a few simple tips you can make not only the morning but the whole day more relaxed and smooth. Plan the night before. Choose the 2-3 most important tasks and put them on a to-do list. By choosing just the most important stuff instead of a dozen things you are less likely to start procrastinating or realize at the end of the day that you filled it with less important tasks. Pack your bag the night before. This very simple habit can alleviate quite a bit of stress in the morning. If you pack your bag before you go to bed then you don’t have to run around in your house half panicked tomorrow while looking for your books or some important papers. Make your lunch the night before. Pack the leftovers of your dinner in a container and put it in the fridge. Just don’t forget to put it in your bag in the morning. You may even want make an extra serving so you can quickly heat up dinner when you get home from work/school. Doing this the night before will save you a bit of time and possibly a bit of money. Don't forget to just relax. You can’t get much done if you never get any rest and revitalization. Well, you can for a while but soon you’ll start to feel run down, stressed out and fill up with all kinds of negative emotions pretty much all the time. So take some time to just relax. Meditate in one way or another. Take a warm bath. Take a walk in the woods. Listen to relaxing music. Have some fun with friends and/or family. Release pressure, stress and tension that can come from a hard day’s work so you don’t carry all of that into the following morning. Get enough sleep. It’s tempting to stay up a bit longer and let the “morning-you” take care of the problems – I do for example become more likely to revert to old behaviour patterns such as negativity and being easily stressed – that come from lack of sleep. But be good to yourself at least some days during the week. Go to bed a bit earlier and catch up on your sleep. Use a morning ritual. What you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. We have a tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. So a morning ritual that sets the right tone for the day can be a great start. I do for example get up and drink two glasses of water, eat breakfast and drink a cup of yerba maté, brush my teeth, make the bed and declutter for a few minutes. Then I prioritize the items on my to-do list and get started with the most important task. Keep everything in its place. If everything has its own place then it is whole lot easier to keep your home reasonably ordered and decluttered from day to day. And to find the keys as you are heading out the door. What is your best tip for creating a better start to the day?

Image by tbondolfi ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='socialbuttons' /] “First we make our habits, then our habits make us.” Charles C. Noble “Good habits, once established are just as hard to break as are bad habits.” Robert Puller Changing a habit can be hard. To make the habit stick you have to keep going until it becomes not something you do through willpower but something you feel drawn to doing. This can take 30 days or more of taking action each day. But we all have bad days. What do you do on such a day when you just feel like giving up on creating this new habit? Here’s what I do. I say to myself: Just for today! It is important to make yourself realize that the period that you are investing in changing a habit is not the rest of your life. As mentioned above, if you do something every day for 30 days then that will become a habit and you will feel drawn to doing it or just do it automatically. So it is not about forcing yourself to do this thing on willpower for the next few decades. Brian Tracy has a great little phrase that makes it easier to take action and just focus on it for today. Tell yourself: “Just for today I will XX!” Replace XX with what you will do just for today such as getting exercise, get going on the most important task first thing in the day or eating a healthy lunch. You can take it one day at a time with this phrase until your habit becomes a natural part of your life, until it becomes something you feel drawn to doing. I myself don’t use it every day. But I find it very helpful on those days when inner resistance causes me to not feel like continuing doing something until it becomes a habit. Such days are pretty much inevitable. But by telling myself that I only have to do it today I release the mental burden of the past times I did it and future times when I will do it. And so the task becomes much lighter and the inner resistance melts away. And guess what, when tomorrow comes I'll have a good day again with less resistance and I will most likely feel like doing the task again. And that is how I handle a bad day when I am changing a habit. What is your favorite tip for making it easier to change a habit?

Image by Evil Erin ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='socialbuttons' /]Life is often filled to the brim. There are many things to do and if you're like me I’m sure you feel overwhelmed and stressed out sometimes. What to do then? Here’s what I do and the three simple steps I follow to go from a stressed and overwhelmed headspace to one with clarity, calmness and a sense of direction within minutes. 1. I reconnect with the present moment. When you feel overwhelmed you are stuck in your mind, you are stuck on all the things you have done and all the things you have to do today and perhaps even this week and month. No wonder you feel overwhelmed and stressed out. So when I feel this way I reconnect with the present moment. I just focus on my breathing for two minutes. Just the in- and outbreath and nothing else. Or I spend two minutes just taking in what is right here right now. The computer in front of me. The sunlight through the window that warms me. The buses and traffic going by outside and the clear blue sky. I use all my senses to just focus on what is happening around me right now and nothing else. By doing so I align myself fully with what is happening right now instead of being somewhere in the past or future or both of them inside my mind. Yes, I still have the same things to do. But the overwhelm that was is in my mind because I was looking at things from a perspective that hurt me loses it's power. 2. I ask myself: what is the most important thing I can do right now? Usually the answer is that I need to work on things that aren't urgent but very important such as a new digital product or looking at and starting to explore new opportunities. 3. I stop thinking and take action in a single-tasking manner. Then, when I have come up with the answer – usually by consulting my to-do list on teuxdeux.com – I get to work. I do not think about it for a few minutes since that only makes it harder to get started and I often wind up procrastinating away much more than those few minutes. Instead I focus on just this one task I need to do. I take breaks every hour but keep working on it by single-tasking until it is done. Then I start working on the next task that is now the most important one. By doing so I use my work hours in the best way I can and I feel good about myself and the work I have done at the end of the day. This little ritual of three habits can take some time to getting used to and you’ll probably stumble. But after a while I noticed that it became more and more automatic and I felt less inner resistance and could change gears from overwhelmed to focused faster. So keep practicing even if you stumble. It usually takes at least a month to establish a chain of habits/ritual like this and probably more than a month if all three habits are brand new for you. Be patient with yourself. –ODDS&ENDS– For the next 4 days only – until April 1 – you can  get $1078 of business success products for just 97 dollars . This deal comes from Michael Port – acclaimed New York Times Bestselling author – and his brand new venture Daily Success Deals. Daily Success Deals is a sort of Groupon for business and personal success products. When a certain number of people  have purchased the deal of the day all of them will get all the products in the bundle (but no money will be withdrawn from your credit card before this happens and the deal takes effect). This bundle of products is very impressive in my opinion, participating are some of the top business success people online besides Port like Third Tribe Marketing (Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, Darren Rowse, and Chris Brogan among others), Pam Slim, Laura Roeder and Danielle LaPorte.

“Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.” Doug Larson “An optimist is the human personification of spring.” Susan J. Bissonette Spring is finally here in Sweden. Well, kinda. I guess it’s more of a feeling of spring in the way that Doug Larson so awesomely points out in the quote above. But still. After an unusually long and very cold winter it’s great to have some warmth, a few birds singing and see more smiling and enthusiastic faces as you walk the streets. So I thought I’d share a few of my favorite sayings about spring that can help us to make this year the best one yet. Make decisions at the right time. “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.” Robert H. Schuller I think this is a very good tip and something I wish I had thought about a few times in the past. When you are in the low time or a bad mood you can’t really see reality in an accurate way. Making important or negative decisions when you are in that headspace isn’t a good idea. Nowadays I have a learned to just be still and wait out those angry clouds. Even if it feels like there is an urgent decision to be made (which isn’t always the case even though your clouded mind may fool you into believing that). Then, when the mind is clearer it becomes a lot easier to make a good decision. Be consistent to get some real results. “One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.” Aristole To live a happier life and make a real change you can’t just take action or do things on a day when you feel inspired. Sure, the spring may give you a boost of energy and inspiration right now. But what will you do with that? Just surf on those good feelings for a day or a week? Or let it be a start to consistently taken action each day, even if that inspiration and initial enthusiasm may dissipate (which it pretty much always does)? To take action more consistently here are a two of my absolute favorite tips: Use a morning ritual. I have mentioned this many times, both in my e-books and in various articles. The reason for that is that this is perhaps the most powerful tip I have found so far in this area. You simply set up a ritual in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. That’s one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day. Don’t hurt yourself. This is a very important reason for me. When you disappoint yourself and don’t think and do as you really deep down want to you hurt yourself by lowering your self esteem. Whatever you do during your day sends signals back to yourself about what kind of person you are. Do the right thing like being effective, kind or go to the gym and you feel good. Get lazy, negative or just plain mean and you tend to feel worse after a while. You don’t get away, there is no escaping yourself. And there is always a price to pay. This is a powerful motivator to become a better person. Keep going. “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” Hal Borland Persistence might not exactly be the sexiest sounding quality. It might not sell a lot of products to people looking for the magic pill. But it is an immensely helpful quality to cultivate and put to use. If you fail, what do you do? You dust yourself off, learn what you can from what happened and try again. If the success you are looking for won’t come that quickly – a pretty likely scenario – then you have to persist. Persistence is one of the most useful qualities one can have. Not only because you will still be out there in a less competitive playing field as a lot of other people have given up and gone home. But also because developing persistence will enable you to get what you want. It may just take a little longer than had hoped for. But if you keep going, if you refine your approach based on what you learn from experience and other sources then better times will come. Winter makes the spring so much better. “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” Anne Bradstreet The winter of life is often in retrospect a gift. It makes you stronger. More empathetic and understanding. It helps you out in some way and guides you. You can always look back at it when you feel down and be happy that you aren’t in that place anymore. Your winter and adversities expands the spectrum of human experience, understanding and emotions for you. Your capacity for genuine gratitude increases because of it. The sad times make the happy times even sweeter.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/insomnia90/ / CC BY-ND 2.0 “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi “Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me, for every man is a mirror. We see only ourselves reflected in those around us. Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own. The whole world and its condition has its counter parts within us all. Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.” Kirsten Zambucka Improving your attitude and living a more positive life overall can take a lot of time and effort. But a part of it can also be simple. You can spread positivity around you with small actions. This will not only make you and other people feel better today. Over time you tend to get what you give. You will make it easier for yourself to live a more positive life in the long run too. Smile. Smiling puts you and the people around you into a more positive mood. It even works when you don’t feel much like smiling. Just try forcing a smile for 30 seconds if you are feeling a bit negative and see what happens. Give a genuine compliment. Compliments are awesome. But make it a genuine one. Make sure you really mean it or it may have the opposite effect as your insincerity shines through. Find something a bit unexpected – like great taste in old soul music rather than looks – and something that is important to the other person and make a positive, appreciative comment about that. Hugs. A hug is, just like smiling, a simple physical thing that can make anyone feel a little better. People love hugs. Encourage someone. There is much discouragement in the world. You may hear from people around you, you may receive much negativity from the TV and newspapers. Many will back down from doing something they want because of that atmosphere of discouragement. So instead, be an exception and encourage people to believe in themselves and what they want to do. Change the way you feel. Emotions are contagious. So to spread positivity, know how you can create and sustain a positive attitude and optimistic mood. Know how to pick yourself up out of slumps. Besides smiling, you can also appreciate life more, change your physiology, act as you would like to feel, ask better questions and recall positive memories to make a quick emotional shift. Help someone out in practical way. Maybe it’s not encouragement that is needed. Maybe it’s a practical solution. So lend someone a hand when they are moving. Or give them a ride in your car. Or if they need information, try to find a solution via Google or by asking the people you know. Just listen. Sometimes people don’t want any help. They just want to vent or for someone to listen as they figure out things. It may not seem like much but it can be an immense help for someone who needs it. So be there fully – don't sit there thinking about something else – and listen. Put things into perspective. It’s easy to get wrapped up in a problem and to make a mountain out of a molehill. But you can help out by adding your perspective. The two of you can talk about it, perhaps laugh about it and even find the hidden opportunity within the problem that in one person’s head may have almost seemed like the sky was falling. Play positive music. Uplifting music is of course a great way to boost your own mood. You can do the same for people around you. Put on a really positive song when you are hanging out. Or send them an uplifting playlist for Spotify or a link to a video on Youtube. Perform a random act of kindness. Just holding up the door or pointing out the way for someone who seems lost can be a way to spread a little bit of positivity. It’s always nice when someone you don’t even know does something kind for you. Pay it forward. If a friend or stranger spreads a bit of positivity to you then in some way pay it forward. Spread the positivity on to another person and let an upward spiral of positivity grow and expand in your world.

One good way to reduce the stress in your daily life and save time for something more enjoyable and/or more important is to cut down on the time you spend on email. Here is how I have done that over the past year or so. Effective spamfilters. My regular email service provider here in Sweden did some changes. This meant that I got a lot more spam every day. So I switched to using Gmail instead and these days I receive extremely few spam emails. This does not only save me from a lot of deleting but also makes it easier to quickly get an overview of new emails. Shorter replies. In many cases you don’t have to write a lot in a reply. I try to stick to just writing 1-5 sentences if possible. Check emails just once a day. I check my email inbox just once a day. Usually during the hour before dinner because that is not a peak hour for me. I reserve my peak hours each day – the hours when I have the most energy and is able to focus the best – for doing my most important tasks (usually creating and writing). I understand that checking just once a day may not be possible for everyone. But if you can then it’s a helpful choice and if you just can cut down on the checking a bit then that can help too. Checking your email too often can, in my experience, create an emotional need where you get hooked on digitally checking the world around you to get validation (as in attention, a feeling that you are important and that you are in the loop). This can lead to sort of compulsive need to check inboxes, Facebook and Twitter 10 times a day. Not a great way to spend your day as stress levels tend to go up and you get too little of what is most important done. Add a FAQ section or page. I have a short section of frequently asked questions just before the contact form on this page. By using this I get extremely few of the questions I used to get a few times a day before about for example guest posting and swapping links. This has saved me quite a bit of time and energy and I highly recommend adding a section or page like this if you have a website to cut down on the emails you get. Ready to send responses. It can be useful to save drafts of information that people need from you often in your email program. Then you can just paste that template into a reply and change it a little to suit that reply and what the sender is asking for. I have used this, for example, for information about the advertising options on this site where I included prices and other relevant info. Think about what questions you are asked a lot via email. If possible add answers to a frequently asked questions section or page. If that is not possible for some questions then type your response and save an additional copy of that reply as a draft in your email program. This will save you time the next time you get that question or a similar one. Delete. I don’t use the delete button that much. But I get a lot of pitches for products or other things that people want me to try or write about and quite a few of them are things I have no interest in. Or it may not be relevant to my readers. So I delete. I like constructive criticism and even though it may temporarily bruise my ego a bit it can also helpful. But harsh attacks is something I have stopped responding to. Because in my experience during these four years that I have been doing this is that they do not want to talk about things but simply lash out. I have tried sending constructive replies but never get any replies back. So nowadays I read and then delete such things.

“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.” “He not busy being born is busy dying.” One of the most successful and enigmatic musicians of the last hundred years must be Bob Dylan. Throughout his career, albums and awesome songs he has constantly redefined himself and both confused and enthralled listeners. Here is some clarity though, some of my favourite words of wisdom from Dylan. Find what you love to do. “A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.” I think this is a first step that many of us have a big problem with. Or just forget about. Because when you find something you really love to do it doesn’t seem like work that much anymore. When you do something you love you don’t have to push yourself so much. You keep going because you like doing it, not just because your want to reach some goal (although that can be exciting too). Taking action also becomes natural when you doing something you really want to do. A lot of the time you can’t wait to get going with it. So the problem many of us encounter may not be that we don’t know enough tips to keep ourselves motivated to keep going. The problem may be that we are working on the wrong thing all together. So do you find out what you really want to do? I certainly don’t have all the answers for that one, but one tip is just to explore life. To just try things out and see what you love. It’s easy to have theories about what you or may not like. But you never know until you have tried it for a while in real life. Understand that success is today too. “A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” When you read about success it often seems like something you should work towards. Something there in the distant future. This way of thinking can lead to many ups and downs. Sometimes you feel really good and are working towards what you want in an effective way. Sometimes you feel like doing nothing. It can become a rollercoaster. But one of the most important parts of success in area of your life is simply consistency. To get up in the morning each day and do what you know is right in your life. Working out instead of coming up with excuses not to. Being kind and open instead of closing up and gossiping or trying to put someone down or making them wrong in an interaction or just in your head simply to feel better about yourself. Pushing a bit outside of your comfort zone instead of staying inside it and feeling safe. How you live today and each today is very much connected to the most fundamental goals people have in life. To be healthy. To be effective and get the most important things done. To raise self esteem and self confidence and keep it at a high level (things that to a large part come from taking responsibility for each day in your life and doing what you know is the right thing to do). So success is not about what you do in a few inspired rushes towards the goal. Things take time. Often more time than you might think. So keep an eye on where you are going. But keep your focus on the process instead of that alluring goal. Do it by making today and each day a success. Life is change. “There is nothing so stable as change.” As humans, we often want to feel safe. We want certainty. And for a while we may think we have it. And then something always comes along to knock that feeling out of us. So there is a superstition of safety. This is not just something negative though. It’s also created by your mind so you can function in life. No point in going all paranoid about what could happen a minute from now day in and day out. But there is also not that much point in clinging to an illusion of safety. So you need to find balance where you don’t obsessed by the uncertainty but also recognize that it is there and live accordingly. As you stop clinging to your safety life also becomes a whole lot more exciting and interesting. You are no longer as confined by an illusion and realize that you set your limits for what you can do and to a large extent create your own freedom in the world. You are no longer building walls to keep yourself safe as those walls wouldn’t protect you anyway. If you want to grow and move forward it’s not only essential to get used to the thought of life as changing and unknown but also to let go of the past. When you let go of the past then change becomes so much easier to handle. And growing becomes easier too. Because if your goal is to get fitter, then when you let go of a self-image of being unhealthy and instead stick to the one where you are healthy you stop working against yourself. Your actions, thoughts and self-image are now aligned. And so doing the right things by eating healthy food and working out becomes the natural thing rather than something you have to push yourself to do every day.

