I'm not much of a jealous guy. I feel jealousy sometimes but it often passes pretty quickly and without the almost burning intensity some people seem to experience. Still, I have of course thought about this problem and found a few ways to overcome it when it arises within. Hopefully this article can help you to decrease this destructive feeling in your life. Stop comparing yourself to others. 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, 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 jealous of what the other guy has that you haven't. Develop an abundance mentality. Jealousy often seems to come from a perceived scarcity in some area of your life. Maybe you feel jealous because someone else got the job you wanted. Or because someone else got the opportunity that you had hoped for. Perhaps you are feeling jealous because you are afraid of losing something and feel that if you do then you have hit rock bottom. Comparing yourself to others seems to be a symptom of this belief of scarcity. And you feel jealous because someone else has gotten one of those scarce things or opportunities that you wanted. 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 jealousy, 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 develop an abundance mentality. An abundance mentality tells you that there are always new chances and opportunities. That there are always new business opportunities to find, new tests in school to take and new people to date/make friends with. This 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. An abundance mentality allows you to feel more of an inner emotional freedom and it makes you more relaxed and positive. I believe that developing an abundance mentality is the most important step in reducing or overcoming jealousy because when you feel that there is always an abundance then there is little to feel jealous about. And whenever you feel jealousy starting to creep in you can stop or drastically reduce its power over you by switching your focus from the scarcity to the abundance in the world. Surrender. And develop a habit of not identifying so much with your thoughts and emotions. Although just switching my focus to the abundance usually seems to work to overcome jealousy I thought I'd share another way to has also been helpful. This method is useful if you have been carrying the negative emotion for a while and don't seem to be able to get rid of it. And it's basically this: stop fighting your jealousy. Surrender to it instead and just accept it. This may sound counter-intuitive. But the thing is that you are feeding the emotional loop with more energy by resisting the emotion. When you surrender to the emotion and let it in then you stop feeding it. And it goes away. Here's one practical way of doing this: Say yes to the feeling. Surrender and let it in. Observe the feeling in your mind and body without labelling or judging it. If you let it in – for me the feeling then often seems to physically locate itself to the middle of my chest – and just observe it for maybe a minute or two the feeling just vanishes. I would also recommend to not identify so much with your thoughts and emotions. This basically means that you realize, learn and remember that you are not your thoughts or emotions. You are the one observing them. They are just things passing through you. If you learn to identify less with your thoughts and emotions then you don't have to do the exercise above so often. You just accept your thoughts and feelings in a more automatic way and let them pass without getting all wrapped up in them. Think about what's in it for you. I don't know if this pretty analytical method works for a lot of people. But I have found it 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 behavior 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. Asking yourself what is in it for you is a good way to find distance from your thoughts and behavior and to motivate yourself to just drop the less useful stuff whenever you can. Think about what your jealousy is telling you. This is an interesting and useful way to look at jealousy. As I wrote a few days ago – in Epictetus' Top 7 Timeless Pearls of Wisdom – what you think and feel about the world can often tell you quite a bit about yourself. So thinking about what your jealousy tells you about yourself can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself. Think about what is reflected when you feel jealous of someone else. Is a fear of rejection? Of not being good enough? Or a fear that you will lose something/someone/some part of yourself you feel very attached to? If so, why are you feeling so attached? Try to find a solution or help – from books, people, the internet etc. – for whatever fear or belief within you that you think is making you feel the jealousy. Ask yourself: what can the jealousy reveal to me? How can I grow from this insight?