Image by nattu ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='socialbuttons' /] Today I would like to share three of my favorite tips for making it easier to establish a relationship with someone. Maybe in a new class. On a date. At work or in a job interview. Or at some party next weekend. Assume rapport. This one can work quickly. That is, if you can suspend your disbelief for while and keep your mind open. It won’t work if you don’t think it will work. So, what is assuming rapport? Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you take different approach. You assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport). How do you do that? Just before the meeting, you just think/pretend that you’ll be meeting a good friend. Then you’ll naturally slip into a more comfortable, confident and enjoyable emotional state and frame of mind. In this state of mind the conversation tends to flow more naturally too, without much thinking. Just like with your friends. I have used this small tip many dozens of times by now and have found it surprisingly useful and easy to implement. It’s a sort of variation of acting as you would like to feel. This tip also helps you and the other people to set a good frame for the interaction. A frame is always set at the start of an interaction. It might be a nervous and stiff frame, a formal and let’s-get-to-the-point kind of frame or perhaps a super relaxed one. The thing is that the frame that is set in the beginning of the conversation is often one that may stay on for a while. First impressions can last for quite some time. Now, meeting your best friend might not always be the best thing to think about before a meeting at school/work. In that case you may want to try to imagine a similar meeting that went well and your interactions with the people there. But what if you come off as a weird person? Well, that is always a risk in the beginning when you start using this tip. But I believe that most of the time such thoughts are only in your head. No one likes awkward and uncomfortable interactions. So if you just assume rapport immediately then most people that may have been nervous/felt awkward will adapt to your more comfortable and relaxed frame. This is also a quick way to reconnect with the mental and emotional state your friends might be referring to when they give you the classic advice to “just be yourself”. See yourself in other people. “Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.” Isa Upanishad, Hindu Scripture The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation and loves to play the comparison game. The game where people are different compare to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates fear in social situations. Doing the opposite removes fear. That there is no real separation between beings, that we are one and the same, might sound a bit corny. But one thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend. You do this practically by using the previous tip. Another idea is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet. As I mentioned above, there is pretty much always a frame set in any interaction. It may make you and the others feel awkward or comfortable. But underlying such feelings is a frame of mind. Either it asks us how we are different from this person. Or how we are the same as this person. The first frame is based in how the ego likes to judge people and create separation to strengthen itself (either through feeling better or more like a victim). The second one creates warmth, an openness and curiosity within. There is no place to focus on fear or judgement anymore. Practise. Although the two ideas above can be very useful, the most important thing – as with anything – is practise. By doing things and learning from mistakes, failures and successes you can improve any part of your life. Your social skills too. But just reading some tips will not magically improve any of your skills or transform you in some way. You do that yourself by being patient and persistent. One interesting thing I have discovered after having been interested in personal development, positive thinking etc. for a few years now is that over time you can improve what may be called emotional and mental flexibility. What I mean by that is that you don’t become so identified with your current thoughts and emotions. You realize that they are just there right now but will not be there forever. You stop being so reactive to what happens in your surroundings and stop thinking that you need to feel/think a specific way in a specific situation. What you feel and think becomes more of a choice. Just like you can choose to turn right or left while walking. I don’t use assuming rapport in the way I mentioned above that much anymore. I have slipped into that emotional state so many times by now I can just recall how it feels to be relaxed and comfortable and choose to put myself in that state. It doesn’t work all the time of course, but most of the time it does. But if you have been totally identified with your feelings and thoughts for decades then it can be hard snap out of that. Choosing how you think and feel may sound kinda stupid or impossible. That is why you need to practise. To convince itself and to silence your inner doubts your mind needs proof that this stuff actually works for you. The proof is the experiences you have. And by practise I mean using, for example, assuming rapport a couple of dozen times. Not two or three times. By being open and believing that this stuff works and by practising it over and over – just like a tennis serve – it become easier and easier to do it. If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Image by ePi.Longo ( license ). “The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.” Jim Goodwin “For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.” Lily Tomlin “Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.” Eddie Cantor The world is moving at breakneck speed. Information is overflowing 24 hours a day. At work or in school we are busy, busy, busy. Lunch is wolfed down. When we get home there is still so much to do, so much we want before finally falling into the bed. Sometimes this works fine. Sometimes this can cause problem, feelings like it’s all just too much and like you are not in control. So I like to slow things down. In this article I would like to explain why and how to do it practically. If you are feeling like your speed in life is causing difficulties try one or a few of these things and see how they work for you. 1. You can lose or maintain weight. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that you are full. That’s because the food has to reach the intestines before your body starts sending signals telling your brain that you feel full. By slowing down your eating your brain can stop you before you eat too much. I have found that that if I eat too fast then I usually eat about 15-25% more before I feel full. If you do this every day of the week those extra calories can quickly add up . How to slow down: Eat before you get ridiculously hungry. If you’re really hungry it will be hard to eat slowly. The best way to avoid this is to not wait for too long but to eat when you feel just a little hungry. Or to have your meals at specified times during the day that you know from experience will be appropriate to avoid getting too hungry. Put down your fork between the bites. The classic advice is to put down your fork and then chew. Then to pick up your fork again after you’ve swallowed, take another bite and repeat the process. I like this tip because it forces you to slow down. Instead of taking that stressed energy from your day and just letting it power through the meal too as you quickly wolf down everything on your plate. Focus on the food and yourself. Not on what other people are doing.It’s easy to get drawn into someone else’s pace while eating (just like when driving or running). Be conscious of keeping your own pace instead of just unconsciously eating as fast as everyone around the table might do. 2. You can lower your stress levels. When you feel like life is going to fast then you feel like you are losing control over it or barely hanging on. This, as you also probably have noticed, can cause a lot of unnecessary stress. How to slow down: Simply do the things you are doing slower. If you are moving quickly then just take a deep breath and slow down your movement and your pace when walking. Drive your car and ride your bike a little slower. As mentioned above, eat slower. Take in life around you a bit instead of focusing on setting a new speed record. 3. You can gain clarity and find and do what is most important. As everything moves a bit too fast it is easy to get lost. If you don’t think about what you are doing then you can easily get lose half your work day doing busywork. You mind just think “Hurry, hurry, hurry! What is the next thing?” instead of “What is the best use of my time and energy?” How to slow down: When I get lost in such frantic and stressful activity I take a deep breath. I just take in my surroundings for a minute or two to relax and reconnect with this present moment. Then I ask myself: What is the most important thing I can do right now? Or I ask myself: If I only had two hours to work today then what would I spend those two hours working on? As you take a breath, slow down and reconnect with what is most important a calm and focused energy and effectiveness replaces the frantic and stressed energy of a mind that is going too fast for its own good. Then you can take action and start doing the most important things one at a time. This is not only helpful for daily decisions but for bigger decisions too. As you slow down it becomes easier to find a healthy perspective and to think things through in a clear and calm way. 4. You can get new ideas and let creativity flow again. If your mind is constantly bombarded with new information, voices and sounds then it will be very hard to find room for creativity and for getting new ideas. Influences are good for creativity but a overload of input just makes you feel like your mind is overstuffed and like you are just trying to keep up with it all. So you may need to slow down and free up some space in that mind. How to slow down: Take a break. Or take a walk. Sit down in nature and watch the ocean. Or take a shower. Or take a while to just lie down on your bed and sofa and shut out the world for that time. Just be there without much thought about what you want to do or about the past or future. Just relax and be there and focus on the world around you. The thing is that when you don’t focus on needing new ideas or on needing to be creative then your mind starts to relax and work on its own. And soon ideas start to pop up out of nowhere in your mind. Just be sure to write them down immediately as they can pass and disappear out into the world quickly again. 5. You can connect with the present moment and just fully enjoy what is happening right now. When you are aligned with the present moment you tend to feel good and relaxed. Your mood is optimistic. You do your work in a focused manner and the social part of your life tends to go smoother and become more fun. You do things well without having to think that much at all really. You are flowing. This is a wonderful headspace to spend as much of your week in as you can. You feel and work better this way. This is also a good headspace to simply enjoy your life. It helps you appreciate the little and big things in life fully because you are fully there when they happen instead of planning for the future or reliving the past so intensely that you can't fully appreciate and enjoy a meal, a conversation with a friend or a walk by the ocean. How to slow down: I usually just slow down what I am doing and go to a full stop. Then I take in my surroundings fully as they are happening right now for a minute or two. I listen to the cars going by the house. I watch my desktop and the glass of water next to it. I may look out the window and see blue sky, the white snow and the cold air outside standing still. I feel the slight chilliness of the floor, the warmth in the air in this room and I feel the cold water in my mouth as I take a sip. This is all I focus on as I slow down my day for a few minutes to move out of confusion, stress and daydreaming and into this moment. It may sound a bit odd but it makes a world of difference. If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/notsogoodphotography/ / CC BY 2.0 [hana-code-insert name='socialbuttons' /] “Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.” Katherine F. Gerould “Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein “First we make our habits, then our habits make us.” John C. Noble Over the last five years I have changed a lot about how I work, how much I get done and how well I do those things. Today I get a lot of things done but that does not mean that my day is more stressful. In fact it is often more relaxing than it used to be. This is not because I have become some kind of superhuman but simply because I have developed a few new habits and rituals and I stick with them as best I can each day. In this article I will share 7 of the habits that have had the largest positive impact on my daily work. 1. Single-tasking. Even during breaks. Single-tasking means that you do just one thing at a time instead of trying to do a number of things at the same time. This is one of those tips you find listed on most productivity blogs and in many books on personal effectiveness for a good reason. It is a very beneficial way to work. When I work this way I only focus on one thing at a time. I focus on it fully with no other thought creeping in. This helps me to do things better and in a shorter amount of time. But the most important reason why I work like this is because how it makes me feel. It makes me feel relaxed and calm. It drains a minimum of energy from me. I try to stick to this as best I can each day, even when I take a break. If I watch a an episode of a TV-show, read a book or check a webpage during my break I still only do one thing at a time. By sticking to the single-tasking during the whole day – even during breaks – it becomes easier to single-task and hit a state of flow when I get back to work again. And I strengthen my single-tasking habit and I tend to stay in the present moment a lot more during the day. It may not always be possible to single-task but I recommend using it as much as you can. 2. Use a short and prioritized to-do list. I start my day by doing the most important task. Today it was writing this article so now – just after breakfast – I am writing it. Just before I started writing I checked my online to-do list on Teuxdeux.com (it's free and awesome). I added a few items, moved a few of them to other days and then prioritized today’s tasks. Then I didn’t think or plan anymore since that often leads to procrastination. I switched programs and started writing instead. 3. Use a minimalistic workspace. My work space is just a laptop on a small black desk made out of wood. I use a comfy chair and there is room for my glass of water beside the computer. That’s it. There are no distractions here. Just me, the computer and the water. 4. Never work after 7 in the evening. I am strict with limits during my day. Not to become the most self-disciplined person in the world but simply to ensure that I do not work too much or too little. And to ensure that I do not spend too much time on low-priority activities. I have set a time-limit so I always have time to wind down and relax after my day. This is also very important to me because if I work too late then I will have a hard to time to fall asleep and I find the hours in the bed less relaxing than they could be. You may want to set another stop-limit but I highly recommend this practice to not bring home your work and to be able to fully relax during your week and not feel drained as the weekend approaches. And if you start with the most important task each day and work through your to-do list that way in a single-tasking manner then you’ll probably be done with your tasks before you reach your time-limit. 5. Check everything just once a day. I check my email inboxes, blog statistics, my online earnings, Twitter and Facebook just once a day. I combine all that checking into one small daily ritual so I don’t slip and go checking it more during the day and waste my time, energy and attention. 6. Check everything at the end of the workday. I do the inbox etc. check mentioned above at the end of my workday. This is to make sure that I do get the most important things done first. If you check these things too early or too often then the day just seems to fly by and you didn’t get much done at all. If you can’t always prevent or eliminate doing those less important things then at least postpone them for a few hours so that you can make a dent in your most important work. 7. Simple refocusing. Over my simple workspace there hangs a small white board. It has three sentences written on it. All of them help me simplify my day. From the top: “Keep things extremely simple”. When I lose my way during the day and slip into procrastination or overcomplicating  things I can just look up and remind myself about how to go about things. “Clean work”. This one reminds me to single-task and to just do one thing at a time fully focused during my whole workday. “There is no problem”. I have (or my mind has) a tendency to sometimes start to look for problems where there really are none. If I feel I have a problem I usually look up and read this sentence. It helps me to think things over once again. Sometimes I find that there really is a problem that I can solve. Oftentimes I discover that the problem may just be something have I have created in my mind. And so I let it go. What is your best tip to simplify and/or relaxify the workday? If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Image by Alex E. Proimos ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='socialbuttons' /] “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice” Wayne Dyer If you are setting a new goal or establishing a new habit then it's pretty likely that you'll run into a motivational low point. A point where you just feel like giving up, like it really doesn’t matter if you continue. What to do then? Here's what I do instead of giving up and going home. Reconnect with optimism. How you perceive what you are doing or are about to do makes a huge difference. The positive and constructive way of looking at things energizes and inspires you. It makes it easier to keep going even when you hit roadblocks. The negative and defeatist way of looking at things will on the other hand suck the motivation out of you and you'll probably quit just as soon as you hit a roadblock or two. It is essential to develop a more constructive and optimistic way of looking at things to keep the motivation up until you have reached your goal. A very practical way to become a more optimistic person is to ask the better questions that will empower you. Ask the right questions that will focus on the good such as: What is awesome about this situation? Ask the questions that will focus on the lesson or opportunity in a situation such as: What can I learn from this? And what is the opportunity in this situation? And ask the questions that focus on how to solve a problem. Instead of complaining, blaming or asking why you have the problem. Ask action oriented questions like: How can I solve this? And what is the next small step that I can take to do so? List the positives. List the positives of getting this thing done or reaching your goal. Do it on paper, on your computer or just in your head. When you feel unmotivated and don’t feel like doing something it’s very easy to get stuck and just focus on the negative aspects such as it being hard work or the risk of pain or failure. So you need to change what you are focusing on to motivate yourself to take action. Making a list of positives like benefits, possible opportunities and simply reasons why you want to do this can be very effective for turning your focus around. Remember how far you have come and to compare yourself with yourself. Comparing what you have and your results to what other people have and have accomplished can really kill your motivation. I believe this is one of the most common motivational mistakes people make and it can make you feel really bad even though you may be doing quite good. So keep in mind that there are always people ahead of you. Most likely quite a bit of people. And a few of them are miles ahead. So focus on you. On your results. And how you can and have improved your results. Reviewing your results is important so that you see where you have gone wrong in the past to avoid similar missteps further on. But it's also important because it's a great motivator to see how much you have improved and how far you have come. Often you can be pleasantly surprised when you do such a review. Work out. This is one of the most effective ways to change how you feel. I like it because even if you feel too frustrated and down to do ask yourself the right questions you can still drag yourself to the gym or wherever you go to exercise. And if you just do your pretty mindless repetitions then your body will do the rest. Endorphins, testosterone and other chemicals will be released. Inner tensions will loosen up and leave your body. Your negative emotional pattern will be broken. After the workout you’ll be in another emotional state than you were before. Plus, you’ll probably get a boost of new energy. Talk about it. Sometimes you just need to let it out and talk to someone about your motivational low point. Letting it all out can release a lot of pent up emotion and let you get a new, more positive and healthy perspective on things. Often we build our own small or medium-sized problems into big scary monsters in our minds. Letting the monsters out into the light and letting others see them can make us realize that we were making a too big of a deal of all of it. It allows us to lighten up a bit, to not take things too seriously and to start moving out of the self-created slump. So talk to a friend or family member. Or try an anonymous internet forum with likeminded people. Perhaps you’ll even get a few pieces of great and free advice. Remember to have fun. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the seriousness of a task and the stress and tension of completing it. So remember that you are allowed to have fun when you are working on it. There is no rule that says you have to be all serious about it all the time. When you can, create fun in a task. Compete with yourself to finish it even faster than you did the last time, whistle a nice tune while working or have fun and joke around with your co-workers and class mates. Then, with a lighter frame of mind, you’ll stay motivated to keep working and finish it. Take a break. Yeah, sometimes you just need to take a break. Perhaps your time-plan for your goal or new habit is just too optimistic? Maybe you have worked harder than you can manage right now. Then take a break. A few hours or days of rest and recuperation can change how you feel in a remarkable way and recharge your batteries. What is your favorite way to get out of a motivational slump? If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Image by david.nikonvscanon ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='social down' /] “I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.” Henry Ward Beacher “We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?” Jean Cocteau “Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers.” Unknown Luck. Some hope for more of it. Some don’t believe in it. Some think that everyone but themselves are lucky. But can you create more of your own good luck in life? Here are a few timeless thoughts on that topic. Work hard. Be proactive. “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more luck I have.” Thomas Jefferson “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” Bruce Lee This is in my experience very true. The more I work, the more I take chances and am proactive in life the more times I tend to be lucky. Just sitting around and waiting for some good luck to land in your lap tends to be a pretty bad strategy. Creating your own opportunities and taking massive action simply gives you more of most things. Even luck. Also, the more you practice the more you improve a deciding factor like your intuition. A better gut feeling can result in more good decisions that may seem lucky from an outside perspective. Be prepared. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Seneca “One-half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck.” Carl Zuckmeyer Now you that you have spotted an opportunity, what to do? Exactly. It’s a great idea to have an idea about how you can use an opportunity in a way benefits you. If you are unprepared both then it’s easy to fumble away half of your lucky moments. So, read. Talk about what you want with others that have more experience and knowledge than you. Ask them a lot of questions. Practice, educate yourself and form effective habits so that you are ready to make good and useful decisions and put in the hard and focused work when the opportunity arises. Luck may often just be the golden rule. “Your luck is how you treat people.” Unknown As you treat someone else she or he will feel like treating you. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But over time these things have a way of evening out. So what looks like someone being lucky a lot from an outside perspective may just be he or she using the golden rule in a helpful way. Being unlucky can be a sort of luck for you too. “Luck never made a man wise.” Seneca “All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck – who keeps right on going – is the man who is there when the good luck comes – and is ready to receive it.” Robert Collier “Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow’s good luck.” Og Mandino Having some bad luck can in many ways be a good thing too. When things are rough but you somehow get through them you tend to gain strength and perhaps a bit of wisdom and perspective on life. It may not have been fun. But those gains can be very helpful in the future. I think that things do often balance out over time. You have a bad meeting, date, day or even week. But, in my experience at least, then you often have something good happen or you get a lucky break the next day or week. Of course, in that situation it is important to be attentive and not still be focusing on that negative situation in the past. The important thing is to keep going through ups and downs. The worst thing is when you just go passive and don’t do anything. Because then nothing seems to happen in a good long while. I also find it useful to ask helpful questions when having a “negative situation”. Question like these: What is the good thing about this? What can I learn from this? What hidden opportunity can I find within this situation? At first it might seem stupid to ask such a thing when having a bad day/meeting/test in school or date. But after a while you get used to it and your mind even starts to do it automatically from time to time. Another important benefit of having some bad luck is what Robert Collier mentions above. When the good luck comes you are ready to recieve it. You feel that after that bad luck you actually deserve your lucky break. This ties into hard work too. When you feel you have deserved your lucky break then you will have no or less problem with taking it. There will be less self sabotage. There will be less situations where you start telling yourself that you can’t handle it or don’t deserve it. You just go for it. And by having kept on going through the rough times you have gained strength and wisdom that will enable you to make the best out of this new and lucky situation.

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Winston Churchill “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Maria Robinson “It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right.” Unknown Negative thinking can poison what – from the outside – looks like a pretty good life with opportunities. Pessimism can create ceilings and walls made out of glass where there really are none. With such forces controlling your inner life your outer life tends to stand pretty still. Your time here waste away. It’s a terrible thing. But you can change. I have. And in this article I’ll share six fundamentals that have been essential for me to make that mental change. These are things that actually work in real life to change how you view things. However, just knowing these things won’t change your thinking. You have to practice them and fail from time to time and then get back up again and keep using them until they become new habits of thinking. Focus on what you want. What do you think about most of the time? Your troubles and worries? If that is the case, if you spend your attention on focusing on what you don’t want then it’s easy to feed the negativity monster in your mind with more energy and to get stuck in analysis paralysis. But if you instead spend most of your time thinking about what you want out of life in various areas then you become more focused. Your mind starts to spit out solutions to your obstacles. You feel like taking action to start moving step by step towards your goals. So focus on what you want. Post reminders on post-its and whiteboards in your surroundings to keep your attention where it needs to be. Write down your goal and focus single-mindedly to taking yourself towards it. Ask yourself questions that helps you find the useful and positive such as: What’s awesome about this situation? And what is the hidden opportunity in this situation? Be grateful for what you got. What you want is something out there in the future. But it is also important to view what you have in the right way to keep an optimistic viewpoint. So appreciate the little and big things in life you have instead of focusing too much on what you don’t have. Ask yourself: what can I be grateful for in my life right now ? When I ask myself that question I often come up with simple answers such as the roof over my head, the delicious food on my table, having the opportunity to sleep in and the people closest to me. Avoid negative generalizations. Negative generalizations about life can really wreck your outlook. If you for example run into an obstacle or problem then the negative thinker may generalize this as something that is just there and will continue to stay there. While the optimistic thinker views the obstacle as something temporary that can be overcome by taking action (even if that also means failing and learning a few things along the way). If the negative thinker runs in criticism then s/he may generalize this as something personal, like the other person is out to get him/her and that s/he is somehow a bad or generally an incompetent person just because this piece of criticism. The optimistic thinker on the other hand will keep some distance to the criticism. S/he thinks that the piece of criticism may be valid for this area of life rather than saying something about everything (if the criticism is about not being on time for meetings at work then that is the issue that needs to be corrected, it does not mean a bad performance in all areas of that job). The optimistic thinker also keeps in mind that criticism may sometimes not be valid but will arise because the other person has had a bad day, is irritated about something else or hates some part of his or her own life. Shape the input. If you let pessimistic and negative thinking into your mind then it will be pretty much impossible to stay optimistic about life. So shape the input. Take a closer look at what movies, TV, news, books and music you consume and how they affect you. Look at how the people closer to you too such as friends and family affect your thoughts. Then take action to reduce or cut out the most negative sources as best you can and replace that void in your life with more time with the positive influences. Set the context for your day. What you do early in the day often sets the context for that day. A good start leads to good day and a bad start to a bad day. Some suggestions that will help you to set the positive context for the day: Spend a few minutes in the morning on thinking about what you want and your goals. This sends you off to highly motivated and focused day. Spend a few minutes being grateful for what you got. This sets you up for a positive mood throughout the day. Exercise. This will help you release inner tensions and worry and fill the space they occupied within you with new energy. Do the most important thing first. This is how I start my day. Today I woke up and did my usual morning ritual that ends with doing the most important thing on my to-do list. And so I started to write this article. This not only makes sure that the most important thing gets done each day. It also makes me feel good about myself and makes the rest of the to-do list feel lighter to move through. So make an effort early in the day. It really pays off even if you may not always feel like it just after breakfast. Be good and kind to yourself. How you view yourself and treat yourself has a huge impact on how you view the world around you and interact with it. You are at the centre of your world and if you like yourself and are good to yourself then it becomes a lot easier to thinking optimistically about your future and the world around you. Here are a few of the best ways to be good and kind to yourself: Do the right thing. D o what you deep down think is the right thing as much as you can – but accept that you will never be able to do it all the time – to increase your self-esteem and your sense of the things you deserve in life. Write down five things each night that you are grateful for about yourself. Or appreciate yourself by doing a two minute exercise where you just list small and big things about yourself that you like and good things you have done. You can do this exercise in your mind or on a piece of paper. These two self-appreciation exercises will help you create better thinking habits. Because the more you do things like these, the more this kind of thinking will naturally pop up in your everyday life too. You are changing how you think about yourself and what you have a tendency to focus on (both in yourself and in the world around you). Don’t beat yourself up. It’s just a stupid habit and no one will reward you for it. And it only makes it harder to improve since you will probably start to procrastinate to avoid the pain of your own future self-beatings for example.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denemiles/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 [hana-code-insert name='social down' /] “The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become.” Ben Herbster “The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” Marcus Aurelius It’s a fresh new year. Although you can make a positive change in your life at any time most people get an extra dose of enthusiasm around this time of the year. That’s only natural. But how do you go about making changes that will stick? How do you not wind up in the same place where you started a few weeks or months from now? Below is a simple guide that will help you to stay on track and help you overcome or avoid some of the most common problems that people encounter when they are trying to make a change. Choose something YOU really want. It’s easy to tipsily declare your New Year’s resolution for 2011 when you got a glass of champagne in your hand. Or to just say something to not look totally unambitious when people ask you. But do you actually want it? Maybe you don’t really want it that much. But the world around seems to want it. This doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve it. But it is a lot better to focus on what YOU really want. Both to steer your life in the direction you yourself want and to create positive internal motivation instead of external pressure you feel you have to live up to. Focusing and working on what you really want to achieve makes it much easier to actually make that change stick. How do you find out what you really want to do? By thinking and by experimenting and just trying things out (the image you have of something in your head can be very different from the actual experience). Get to know what you really want in your life. Choose a main focus. Consider choosing one main area of life to focus on each year. This makes it easier to actually get a lot of things done and taking massive action instead of getting lost in too many commitments and getting worn out by trying to balance all areas of life. In 2011 I will be focusing on expanding and growing my business (this website, my newsletter and my products ). I have also set a smaller, secondary focus on developing and expanding and my social life and deepening relationships even more. These is the same two focuses I had last year and the ones that I want to keep working on and exploring even more this year. Think about what area of your life that you really want to focus on. It may be the area you know deep down that needs to most improvement. Or the area that you think you will reap the greatest rewards by improving (that is how I chose my two focuses). Find a way that fits you. Different things fit different people. It did for example take me quite some time of trying different ways to do cardio exercise before I finally found body weight exercises. And it did take me a while to find productivity habits that makes me very consistent . Experiment and find what works for you and what fits your personality. This will make it a lot easier to stick to your positive change and develop a relaxed consistency. Set the goal but focus on the daily process. I for instance use this when I write and when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up and doing my workout/writing. The results – I become stronger and the website/my products grow – come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take action when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”. Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day. Let other people help you out. This is so important. Do not try to do it all alone. If you’re about to quit smoking ask others who have overcome the addiction what their best tips are. Do some research online and offline. This can save you pain, frustration and it can help you to keep going. You can also tell people your goals – face to face, via email, on Facebook or your blog etc. – to get accountability and motivation to take action. And you don’t have to go it alone. Finding someone – an accountability buddy – who wants to make the same change that you want can make things easier. Use laziness to your advantage. I’m kinda lazy. But I use that to my advantage by for example not having any sweets or cookies in my cupboards. I only have healthy stuff there. Since I may feel the craving for something sweet or a snack from time to time but I am too lazy to go to the store I wind up eating what I have at home. A simple habit that has helped me to improve my health. I also know that I am too lazy to go to the gym or go out running three times a week. So I workout at home. This has helped me to have very good consistency. Such small, invisible barriers can have a great impact on your daily life in the long run. Remove them or use them or to your advantage. Use reminders in your environment. I have written about this many, many times since it have found it very helpful for staying on track and making a change stick. Simply write down your goals on paper and put them where you can’t avoid seeing them every day. Your fridge, bathroom mirror and workspace are such places. Paper works fine for this but since last year I use a medium sized whiteboard instead . There I can write – in big letters – what my main focus is, what my most important goals are and also any other important thought or perhaps quote that I want to be reminded of each and every day. Don’t beat yourself up when you slip. You will most likely have a few bad days and fall flat on your face even if you follow the tips above. The important thing here is to not be too hard on yourself and keep on beating yourself up for a week. That could certainly lead to giving up altogether. Plus, it’s kinda pointless. Instead, learn what you can from the experience so you don’t have to repeat it too many times. Then get back on the horse again the next day. And keep going. Look at it like this: 2011 will pass no matter what you do. You will arrive at New Year’s Eve this year too. So if your fail or make some mistakes, so what? Since the time will pass no matter what you do you might as well try again. By doing that you can make this your most awesome year yet. Take one small step today. Don't get stuck in planning. Or thinking that you will get started tomorrow or next week. Get the ball rolling instead. Do that today by just taking one small step towards what you want. – – – P.S – – – Thank you so much to the 1238 people that participated in the short survey before the holidays. You have been a great help and given me new insights on how I can help you even better in 2011. If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you! =)

Image by fra.ps ( license ) [hana-code-insert name='social down' /] “May you have warmth in your igloo, oil in your lamp, and peace in your heart!” Eskimo proverb The holidays are here. There are Christmas decorations in almost every window, it's freezing outside and the huge amounts of snow is glittering in the sunlight. The holidays bring a lot of things. There is great food, awesome presents and wonderful company as you spend time with the people closest to you. But there is also the stress and sometimes negativity that often comes with the holidays. So you may feel the need to relax and let go of some negativity. Here are four simple and effective tips for doing just that. 1. Slow down. First, slow down. Even if it may feel silly and if you have to force it a bit. Slow down your body, move and walk slowly. Breathe slower and more deeply with your belly (and focus on doing just that for two minutes and see what happens). Slow down your eating (this will not only help you to relax, it will also help you to not eat too much during the holidays since it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that you are full.) Slow it all down and pay attention to what you are doing. Be here now and focus on doing just one thing at a time. By slowing down, by being here now, by not having your focus split between many things you, your body and your mind start to relax. The stress you feel from doing the things does not come from the things, it comes from how you go about doing them. 2. Take it easy with those expectations. Things take time. Especially around the holidays as stores, roads etc. are overflowing with people. It is just how it is and if you don’t accept that then it’s going to be some stressful and frustrated days ahead. Take this into consideration when you make practical plans. Realize that things may take longer than you originally planned for. And realize that even though that Christmas etc. is supposed to be a sort of perfect time of the year nothing will ever be perfect (not for long at least). Striving for or expecting perfection can be pretty dangerous. Because you will never feel like you, what you do or what you get is good enough. Even though what you do, for example, is just fine 90 percent of the time you still feel deep inside like you are not OK. No matter what you do. You have set the bar at an inhuman level. If you expect perfection around the holidays – or around any time of the year – then your self esteem will stay low, your stress levels will shoot up and you will feel disappointed even though things may have indeed been very good overall. 3. Tap into gratitude. Where you put your focus does to a large degree determine how you feel and think. Focus on the stress and how hard everything is and you will feel and think about just that. Focus on the positive things in your life right now and you will feel a lot better and think happier thoughts. Your day becomes lighter. One of the quickest ways to shift your focus is simply to appreciate the positive things in your life right now. To be grateful for what you have. Two ways of doing that are: The two minute exercise . If you’re feeling negative or stressed out use just two minutes in your day to reflect upon things that you are grateful for. It’s a small and quick thing to do but it can have a big effect on your mood – it’s hard to not feel like smiling after those two minutes – and how you view your life. Ask yourself: “what can I appreciate in my life right now? and “what can I be grateful for that I may have been taking for granted this year?”. The gratitude journal. Basically the same exercise as above. But here you quickly jot down 5 things you are grateful for in a journal. Do this for a few minutes each day or each week. Review the journal whenever you feel the need. Very simple but effective. 4. Take a break. Working nonstop can sour your mood and stress anyone out. Slow down but also remember to take breaks. Take 20 minutes or half an hour to just rest. Take a walk in the crisp and cold winter landscape. Escape via music, a book you got for Christmas or by watching classic holiday movies/TV (I usually watch some of the best Christmas-themed Simpsons episodes around this time of the year like Mr. Plow and Marge Not Be Proud ). Do something that snaps you out of the working, shopping and preparing mindset, even if it is just for while. That short change in scenery and change of mental headspace may be all you need to feel revitalized again. That’s it. I hope you find something helpful here. Happy holidays everybody! If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you! =)

“Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.” Charles Dudley Warner “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” Naguib Mahfouz A couple of weeks ago I posted an article that can help you to cut the irrelevant stuff out of your life . Today I would like to share five more questions that can help you to make 2011 a happier, simpler and lighter year. 1. If I was just told that I had to go away for a conference or vacation tomorrow and it would last for a whole week then what would I spend today doing? This is a wonderful question to help you get your priorities in check. If you feel lost at the start of your week or day or get lost in busy work then stop. Then ask yourself this question to refocus on what is the absolutely most important. 2. Would I rather be right or be happy? I believe this question reflects a very common challenge in all kinds of relationships. Right in this question means the need to judge, the need to be right while interacting with other people. It’s not just about the guy who can’t be wrong in a discussion though. It’s about the thought that you don’t always have to be against people or things. You don’t have to exist in a “me against someone else” headspace. You don’t have to defend positions all the time or build walls. You can let go of the mentality that says “someday I’ll show them all!” that may be based in some sad stories from your youth. You can just relax, be cool and be with people instead of being against them in some subtle or not so subtle ways. Feeling like you are right can bring pleasure. But it is a short-sighted and dirty high that creates negativity in the long run. And beyond that mental position there is a lot more connection and happiness to be found. 3. Am I detached from the results? If you are doing something – writing, playing a sport, holding a speech etc – you can really put obstacles in your own way by being attached to a certain result. When it’s game-time, when you are out on the court, stay unattached to the outcome. Or you will get nervous and fumble. This is for when you are out there playing. In between those times you can think about your goals and possible outcomes. But when you play/blog/work/are having some kind of social interaction etc. be present and stay unattached to the outcome. Just focus on what is in front of you. Things will become easier. You will feel lighter and more focused. You’ll create less inner anxiety and pressure for yourself. And you will perform better because you are focusing on what’s right in front of you and not weighing yourself down with a lot of imagined or real expectations from other people and self-created negativity. 4. Is there anyone on the planet having it worse than me right now? When I am stuck on focusing on the negatives, when I feel like a victim and that things are against me I ask myself this question. The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you of a somewhat childish “poor, poor me…” attitude pretty quickly. I understand that I have much to be grateful for in my life. This question changes my perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one. It helps me to lighten up about my situation. After I have changed my perspective I usually ask another question like: What is the hidden opportunity within this situation? That is very helpful to keep your focus on how to solve a problem or get something good out a current situation. Rather than asking yourself “why?” over and over and thereby focusing on the negatives and making yourself feel worse and worse. 5. Can I let this go? So much of our time is spent not here but in the past. We relive old conflicts and arguments. We replay negative situations that may have happened last week or a really long time ago. A terrible thing about this is how it is considered such a normal thing. People just do it day after day and in many cases year after year. It is a horrible waste of energy and the time you have here. In some cases you may have to take action to resolve an old situation and get closure. You perhaps bring up the situation with the people involved to get them to understand and for you to better understand them too. And/or maybe you apologize or forgive. But in many cases you can just let it go. Well, just letting it go is perhaps something of an oversimplification. But a few steps that have helped me to become better at letting go are these: Be ready to give up the benefits of not letting go. You may not want to let go because it makes you feel superior to someone else or because it makes you feel like a victim and so you receive attention and sympathy. To let go you have give up benefits like these. Accept it and then let go. I like acceptance. I like it because when you accept something instead of resisting it you stop feeding more energy into your problem and making it even bigger. A bit counterintuitive. This is also useful when it comes to letting go. If you first accept what you want to let go you aren’t so emotionally attached to it and still feeding it with your focus and energy. And so it becomes less powerful and easier to just drop. As long as you resist it then it will be hard to let it go. Let it go if it shows up again. In my experience it’s pretty common that what you let go shows up in your thoughts again. And that’s OK. Just let it go each time it shows up. After a while it stops showing up.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.” “A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.” “I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.” Back in the 20:th century there lived a writer in France and the US who had one of my favorite names of all time. Anaïs Nin was a writer of journals that spanned over many decades and presented her view of her personal life and relationships. She was also one of the most critically celebrated writers of erotica. Anaïs Nin is the source of a few of my favorite quotes of all time. Today I would like to share those and a few more. 1. You are the lens. “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” This was one of the biggest revelations I had when I first got into personal development. I realized that the world was perhaps not fixed in some pattern. I realized that I was mistaking my view of the world with the world itself. Because the world can be viewed from many different points. And it does change according to who is watching it. An optimistic person will for example notice the opportunities, things to be grateful for and that even though things may be hard or bad right now they will change once again. The pessimist will likely stay stuck in inaction, think that his or her world will not change and look down on the optimist as some gullible and naïve fool and that way find a way to feel superior and good about himself/herself. I have tried both ways in my life. I highly recommend going the optimistic route. Here is an article that can help you with that . This quote is also interesting because it helps you realize that what you see in your world can also say things about you. If you find a lot of hostility and standoffishness towards you in your world then perhaps you are more like that than you would like to think too? If something about people irritates you then perhaps it is because that quality is something you yourself have and it is something you do not like about yourself? Think about your world and what it can tell you about yourself. Think about yourself and how you may be interpreting the world in ways that do not serve you very well. Think about how you could become the change you want to see in your own world. 2. A new world is out there waiting. “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” This is a wonderful thing. If you are open then you can always learn new things from new people. And they can learn from you. And so ideas, new music and fashion, movies and books and recipes are floating between the two of you. There are of course also other less tangible things that build the world between you such as acceptance, love, understanding and just listening. And these are things you can help each other to get better at too. So seek new friends. Friends that will help you. And seek friends that aren’t necessarily that much like you because it is there where the both of you can learn much. 3. The balance will tip. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” What is holding people back from really making a change in their lives? I believe that one big reason is simply what Nin says above. At some point you have had enough. You understand that this cannot stand anymore. The balance of risk and pain has tipped and you just must change. Three tips that can help you: Ride on the emotion but have a plan. Even though the emotion of having had enough and so on can propel you forward you also need a plan because that emotion can weaken. So plan. And write down that plan in steps. Keep the plan as simple as you can and focus on just taking one step until it is done and then focus on the next step. Talk to people who have gone where you want to go. Find the information that can help you to grow in the way that you want. Talk to people and read what have been written in books and online. But be sure to only listen to people who have actually gone where you want to go. Life is too short to waste on the advice of people who just want to say something or armchair theorist. Gather the support. Find the people who can support you in your change. This can be people and influences from books, blogs, online forums, offline clubs and so on. Shape your environment so that you spend more time with people and influences that will support you (or at least are neutral). Do not let a few naysayers hold you back. But at the same time be careful about dismissing advice from concerned people. 4. Put in the work if you want the results. “Good things happen to those who hustle.” This year I have understood more than ever the value of hustling and putting in a lot of focused work. And so I have put together three books. This website is a lot more popular than ever before. The income I receive from this business has increased quite a bit. I have understood that if I work smart I can do a lot more than I used to do. And if I work both smart and hard I will reap even more awesome results. This makes me very eager to start 2011 and to make it an even better and more fascinating year than 2010. 5. Creativity happens in everyday life. “My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.” When I talk about my blog with people in the regular offline world one of the most common questions I get is: Where do you get all the ideas from and don't you run out of them? My answer is that I don’t run out of ideas because they come from life. I talk to someone about something and an idea for an article springs to life. I see a billboard or the frontpage of a newspaper when I am out and about. I watch the winter snow outside my window while writing these words. All these things can give me the seed that becomes an article later on. The important thing is to keep your mind open. To not worry or fret about not having ideas when things are going slow because then you will block your own mind and creativity. To always carry something to capture your ideas in – I have a cell phone and most often a pen and paper in my coat pocket – because otherwise they tend to fly away just as quickly as they popped into your mind. It is also important to keep a list of some sort of all the ideas you get – they tend to come to you in small flocks – so that when you feel uninspired or lazy you can just take an idea from your collection and start creating anyway. Because on those days inspiration tends to catch up to you after you have put in some work.

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” “What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.” Deaf. Blind. Helen Keller didn’t start out back in the 1880’s with the cards stacked in her favor. But with the help of patient people she learned to communicate better with the world and went on to write books, work for women’s right to vote and became on of the most inspiring people of the 20:th Century according to Time Magazine. Keller obviously summoned and created a great deal of courage and character to be able to do all that she did. Here are a few of her brave, tough, reality expanding thoughts. Use your experiences to build character. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.” To get real results you have to try things out, perhaps fail and then learn from those failures and try again. And that may not always be pleasant. Even if you view failures and mistakes like learning experiences they can still sting, especially shortly after they happened. But you can also know that when it stings you have at least done something and that you can gather lessons from this. Instead of a feeling safe but also vaguely feeling that you’re not living up to your potential as you sit on your hands doing or trying nothing. As Keller says, you cannot develop character and success through quiet and ease. You must do things and go through things to become stronger and wiser. Don’t cling to your illusion of safety. “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” You cannot sit on your hands and take it easy and hope to get things done. At least not the things you really want to get done (which often may be the things you fear doing). Why do people sit on their hands and get comfortable in their ease and quiet though? Well, one big reason is because they think they are safe there. But the truth is what Keller says; safety is mostly a superstition. It is created in your mind to make you feel safe. But there is no safety out there really. It is all uncertain and unknown. You may get layed off. Someone may break up with you and leave. Illness will probably strike. Death will certainly strike in your surroundings and at some point come to visit you too. Who knows what will happen an hour from now? This superstition of safety is not just something negative. It’s also created by your mind so you can function in life. No point in going all paranoid about what could happen a minute from now day in and day out. But there is also not that much point in clinging to an illusion of safety. So you need to find balance where you don’t obsessed by the uncertainty but also recognize that it is there and live accordingly. So you stop clinging to your safety life also becomes a whole lot more exciting and interesting. You are no longer as confined by an illusion and realize that you set your limits for what you can do and to a large extent create your own freedom in the world. You are no longer building walls to keep yourself safe as those walls wouldn’t protect you anyway. You can instead start your own daring adventure. Perhaps slowly at first, but still. Face reality head on. “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” How to view reality is a tricky thing. On one hand, it’s very useful to keep a positive attitude and view your world through that. But you also have to avoid using positivity as a way to repress real problems in your life. Repressing won’t help you. It will just keep the problem away as time passes and oftentimes deepens and complicates the problem / conflict. So you have to face reality for what it is in a way too. And as you probe deeper into your life and your surroundings what you come up with will not always be pleasant. One example would be the previous point in this article about safety. But to grow I think you have to arrive at these conclusions too. Because as tip # 1 in this article says, you have to go through things to develop character, strength and success. I also think you need to arrive at the unpleasant conclusions to gain a deeper understanding. And although these conclusions may be unpleasant at first they may also be a gateways and turning points for you. They can over time provide some real leaps of growth for you. If you face them and explore them and start to draw understanding and lessons from them. And then start to rewrite your map of the world. You choose how you treat yourself. And how you want to be treated. “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.” “Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.” One of the age old words of wisdoms I have heard repeated over and over basically says that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. So even though it may sound counterintuitive, deep inside you do to a large extent decide how the world treats you. You decide if you let an insult hurt you or if you just reject that gift. You also decide how you want to be treated by the way you behave and how you feel about yourself within. How you feel about yourself and how you feel entitled to/expect to be treated by other people will come through perhaps not in your words but in the important non-verbal communication. Your body language and voice tonality – a big, big part of communication – will give people signals and feelings about how you feel about yourself and what you expect and feel entitled to. So you do to a large extent create other people’s responses to you. And that starts with how you feel about yourself. One awesome way to self-sabotage here is to fall into self-pity and victim thinking. It can paralyze you and get your thoughts spinning in all kinds of unproductive and unhelpful ways. Sometimes for a very long time. Sure, self pity and victim thinking gets you attention from others and can make you feel special. But if you look at things from a larger perspective you also realize how it paralyzes your life. When you’re stuck in self-pity you won’t get much good done, neither for you or anyone else. At least not in the way that you could be doing things and feeling good about life if you gave up those destructive thought patterns. One last and important thing on this topic: people around you will reinforce how you feel about yourself by treating you as they think is appropriate. That reinforces your self-image. This social feedback can be a powerful force that strengthens your and other people’s image of you. No matter if that image is one filled with victim thinking or if it’s one with high self-confidence and positivity. Impossible is nothing. “While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.” Yeah, the sub-heading for this section might sound a like an exaggeration. But Keller and the people around her really pulled something amazing off. Becoming such an inspirational figure from such a bad starting point at that point in history couldn’t have been easy at all. It was probably something no one expected. And isn’t life and history full of those things? People standing in groups of various kinds saying that things can’t be done. And then someone goes for it and does it anyway. The opinions of others can be helpful. But to take them as fact could be very limiting. Perhaps all of them don’t say things because they know much of those things but because they are stuck in a pessimistic perspective. Or want to cling to the safety they have created within. Keep on keeping on. “We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.” Now, doing amazing things will probably not happen over a weekend. One big reason that people don’t get what they want may just be that they give up too soon. Perhaps because of a magic pill mentality where their expectations about success are stuck within a too small time-frame. To get the results you have stick with it. You have to persist. Not all people do. So the longer you persist the thinner the playing field can become. But how can you persist? Three suggestions: Find what you really, really want to do. This will give you the sustained inner motivation to keep going. List the reasons why to keep going. It’s easy to forget about all the good things that can come out of keeping on going. So you need to remind yourself. Write down all the reasons why you are doing what you are doing and review that piece of paper regularly. Shape your own little world. Choose what you let into your mind. Choose the books, music, movies and people that will inspire and support you. Minimize the negative influences from media, various websites and naysayers. Don't let other people and influences pull you down and back to where you started. Be open and flexible. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” This is one of my favorite quotes. How often do we not miss the window of opportunity in a new situation just because we are still angry, sad or frustrated about that other door that just closed? To me this is another powerful reason to remind myself to stay in the present. To not get stuck and hung up on missed opportunities. When you are living in the present – which is a way to live on the positive and open part of the emotional scale too – and not stuck in the past I have found that it’s a lot easier to find the hidden opportunities in any situation. So whenever you see a door of happiness closing, take your eyes off it at least pretty shortly after. And instead of letting your awareness linger on what is in the past, use your time and focus to find the new opportunity to continue your daring adventure. If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Image by tony ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='social down' /] “Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.” Denis Waitley “If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.” Win Borden Perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve your life is simply to do things. To take action and learn along the way. Here are five suggestions for “do-habits” that are very helpful to adopt to radically improve your life. 1. Do it first thing in the morning. How you start your day tends to have a big influence on that day. It sets the context in your mind. I believe that one key to better consistency and improvement in your life is what you do early in the day. Two ways to get a good start to your day are these: Do the hardest/ most important/ most uncomfortable thing first in your day. If you start your day by doing it you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed and good about yourself. And the rest of the day – and your to-do list – tends to feel a lot lighter and easier to move through. It’s amazing what difference this one action makes. Start small. To get from a state where you just feel like sitting on your chair and doing nothing much to one where you take action over and over you can do this: start small. Getting started with your biggest task or most difficult action may seem too much and land you in Procrastinationland. So instead, start with something that doesn’t seem so hard. One of my favorites is simply to take a few minutes to clean my desk. After that the next thing doesn’t seem so difficult to get started with since I’m now in a more of a “take action” kind of mode. Experiment with this one and the previous tip and see which one that suits you the best. Or mix them up as you wish. 2. Do it one more time. Don’t give up too soon. It is very easy to give into feeling that you done something enough times and it will never work. You have tried it as many times as you would expect people to do. But these expectations I believe are often a bit unrealistic. Society, TV and advertising tell us that there is an almost instant solution to any of our problems. You can easily lose 30 pounds within a month. Or with little work and time invested have another extra 20 000 dollars in the bank. So it is not unreasonable to think that success will come quickly. But instead of doing something as many times as you think others have done it, talk to and read about people who have actually done what you want to do. This will give you a more realistic picture of reality. Oftentimes you may have to do it more than one more time. But I have often found that doing it just one more time, doing it that extra time even though you may start to feel that this won’t work, can bring the results you want in many cases. I actually feel a little bit of excitement sometimes when I feel like giving up because then I remember that at this point success is often not that far away. 3. Do the unusual thing. When faced with a choice in your daily life, step back for a minute and think. Then take the option that is and feels unusual for you. If you often back down just don’t for this one time. If you are often get into arguments with people then just this one time don’t and instead just let it go or treat the other person with kindness. Do the opposite of what you usually do and see what happens (while using common sense of course). Do something new and something you wouldn’t expect from yourself. This is a fun a great way to get new experiences and learn things you wouldn’t if you kept going like you usually do. Getting stuck in the same old routine until it becomes a rut can suck the life out of you. Doing the unusual thing in small and big situations, no matter how it goes, is a great way to feel alive again. 4. Do less. How do you find time to do what you really want? How do you not get caught up in minor tasks and fill you day with them? By setting limits. By being a bit ruthless and cutting down on the least important stuff. At some point you will probably have to be honest with yourself and realize that you can never fit all that you want into your day or week. Something has to go. Not only because it takes up time. But also because you only have so much energy, focus and creativity available during your day. If spend it on the less important things then all of that will be gone each day before you get to the big stuff. It may not be fun to give up a couple of those TV-shows or hanging out on Facebook. But to make room for something new you sometimes have throw out a couple of old things. 5. Do your best. Why should you do your best? Why not coast a bit and do just what is expected? Three reasons: You get better results. Sometimes immediately. Often not right away, but as all your awesome work adds up you start to see new and exciting results. You raise your self esteem. When you do what you think is the right thing – like doing your best – then your self esteem goes up. If you just coast then you tend to feel kinda lame about yourself. So do awesome work and you feel awesome about yourself. Do ok work and feel ok about yourself. Deservedness. When you feel awesome about yourself you do also feel like you deserve more in life. So you go after it and you won’t self-sabotage as much when opportunities pop up. If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