Now, who is Epictetus you may ask? He was a Greek philosopher that lived about 1900 years ago. When he was young he was a slave in Rome but was later released and started to teach philosophy first in Rome and later on in Greece. Epictetus was somewhat of a lonesome minimalist. He lived with few possessions and by himself for a long time. He also seems to never have written anything, but luckily his thoughts were recorded by his pupil Arrian. Here are seven excellent pearls of wisdom from Epictetus. If you are going your own way, prepare for reactions. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” Besides being a funny quote I believe it is very relevant to self-improvement. 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. Much of these reactions are probably not so much about you but about the person who said it and his/her life. How they feel about themselves is shining through in the words they use and judgements they make. 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. You choose to be insulted. “It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.” What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may be a “normal” or a common to react to different things. But that mostly just all it is. You can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions to pretty much everything. You don't have to freak out, overreact of even react in a negative way. Perhaps not every time or instantly. Sometimes a knee-jerk reaction just goes off. Or an old thought habit kicks in. But as you realize that no-one outside of yourself can actually control how you feel you can start to incorporate this thinking into your daily life and develop it as a thought habit. A habit that you can grow stronger and stronger over time. Doing this makes life a whole lot easier and more pleasurable. Forget about what you think you know. “It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.” 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. So whenever you want to learn anything it may be a good tip to disregard as much as possible of what you think you know. 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. :) Listen. “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” This is a useful piece of advice in just about any interaction. It's useful when learning something new. And it's helpful just while in a regular conversation. It's not always easy to stick to it though. Sometimes you get too excited about something to keep quiet. Sometimes you just want to brag or recount what happened. Having the attention of all the other people feels good. So how do you get around this habit of hogging the spotlight? One useful way is to just forget about yourself. Focus your attention outward instead of inward in a conversation. Place the mental focus on the person you are talking and listening to instead of yourself. Placing the focus outside of yourself makes you less self-centred and your need to hog the spotlight decreases. If you start to actually listen to what people are saying it also becomes easier to find potential paths in the conversation. By asking open-ended questions – the ones that will give you more than a yes or no answer – you can explore these paths and have better and more fun conversations. Appreciate what you have. “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” One good way to live a miserable life is to constantly focus on what you don't have. If you appreciate what you have you'll find everyday life more pleasurable. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't focus on what you want. To me it's more about focusing on what you want and not keeping your focus in a more popular place: on what you lack. This will make it easier to get what you want since you always seem to notice and receive more of whatever you focus you mind upon. Notice what is reflected. “When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.” I really like this one because I've become more and more interested in how we relate to each other. Like how 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's also useful to remember whenever you feel negatively about someone else. It can not only help you forget about your negative emotion. It can also help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself. 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.” Suffering is optional. And so is happiness. What you choose to think about determines how you feel. Now, again, it may be “normal” and common to go through a lot of mind-made suffering after the initial pain that ignited the suffering. And it's easy to slip back into old thoroughly ingrained thought habits. 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. 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, that you don't have to identify with them their power over you fades and vanishes quicker than if you had identified with them completely.

As humans we tend to spend a lot of time in the past or the future. We spend much time thinking about what was and what could have been. And we spend much time projecting into the future and wondering about what may happen. This way of thinking is indeed a great way to make much of your life a lot more miserable and limited than necessary. The key to solving this problem is of course to live as much as you can in the only moment that you ever really live in and control. This moment right now. The moment that is all there ever was and – probably :) – will be. There are more advantages to being in the moment besides being able to decrease mindmade suffering. Some of those advantages are: Clarity. When you are in the moment you have a much better focus and things flow naturally out of you. This is very useful in conversations, at work, while writing or while on the tennis court. Calmness. You feel centred, relaxed and whatever you do you do more easily. Since you are not projecting into a possible future or reflecting on previous experiences there is very little fear holding you back or worry stopping you . Positivity. Since there is little fear, there are few negative emotions when you are in the present. Instead you move around on the positive part of the emotional scale . Now, that sounds nice and useful. But how can you step away from the thought loops that whirl back and forth through your memories and fantasies? How do you actually return to the present moment? Here are 8 ways. But before we get to them I'd just like to add that this is a skill. You will slip back into involuntarily thinking about the future/past . But the more time and effort you spend connecting with the moment the easier it gets reconnecting with it. And staying there longer. 1. Focus on what's right in front of you. Or around you. Or on you. Use your senses. Just look at what's right in front of you right now (besides your laptop/phone and my blog ). Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel. For the last three days the dark winter seems to have left us here in Sweden. It's been clear skies and sunshine all the time. So I have been using the unexpected light and warmth of the sunshine on my skin to reconnect with the moment. 2. Focus on your breathing. Take a couple of dozen belly breaths and just focus your mind on your inhaling and exhaling. This will align you with the present moment once again. 