“I’ll be floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee.” “I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.” “A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.” I’m guessing Muhammad Ali doesn’t need a long introduction. As an amateur he won the Olympic Gold. He then went on to become a three-time World Heavyweight Champion. And in 1999, Sports Illustrated and the BBC named him as “the Sportsman of the Century”. But what can we learn from one of the best boxers of all time? Well, here are five tips from Muhammad Ali on how to break through the barriers in the world and in your mind. 1. Take a risk. “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” To get what you really want you will pretty much always have to take risks. Of course, that can be scary. So how can you overcome this, take a leap and take the risk? I don’t have some simple and easy solution. But I do have a few tips. Really, really want it. When you really want it simply becomes easier to push through the inner resistance you feel. You are so motivated to achieve whatever it is you want that the risk may be scary but smaller than your desire. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that could happen? We often build big, negative fantasies in our heads of what may happen if we do something. Huge scary monsters. But probably 90 percent of what you fear never comes into reality. This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts. Detach from the outcome. When you are actually doing and taking the risk in real-time detach from the outcome. Just focus on what’s in front of you. Things will become easier. You’ll create less inner anxiety and pressure for yourself. And you will perform better because you are totally focusing on what’s right in front of you and not weighing yourself down with a lot of self-created negativity and doubts. Every time you take the leap and take a risk – even if things might not go your way that time – you can build confidence in yourself. By getting more experiences where you took action instead of sitting on your hands it will over time becomes easier to start moving in the direction you desire and take a chance. 2. Steer clear of self-sabotage and creating inner obstacles. “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” This is a big problem because often you don’t even know that you are for example self-sabotaging. You think that the thought loops that spinning around in your head is reality. But you can’t predict the future. But you are so stuck in your thoughts that you believe them as if they where the absolute truth. Again, one way to gain a sober perspective is to ask: what’s really the worst that could happen? And then you can make a plan to handle that worst case scenario if it were to come into reality. Another important thing here is to do what you think is the right thing in life as much as you can. Why? Because when you do that you start to build an image of yourself as someone who deserves the good things that come to him/her. Self-sabotage comes from thinking that you on some level simply aren’t worthy of what you want. So you sabotage for yourself along the way to get yourself back into the place or level of success you feel you deserve. So you have to make yourself feel more deserving. Doing the right thing isn’t always easy. But you choose to go and work out instead of lying on the couch and watching TV. You choose to be kind instead of petty or judgemental. You choose to take a chance instead of not taking it. And a lot of the time you might not do the right thing. But by just increasing the number of times you do it during your week little by little you can really change how you view yourself. And over time this habit can become stronger and stronger. Now, another essential thing to avoid self-sabotage and creating mind-monsters is this… 3. Keep your self-talk positive. “It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.” “I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.” “I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.” If you are always negative and down on yourself it will be a lot more painful and sometimes pretty much impossible to achieve what you want. Keeping the self-talk in your head positive is essential. You can make that easier to by following the tips above. Another helpful thing is just to be mindful of how you think about things. To say “Stop!” and cut off negative thought threads before they become strong. Just cut them off as often as you alert enough to do so. And replace them with more positive thought spirals by asking yourself questions like “What’s awesome about this?” and “What can I learn from this?”. Keeping your self talk positive may seem cheesy or uncool. But beating yourself up all the time is far worse and really not helping you at all. Plus, the thing is that your self-talk is contagious. Because how you talk to yourself affects how you feel. And as we know from bumper stickers, enthusiasm (and any other feeling) is contagious. And as we know from Ali, this self-talk can also start to seep out into what you say out loud too. As you interact with people, there is always a social feedback loop. People tend to treat you as you see yourself and as a reaction to how you make them feel. Someone with very positive self-talk will probably be perceived as confident and positive and therefore be treated a certain way. Someone who thinks s/he is a loser and is always down on him/herself may be met with sympathy but also irritation or simply that people tend to avoid that person. And since people and support is essential to just about any success you may desire your self-talk – and how you talk out loud – becomes very important. Now, the social feedback loop is about what you really feel about yourself. Not that you repeat affirmations all day that you don’t believe in. So you need to start doing the right thing too, because positive real-life experiences have a deeper impact on how you feel about yourself than just making the self-talk more positive. At least in my experience. 4. Don’t make a big deal out of it. “It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.” So you create a more positive self-image by doing the right thing and keeping your self-talk more positive. But it’s also a good thing to not go overboard. To not grow a huge ego and come off as arrogant or well, like a jerk. This may be a bit counter-intuitive but not making a big deal out of what you are good at have some big benefits. Less defensiveness and negativity. I could for instance create a big ego around the fact that I have many readers on this blog. And that would feel awesome for a while. But sooner or later my head would become too big and I would come off in negative way. And if people would question what I am saying I would start to feel more and more threatened and nervous. Because I would have a big image to live up to and defend each day. I think it’s a lot easier to keep the self-talk positive but also just be a guy who knows some stuff, has done some things and write about all of that. Makes the doing easier and more enjoyable. If you think it’s a big deal then it becomes a big deal. And things become unnecessarily hard and complicated. You start to create monsters in your mind again. Your ego may want you to think that it’s big, big deal because it means that you are a big, big deal too. That effect is enjoyable but makes the doing harder and less fun after a while as the inner pressure starts to ramp up. 5. Use your emotional leverage to succeed. “Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.” If you are here or have an interest in personal development then you have probably hit a point sometime in your past where you said “Enough of this! Something has to change”. Or you felt like you hit rock bottom. Now that isn’t fun. But as Ali says, it’s also there you can find that extra motivation and power to push through. If you were unhealthy and overweight you feel like you never want to go back to that again. If you didn’t get anything done, procrastinated all day and felt like crap you don’t want to go back to that. If you were buried in a mountain of debt you want to never go back to that place or headspace again. When you have had enough you will find a way to change your life. And I’m not saying that you should be driven by a fear to never return back to where you were. But to simply remind yourself of how it where back then when things get tough. And realize that yes, it may be hard right now. But it is temporary. And it’s definitely better than it used to be. Your worst times may not be fun at all when they are happening. But later on they can be some of the most helpful and powerful experiences of your life.

Image by Wolfgang Staudt ( license ). [hana-code-insert name='social down' /] “Let him that would move the world first move himself.” Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Plato “Nothing endures but change.” Heraclitus “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” Pericles Obviously, old greeks like Plato, Epictetus and Aristotle were really sharp. And what they talked about over 2000 years ago is just as relevant and useful today. Our outer circumstances may have changed dramatically over the last few thousands of years, but on the inside we seem to have stayed pretty much the same in many ways. Here are just 7 of my favourite fundamentals from that place and time. I hope you will find them as helpful as I have. 1. If you are going your own way, prepare for reactions. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” Epictetus I believe this is very relevant to self-improvement. And something that is holding people back, no matter how much tips or knowledge they have about how to make their lives better. The fear of social rejection is strong in many people. If you start changing then people may react in different ways. Some may be happy for you. Some may be indifferent. Some may be puzzled or react in negative and discouraging ways. And that’s OK. Most likely they won’t react as negatively as you may imagine. Or they will probably at least go back to focusing on their own challenges pretty soon. 2. To get what you really dream about out of life, you have to wo/man up. “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” Aristotle So to make some real changes you must accept that you may look foolish. You will need courage to actually apply what you have learned on this blog or through other sources. This is one common sticking point. The problem is not that you don’t have the correct tips or solutions. It’s simply that you avoid facing what you fear (even though you mind might still be telling you that the solution does not lie there but rather in gathering more information). If this is something that you do often then you have to increase your courage. So, how can you do that? You have to take action and face your fear. Maybe not what you want to hear, but in my experience and from what I have learned from others this is probably the best way to build courage and self confidence. You can make this a bit easier though. Three of my own favourite tips for doing that are: Be curious. When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. When you shift to being curious your perceptions and the world just opens up. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity and to remember all the cool things it helped you to discover and experience. Be present. This will help you snap out of overthinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done. This is also probably the best tip I have found so far for taking more action in life since it puts you in a state where you feel little emotional resistance to the work you’ll do. One of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on your breathing for a minute or two. Realize that failure won’t kill you. It is when you face your fears that you discover the thing that billions of people throughout history have discovered before you. Failure won’t kill you. Nor will being wrong. The sky will not fall down. That’s just what people that haven’t faced their fear yet think. Failure is actually a great way to learn things about yourself and life. And to make yourself tougher and more courageous. 3. What they say might not really be about you. “People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.” “The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.” ~ Aesop Criticism that may be valid should be taken seriously. But negativity directed towards you is often not about you. It’s more about someone else having a bad day, week or year and directing their negative energy at anyone passing by in their life. This ties back to fundamental #1. So much complaining and negativity that people put out into the world is about how they feel about themselves and their lives. The problem is just that we are often so focused on own lives that we take every negative thing said to us personally. But the world doesn’t revolve around me or you. So remember those two quotes when someone’s directing negativity towards you. And more importantly, remember those quotes when you feel the need to lash out towards someone. Ask yourself what the real problem in your life is. And what you can do about it. Instead of just lashing out and feeding more negativity into your and someone else’s life. One thing you can pretty sure of is that the more people try to boost their own value and temporary positive feelings by putting someone else down, the worse they feel about themselves and their lives. And that goes for you and me too of course. 4. Discard the things that aren’t helping you. “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” Antisthenes Some of what you learn in life is simply social conditioning that is fed to you over and over as you grow up. And so you believe that it is true. But you have to realize that some of the things you have picked up may not serve you in the best way. But you may have simply grown so comfortable with those beliefs that you cling to them – no matter how negative they are – like a safety blanket. Another thing is that was once true for you may not be true anymore. As you improve yourself you have to let go of your past and your old self-image to be able to move forward fully. You have to accept that you have changed and then keep your focus steadily on your new areas of interest so you don’t slip back into your old – and so familiar and comfortable – self over and over again. Also, if you have learned read a lot about personal development then you might have a lot of tips on different topics in your head. To simplify your life and thinking you might not need 25 ways to handle nervousness. Articles with that many tips can be helpful but it’s important to try that stuff out for yourself and see what tips that work most effectively for you. And then simplify so you always know what action to take if you get nervous for example. Instead of having your mind so cluttered with information that you become paralyzed and take no action at all. 5. Your wishes may not be all that they are cracked up to be. “We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.” Aesop Here is one of those beliefs that you may hold but may want to let go off to live a happier life. We wish for something. A new car, a new job, a new relationship or perhaps a new pair of shoes. And perhaps you think: “if I only get this thing, then I’m home, then I’ll feel happy and good all around”. And then you get it. And it’s awesome. But often for just a while. And then you may feel like maybe something went a bit wrong. Like it didn’t fulfil you or complete you like you thought it would. Why? Well, after while when you get used to something, when it becomes normal, then the ego tends to want more once again. Or maybe you can’t enjoy something for what it is because even though your environment changes, you are still the same. The same person with the same outlook on life. With the same self-imposed barriers for your own success and happiness and maybe self-sabotaging behaviour. And until you take a look at those things you may find yourself repeating the same patterns over and over. When you are the same, you often tend to get the same results over and over again. Our wishes can also often come through accompanied by unexpected and not so pleasant side effects. Things may seem just perfect when you dream about them. In reality, it can become a little more complicated and messy. Now, new things or people can be great. But if you think this one thing or person will fix all your problems or if you focus on the wrong aspects – what is not perfect, how can I get more etc. – instead of the positives and gratitude then you may find yourself always looking for the next thing and create quite a bit of unhappiness within. 6. Focus on building helpful habits. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle Becoming really good at something or making real improvement in your life isn’t about short spurts now and then when you feel like it. It’s about habits and consistency. Here are two tips that have been helpful for me to establish new habits in my life. The 30 day challenge. You have probably read about this old personal development concept from for example Steve Pavlina . Basically, you make a deal with yourself to do one thing for just 30 days (one example: exercise every day) and no more than that. But after those 30 days you may discover that your mind will have become so accustomed to this new behaviour that it will be easier to continue doing it than stop doing it. Just focus on the process. While doing something for those 30 days you focus on the process rather than the results. I for instance use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up – even the days when I don’t feel like it – and doing my workout. The results come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action and establish the new habit when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”. Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and likely to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day. 7. Suffering is optional. And so is happiness. “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” “I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?” “It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.” ~ Epictetus Suffering is optional. And so is happiness. What you choose to think about determines how you feel. It may seem “normal” and be common to go through a lot of mindmade suffering after the initial pain that ignited the suffering. And it’s easy to slip back into old thoroughly ingrained thought habits. But you don’t have to. You can learn to gain more control over your happiness and suffering. One tip that I have found helpful for this is to learn to reconnect as much as possible with the present moment. Suffering is to a large extent created when your mind is thinking thoughts about either the past or a possible future. As mentioned already in this article, one of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on your breathing for a minute or two. It is also very useful to realize that you are not your thoughts or emotions. They are just things that are flowing through you. But they are not you. You are the one observing them. This realization can gradually free you more and more from keeping negative thought and emotions going. Whenever they arise and you realize that you aren’t them and that you don’t have to identify with them then their power over you fades away. If you found this article helpful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” E.L Doctorow “Whether or not you write well, write bravely.” Bill Stout “Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.” Olin Miller I usually don’t write much about writing. But today, as I am working on my next book and am writing a lot, I felt like mixing things up a bit and bringing in some variation. So here are five timeless tips on writing. I suppose this article could be useful if you are a blogger but also if you’re a writer of some other kind. Perhaps one with an unfinished novel still waiting in the drawer. 1. It won’t always be easy. “Every writer I know has trouble writing.” Joseph Heller “Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.” Leonard Bernstein When I started writing articles about music and film in Swedish quite a few years ago I used to wait for inspiration to come. I did the same thing when I first started blogging. I don’t do that anymore. Inspiration can show up on its own, waltzing in through a door or a window. But doing things that way makes work inconsistent – both in quality and quantity – and you spend a lot of time waiting. It’s often better to just start working. For the first minutes what you do may suck quite a bit and it’s hard going. But after a while inspiration seems to catch up with you. Things start to flow easier and your work is of a higher quality. So don’t limit yourself to the moments where you feel inspired or you feel like the moment is just right to do something. Act instead. A lot of the time you can find inspiration along the way. 2. Remove. “Even the best writer has to erase.” Spanish Proverb “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” Elmore Leonard “When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.” Cicero Not much to add here. Get to the point quickly and you’ll have a better chance of getting through to the one you writing to. Just like when you are talking to someone in real life. 3. Be wholly alive and be present. “The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” William Saroyan Be present and alive with whatever you do. Focus on what’s in front of you. This is not an easy habit to cultivate. But I have found that over time you can learn to spend more and more time in the now. In this space your writing will be easier and you may be surprised at how wonderful some of the things that flow out of you are. Again, this is useful in conversations too. When you start to think too much you are going down a slippery slope. Your communication becomes overly complicated, unclear and with less emotional power behind it. 4. Write, write, write. “If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write.” Epictetus Good old Epictetus. Always gets to the point quickly. Just like when playing tennis you need to put in the hours. Maybe not the easy answer one wants to hear. But massive amounts of practise tend to sharpen your skill considerably in just about any field. 5. Focus on your truth. “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” C.S Lewis When you write I think it’s better to focus less on being original and more on expressing what you feel is the truth. What you feel has some truth to it often has truth to a lot of other people too. Because we are all pretty much the same. And the truth tends to get through to people. When you read something that tells the truth you can feel it in your body and in how it resonates with your emotions and thoughts. This is not easy though. And the people that do it a lot often have a lot of courage. But I think it’s something to strive for. Few things under the sun are new. Things often just seem new to someone because that person hasn’t heard about them before. But most of the time some guy talked about it many hundreds or thousands of years ago. In personal development, loads of people borrow from people like Buddha. And he probably borrowed stuff from some guy no-one can remember anymore. I’m not saying that people do not add new things and parts of themselves when they express truths that have been said over and over throughout the ages. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t get too hung up on being original because a big part of human interaction and communication is being able to really connect, relate to and understand each other in some way. And you can do that by telling your truth.

Image by mezone ( license ). “When you write down your ideas you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools.” Michael Leboeuf “Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.” Francis Bacon, Sr. One of the simplest but most powerful habits I have established in my life in the past few years is to write things down. Why is it so important? 1. If your memory is anything like mine it’s like a leaking bucket. Since I’ve started to write things down more often I have also noticed when reviewing old notes how much my memory can leak. The memory isn’t very reliable. Every time we remember something we recreate what happened rather than just replay a film from our mental archives. The recreation is directed by a number of things such our beliefs, our emotional state at the time and our self-image . What you remember about an event may differ quite a bit from what someone else remembers. There is a wide variety of interpretations of reality. And then when you try to remember that interpretation of an event later on it can change even more. So we need some kind of system outside of ourselves. 2. Ideas don't stay for long. Fine or awesome ideas can pop up at the strangest times but they tend to not stay for long in your head. So you need to capture them fast or they are gone in the wind. 3. Written goals are very important. One thing a lot of very successful self improvement writers – Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar and so on – go on and on about is the importance of having written goals. A written goal brings clarity and focus . It gives you a direction. And by rewriting your goals you not only reaffirm what your goals are. You may also find new insights that bring more clarity and focus to your goal and life. A written goal is also a powerful reminder that you can use to keep yourself on the right track when you feel stressed and may consider making hasty decisions. 4. To remind yourself of what to focus on. Often we get caught up in our everyday business and lose track of what is most important. To keep yourself on track – instead of just keeping yourself busy with low-priority tasks – simply write down a reminder that can stop your thoughts when you see it and guide you back on track again. It can for example be your current major goal (like running a half-marathon next year, spending double the time each week with your kids or starting your own website or blog and getting a 1000 regular readers per month). I also like reminders like: “is this useful?” and “what is the most important thing I can do right now?” Write down your reminder and put that reminder where you can’t avoid seeing throughout your day. 5. Unloading your mental RAM. When you don’t occupy your mind with having to remember every little thing – like how much milk to get – you become less stressed and it becomes easier to think clearly. This is, in my opinion, one of the most important reasons to write things down. Feeling calmer and more relaxed does not only improves your health but also makes life easier and more smooth and effective. 6. Clearer thinking. You can’t hold that many thoughts in your head at once. If you want to solve a problem it can be helpful to write down your thoughts, facts and feelings about it. Then you don’t have to use your for mind for remembering, you can instead use it to think more clearly. Having it all written down gives you an overview and makes it easier to find new connections that can help you solve the problem. 7. Get to know yourself and your life better and improve long-term focus on what’s important. You can use a journal as a way to keep an overview of your thinking over a longer time span and to recognize both positives and negatives in your thinking and actions. You may, for example, think of yourself as a healthy person but realize when you read through your journal that you have only been out running four times this month. Or perhaps you have an image of your life going pretty well but discover when reading through your notes for the last month that you are negative about your job or a relationship in almost every entry . By writing things down you can help yourself to spot trouble and get yourself back on track and keep yourself there within a larger timeframe. Or your journal may tell you something that you haven’t really paid much attention to about yourself and/or about your life. And so this can bring clarity. So those are seven of the most important reasons why I write everything down. How to capture your thoughts? Well, that’s up to you. At the moment I usually use Word or a pen and paper to think things through, TeuxDeux.com for my to-do lists and when I’m out somewhere and get an idea I type it down in my cell phone. But try different ways and find the ones that you feel most comfortable and effective with.

“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” Bruce Lee The deeper I go into this area of personal development – and perhaps as I become older – I realize more and more how limited time and focus are. And a form of ruthlessness becomes stronger and stronger. A ruthlessness to cut out the pointless stuff so that you can spend your precious time and focus on what’s important, cool and fun. Your focus and energy each day is limited. If you use it on the wrong stuff you will never have enough to tackle to important and positive stuff you want to do. You may not see it now but doing some of the things below a lot can really suck the energy right out of you and place your focus in places that won’t help you. I’m not saying that anyone has to be perfect and not ever do any of these things again. But that you can aim to reduce these things as much as you can and fill up your time and focus with more interesting and positive stuff instead. Make a habit of being a bit ruthless with your focus and time. Don’t waste them on things just because you think it is “normal” and what other people do. Or because you are used to it. Now, here are a five of my suggestions for how you can waste your life. And how you can use your time, focus and energy in a better way. 1. Create drama. Do you create drama in your life to liven it up? Do you have a lot of conflict in your life? Is a lot of people mean to you or out to get you in some way? You may be in a rough spot right now. But you may also create quite a bit of the drama and conflict you experience by how you think and behave. A lot of these things are often avoidable. Yes, the drama can be emotionally addictive and in a way feel comfortable and safe because it is what you know. But life becomes so much smoother and easier if you let that stuff go as best you can. Do it for your own sake, for the people around you and for your relationship with them. What to do instead: Don’t taking everything so seriously. Realize that you say stop to yourself and choose your emotional responses and that you can for example walk away instead of turning situations into big conflicts or fights. Stop making mountains out of molehills to get attention and sympathy from other people. Examine your own life and see if you are perhaps under stimulated. Does nothing much fun happen in the daily life? If not, don’t fill your life with drama. Start filling it with goals that you are really excited to work towards. 2. Lack energy. If you don’t have enough energy then you won’t have the energy to do what you may really want to do. Or to keep your focus sharply on the right things. Instead you may take the easy way out because you feel tired all the time. What to do instead: Eating and sleeping right and working out several times a week are three great fundamentals that will improve your energy levels. Keeping your focus in the right places – on the positive, on what you want instead of what you don’t want, on what you actions you can take rather than what you lack control over – can also help greatly with keeping the energy up. Obvious? Yeah. But so is much of the most useful advice. The trick is to actually use the advice consistently in your own life. 3. Be judgmental and gossipy. Being judgmental and gossiping about people can make you feel good. Or it’s just fun to share the latest news about someone. But what does it do to you? Being judgmental makes you less attractive to most people since openness and positivity are two things that people like. Being judgmental also reinforces your own self-image of a person who needs to put others down and judge them to feel good about yourself. It’s a great way to never be able to raise your own self-esteem. It’s a temporary high with a hangover of negativity that can take over large parts of your everyday life. What to do instead: One tip to help yourself slip out of such behavior is to focus on the positive in people a bit more and discuss that instead. You can also focus on being kinder and on giving people genuine compliments. This will make both you and the people around you feel good without those negative effects that I mentioned above. And again, focus your time on doing and working towards what excites you and you’ll simply have less interest and time to go around being gossipy and less need to make yourself feel better through judgments. 4. Think that people care very much about what you do. This can be a huge time waster. It can keep people trapped for years in their own minds, unable to take action and do what they really want. What to do instead: Realize that people have their own lives. The world doesn’t revolve around you and the real challenges and imagined drama in your life. People have their own lives and challenges and drama to worry about. So don’t spend too much time thinking and worrying about what people may say or think if you try something. Just try it instead. You may be surprised by the positive or just indifferent response you get from the people around you. 5. Have endless discussions that just go around and around in your head. People often replay old arguments over and over in their heads and get hooked on these mental reruns. I have certainly done so. A few other popular ways to have endless discussions in your head are: “Should I do it? Or not do it? And what may happen if I do it?”. This is often caused by thinking that people care very much about what you do. Or that thinking that overthinking will somehow reveal a solution where there is very little or no risk of pain and failure. Beating yourself up. Instead of moving on. What to do instead: Realize that the past is the past and that you cannot change it by replaying it in your mind over and over. When an old argument pops up in your mind accept that it is in the past and let go of it. Be kind to yourself, be smart about things and learn what you can instead of beating yourself up. No one will reward you for beating yourself up and you aren’t helping yourself. Realize that overthinking does seldom helps you find superb solutions, but instead traps you in analysis paralysis and just pumps up your fear and negative expectations so that taking action becomes even harder. Use your mind to find a solution but when that is done take action instead doing some more thinking. Another of own favourite tips for snapping out of such endless discussions in my mind is to step into the now again by for example focusing my senses – what I see, hear, feel, smell and so on – just on what is in front of me and around me. And then to focus on doing something, whatever it may be and just do that. This places me in the now and now my mind is focused on something outside of myself that I am doing. To avoid several the pitfalls described in this article I’d say that it certainly helps to live consciously by living in the present moment as much as you can. This stops a lot of the thought loops and negativity from showing up at all. And if they do show up you are now conscious of your thoughts and can say to yourself “no, no, no, stop, we are not going down this pointless path again…”. This helps you to avoid getting stuck in old conditioned and unconscious patterns of thought and behavior that doesn’t help you. Break out such thought loops or behavior quickly a whole bunch of times and you may discover that they start to show up less and less in your life. ***** PS: Thank you for participating in last week short survey, I was blown away by the interest and the fact that over 1500 people participated and helped me to better understand what you want to improve in your life. So thank you again!

Image by jimharmer ( license ). “God bestows upon one man genius without patience and upon another man patience without genius. The relative achievements of the two are often surprising.” Walter C. Klein “Patience is the companion of wisdom.” St. Augustine “If I have made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.” Sir Isaac Newton One of the most helpful qualities a person can have if s/he wants to grow is to be patient. With patience and persistence you can overcome pretty much anything. But why is it hard to be patient? How can you improve your patience? And how can patience help you out practically in life? Here are seven timeless thoughts that may give you some answers to such questions. 1. Social programming can stand in the way. “How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?” Paul Sweeney Everything is moving fast in today’s society. Instant gratification is default setting in many minds. I’m not saying this to rail against today’s society. I’m just saying it to give at least a partial explanation why patience is hard to understand and use to your advantage. Social programming doesn’t pay much attention to patience. It wants you to do more right now instead. And after a few years here you may want to have more things right now. And the thought of delaying gratification may seem a bit… weird. 2. With patience you’ll get it. “He that can have patience, can have what he will.” Benjamin Franklin This may not be such a popular thought. People may not want to hear about it. Still it’s what every successful person has had. And so they chipped away. Practised day in and day out. It often looks like they have some massive talent or big stroke of luck when they become successful. That might be the case. But people may not see all the years of hard work that came before that big break. Or they don’t want to see it and instead rationalize it as “huge talent” or “luck”. That way they don’t have to think about the fact that they also have the option of putting in all that work. And that they by doing things that way could perhaps someday even outdo the dreams they have right now. It’s easier to just put it down as big talent or luck. And keep dreaming about quick fixes and magic pills. 3. Don’t give up yet. “Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.” Soren Kierkegaard “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.“ Albert Einstein Since society tells us to look for quick fixes it’s easy to make the mistake of giving up to soon. After you have failed perhaps 1-5 times. That’s the “normal” thing to do. But what could have happened if someone just kept going after that? And for each failure learned more and more about what works? I think people often make a mistake of giving up too early. Your mind probably has a reasonable timeframe for success. This might not correspond to a realistic timeframe though. It’s useful to take a break from advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give you complete plan but a clearer perspective of what is needed to achieve what you want. Now, that’s not to say that you should never quit. But it can be helpful to keep going on your current path for a while longer. And that’s not to say that you should do the same thing over and over in exactly the same manner. It’s better to do and get an experience. Take the lessons you can learn from that real life experience. And then adjust how you do things as you try again. 4. It gives you an advantage. “Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” Thomas Jefferson While other people fly off the handle you can remain cool and patient. While other people give up after trying a few times you keep moving. While others run in circles chasing the next quick solution to their problems you stay steadily on your path. 5. It’s a form of protection. “Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.” Leonardo Da Vinci This is a wonderful point. With patience wrongs or failure will not feel like the end of the world. They no longer hold such a large emotional power over you that you just give up. You know that if you just keep going and perhaps adjust how you do things then your life will improve. 6. Build it. “Patience can’t be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.” Eknath Easwaran “We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.” Helen Keller The more you can remain patient the easier it gets. It’s a muscle you build over months and years of time. As Keller says, life can teach you to become more patient. During the rough parts of life you often have no choice but to be patient. These are the times that will especially strengthen your patience muscle. When we are young we get much of what we want instantly from our parents and other grownups. As we become adults we learn that people won’t give us everything we want anymore. If we want to have the things we really want we often have to learn to be patient. Otherwise we may time after time wind up in a loop where we get things we kinda want right now to cover up the real and deeper wants. This can bring dissatisfaction after the initial buzz of newness dissipates. A vague knowing at the back of our minds. As we consume more right now to make that uneasiness go away. 7. Be patient with yourself. “Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering you own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.” St. Francis de Sales This is a very important thing to keep in mind when it comes to personal development and life. Because things will not always go as planned. You will fail. You will bail out because of fear. You will become confused. You will do things you know you shouldn’t have done. You will probably do these things more than once. Don’t beat yourself up about it for two weeks or three months. Or give up. Instead, be smart and patient with yourself. And get back up on that horse and back in the saddle again tomorrow. If you found this article helpful, please share it with someone on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Bodybuilding world champion numerous times. One of the most highly paid actors in the last few decades. And now the governor of California. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s resume sounds more like the resume of three men rather than just one. How did he do it? Here are a five clues, success habits and tips from Arnold himself. 1. Believe in yourself. “I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way – I hope it never will.” “We all have great inner power. The power is self-faith. There’s really an attitude to winning. You have to see yourself winning before you win. And you have to be hungry. You have to want to conquer.” “The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.” A very strong belief in yourself can be ridiculously useful. Corny as it may sound, your belief in yourself determines a lot about your journey and your results. But the problem with statements like “Just believe in yourself, man!” is that they don’t come with any practical instructions on how to actually believe more I yourself. So you have a hard time getting anywhere. I have found a few things that have been helpful. First, by realizing that you are able to handle negative stuff that comes your way your belief in yourself and your capabilities grows. You can also work on a similar process voluntarily. By setting goals and achieving them your belief in yourself increases. And by facing your fears and finding that you can indeed survive such experiences your belief in yourself goes up too. None of these options may sound that glamorous, fun or quick. And a lot of the time they aren’t. But like with so much else,you have to put in effort to get good results. But there is also another side to this challenge. Quite a bit of the problem with a lack of belief in yourself comes from internal self-sabotage, self-limiting beliefs and resistance within your mind. It’s you holding yourself back. I have found that reading Eckhart Tolle’s books like “A New Earth” – or books on mindfulness in general I guess – to help you realize that you are not your ego, thoughts or emotions and rereading to strengthen and deepen that belief can be very helpful to reduce the inner struggle, over-analyzing and self-sabotage. Over time you can get better control over your mind and you´ll stop listening so much to your own negative inner voices and emotional resistance. Having a reasonably good handle on that part makes it easier to see yourself doing what you want to do. Because, as Arnold says, you have to be able to envision what you want to do or it will be very hard or just impossible bring that vision into reality. By getting better control over your mind it becomes easier to hold this vision in your mind day after day, week after week. You’ll be less prone to self-sabotage. And your belief will waver less when being questioned or worse by other people or just society in general. 2. See struggle and failure as something positive. “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” Failure is seldom the end of the world. It’s a part of the journey, a part of the learning curve. The problem is just that if you have a scarcity mentality then every failure or potential failure may seem as the sky falling. This can hold you back from performing well. Or from taking action at all. The key to overcome this is to develop an abundance mentality that tells you that there are always more opportunities. This allows you to not take the setbacks too seriously. One way to help yourself to develop such a mentality is to replace some of the usual input – news, advertising – with information and the vibe from personal development authors/speakers. Another way is just to hang out more with people with an abundance mentality. Or just people that are positive and enthusiastic about life. Now, most of the time you only really fail when you give up and surrender. If you keep going you’ll build your inner strength to live and move through rough patches. And if you are able to look at your setbacks and learn from them you can also deepen you knowledge, perhaps avoid some mistakes and find a better course towards your goal. Remember that to succeed you need those failure. They make you stronger and smarter and that build-up of yourself is vital to success. 3. Go the extra mile. “The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.” Going the extra mile. It’s not easy. Personally I think this has often been because I have just thought too much. Overthinking often leads to negative thought spirals where you use your mind to decrease your own strength through self-doubt. And if you add up all the overthinking you can waste months or perhaps even years of your life. It’s more useful to just stop thinking when all then thinking that is needed is done. And to then just go and do what you choose to do. And then to learn from your experiences and to keep going. 4. Go work out. “Training gives us an outlet for suppressed energies created by stress and thus tones the spirit just as exercise conditions the body.” Yep, working out is very useful in more than one way. I have found that one of the best ways to turn an anxious, negative or weak mood fully around is simply to go exercising. It is also reliable because it is not so dependent on your mind. You just have to drag yourself wherever you need to go and make your body do certain movements to get the desired result. And, anyway, how are you going to be able to go the extra mile without extra energy? Over the last few years I realized that many problems are simply based in a lack of energy. So working out or not isn’t much of a choice really. If you aren’t naturally a bouncy, high energy person then you have to exercise in some way to create that energy you need to achieve whatever it is you want in life. 5. Go and help others. “Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.” Helping others is valuable in so many ways. Beside the wonderful upsides that Arnold brings up – like the fact that you are helping people out and at the same time enriching and adding meaning to your own life – you also create a lot of relationships. And the Law of Reciprocity, the urge to give back is strong in people. If you provide value and help to them then they will often be inclined to give you a hand when you need it. Or feel the need give back by paying it forward and helping other people. This creates big, expanding upward spirals of positive actions and thoughts. And that can be very useful for us all.

“Adventure is worthwhile.” About 2500 years ago a slave called Aesop lived on the Greek island of Samos. He is known for the fables that he wrote down. Many of them were even older that Aesop and had been passed down through the ages through the oral tradition. So even though these seven useful tips are attributed to Aesop, they may be much older than that. 1. Your wishes may not be all that they are cracked up to be. “We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.” We wish for something. A new car, a new job, a new relationship or perhaps a new pair of shoes. And perhaps you think: “if I only get this thing, then I’m home, then I’ll feel happy and good all around”. And then you get it. And it’s awesome. But often for just a while. And then you may feel like maybe something went a bit wrong. Like it didn’t fulfil you or complete you like you thought it would. Why? Well, after while when you get used to something, when it becomes normal, then the ego tends to want more once again. Or maybe you can’t enjoy something for what it is because even though your environment changes, you are still the same. The same person with the same outlook on life. With the same self-imposed barriers for your own success and happiness and maybe self-sabotaging behaviour. And until you take a look at those things you may find yourself repeating the same patterns over and over. When you are the same, you often tend to get the same results over and over again. Also, our wishes can often come through accompanied by unexpected and not so pleasant side effects. Things may seem just perfect when you dream about them. In reality, it can become a little more complicated and messy. Now, new things or people can be great. But if you think this one thing will fix all your problems or focus on the wrong aspects – what is not perfect, how can I get more etc. – instead of the positives and gratitude then you may find yourself always looking for the next thing and create quite a bit of stress and unhappiness within. 2. Learn not only from your own life. “Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.” This is a very useful thing to keep in mind. Not the easiest to implement consistently though. Some things are very hard to learn by just watching others make a mistake. You have to make it yourself, get the experience of it and learn about the thoughts and feelings associated to it. With that understanding it can be easier to actually learn to avoid doing the same mistake over and over. However, to keep your eyes and mind open to the mistakes and misfortunes of others around you – or via books or blogs – is still very useful. It can allow you to make quicker and less painful progress, for instance when you are a beginner at something. 3. Beware of complacency. “Don’t let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth – don’t let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.” One of the big, and sneakiest, obstacles to living the life you wish for is complacency. It tells you that it’s easier to just stay where you are, to watch TV and eat snacks instead of for instance working out or trying something new. Or expressing yourself in a genuine way. Complacency might give a feeling of things being good enough. Or a sense of security. But a sense of security is often a just false sense of security. You never really know what will happen. If you want to fulfil more of your potential, if you want to find out what you really can do, then complacency isn’t such a good idea. But how do you keep yourself from falling into it? I don’t have an easy answer. I think you have to keep your focus on the right things to help yourself to grow. And not only check your own thinking and actions continually but also fill much of your life with people and information that will inspire you, challenge you and keep you in a supportive environment. And keep you from falling back into a lazy, comfortable rut. 4. Work on your own goals. “He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.” “If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will use you for theirs.” One good reason to have a direction and goals in life is simply because if you don’t, then someone else does. And that person will get the people without goals to work on his/her goal. Or as the second quote suggests, they might help you but with an ulterior motive. And so you lose your personal power. You give it away to someone else by not having your own direction, by not keeping your own hands on the wheel. And it may not feel that horrible really. It might feel safe. But on the other hand, if you start setting goals and get a direction in life you tend to perk up and feel more empowered. That vague, underlying uneasiness that seemed to float through your life start to vanish. You feel more alert. And you can start to work much more on what you really want out of life, instead of what someone else may tell you that you should do or want. 5. Kindness is always good. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Any act of kindness can put a positive spark into the world. Just a genuine compliment can make a person’s day. And even if someone doesn’t appreciate your kindness you can still feel good about handing it out. In the end, their response is their business. And in the long run, you tend to get what you give. 6. What they say might not really be about you. “People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.” “The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.” Of course, criticism that may be valid should be taken seriously. But negativity directed towards you is pretty seldom about you. It’s more about someone else having a bad day, week or year and directing their negative energy at anyone passing by in their life. So much complaining and negativity that people put out into the world is about how they feel about themselves and their lives. The problem is just that we are often so focused on own lives that we take every negative thing said to us personally. But the world doesn’t revolve around me or you. So remember these two quotes when someone’s directing negativity towards you. And more importantly, remember those quotes when you feel the need to lash out towards someone. Ask yourself what the real problem in your life is. And what you can do about it. Instead of just lashing out and feeding more negativity into your and someone else’s life. One thing you can pretty sure of is that the more people try to boost their own value and temporary positive feelings by putting someone else down, the worse they feel about themselves and their lives. And that goes for you and me too of course. 7. Help yourself. “The gods help them that help themselves.” The ones that help themselves consistently by making plans and taking action get more opportunities and more of what may be perceived as luck. Things just seem to line up for them. While others may stand on the sidelines and begrudge all that luck and success that those people have. The more you help yourself, the more help you tend get from the world around you. If you don’t help and empower yourself then there will probably be a whole lot less help of any kind coming your way.

“May you live all the days of your life.” Jonathan Swift was a writer that lived a couple of centuries ago (1667-1745). He is perhaps most known for classics like “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Propsal”. The latter being the ironic and shocking essay where he suggested that impoverished Irish people should sell their babies as food to rich people. Such works has earned Swift a reputation as one of the finest satirists of all time. Since Swift was a writer there is a ton of things to quote. Here are seven of my favourite words of wisdom. 1. Don’t fear to be wrong. “A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than yesterday.” So much of what we learn in society is about how you should not fail and not make mistakes. In school we are taught to get good grades and play by the rules. And so always taking a safe route and not taking risks can become an ingrained behaviour as we learn to associate failure with shame and pain. But one should really not be afraid of making mistakes. Or admitting that he or she has been wrong. By recognizing that you can release the negative emotions that may dwell within and move on to the next thing. Admitting that you have been wrong also makes it easier to clearly analyze what you did and what you can learn from the experience. 2. Money is useful. Love of it is hazardous. “A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.” Money is very useful. But if you let it take the wrong place in your life it can wreck havoc. It can create greed and much negativity in your life. And if you love the money, you’ll probably just want more and more. No matter how much you get. And it may not fill you up and finally make you happy as you may have hoped. The drive to always want more can become like filling a bucket with a hole in it. And as you slowly realize that this won’t work as you had hoped bitterness and negativity can start to feste. Now, it’s important to not let this reasoning lead you to believe that money is evil. Money is a tool. It can help you to achieve many positive things. 3. Dig where you stand. “Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.” It’s very easy to fall into an addictive pattern of criticizing yourself and others. But what are the positive things in you and the people around you? If you just look for things to criticize then that is what you will see. If you look for things to criticize in yourself that is what you will see in yourself and pay attention to in others. So what can you do? You can start digging where you are standing. Instead of asking yourself those negative questions continually, ask yourself: what is good about me? Ask yourself where your strengths and talents lie. And don’t give up at once just because a negative mindset may initially not let you see what’s good and positive about you. What you focus on most of the time is what you will see of reality. Knowing your weaknesses and learning from mistakes is helpful. But to dwell on criticism and the negative parts will just keep you in a loop where you create more of that for yourself. At some point it’s useful to move on from that and start to shift your focus to the positive. And see what gold that will help you uncover. 4. Go further than you may think you can. “I’ve always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I’m going to make the next one.” One big problem with success is that you may want it right now. Or at least very soon. No wonder, advertising continually bombards us with messages of how we can become thin or rich in just 30 days. And people often want to believe in that. Now, I’m not saying that a lot of the stuff out there doesn’t work. They probably do work. I’m just saying that it may take more time, patience and work than advertised to get you where you want to go. It’s useful to take a break from advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give complete plan but a clearer perspective of what is needed to achieve what you want. And then you plug away. You don’t let setbacks or failure discourage you. You go out and try again. And just when you feel like giving up you go on a little further. And a little further. Because it’s often darkest before the dawn. 5. Put down the extra, unnecessary baggage you are carrying. “The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.” We pick a whole lot when we are young. Some of it is helpful. A lot of it will hold you back and create a lot of unnecessary suffering in your life. You may have learned things from society – or sometimes gotten stuff drilled into your head – when you were young. You may have taken what someone said or did to you once or repeatedly as an absolute truth about you and your life. But as a grown up, as you start to examine your life and beliefs you may discover that those things was just things that happened. They are in the past. You are here now. And by grasping that it’s you who are always in control of your life – that you are creating it right now – you understand that unhelpful beliefs or what happened doesn’t have to mean that much really. You can choose to drop them and continue with a lightness in your step down a road that you are creating for yourself now. One tip that can help you with that is to first accept that you are carrying the negative thing and how it is affecting you. And then to let it go. Acceptance of what already is does – even though it may sound counterintuitive – make it easier to let something go. 6. Be good to yourself in simple ways. “The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.” It’s nowadays common to run yourself into the ground and then, as you feel like a shadow of your former self, to seek help. But a big part of keeping your health – mentally and physically – in good shape is to prevent problems before they even show up and force you to go to the doctor. Swift brings some common sense into this challenge. By doing simple things consistently, by making them ingrained habits one can avoid many problems down the line. Doctor Diet. Eat not too little or too much. Eat slowly to really enjoy the taste and avoid overeating, an upset stomach and added stress. Doctor Quiet. Always being around noise, other people and stimulation via a lot of information can drain you. It’s important to find some quiet time for yourself regularly to avoid being overloaded. Being out in nature is for instance one good way to reconnect with the quiet and stillness. Doctor Merryman. How happy and positive one wants to feel is often to a large degree a choice. You can cultivate a negative attitude towards everything. Or a positive one. Now, this may sound like almost stupidly simple advice. And the information is very simple. Many very helpful things are very simple. More advanced tips can sound intriguing because one may associate complicated with better. But everything has to have foundations. Without those everything you build on top of them will only work at a limited capacity or sometimes just crumble. 7. Be open to the idea that you can always learn . “No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.” Being open to this will open up your mind. If you think you know everything, great insights and wonderful new paths to explore will just pass you by. By being open you’ll see, feel and learn things you wouldn’t otherwise. But be careful of focusing too much on learning from books, blogs etc. They have a place and can help you correct things may have done backwards for all of your life. But the most important thing is to live. And to learn from your experiences. Because it is there you find true understanding of things.

“A well-spent day brings happy sleep.” If you want tips on how to become more productive, one awesome source would be Leonardo da Vinci. He painted a whole lot of classic paintings such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. His journals contain ideas for inventions like hydraulic pumps, steam cannons, helicopters and hang gliders. He was also, among other things, an anatomist, sculptor, botanist and musician. Da Vinci got stuff done. A lot of stuff. How did he do it? Well, here is a guide with his tips for getting things done. 1. Do. “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.” “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” If you want to get things done you have to do things. If you want big results you often have to take massive action. There is no way to get around taking action if you want real life results. But it’s easy to get stuck in a mindset where you in a way substitute thinking for action. You think and think and take action just once in a while. One thing that gets you stuck in this mindset is that you may see other people doing the same thing. And so your habit of taking action once in a while gets reinforced since it feels like the “normal” thing to do. The fear of failure and what people might say if you try, fail or succeed are powerful factors too. But to get what you want you need to break out of that. You need to take a lot of action. And if you are an overthinker or procrastinator like I was then there is probably room for a lot more action every week. I think the first step to taking more action is just to be aware of how much action you are actually taking. To be aware how much time you are spending thinking or planning. And catch yourself when you get stuck in unproductive thought patterns. And then adjust to take more action. How can you snap yourself into action? Two tips that works well for me are: Pump up your enthusiasm. One way of doing that is to see what’s positive in any situation. Then build on that to get your enthusiasm going. Perhaps it’s just a thing or two. But that glimmer of positivity can be a starting point to change your perspective to a more positive one where you can find enthusiasm. And whatever the situation you are in will often be easier and more pleasurable to handle. Another way to pump up your enthusiasm is to get an enthusiastic vibe from other people. Listen to CDs with enthusiastic people – Brian Tracy and Wayne Dyer are two helpful guys – for perhaps 20 minutes. When you are done listening you’ll probably feel a lot more enthusiastic. Or hang out with enthusiastic people and get them to talk about what they are enthusiastic about. Enthusiasm is contagious, so use that fact to help yourself. Just do it anyway. If you don’t feel like you could pump up your enthusiasm, just go and do what you want to do anyway. You may not want to go to the gym. But you do it anyway. And after you’ve been there for a while you are glad you went there, because now you are getting your workout done. And you are feeling proactive, enthusiastic and good about yourself. 2. Do. Experience. Understand. “Experience does not ever err. It is only your judgment that errs in promising itself results which are not caused by your experiments.” “Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.” If you take little action it’s easy to overestimate the value of the results. A failure or a mistake might feel like the end of the world. You may perhaps you beat yourself up about it for the rest of the week. That won’t help much though. As you learn to take more action, the results contain less emotional power. You don’t get overwhelmed or lost in a sad funk. You also realize that the world doesn’t revolve around you. People will probably not care as much as you think if you try, fail or succeed with something. They have their own lives to worry about. So instead learn to take the lessons from a mistake or failure. Do not take the failure so seriously but instead see it – just like everything else – as a valuable experience. So dive into life. Get experiences, because it is only here you will get some real understanding. 3. Be consistent. “Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” It’s easy to get riled up and get going with something new on an enthusiastic high. But that initial enthusiasm tends to dissipate. That’s when you hit a plateau. That’s when you need to keep moving. Doing everything in small spurts and then turning to the next thing when something loses it “newness” makes it hard to get what you want. You have to be persistent. And consistent. Then you can get pretty much anything done. One of the big reasons why people don’t get what they want is simply that they won’t keep going. Or that they go, stop, go, stop. Persistence and consistency isn’t exactly the sexiest things in personal growth. But they are ridiculously helpful. Because the results you want may not come to you tomorrow or next week. Improving your life is often hinges on the ability to not go running around for new magic pills all the time or choosing the instant gratification option every time. So, how do you become more consistent? Be aware. Just by being aware of what you are doing – and not doing – you can stop and change how you think and act in your everyday life. This will take time, but little by little you can avoid your own pitfalls – such as for instance the instant gratification route – more and more. Set the context for your day. What you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. And your days are your life. We have a tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. One thing that can give you a good start is to do the hardest and/or most important thing first. If you start your day like this then you don’t have to worry about that special task for the rest of the day. Taking this route makes the day feel easier and you’ll have less inner resistance to getting the rest of the tasks of the day done. Another way to use this tip is to work out early in the day. It will make you feel energized and more alert for the rest of the day. 4. Move over, through or around obstacles. “Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.” Obstacles are tricky. They can easily discourage you. But they are seldom as scary as they look. If you actually start to smash them or move around them you may find that it is easier than you may have thought. The biggest obstacles are often the ones you put up in your mind. Not just in the way that you perceive external obstacles and make them bigger than they are. But also in how you create obstacles that aren’t even out there. They exist solely in your mind. So be careful and reconsider your assumptions and perception. Realize that you may be making things a lot harder than they actually need to be. Realize that you to some part decide how hard or easy something is. By diving into reality and taking action you get real life experience of how things are. Then you may see how the obstacles were just in your mind. Or how you can move over, under or through the obstacle by learning and adjusting. Or just by being persistent. Look at an obstacle as a way for the world to test you and teach you. Instead of a solid brick wall. 5. Know what’s important (for you). “Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.” There is always enough time. You have the same amount of hours in the day that da Vinci had. But the thing is to know what is important to you. And to take action based on that. Knowing what you want and following that path is vital for the rest of the tips above. To be able to take all that action, to do it consistently and to crush internal or external obstacles you need to know what you want. That will give you the motivation to keep going. And I’m talking about what you really want. What is most important to you (not what your parents, teachers or society may tell is important). How do you find out what you really want? I think you need to really think about it. But more importantly, I think you need to just experiment and try things. From all that doing and all those experiences you learn things. Not just about the world but also about yourself. Experience makes it clearer in your mind if what you thought you wanted is really what you want. Over time your map of yourself and your life becomes more accurate. And by doing things you not only find what is most important to you. You also find the things you really enjoy doing and that makes it so much easier to keep going. 6. Focus. “As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.” You need to know what’s important for you. You also need to focus on it. And focus on it consistently. And this is not just about keeping your focus on what you are doing and what you want each and every day. It’s also about the focus of your attitude. To for instance keep your focus on the positive, on your curiousness and your enthusiasm. On what gets you where you want to go. Instead of negative doubts, beating yourself up or other things you may focus on from time to time for some reason. That stuff will seldom help you. Of course, if there is a real problem then that needs to be handled. But oftentimes it’s easy to get stuck in negativity because of old habits, what other people may say or just to strengthen a victim identity and get a strange sense of satisfaction and familiarity out of the negativity. So finally, here are three practical tips that I have found to be very helpful to improve my focus. Exercise. This is so key. Regular exercise makes me more focused, positive and energized. The best way to make exercise a consistent part of your life each week is to try different things and find what you like doing and what fits you and your situation. Singletask. Do just one thing at a time to get things done quicker and with less stress. For me at least it works a lot better than multitasking. Work in a cone of silence. Try to minimize possible distractions. You could do that by for instance unplugging your internet cable, shutting off your phone and closing your door. If you found this article helpful, please share it with someone on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

“Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.” Bertrand Russell “Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own.” Harold Coffin Envy can be like a tiny devil on your shoulder that whisper words into your ear, gnashes on your soul and makes life into something that is often filled with suffering and much negativity. Or the envy can just be something that irritates and distracts you from time to time. In any case, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you want to, then you can at least minimize it in your life. So that you can spend your time here in a lighter and happier headspace. Focus on yourself when it comes to comparing. Comparing what you have to what others have is a good way to make yourself miserable. It feeds your ego when you buy a nicer car or get a better job than someone else. You feel great for a while. But this mindset and the focus on comparing always winds up in you noticing someone that has more than you. That someone has an even better job or car than you. And so you don’t feel so good anymore. The thing is that there is always someone with better or more than you. So you can never “win”. You just feel good for a while and then you don’t. A more useful way to compare is to just compare yourself to yourself. Look at how you have grown and what you have achieved. Appreciate what you have done and what you have. See how far you have come and what you are planning to do. This will make you make you more positive and emotionally stable since you are no longer comparing and feeling envious of what the other guy have that you haven’t. Be grateful for what you got. Besides comparing yourself to yourself it can be helpful to add a regular gratitude exercise to your life to minimize the envy. So take just two minutes out of your day to focus on being grateful for all the things you got. Make a list of them in your head or write them down in journal at the beginning or end of the day. Develop an abundance mentality. Envy often seems to come from a perceived scarcity in some area of your life. Maybe you feel envious because someone else got the job you wanted. Or because someone else got the opportunity that you had hoped for. Perhaps you are feeling envious because you are afraid of losing something and feel that if you do then you have hit rock bottom. Focusing your mind on the scarcity can really screw with your thoughts, feelings and life. It can cause much stronger negative emotions than is really reasonable. And it gets you really stuck in the envy, intensifying it, making it stronger and more long-lasting by feeding it with more thoughts and emotional energy. To get out of this confining and destructive mentality you can choose to focus on the opportunities and the new chances. You can develop an abundance mentality. There are always new business opportunities to find, new tests in school to take and new people to date/make friends with. This way of thinking relieves much of the pressure you may feel if you have a scarcity mentality that makes you think that you only got this shot right now. Or makes you feel like an utter failure just because you just stumbled and things didn’t work out this time. So keep your focus steadily on the opportunities, on the new chances, on what you can learn from your failures as best you can instead of confining your mind and your life. It is sometimes hard to do so from day to day but it is even harder in the long run to live a life where you don’t keep that positive focus. Think about what’s in it for you. I have found this to be helpful in many cases when I have negative thoughts or when I’m behaving in a less than useful way. Basically, I ask myself: What’s in it for me? And each time I fall back into that negative headspace and behaviour I remind myself of this question and the answer. This reinforces to me the pointlessness of what I’m thinking. And often I just think to myself: “Oh, I’m being stupid again. Time to focus on something useful/fun/positive instead”. Now, there are upsides of being envious that can make it hard to let go of it. When you are being envious you may not take chances or go into the unknown. You just judge people that have taken the chances from the safety of the sidelines. Feeling envious can also make you feel like a victim. Such a mentality may sound very unattractive for anyone to want. But in reality it brings you attention and validation because you can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out. And you don’t have to take the sometimes heavy responsibility. Taking responsibility for your own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just heavy sometimes. When you are ready to let go of that safety and those somewhat strange upsides it will be easier to change how you act and how you think about things. Get a life. Simple and perhaps the best tip in my opinion. If you find yourself sitting around too much and not having enough to do then it’s very easy to feel stuck and to get stuck in thought loops and go into a downward spiral. Simply by filling your life with more fun activities and people and the things you want out of life you won’t have time or a reason to be envious. Other benefits of getting a life are that you become a lot more relaxed and less prone to overreacting about the little things. So spend less time analyzing life and more time living and exploring it in whatever way you’d like. Image by Florencia Cárcamo ( license ).

[hana-code-insert name='social down' /] “The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.” Theodore Parker “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all.” Henry David Thoreau During the summer I often spend much time in a chair in the sun and just relax and read. So I thought it may be a good idea to share some of the best books on personal development that I have read so far. In case you also want to spend some time in the sun over summer and don’t know what to read next. Here is a top ten of my favorite books – in no particular order – out of the 100+ books in this niche that I have read. 1. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. For 20 years Napoleon Hill traveled around the US and interviewed 500 of the most successful people. This book, released in 1937, was the result and has since then sold over 15 million copies worldwide. A good place to start if you are interested in personal development as it covers a lot of time-tested advice. I wasn’t as enthusiastic as many others about this book when I first read it. But over the last few years I have become a bigger and bigger fan of it since I have discovered for myself that much of what it says works very well. And Hill sure does a fine job of explaining the ideas in a simple and inspirational way. 2. Pulling Your Own Strings by Wayne Dyer. Dyer is one of my absolute favorite personal development people and Pulling Your Own Strings is probably my favorite out of all his books (so far at least). This book deals with who is pulling your strings and how to improve relationships by increasing your own personal power and for instance becoming more assertive. Simple and easy to follow ideas for better relationships and better self esteem. 3. The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden. The book that helped me to really understand what self esteem was and how it works. I like how Branden breaks down self esteem into six pillars, that makes it easy to understand how you can increase your own self esteem and to see what pillar that may be weak in your life. An awesome book. 4. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. It’s hard to choose one book from Eckhart Tolle to recommend since many of them are really good (Stillness Speaks is another one I like very much and Even the Sun Will Die is a long and fascinating interview). But A New Earth is probably the best one for clearly explaining his ideas (I found it easier to understand and apply than The Power of Now). Ideas that have helped me to simplify my life, improve my social skills, find a lot more inner peace, to live right here right now. And so on. 5. How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. One of the best and most popular books ever (15 million copies sold) on improving your social skills. A must read. 6. The Psychology of Achievement (audio) by Brian Tracy. Like most of Brian Tracy’s products it’s packed with small nuggets of practical gold and very little fluff. The book covers a lot on how to develop a top achiever’s mindset and improve your life in any area really. A fine place to start if you have just discovered an interest in personal growth. 7. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon that became interested in the self image and how it can be changed. He wrote this book about his findings. Contains tons of practical exercises and advice for improving your self esteem, self talk, minimize self sabotage and achieving the success and positive changes you want in your life and in yourself. Perhaps the book on this list that has lead to most lives being actually changed in real life since it’s so grounded in changing your habits and thought patterns in a way that,I at least believe will work for a lot of people. It also helps that it has sold over 30 million copies since it was first published in 1960. 8. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I guess most of you have already read this much talked about book with the tagline “Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” that was released a few years ago. I remember that I found it very inspiring when I first got my hands on a copy and it has certainly been a great motivator and source of practical tips as I have grown this blog and my own company over the last few years. 9. As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. Once upon a time the there was personal secretary in England named James Allen. During his lifetime he never achieved great fame or wealth. At the age of 38 he retired. He and his wife moves to a small cottage in Illfracome of Devon in England. During the next decade he produced nearly 20 books. In 1912, at the age of 48, he passed away. But the same year he retired he also published one of the most inspiring books – well, I guess it is an essay – on personal development I have ever read. Together with Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”, James Allen’s “As a man thinketh” is probably the most well-known of what might be considered old school books on improving yourself and your life. The book is in the public domain, so you can read it for free at Project Gutenberg for example. 10. The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. Another super best-seller. Another book on how your thinking and ideas control your life and success. Another must read and together with Psycho-Cybernetics perhaps the book I most often revisit when I am in need of some motivation or just need to get my positive and constructive thinking going again. What is your favorite personal development book that you would like to recommend to the other readers? Image by Darwin Bell ( licence ).

Image: kalandrakas ( license ). “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” Anais Nin Today I’d like to share a few of my favorite timeless tips for improving your social life. Here are six of them. 1. Be wary of building walls. “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” Joseph F. Newton Men The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation and loves to play the comparison game. The game where people are different compared to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates fear. And so we build walls. But putting up walls tends to in the end hurt you more than protect you. So how can you start building bridges instead? One way is to choose to be curious about people. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. Another way is to start to see yourself in other people. To get that there is no real separation between you and other people. That may sound vague. So one practical suggestion and thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend. Another thing you can try is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet. Try it out and see what you find. 2. Your relationships are in your mind. “As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts. Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind. Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts. For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior. Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.” Wayne Dyer “It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.” Epictetus How you choose to interpret people and your relationships makes a huge difference. So much of our relationships may be perceived to happen out there somewhere. But as mentioned in tip #1 in this article, your underlying frame of mind – do you build bridges or walls? – will determine much about your interactions both new people and people you know. So you really have to go inside. You have to realize that your interpretations from the past are interpretations. Not reality. You have to take a look at your assumptions and expectations and thought habits. Find patterns that may be hurting you (and others). This isn’t easy. Or always pleasant. You may discover that you have had some negative underlying habits of thought for many years. But to change you have to do it. Instead of just keep looking at yourself as some sort of unmoving and objective observer of the world and reality. A change in you could – over time – change your whole world. 3. Avoid being boring. “The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.” Voltaire Don’t prattle on about your new car for 10 minutes oblivious to your surroundings. Always be prepared to drop a subject when you start to bore people. Or when everyone is getting bored and the topic is starting to run out of steam. One good way to have something interesting to say is simply to lead an interesting life. And to focus on the positive stuff. Don’t start to whine about your boss or your job, people don’t want to hear that. Instead, talk about your last trip somewhere, some funny anecdote that happened while you were buying clothes, your plans for the summer or something fun or exciting. 4. Focus outward, not inward. “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Dale Carnegie A lot of people use the second, far less effective way. It is appealing because it’s about instant gratification and about ME, ME, ME! The first way – to become interested in people – perhaps works better because it makes you a pleasant exception and because the law of reciprocity is strong in people. As you treat people, they will treat you. Be interested in them and they will be interested in you. 5. Don’t get stuck in the questions. “I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.” Yogi Berra If you ask too many questions the conversation can feel like a bit of an interrogation. Or like you don’t have that much too contribute. One alternative is to mix questions with statements. Just say what band you are really into instead of asking what band they are into. Or say what you think about local sports team’s chances of winning the next game. Or, while using common sense, just what you are thinking about what is happening around you right now. And then the conversation can flow on from there. So open up and say what you think, share how you feel. And if someone shares an experience, open up too and share one of your experiences. Don’t just stand there nodding and answer with short sentences. If someone is investing in the conversation they’d like you to invest too. And like in so many areas in life, you can’t always wait for the other party to make the first move. When needed, be proactive and be the first one to open up and invest in the conversation. 6. Genuineness is awesome. “Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don’t over-analyse your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.” Leo F. Buscaglia I think that one of the most important things in a relationship of any kind is to be genuine. Few things are as powerful as genuine communication and letting the genuine you shine through. Without incongruence, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness. It’s you to 100%. It’s you with not only your words but you with your voice tonality and body language – which some say is over 90% of communication – on the same wavelength as your words. It’s you coming through on all channels of communication. Being your geunine self – the one where you build bridges and are open and giving – will give you better results and more satisfaction in your day to day life because you are in alignment with yourself. And because people really like genuineness. ————————————————– PS. Just thought I’d give you a quick update and tell you that my new ebook will be out and for sale on the blog next week. It is called the Power of Positivity and contains 22 chapters on how to improve your life in areas such as productivity, social skills, attitude, motivation, self-esteem and thought habits. I am very excited about it and about getting it out there. So be on the lookout for that.

”The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” Albert Einstein “It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.” Voltaire Your thoughts are incredibly powerful. This can be an awesome thing. It can also be a thing that cripples you, paralyses you, causes much suffering and gets you stuck instead of getting you to move forward towards a better and more positive life. In this article I’ll explore 10 common mistakes I have made many times – and still do from time to time – and what I have done about them to improve the way I use my mind. 1. You overthink. I used to be a chronic overthinker. This makes taking action very hard, you analyze small things until they become big and scary in your head and in general overthinking things always leads to a negative view of those things. I have however successfully reduced or almost eliminated overthinking in my life. It did take time, but on the other hand you are in the company of your mind each day so you might as well start working on a better relationship between the both of you. What to do about it: How did I do it? The most important thing was that I focused a big part of a year in my personal development on reading/listening to books by Eckhart Tolle like Stillness Speaks, A New Earth and The Sun Will Also Die and establishing a habit of being in the present moment. I listened to those books over and over on my mp3 player while out walking, while riding the bus and so on. This had two big benefits: I was very focused on his advice and it popped up in my head during the day which made it easier to stay aware of though patterns and Tolle became a sort positive influence in my weekly life. Just like a friend can influence you with his/her positive, negative or ambitious attitude and vibe. Practice being present and it becomes a lot easier to minimize overthinking and to use thinking as a tool rather than letting thoughts control you. Set short deadlines for decisions. Another tip is to start using deadlines. Instead of thinking about something for days, tell yourself that you have – for example – 30 minutes to think. Then you will make a decision. I also use even shorter deadlines for smaller, daily decisions. I don’t sit around thinking about decisions like if I should exercise, make a phone call, try some new food or anything where I may feel a bit of resistance from within. Instead as soon as I think about it I make a decision to do it within seconds and start moving. I have found this to be a good way to become more decisive instead of falling into the paralyzing trap of overthinking. 2. You see things in black and white. Instead of seeing life as it is, somewhat messy, you see things in black and white. You are right and someone else is wrong. This way is good and that way is bad. Things are either this way or that way and there no exceptions or gray areas. This makes it harder to make sense out of things, to take action in the right way and can be a way of thinking that makes you more and more inflexible as time passes. You get stuck and you put barriers in your mind and life and this creates a lot more unhappiness and suffering than necessary. What to do about it: Try to understand the other side. It’s easy to stick to your point of view. But you can gain powerful insights about the other person and yourself too by trying to understand their point of view. This also tends to decrease harshness and negativity and can make it easier to reach an understanding where both parties feel more satisfied with the solution. Be aware. Like with any mistake in this article, just being aware and paying attention during your normal day can help you to discover and reduce these thought patterns by stopping that thread of thought and then changing what you focus on. Be OK with not having to be so smart and right all the time. It won’t kill you but can instead in my experience be the more helpful choice in the longer run. You tend to become more relaxed and feel better about yourself and your world if you make that choice. 3. You think the world is revolving around you. You fall into the trap of worrying about what people may think and let that paralyze you from taking action. Or simply become too self-conscious or too focused on yourself in conversations and relationships. What to do about it: Be aware. Perhaps use a post-it on your bath room mirror or fridge to remind yourself each morning. Act as you would like to feel. Use this when you feel self-conscious and like everyone’s attention is focused on you. In such situation or on such days act as if the world doesn’t revolve around you and people don’t care that much about what you do. After a while and after taking action you will actually start to feel that way for real because experience hands your mind proof that this is indeed the truth. Focus outward. Instead of thinking about yourself and how people may perceive you all the time, focus outward on the people around you. Listen to them and help them. This will make you feel better about yourself and help you to reduce that self-centered focus. 4. You generalize yourself and your world. You may tell yourself: “I’m this and that person just because I’ve done this. Or failed at that.” Just because you’ve failed with your 30 day challenge to exercise each day doesn’t mean that you can’t be a person who succeeds with that. Maybe a few people in the real world don’t get along that well with you. They may not like you. It’s important to not let those few people dictate how you view what others think of you. Or you may generalize because of one event or action. But what other people say about you or to you is often more of a reflection of them rather than you. Maybe they are having a bad day, week or year. Maybe their pet was run over. Maybe they are having a conflict with a family member or friend. You don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. But since we tend to be a bit self-centred we may interpret what someone is saying as being about us and that this one action or event represents this person. What to do about it: Realize that the past is the past and just because you weren’t that good at something in fifth grade doesn’t mean that it is the person you are now or that you couldn’t become good at that thing now. You may find that parts of your self-image that you thought were accurate are just based on a few things that you did or that happened to you in the past. When you examine those beliefs you may realize that they aren’t really that well-grounded as you had imagined. They are more like a house of cards rather than a house made of bricks. Just because you’ve failed a few times or made a few mistakes doesn’t mean that you are such a person. It is just stuff that happened. And again, try putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Remember that one event or action is not always the full picture and try to understand and form a more complex picture. And don’t make too big of a business out of a few people that you don’t see eye to eye with. That’s OK and just life. 5. You look for problems even when there are none. This is a weird one. I have found myself looking for problems even when there are none really. I think in part comes from snapping back into your old mindset. I used to be much more negative and see problems everywhere for many years. So the mind is conditioned to operate that way and so used to it. So on some days you sit around and suddenly realize while thinking that you are looking for a problem in a situation or area of your life where there are none. What to do about it: I have written “There is no problem” on my white board on my wall to remind me each day. If I am faced with what I start thinking is a problem I ask myself: who cares? I most often then realize that this isn’t really a problem in the long run at all. I also think this can come from thinking a bit too much about personal development and working on that. You become so accustomed to looking for solutions that your mind wants to find problems that it can solve. This personal development stuff is awesome. But read about and think about it in moderation and not all the time. 6. You are addicted to your comfort zone. If you are always thinking about how to feel and be really, really safe then making a positive change will be impossible. The unknown and change is uncomfortable and scary to the mind because it tends to want your existence to be stable and continue to be as it has been so far. What to do about it: Be curious. When you are stuck in a bit of fear, when you get stuck in your comfort zone then you are closed up. Curiosity on the other hand is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. Do it in small steps. What holds us back in our zone of comfort is often a fear or that facing that fear head on might be overwhelming. Doing things in small steps allows you to stretch your comfort zone and slowly making it less uncomfortable and frightening. Focus on the positive past. Realize it can be fun to get out of your comfort zone despite what your mind and feelings might be telling you before you get started. Think back to the previous times when you have broken out of your comfort zone. Focus on the positive memories, when you got out there, when you took a chance. And you will probably remember that it wasn’t so bad, it was actually fun and exciting and something new to you. Accept that it will be uncomfortable. Even if you do the things above it can still be uncomfortable to step out of your comfort zone. If that is the case, accept it. That discomfort will be temporary and you can always take action and just do it even though you may not fully feel like it. The thing is if you accept that the discomfort is just there then it tends to become smaller or not so significant. 7. You think about yourself as a victim. One big problem a lot of people have is that they slip into thinking of themselves as victims that have little or no control over their lives. In this headspace you feel sorry for yourself, the world seems to be against you and you get stuck. Little to no action is taken and you get lost in a funk of sadness and self-pity. What to do about it: Know the benefits of a victim mentality. There are a few benefits of the victim mentality. You can always get attention, validation and good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out. When you feel like a victim you tend to not take action and then you don’t have to risk for example rejection or failure. Taking responsibility for you own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just heavy sometimes. In the short term it can feel like the easier choice to feel like a victim and not take personal responsibility. And when you feel like the victim and like everyone else – or just someone else – is wrong and you are right then that can lead to pleasurable feelings. In my experience, by just being aware of the benefits I can derive from victim thinking it becomes easier to say no to that and to choose to take a different path. Be ok with not being the victim. So to break out of that mentality you have to give up the benefits above. You might also experience a sort of emptiness within when you let go of victim thinking. You may have spent hours each week with thinking and talking about how wrong things have gone for you in life. Or how people have wronged you and how you could get some revenge or triumph over them. Now you have to fill your life with new thinking and that may feel uncomfortable because it is not so intimately familiar as the victim thinking you have been engaging in for years. Take responsibility for your life. Why do people often have self-esteem problems? I’d say that one of the big reasons is that they don’t take responsibility for their lives. Instead someone else is blamed for the bad things that happen and a victim mentality is created and empowered. This damages many vital parts in your life. Stuff like relationships, ambitions and achievements. That hurt will not stop until you wise up and take responsibility for your life. There is really no way around it. 8. You think that what you feel now is just how it is. One big mistake that I have made many times is to think what you feel right now is kinda permanent. That it is how you really feel about things and will feel in the near future too. However, it is really hard to predict how you will feel just an hour or 15 minutes from now. The mind fools you as you identify with the emotions you are feeling right now. This can really hold you back. What to do about it: Use and strengthen your discipline muscle. You may for example not feel like going to the gym today. Your mind might say “It’s ok, you don’t need that anyway, you were there three days ago”. And so you lie back on the couch. But you can also say to yourself “No, today is workout day and I will go even though I don’t feel like it/don’t think I need to right now”. And so you go. And after you have been there for maybe 15 minutes you start to enjoy it and you’re glad you went. Just be aware that your mind doesn’t always want what you know is the right thing to do. The mind often tries to get us to choose the easiest option in our daily lives. It makes it seem like what you feel now is reality. Even though emotional states are fleeting and you can change them around in just a few minutes or hours by going to that gym. 9. You compare yourself to other people. One thing that can cause quite a bit of low self-esteem, frustration and unhappiness is comparing yourself to other people and their lives. You compare cars, houses, jobs, shoes, money, relationships, social popularity and so on. What to do about it: Be kind. The way you behave and think towards others has a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself. Judge people more and you tend to judge yourself more. Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself. You become more OK with yourself and the people in your world instead of ranking them and yourself and creating differences in your mind. Just realize that you can’t win. Just consciously realizing this can be helpful. No matter what you do you can pretty much always find someone else in the world that has more than you or are better than you at something. Compare yourself to yourself. Instead of comparing yourself to other people create the habit of comparing yourself to yourself. See how much you have grown, what you have achieved and what progress you have made towards your goals. This habit has the benefit of creating gratitude, appreciation and kindness towards yourself as you observe how far you have come, the obstacles you have overcome and the good stuff you have done. You feel good about yourself without having to think less of other people. 10. You think you already know how things work. If you think that you already know something then your mind will not be open to actually learning it. Whatever someone is telling you, your mind will sort through based on what you think you know. You’ll only hear and learn what you what you want to hear and learn. What to do about it: Whenever you want to learn anything it may be a good tip to disregard as much as possible of what you think you know. Keep your mind as open as you can. In my experience this makes it easier to pick things up and not disregard important stuff. Of course, the ego often wants to jump in to meddle and strengthen itself by making you think that you already know whatever you’re about to learn. Be careful in trusting that somewhat arrogant inner voice.

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” James Allen “Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” Arnold Bennett “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin You have probably arrived here because you want to make a positive change in your life. Perhaps you want to improve your social skills, your health or simply your attitude and how you think. Now this is great. But it seldom that easy. There may be obstacles outside of you. There are almost certainly obstacles inside of you. In this article I’ll explore some of those common obstacles that can make change so hard and how to overcome them. Hopefully you’ll find something that can help you to move forward to make that change. 1. You don’t want to change. Maybe you think you want to change something. But is it really your wish? Or is it the wish of your parents, boss, partner, friends or society? If you don’t really want to make the change deep down then it will be very hard to go the distance. Yes, you can begin but if there is no inner drive to do it then you will lose motivation easily and feel like giving up all the time after a while. What to do about it: Sit down and really think about whose goals you are working towards. If they are not yours the think about what you can do to stop working on them and spend more time on your own consciously chosen goals instead. If you still have to go on with may have started as someone else’s goal – perhaps your boss has told you to do something and you can’t just ditch that if you want to keep your job – then find your own reasons for working on that goal. Brainstorm and write them all down. Review that paper and make the goal into more of your goal and know why you are working towards it for you own sake. This is also why it is hard – if not impossible – to change someone else. So be careful about such wishes and hopes. 2. You don’t feel courageous enough. Change can be scary. Doing things for the first time or stepping into the unknown can pretty frightening. You may feel like you need some courage to make those changes you want, to take those first steps. What to do about it: Well, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “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.” You have to be willing to take action, to move out of your comfort zone and to face fear to increase your courage and self confidence in a way that stays with you (not like when you pump it up temporarily by using different exercises or music for example). You have to be willing to take the punch and risk some emotional pain for a while. There is no way of getting around that. And I won’t lie to you. Sometimes it will suck. You will go to bed and feel sick to your stomach and just hope the day will end. But many times you will feel great as you just move over that invisible barrier and face your fear. You may not even get the result you wanted but still feel great about yourself because you just dared to face that fear or take some action. But what about the times you felt sick to your stomach and went to bed feeling not so good at all? Well, the next day you will wake up. And you realize that you are still here. You are intact and the earth keeps spinning and you get up for a new day. Life continues. But now you know deep down that you can handle things at least a little bit better because you could handle what happened yesterday. You have raised your confidence in yourself and become stronger. And another thing is this: when you do things you don’t just build confidence in your ability to handle different situations. You also experience progressive desensitization. What that means is that situations – like for example public speaking or maybe just showing your latest blogpost to an audience out there – that made you feel all shaky become more and more normal in your life. It is not longer something you psyche yourself up to do. It just becomes normal. Like tying your shoes, hanging out with your friends or taking a shower. And so you don’t really need that much courage after a while. 3. Your environment is holding you back. If you are for example trying to lose weight then it will be a lot harder if the people around you are eating junk food every day. If you are trying to think more positively then it will be a lot harder if you hang out with negative people all the time and watch the news and negative and fear-inducing TV-shows too much. What to do about it: Change your environment in a ways that will support you. That’s doesn’t mean that you have to take drastic measures like never talking to some friend or family member again to cultivate a more positive attitude. It may just means that you cut down on seeing the most negative people/TV-shows etc. that much and replace that with more time with positive people and positive media consumption. By doing that the process will be so much easier. If you are trying to lose weight then find people with similar goals that you can spend some time with each week. Even if it’s just via an online forum of some sort. Carve out some time and a space for yourself with people and motivational and educational information – books, blogs, magazines etc – that will support you as you move towards your goal. Also, by involving more people and/or for example signing up for courses somewhere you will feel commitment to people you like and a bit of positive social pressure to actually go there when you are supposed to instead of slacking off on the sofa. One common problem with the social environment is that you perhaps fear what people may think if you make change. Well, in my experience people are seldom as harsh as you think they will be. They are most often supportive or simply not that interested/neutral to you making changes. People are most often focused on their own goals and challenges in life. Or what other people may think of them. You are not the center of the universe. :) 4. You feel like giving up after one or three failures. When you are really young then you probably don’t build failure up to be this huge thing. You learn to walk, fall down and ding your head and get up again. The same goes for learning to ride your bike. But through influence from school and society failure becomes this increasingly more frightening thing. Sure, as you get older the stakes become higher and you can lose more if you fail. But I do think people often exaggerate the effects failure will have simply because they feel frightened. What to do about it: Most of the time the sky will not fall if you fail. People will not mock you. Life just goes on, as I mentioned above while writing about courage. But you have to do things to gain this understanding. You will not get it just by reading these words and all the other things by people who have said the same thing for centuries. Your mind has to experience failure – or the possibility of it – over and over to make the fear of failure to lot smaller. That has at least been my experience. You may however find motivation in that failure teaches you things books/blogs cannot. By changing your perspective to a more curious one and seeing failure more as a learning experience than something to fear it becomes easier to handle. 5. You don’t feel enough pain yet. Why do people change? Oftentimes I think they have simply had enough. The pain of staying as you are becomes too big and you seriously start looking for a positive way forward. What to do about it: Besides waiting until the problem becomes pretty much unbearable you can try to see your future self vividly in your mind. Ask yourself: What will this lead to in 5 and 10 years? Where are you going? Towards massive debt, a heart attack, serious illness and severe restrictions in your future? Do you want go to that place where it is very likely that you will wind up if you don’t make a change? Then see your future self where you have made the positive change. What positive and awesome things has it brought you in 5 years and in 10 years? See it all in your mind. And remind yourself of the positive and negative consequences by writing them down and reviewing them whenever you feel like quitting and going back to your old ways. Vividly seeing the probably very real future consequences of not changing can be that nudge you need to get serious about improving something in your life. 6. You don’t know how to practically make the change. This is a common obstacle. Fortunately, we nowadays have the Internet so it’s a lot easier to find practical solutions to the problems many people have faced before you. What to do about it: Ask yourself what have other people before you or around you have done to improve their situation? Talk to people who have made the change you want to make (lose weight, quit smoking, improve the social life etc.). Or if you can’t find anyone, read the top rated books on Amazon.com on that topic or read blog articles. But make sure that you take advice from someone who has actually been in your shoes and gone where you want to go. Find a way that suits you. It may not be the first method or system you try. So be patient. Keep moving forward towards the things you want most in your life.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denemiles/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 If you have read this website for while then you know I like wise, funny and inspirational sayings from last few thousands of years. Because even though the world may have changed quite a bit during the years the timeless wisdom about life still often applies. So today I’d like to share 7 of my absolute favorite lessons that I have learned from other people. The lessons I have had most use of and that pop up in my head the most. 1. Andrew Carnegie on paying attention to the more important things. “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” I have to agree, I pay less and less attention to what people say. Because in the end, what someone does is the most important thing. Talking is easy, but walking your talk is harder. And walking it consistently even though you fall, slip back into old habits and make mistakes is a huge part of success. Now, talking and discussing what you want to do can be very helpful. But at some point you also follow that up and take action. And this is not just a good way to see people in a clear way. It’s also a good way to look at yourself more clearly. Because you can tell yourself and others all kinds of things all day. But what you are actually getting done shows a lot about who you are right now and how your future will look. 2. Carl Jung on what others may teach you about yourself. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” What we see in others is quite often what we see in ourselves. And what irritates us in people is may be what we don’t like in ourselves. What you judge in someone you are actually judging in yourself. Therefore what you notice and what irritates you in others can teach you important things about yourself. Things you may not be aware of. In a way people can be like a mirror for you. A mirror that can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself. 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson on facing your fear. “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” This is perhaps my favorite quote about fear. From a distance and in your mind things may seem very difficult and frightening. But when you actually step up and take action I think many of us have been surprised of how the beard of that bully just comes off. Why is that? Well, you can’t sit around think and waiting for courage and confidence to come knocking on the door. If you do, you may just experience the opposite effect. The more you think, the more fear you build within. We often build scary monsters in our heads. Maybe because of things we have learned from the news, the TV or the movies. Or we just think so much about something that our minds start to create totally unlikely horror scenarios of what may happen. As you may have noticed in your own life, 80-90 percent of what we worry about never really comes into reality. Instead things can become anticlimactic when we take action. The beard of the bully comes off surprisingly easy if we just step up and take action. And many times we get the courage we need after we have done what we feared. Not the other way around. 4. Wayne Dyer on taking responsibility for your life. “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” You can look for the next big thing that will fix you. Read more blog articles. Read more personal development books. Look for people to help. And yes, some articles or books or people will give you insights that resonate deeply with you. But in the end, if you are an adult then no one is coming. No one is coming to save you. You have to take responsibility for your own life and what happens in it. Other things and people can certainly aid you quite a bit. But you are responsible. You can go around blaming society or some people for your problems in your social life or finances or health. You can always find scapegoats to judge to feel better about yourself. For a while. You can look for people that will “fix you”. You can do this for the rest of your life if you like. It won’t change much. Whatever has to be done, it’s you who have to take responsibility and do it. Yeah, things might always not go your way and you will probably have bad luck from time to time. But you still have to focus on yourself and doing what you can do in whatever situation that may arise in the outside world. 5. Gandhi on being human. “I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.” “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.” When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different. So it’s important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are. And I think it’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you. It’s also important to remember this to avoid falling into the pretty useless habit of beating yourself up over mistakes that you have made. And instead be able to see with clarity where you went wrong and what you can learn from your mistake. And then try again. 6. Confucius on understanding. “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” This is very much true in my experience. You cannot understand something by reading about it on a blog or in a book. You may think you understand something. But it’s not until you try it in your own life that you know how it feels and you get the full experience. That is one of the reasons why it’s crucial that you take action. No matter how many books you read on a topic or how much you discuss it with people you need to add real life experience. It’s also in real life that you learn the quickest, because here you have access to great feedback like failure. 7. Mark Twain on doing what you want to do. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Awesome quote. And I really don’t have much to add to that one. Well, maybe to write it down and keep it as a daily reminder – on your fridge or bathroom door – of what you can actually do with your life. If you found this article helpful, please share it with someone on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/circo_de_invierno/ / CC BY 2.0 “Guilt is anger directed at ourselves.” Peter McWilliams Guilt. Although it can sometimes be a healthy signal that you have done something that goes against what you think is right and that you should change it can also become a huge and terrible thing makes life unnecessarily hard and heavy. So in this article I’ll share some tips that can help you to minimize guilt right now and prevent much of it in the future. I hope you’ll find something useful here that will make your life lighter and more enjoyable. Accept and let go of the feeling. If you are feeling guilty about not getting enough exercise, people you may not have had time for lately, missed opportunities, not sticking to your goals this year or something else then don’t reject that feeling. Instead, accept it. Tell yourself: “This is how I feel right now and I accept it”. This sounds counterintuitive and perhaps like you’re giving up. However by accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into this problem. It then tends to just kinda lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel. And oftentimes it becomes so weak after while that it just moves out of your inner focus and disappears. Find the actions you can take. Then take them. After you have accepted how you feel it becomes much easier to think clearly. Now, find the actions you can take to change what you are feeling guilty about. Shape up your diet starting tonight with a healthy dinner. Make a specific schedule where you exercise three times each week and your first workout is today. Catch up with people and reconnect with them. Find a system that keeps you consistent. So the first two tips can help you today. But it’s easy to fall back into your old behaviors after a while. To avoid that you can set up a system. This will take time and you will stumble. But the more you use it the easier and better it will stick. A few suggestions for that system would be: Write everything down. Ideas, meetings, you biggest goal(s). Keep those notes on paper, cell phones, white boards and your computer as reminders and inspiration so you stay on track with things like your career, social life and health. Use a limited to-do list. Do you have a to-do list? Think about what the absolutely most important items on the list are. Just two or three. Then put them on a new to-do list. This list will seem less daunting and I have found that it makes it easier to actually take action and get those most important things done. Set limits in your daily life. If your life is overfilled with stuff you may need to set some limits. You may need to stop doing some of the least important things, the things that if you are honest really don’t matter that much. And set a limit for how many times you will check inboxes etc. per day. Checking on stuff all the time creates a lot of stress. And say no if you really don’t have the time. By going about things this way you will have more time and energy for the things that you may feel guilty about missing too often right now. Be OK with being good but also being human. On one hand it’s great to challenge yourself and doing what you think is right or fun or exciting as much as you can. But on the other hand you have to balance that with being human. Take it easy on yourself. If you slip don’t beat yourself up. It’s not a big deal. Everyone slips from time to time. Just get back on the horse the next day again. But learn what you can so you don’t fall into the same hole or do the same mistake again. Striving for or expecting perfection can be pretty dangerous. Because you will never feel like you or what you do is good enough. Even though what you do, for example, is just fine 90 percent of the time you still feel deep inside like you are not OK. No matter what you do. You have set the bar at an inhuman level. If you expect perfection then your self esteem will stay low, your stress levels will shoot up and you will feel disappointed or guilty even though things may have indeed been very good overall. So stretch yourself. But remember that you are human. Finding that balance will make it easier to both to achieve things and to find enjoyment in your accomplishment. Live by your own standards rather than someone else´s. Who set your standards and values? Society, your parents or friends, media or advertising? Where did they come from? One big problem people run into with guilt is that that try to live up to standards that just don’t fit them or that are simply unrealistic. So question things, figure out where they came from. Then see if those standards and values serve you well. If not, then consciously choose your own human standards for all kinds of things rather than just accepting someone else’s standards. As an adult you have responsibility for yourself. But you also have the option to live your own life according to your own rules. Choosing and using that option can make life both a lot lighter and at the same time more productive and exciting. Forgive yourself. Perhaps you feel guilty about things in your past. Well, if you look at it from a very practical perspective then forgiveness is the smart thing to do. It saves you from a lot of pain. It makes you clearheaded again. Forgiveness centres you in the now and in yourself once again. You stop regretting what is already in the past. You stop feeding your thought loops of negativity with more energy. And now you can use that energy and focus that was previously spent strengthening those loops to start moving forward again. It might not always be easy to forgive. But it has many big benefits. And personally I would be a bit wary of playing up forgiveness and what happened more than necessary. Many of our challenges – not all, of course – become so large and complicated in our heads that we build huge, monumental problems. Making mountains out of molehills is a good way to strengthen a victim mentality. It’s an effective way to paralyse yourself. Instead, focus on forgiving yourself for what happened in the past. You are only human and you cannot change the past anyway. By forgiving yourself you can over time release that pent up guilt and let it go. If you found this article helpful, please share it with someone on Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabiovenni/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” Henry James “Be kind to unkind people – they need it the most.” Ashleigh Brilliant “Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” Mother Teresa This is a short guide to being a kinder person. It’s not always easy though and I focus on being more consistent rather than trying to be perfect. But why even make the effort to be kinder? What’s the point? Why not just go about things as you usually do? Three reasons pop up in my mind. By being kinder to others you tend to be kinder towards yourself. Perhaps a bit counter intuitive but this has been my experience. You get what you give. Yes, some people will be miserable and ungrateful no matter what you do for or to them. But most people will over time treat you as you treat them. Unfortunately, a lot of people will not take the first step. So if you want a change in your life you have to take responsibility for it and make those first moves. Sitting around waiting for someone else to do them could take the rest of your life. It makes your world and the world all in all a nicer place to live in. So that’s the why. Here is the how to. Be grateful for what you got. It’s very easy to take yourself, your life and the people around you for granted. Avoid that by using two minutes from time to time for reflecting on what you can be grateful for. Or write it down each day in a gratitude journal. Express it. Don’t hold in what you are grateful for. Say it. It may be that you are happy to have brought an umbrella on a rainy day. Or just a small thing such as saying thanks to someone for holding your books for a minute. But even such small expressions of gratitude can make your or someone else’s day better. Minimize judgments. No one likes to be judged. And the more you judge people the more you tend to judge yourself. So it’s a lose-lose situation. Take it easy with the criticism. Constructive criticism has its place. But too much of that or criticism that won’t help anyone just makes people feel and perform worse. Try encouraging them instead. It makes work and the people involved – including you – easier to deal with and more fun. Try to understand the other side. It’s easy to stick to your point of view. But you can gain powerful insights about the other person and yourself too by trying to understand their point of view. This also tends to decrease harshness and negativity and can make it easier to reach an understanding where both parties feel more satisfied with the solution. Make positive observations about people. This is pretty similar to being grateful for what you got but a habit I like to keep in mind and use. Replace the habit of spotting the things that annoy you about people with one where you make small or big positive observations about them. It could be their great sense of style when it comes to shoes, how they always make you laugh when you need it or simply that they are always on time. Be sure to tell them that. Remember the small and kind gestures. Let someone in into your lane while driving your car. And hold up the door for the next person. Remind yourself. It’s easy to forget. Use whiteboards, your cell phone, post-its and other reminders in your daily environment. Awash yourself in the positive memories of the times when you were kind. When you remind yourself how good it felt to be kind and how you helped someone out and made them feel good too it becomes easier and easier to stay kind instead of questioning the habit. Take the smarter and higher road. Don’t be someone the people can walk all over, set boundaries and say no when needed. But recognize that unnecessary conflicts just waste your time and energy. And that some people are so addicted to the drama and conflicts that you will never win or reach an understanding between the two of you. There are more fun and good things to spend time on in your life. So try to reach an understanding in a kind sort of way. But if it doesn’t work then remove yourself from getting drawn into their conflicts and make the day better for both you and possibly them. Be kind to yourself. It’s OK and something that a lot of people don’t do enough. And it seeps over into your world and how you treat others just like how being kind to others seeps back into how you treat yourself. If you found this article helpful, please share it with someone on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

“Nobody will think you're somebody if you don't think so yourself.” African-American proverb “Self-love is not opposed to the love of others.” Dr. Karl Menninger “Happiness is: Looking in a mirror and like what you see .” Author Unknown People have a need for affection and being liked. But it’s very easy to make a mistake here and go about it the wrong way. Because while trying to get others to like you may seem like a simple and common solution there is an alternative. One that I find works better. It is to focus on liking yourself more rather than trying to get people to like you. Here are six reasons why I put my focus in that place. And after that a brief guide to how you can increase how much you like yourself. 1. Liking yourself gives you power and strength. If you go for trying to get people to like you you’ll most likely come off as needy and desperate a lot of the time. This is a bad position to put yourself in. Because liking and respecting yourself goes hand in hand with people liking and respecting you. If you bend to other people all the time then they may like what you do for them. But they may not like you on a deeper level because there is a weakness and lack of confidence and personal power there. 2. People like people who like themselves. What is attractive to a friend, an employer or a potential partner? To me, it seems like a lot of this boils down to people liking people who like themselves. Someone who likes him/herself is positive, confident, takes care of his/her health and opportunities in school/at work/in life. 3. More inner stability, much less of an emotional rollercoaster. Getting compliments and being liked is wonderful. The problem is just that if you rely too much on validation from others then you let the outside world, other people, control how you feel. And that can be a real roller coaster. Because if you really need the positive validation from people then it’s hard to avoid listening to their negative input. Or you may feel bad when there is a temporary lack in the validation. So what do you do? You let go of focusing on needing that input and replace it with focusing on validating and liking yourself instead. 4. Life becomes more fun and relaxing. If you like yourself then it becomes natural to just be your best self and let people like the real you. Doing the opposite and trying to get people to like you leads to a lack of honesty in any kind of relationship and life becomes a like walking on egg shells while using different masks with different people. 5. What you think and feel about yourself flows over. The more you like yourself, the easier it becomes to like, help and be kind to other people. How much you like or do not like yourself flows over into your world. 6. You minimize self sabotage. If you don’t like yourself, if you deep down don’t really think you deserve what you go after then you will tend to sabotage for yourself. Perhaps in subtle ways. You may get a gut feeling that this success is wrong and so you start doing stuff that screws things up. If you like yourself there will be a lot less self made obstacles in your mind to overcome on your path to success. How to like yourself more So, the benefits sound pretty good. But how do you go about changing how you feel about yourself? Here is a brief but in my experience very effective guide that works in real life. Do the right thing. I write about this a lot. That’s because it’s simple thing to keep in mind and if you live it then it can bring your awesome results. When you do what you think is the right thing then your self esteem goes up. If you just coast then you tend to feel kinda lame about yourself. So do awesome stuff and you feel awesome about yourself. Do OK stuff and feel OK about yourself. This is not always an easy thing. But people who do the right thing get fine inner rewards (and often outer rewards too). What you do tends to correspond to what you get in the long run. What is the right thing? Well, that’s up to you to decide and it can vary from life to life and situation to situation. Some of the things I think is the right thing to do is to keep my life in order and organized, to workout regularly and take care of my health, to be positive and open, to spend time doing things I really like doing, to get out of my comfort zone and face fears and to be a person of action. When you do the right thing you like yourself more and so the self sabotage decreases. The standards you set for yourself flows over to your world too. What you accept or don’t accept from yourself is what you tend to accept or not accept from other people. And what you think and do to the world around you – for example being judgmental or being open and kind – is how you tend to think about yourself and treat yourself too. Don’t take yourself for granted or focus on the wrong things. Appreciate yourself. What you do or do not do has a huge effect on how you view yourself and how much you like yourself. But what you focus on in your mind is also important. Because if you do good things but then focus on small faults or failures then that won’t help you. So make a habit of focusing on appreciating the good things about yourself. Take two minutes right now to think about positive things about you or good things you have done and accomplished. Or take a few minutes tonight to write down five good things about yourself in a journal. This extends to what you focus on in the world around you too. Because as I mentioned in the previous tip, what you focus on in the people around you tends to be how you see and treat yourself. So you may want to add five or ten things that you appreciate about the people around you to those journal entries and two minute appreciation sessions. The more you do things like these, the more this kind of thinking will naturally pop up in your everyday life too. You are changing how you think about yourself and what you have a tendency to focus on.

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” Brian Tracy One big problem that I used to run into is that you simply don’t seem to be able to get started with making a change. You want to make a change but feel stuck. You don’t seem to be able to take action and start moving. If you feel this is a challenge for you then here’s what I have done to get out of such a place. Perhaps you’ll find something useful in my experience. Do a reality check. It’s actually pretty simple to get started. Even if you feel stuck. It may however not be as easy as you wish and there lies a problem. Making a change isn’t that easy and it will require effort. You have to accept that. And work from that model of reality. If you think that things will fall into your lap effortlessly or by some kind or magic then any effort or action will feel so hard and difficult that you will probably not even try. Or if you try and fail, you’ll just quit instead of trying again. So check your reality. Are you looking for an easy answer or a magic pill? Or will you work hard while at the same time listening to advice that can help to make the process easier and allow you to work smarter? A few tips for finding a view of reality that will help you: 1. What have other people before you or around you done to improve their situation? Ask yourself this question. Talk to people who have made the change you want to make (lose weight, quit smoking, improve the social life etc.). Or if you can’t find anyone, read the top rated books on Amazon.com on that topic or read blog articles. But make sure that you take advice from someone who has actually been in your shoes and gone where you want to go. 2. How much work am I putting in? It’s very easy to be a bit delusional about how much actual work you are putting to make that change. Instead of guesstimating, ask yourself this question and be honest and measure it. Log what you spend your time on during a week. It’s not uncommon that you need to put in more work than you may think to make that change. And that you doing a bit less actual work than you think. 3. Realize that you are responsible for your life. I really like this quote from Nathaniel Branden’s The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: “No one is coming”. You can look for the next big thing that will fix you. Read more blog articles. Read more personal development books. Look for people to help you. And yes, some articles or books or people will give you support and insights that resonate deeply with you. But in the end, if you are an adult then no one is coming. No one is coming to save you. You have to take responsibility for your own life and what happens in it. Other things and people can certainly aid you quite a bit. But you are responsible. You can go around blaming society or some people for your problems in your social life (or finances or health). You can always find scapegoats to judge to feel better about yourself. You can look for people that will “fix you”. You can do this for the rest of your life if you like. It won’t change much. Whatever has to be done, it’s you who have to take responsibility and do it. Yeah, things might always not go your way and you will probably have bad luck from time to time. But you still have to focus on yourself and doing what you can do in whatever situation that may arise in your world. 4. If you have a really serious problem, seek professional help. This is also a part of doing a reality check. How serious is your problem or challenge? There is a difference between getting a bit nervous before a meeting at work or a date and having a big panic attack and feeling like you can’t breathe or are about to faint. If you have a serious problem, then please seek professional help. The advice on this blog is for small or medium sized problems (at least as I experience it). If you have a really bad problem then the advice here or on other blog or in books may still help you a bit. But I still believe that best option in such situations is to seek professional help. Perhaps one on one counseling with someone with vast experience, someone that comes highly recommended. Get out of your comfort zone. Doing a reality check isn’t that fun all the time. If you are anything like I was you may have noticed that you aren’t putting in enough work or that you aren’t really taking responsibility for your life. So it can be an uncomfortable thing to do. After you have gotten a more accurate picture of what needs to be done you need to do it. This requires moving out of your comfort zone in real life and not just while sitting comfortably on your sofa. I don’t think there is much one can do to avoid discomfort when making a change. Yes, you can lessen the discomfort and you can make it easier for yourself. But trying to avoid it completely is one thing that makes people go running around in circles for magic pills and leaves them stuck with little actual progress to show. That’s why you need to do a reality check. You can’t make much progress or live life fully if you live in fantasy world where everything is supposed to be painless and easy. Now, there are some things you can do to make it easier to get out of your comfort zone and start taking action. 1. Make one small change. If you try to change many habits at the same time for example then that will probably fail. You will spread yourself too thin and run out of energy and time as regular life starts to interfere. Focus on changing one habit at a time. And if you have trouble making a big change then start with a smaller one. It’s better to make small changes little by little in real life than walking around in endless daydreams of drastic and incredible change that never comes. As you make one small positive change your confidence goes up and it becomes easier to make the next change. And over the months and this year and the next you can make a lots and lots of progress. Let’s say you want to be less nervous and awkward in social situations. To solve that you can take small steps. Steps like first just saying hi to people. And being more involved in conversations at work or in school to exercise your conversation muscles. After a while those things will feel more comfortable. And so you can expand your comfort zone a little bit more. And so you gradually desensitize yourself to social situations or whatever you are uncomfortable with. You make it the new “normal” for you. So, identify your problem. Then make a plan with some smaller steps you can take to gradually lessen your discomfort. 2. Make it social. Sign up for a course in something so you have to be there each Thursday and learn. Locking in this time into your schedule probably makes you more likely to show up than if you will do “some self-studies sometime when you get the time”. If you are going to a party where you know few people then it may be easier to bring a friend. If you have decided to start going to the gym it might be easier to actually get going and keep going there every week if you have a gym-partner. However, there are potential downsides to bringing friends too. If you are at the party with your friend then you might not meet and get to know that many new people. If you are going to the gym with a partner it might lead to the two of you talking and focusing less on getting a great workout. But try it out and find what works for you. By involving more people and/or signing up for courses somewhere you will feel commitment to people you like and a bit of positive social pressure to actually go there when you are supposed to instead of slacking off on the sofa. 3. Ask yourself questions that changes your perspective. If it feels uncomfortable to do something then I find that I can often reduce that by changing how I think about it in my mind. I do so by asking myself better questions. Question like: What’s awesome about this? Will this matter in 5 years? Honestly, am I overcomplicating and overthinking this? Sounds a bit silly perhaps. But by providing better questions you can get more positive answers out of yourself. And you replace destructive thought loops in your mind that can paralyze you from taking action with a healthier and a bit more relaxed perspective. 4. Focus on the positive past. Realize that it can be fun to get out of your comfort zone despite what your mind and feelings might be telling you before you get started. Think back to the previous times when you have broken out of your comfort zone. Focus on the positive memories, when you got out there, when you took a chance. And you will probably remember that it wasn’t so bad, it was actually fun and exciting and something new to you. A lot of times we automatically play back negative experiences – or negative interpretations of events – in our minds before we are about to do something. And we forget about the positive memories and our previous, positive achievements. Avoid that trap. Let the good memories flow through your mind instead. Final words. If you are here then you have probably heard about this blog from a friend or perhaps you had a problem that you wanted to solve and found it via Google. If you are here then you probably want to make a positive change in your life in some way. You may still need time to get started with that. Perhaps you haven’t had enough yet and not reached a point where you know deep down that you really need to get started with making that change now. If that is the case then this article will be here when you are ready, when you one day wake up and say to yourself “That’s enough! I’m sick of this and I’m getting started with changing this today”. If you are ready now then get started. Use the advice in this article to start making your 2010 the best year ever.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23912576@N05/ / CC BY 2.0 “He who knows others is learned; He who knows himself is wise.” Lao-tzu Who are you? What is your daily and weekly life really about? Those not always easy questions to answer. So today I’d like to share three tips that have helped me to get to know myself a bit better and to see my life more accurately. 1. What part of you do you see in them? What we see in others is quite often what we see in ourselves. And what irritates us in people may be what we don’t like in ourselves. What you judge in someone you are actually judging in yourself. Therefore what you notice and what irritates you in others can teach you important things about yourself. Things you may not be aware of. In a way people can be like a mirror for you. A mirror that can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself. So, what people generally irritate you? What do you often judge or criticize people for? What can that tell you about you? 2. Do the unusual thing. When faced with a choice in your daily life, step back for a minute and think. Then take the option that is and feels unusual for you. If you often back down just don’t for this one time. If you often get into arguments with people then just this one time don’t and instead just let it go or treat the other person with kindness. Do the opposite of what you usually do and see what happens (while using common sense of course). Do something new and something you wouldn’t expect from yourself. This is a fun and great way to get new experiences and to learn things about the world and about yourself that you wouldn’t if you kept going like you usually do. It’s also a great way to be surprised about life as things often turn out more positively than in your fear filled daydreams if you just take action. Getting stuck in the same old routine until it becomes a rut can suck the life out of you. Doing the unusual thing in small and big situations, no matter how it goes, is a great way to feel alive again and to reveal aspects of yourself that may have been hidden from you. 3. Journal. Journaling is a fine way to get a more accurate picture of yourself and your life. A few ways that I have used journaling to get to know myself and my life are: Journal about how you use your time. Just write down what you do during one day. Or during one week. Write down what you spend your time on and how much time you spend on each thing. You may, as me, be surprised about how much time you waste on procrastinating and pretty pointless busy work. Even if you may have an image of yourself as an effective person. Journal about what you think. What do you think about during a normal day? Or a week? Write it all down. By doing so you can find recurring patterns of thought such as fears or maybe that you spend a lot of time regretting what happened in the past. Or you may find that you are actually a more positive person than you may think. This is a really interesting exercise because it can help you spot both positive things and negative things about yourself and just how accurate your current image of yourself is. You’ll probably run into some surprises. Journal about what you eat. I used this to lose weight. If you want to lose weight you have to consume less calories that you use. So how do you know what to eat and how much? You got to monitor it in some way. I used the free and very simple Fitday.com to monitor what I eat during the day. This is essential stuff. Because the three normal and most of the time actually pretty healthy meals I ate in the past consisted of the same amount of calories I used during the day. So little progress was made. To keep things within effective and healthy limits I think it’s important to monitor what you do. But not to get obsessed about these things though. The main point is to keep an eye on what you are actually doing instead of guesstimating a whole lot. If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

“He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.” Marcus Aurelius “Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake.” Paramahansa Yogananda Finding peace within is a wonderful but also a difficult thing. It is easy to go looking for it in the wrong places. So here are 5 timeless thoughts to help guide you to the places where you can actually find it. 1. Simplify. “The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace. A persistent simplification will create an inner and outer well-being that places harmony in one's life.” Peace Pilgrim Making thing simpler has certainly brought a lot of inner peace to my life. So, a few of my favorite suggestions on how to simplify your life: Use a limited to-do list. Only 2 or 3 of the most important things. Set limits. Set limits for daily checking of inboxes. I do it only once a day. Set time limits for small decisions and make them within seconds after you have thought about them to avoid procrastination and overthinking. Set time limits for tasks such as 15 minutes each day for answering emails or for using Twitter. Set a limit for commitments and say no to be able to feel less stress and produce better results. Remember to “keep things extremely simple”. I have written down that sentence on my white board and it is a daily and constant reminder that helps me when I lose my way. 2. Accept. “Acceptance of others, their looks, their behaviors, their beliefs, bring you an inner peace and tranquility – instead of anger and resentment.” Unknown When you accept what is you stop feeding energy into resisting what is. You don’t make a problem more powerful and sticky in your mind. Instead, somewhat counter intuitively, when you accept what is it loses much of its power. It just is. And you feel stillness inside. Now, accepting what is doesn’t mean to give up. It just means that you put yourself in a better position take action if necessary. Because now you can see more clearly, you can focus your energy towards what you want and take the appropriate action to change your situation. 3. Forgive. “Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.” Gerald Jampolsky By accepting what is it is much easier to let go of things and to forgive what has happened. Forgiveness is important because as long as you don’t forgive someone you are linked to that person. Your thoughts will return to the person who wronged you and what s/he did over and over again. The emotional link between the two of you is so strong and inflicts much suffering in you and – as a result of your inner turmoil – most often in other people around you too. When you forgive you do not only release the other person. You set yourself free too from all of that agony. One thing to keep in mind is to not just forgive others but also yourself. By forgiving yourself – instead of resenting yourself for something you did a week or 10 years ago – you make the habit of forgiveness more and more of a natural part of you. And so forgiving others becomes easier too. Also, what you think is a question of forgiving others you may sometimes – after some time and inner struggle – discover is just as much, if not more, about forgiving yourself rather than the other person. 4. Do what you enjoy . “Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you'll have more success than you could possibly have imagined.” Roger Caras When you do what you enjoy there is a natural peace that arises within. You are in alignment with your outer world. This also leads to a lot more success than if you have a lot of inner turmoil and really don’t care that much for your work. One of my favorite tips for finding things you enjoy or love doing is simply to explore life. To be curious and try things out and see what you think of them. This can bring many insights both about yourself and about how things really are when you do them rather than when they are just theories floating around in your head. 5. Be careful with your inner peace. “Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” St. Francis de Sales By using the tips above and by living in the present moment you can find a lot more inner peace. Not only during days when things go as planned. But also on days when your world is upset and things aren’t so easy. On such days your inner peace will be very useful to help you make good decisions and to get things done. So be smart, stay calm and be careful with your inner peace.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cowboyneal/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 “The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” Marcus Aurelius “No one can give you better advice than yourself.” Cicero People like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca may have died thousands of years ago. But what they spoke about back then is still helpful today. Our outer circumstances may have changed dramatically over the last few thousands of years, but on the inside we seem to have stayed pretty much the same in many ways. So here are seven of my favorite tips from the streets and palaces of ancient Rome. 1. It’s just a perspective. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” Marcus Aurelius This is very important to remember. Not only to be able to chill out instead of getting into crazy fights and conflicts about any kind of issue in your daily life. But also to stay open to different perspectives that can help improve your life instead of getting really defensive and never be able to admit that there may be a an even better way. By keeping this mind open you become more accepting of other people and their perspectives and thoughts. And it becomes easier to see and find common ground instead of getting your focus stuck on differences. 2. You don’t have to create anger and other negative feelings. “A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.” Seneca Sometimes it is of course necessary to bring up and resolve a conflict. Often though, conflicts or quarrels are just a waste of time and a good way to create negativity within and in your environment. Perhaps someone wants to be right. Or release pent up emotions created elsewhere. Avoid taking such bait by others or giving in to temporary negativity in yourself. Just let it go. 3. Will more solve your problems? “For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.” “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” “What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.” ~ Seneca Society is to a large degree built on getting more. Of course, to a degree this is very useful. But it may not be the thing that will solve all your problems. You may not find your answer or happiness in more. It may just alter your troubles and problems. And/or give you more of them. What is already there inside of you perhaps gets highlighted and magnified when you get more. Instead of getting whatever you want when finally making all that money your wanted you may find that greed, jealousy and selfishness within you and in your world increases. You may have thought that when you finally arrived at that place your problems would just disappear. But the ego always wants more and is never satisfied. So trying to fill yourself up with more – money, power, smartness, prettiness, a feeling of being more enlightened than others – and then finally becoming happy may become like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. 4. Be patient. “Patience is the greatest of all virtues.” Cato the Elder When I met people in real life and tell them about this blog they sometimes wonder how one can build a website with so many readers. I guess different people have different answers. Mine always includes being patient. I think that is one of the key factors why this blog has become pretty popular. I have just been patient and have seen it grow, sometimes slowly and sometimes very quickly. I think people often make the mistake of giving up too early. Your mind probably has what it thinks is a reasonable timeframe for success. This might not correspond to a realistic timeframe though. It’s useful to take a break from advertised perspectives – “You can double your income/lose 30 pounds in a just 30 days!” – and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give you a complete plan but a clearer perspective of what is needed to achieve what you want. 5. Laugh “It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.” “No one is laughable who laughs at himself.” ~ Seneca Taking things too seriously can make life a lot harder and painful than it needs to be. It may be a common or “normal” way to look at things. But you are always free to choose how to view, react and think about things. Taking things and yourself less seriously can really help you to decrease conflicts, anger, sadness and anxiety. And laughing at life and yourself releases tension and tends to make you less susceptible to the gray and dreary clouds of negativity that may plague others. Check out Lighten Up! for more on this. 6. Focus on clearing your own fields. “It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others, and to forget his own … You can't clear your own fields while you're counting the rocks on your neighbor's farm.” Cicero What someone says about you may not be much of a reflection of you but of the person that said it. This is a good thing to remember whenever someone is saying something negative about you. It is even more useful to remember whenever you feel negatively about someone else. It can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself. It can be a reminder to go back to focusing on what needs to be cleared on your own fields. 7. Focus on doing what you think and feel is right. “We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them” Cato the Elder “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” Marcus Aurelius “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.” Marcus Aurelius By letting go of the things that don’t really matter that much and instead focusing on what YOU think about things and doing what YOU think is the right thing you can save a whole bunch of time and improve your results and your self esteem. Doing so will also raise your sense of what you deserve in life, something that is vital to be able to go after what you want and to avoid self sabotage halfway to achieving your goal. All of this will raise your opinion of yourself and you start to realize that what someone else says simply doesn’t make matter that much anymore (a welcome relief for sure). Now, this may sound selfish. And it is. And that is OK. Because by improving your own life and making yourself stronger you are in a much better position to both help other people and yourself. And you may realize that what is most important in your life is something that can help other people too. Win-win is a pretty great solution.

“If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.” George F. Burns One good life skill is to be able to chill out. To be calm in negative situations and not overreact about all kinds of things. Or invent big, big problems in your mind – or create them in your world as you drag other people in through arguments – by making mountains out of molehills. By being able to chill out when needed to you will: Have a lot less stress, worry and pointless conflicts with other people. Waste less of your time on things that aren’t really that useful. Attract what you are. To be able to draw people who are more relaxed and positive about life into your life then you have to be that person yourself. People like to hang out with people who are like them (because it’s comfortable, because it brings more fun and success, because people have 24 hours in a day and so choices need to be made). Being someone that can be cool and relaxed about things is a positive and attractive social quality for any kind of relationship. So how do you do it? Well, here are four good tips: 1. Ask yourself if this even really matters. By asking yourself the wrong questions you can make any little thing into a huge problem. By asking yourself better questions you can see things from a more helpful perspective. Who cares? Very simple. Asking yourself this makes you realize that no, this isn’t a big deal to fuss or worry about. Will this matter 5 years from now? If you ask yourself this question you will discover that if you put something into a more healthy perspective then few things matter that much. 2. Get a life. If you find yourself sitting around too much and not having enough to do then it’s very easy to get stuck in thought loops and go into a downward spiral. Simply by filling your life with more fun activities and people you can become a lot more relaxed and less prone to overreacting about the little things. So spend less time analyzing life and more time living and exploring it in whatever way you’d like. By doing so you are also often confronted with having to expand your comfort zones and perhaps face a fear. This leads to better self confidence and less fretting about if you can handle things that may come up. 3. What would someone else do? This is a good way to find a new and more useful perspective. You simply ask yourself what someone else would do in your situation. Maybe you ask yourself: What would Winnie the Pooh do? What would James Bond do? What would mom or dad do? The point is to play around and find a new perspective and drag yourself out of your current negative, stressed and confused headspace and see things in another light. Just doing that can often help you to calm down, realize that this isn’t a huge deal and help you to find a solution that you can apply. 4. Remember to keep things extremely simple. At the very top of the whiteboard on my wall I have written down: “Keep things extremely simple”. This is a very useful thing to remind yourself of throughout any day. Whenever I feel I am making a thing bigger or more complicated than it is or I simply become confused or negative in some way I can look at the wall (or remember that sentence if I’m not at home) to help guide my thoughts back into a constructive and calm place.

“There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation.” James Nathan Miller “If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.” Winston Churchill One of the most common problems that people may run into in conversations – based on my own experiences, emails/comments I get and feedback from people in real life – is that their heads go empty and they don’t know what to say next. The conversation stalls and there is even perhaps an uncomfortable silence. So how can you overcome this challenge? Here's what I do. Why does this problem even come up? First, here’s my short explanation why you might run into this problem. One reason might be that you are simply not prepared or out of your “regular world” (meaning for example that you go to a party to watch the finals in the world championship in rugby but know nothing about the sport while the other people are huge fans). But a more common reason why you may run into this problem is that you feel that you need to say the “right thing”. You may want to not want to appear stupid by saying the wrong things or asking the wrong question. Or you want to impress someone. Bonus: Download a free step-by-step cheatsheet that will show you how to avoid this syndrome in your own life (it's easy to save as a PDF or print out for whenever you need it during your day or week). 1. You don’t have to be perfect. Realize that you don’t always have to have the best answer or say the perfect thing. No one is expecting that except you. Setting such ridiculous expectations just screws with your mind and improves nothing. Instead it can lead to a sort of performance anxiety that winds up paralyzing your mind. And so you don’t know what to say next. 2. Don’t think too much. When you think too much you tend to have your focus inwards. You become self conscious, start to question yourself and fear what the future may bring. You get stuck between options for what to say and nothing comes out. If you instead bring your awareness back the present moment you shift your focus outwards again. You notice what the people you are talking to are actually saying, what is happening in your conversation and around you. This is the natural headspace stay in when you’re in a conversation. It’s a place where you probably are most of the time with your closest friends and family. So how do you get into this comfortable and social headspace? Breathe or observe. The simplest way to reconnect with the now is to just focus on your breathing or to observe and take in your surroundings with all your senses for just a minute. Assume rapport. Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport). How do you do that? Just before the meeting, you just think/pretend that you’ll be meeting a good friend. Then you’ll naturally slip into a more comfortable, confident and enjoyable emotional state and frame of mind. In this state of mind conversation tends to flow more naturally without much thinking. Just like with your friends. You may want to do a combination of breathing to relax if you feel tense and stressed and then you assume rapport to bring yourself into an even more positive headspace. Going straight from nervous to assuming rapport successfully may be too big of a leap. 3. Tap into curiosity. When you are stuck in some kind of negative emotional state then you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. Curiosity on the other hand is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your nervousness or fear. So be curious. But when you are curious, don’t get stuck in the questions game where the conversation turns into an interrogation. Mix the questions up with making statements. Instead of asking what someone’s favorite film is just tell them what your favorite one is and the let them continue from that statement. 4. Associate. Find something in what you are already talking about to help you move into the next topic. The topic of fishing lure commercials on TV can help you bounce over to the time you and your uncle got trapped in boat without fuel while fishing. And then you and the people in the conversation can go on to talking about family or the oil problems the world is facing. You can also find inspiration for topics by simply observing your surroundings. 5. Prepare. The tips above should help you out but if you get really stuck anyway then you may want prepare and have a few topics in your mental backpocket. The person you are talking to. Again, curiosity is good because people like to talk about themselves. Passions. People love to share positive emotions and usually like to know what makes the other person tick. Watercooler topics and the news. It never hurts to be updated on what’s happening in the world. 6. Do the right thing. This is more of a long-term solution but it makes conversations and just about anything easier and makes your life flow in a natural way. If your thoughts and actions aren’t in harmony then you don’t feel so good about yourself. You feel like you are disappointing yourself and your self esteem sinks. If you on the other hand do what you deep down think is the right thing as much as you can then you feel like you deserve good things in life (and so the need to impress anyone significantly decreases). You feel confident and alive. This does of course come through in a major way in any interaction. Here’s the next step… Now, you may think to yourself: “This is really helpful information. But what’s the easiest way to put this into practice and actually make a real change so I don't get stuck in this kind of situation again?” Well, I’ve got something special for you… A free step-by-step cheatsheet that includes all the steps in this article… save it or print it out so you have it for your daily life and for the next time when you're worried that you'll don't know what to say. Download it now by entering your email below. Image at the start of the article by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caste/ / CC BY-SA 2.0