3. Focus on your inner body. This is a bit similar to focusing on your breathing. In both examples you focus on what's inside you rather than the outside. What is the inner body? Well, I guess you could say it is energy inside of your body. How your body feels from the inside. A practical way to do this just to focus on your hand. To just put your focus there and feel how the hand feels to you and how the energy is flowing through it. Yeah, this suggestion may sound a bit weird to the mind. But if you actually try it a few times you'll probably find that inner energy within your hand. 4. Pick up the vibe from present people. If you know someone that is more present than most people then you can pick his/her vibe of presence (just like you can pick up positivity or enthusiasm from people). If you don't know someone like that I recommend listening to/watching cds/dvds by Eckhart Tolle. His books work too. But cds/dvds are better than books for picking up someone's vibe since the biggest part of communication is voice tonality and body language. 5. Surrender to the emotion that is already there. It's easy to get stuck in a loop of old memories. You may want to move away from them but there is a feeling there that brings them back over and over. So you need to decrease the power that feeling has over you. And you don't do it by fighting it. You do it by surrendering to it. The feeling is a loop within your mind that you are feeding with more energy by resisting it. When you accept the feeling then you stop feeding it and it vanishes. Here's how you it: Say yes to the feeling. Surrender and let it in. Observe the feeling in your mind and body without labelling or judging it. If you let it in – for me the feeling then often seems to physically locate itself to the middle of my chest – and just observe it for maybe a minute or two the feeling just vanishes. As you can see, this way is similar to ones above. They are all about observing. 6. See things as for the first time. This one pretty similar to the first way. But it can be useful when you have a hard time just observing your surroundings. That's when you can look at things as for the first time. Imagine it like that, take that role. Like someone who has never experienced this before. Like a child or someone who has never been here before. I like this one and I have been doing it from time to time for years (although back then I didn't really understand why it felts nice when I did it). Note: These last two ways are certainly not the best ways to reconnect with the moment and I'm not really recommending them. They aren't that healthy (especially in the long run). But they work to some degree. It's up to you if you want to try them. 7. Punch your leg. Try punching your leg. Or pinching your arm. Or have someone else do it. And focus on that sensation to quickly bring yourself back to the moment. 8. Drink a beer or two. It's Friday so I thought I'd include this one. This is probably the most common way to connect to the moment (at least over the weekend). You may have said or heard that it's nice to grab a beer or two after work to take the edge off. What is this edge? I think it's the clutter of thoughts that can run around in your mind after a long and busy week at work. The alcohol quiets down these thoughts (and the decreases the number of thoughts in your mind). And you feel more relaxed. You don't think about the past or future as much. You just enjoy your beer and the company. You enjoy the moment. Drinking a couple of beers – or getting really drunk – can remove the past or future from your mind. It can add calmness and positive feelings. However, it throws the clarity out the window. :) So besides the health aspects of drinking, this isn't exactly an ideal way to be in the present moment. Use it at your own risk. Or just try out a few of the more healthy and effective techniques.

I have been reading, listening to and watching various personal development information for a few years now. I have noticed a few mistakes I have made. And so I have made a few adjustments to how I take in and use this information. These adjustments have helped me make more practical progress. The five mistakes are pretty obvious things really. Maybe you've already changed things to avoid them. Maybe you are at a different place and have a different experience and don't need to avoid doing these things because they work for you. But anyways, I thought I'd share them and hopefully these pointers will be of some use to some of you. 1. Taking in too much information. Up until about six months ago I took in lots and lots of self-help information from all kinds of sources. It helped me but it also often made me a bit confused and I tended to forget quite a bit of information that could probably help me. So I decided to trim down. Instead of reading a few books simultaneously I started to just read one at a time. Instead of reading 10-15 personal development blogs I now read 2 or 3. The last few weeks I have taken this a bit further and delved into just one author. I have used almost all my study time listening to/watching stuff by Eckhart Tolle to both pick up his vibe of presence and to gain a deeper understanding of his work. I will probably do something similar with other authors later on (possibly Wayne Dyer next month). Having this narrow focus has helped me get a clearer understanding of Tolle's thoughts and just “being in his presence” a lot has made it easier for me become and stay present more of the time. 2. Just reading through things once. I have found that by rereading information from time to time I have been able to gain a deeper knowledge because my overall knowledge and experience has grown. So one chapter of a book that once had one meaning can have a pretty different meaning once I reread it. And things that I first half-ignored while reading now seems so much more important. 3. Not applying or testing the information. I believe that this one ties into the first mistake. When you have a continual information overload in your mind it becomes hard to determine what to try next. Or you may fall into a common self-help junkie trap where it feels like you are making progress in your life just by reading about self-improvement. This is however mostly just a sort of emotional high that you can get hooked on. 4. Not reinforcing it. Maybe it's just me but I have a tendency to forget what I should do. So I need to post external reminders – written notes on the fridge etc. – to reinforce what I am striving for and what changes I am working on right now. If I don't use such reminders then I tend to slip back into old thought patterns pretty quickly. 5. Go looking for magic pills. A book will not change you. You change you. You have to put in work. A book may be just perfect for you at the right time, when you are ready for it. But you still have to follow the advice given to change your life. I believe that the search for magic pills is one of those thing that can drive someone to make the mistakes above over and over and make little actual progress. So if you know that you may have spent a bit too much time looking for magic pills I suggest that you focus on fewer ideas, actually applying them and reinforcing them.

Lately, I have been focusing quite a bit on creating and strengthening an abundance mentality for myself. It's not so easy to maintain it though. Much of society seems to be built on a scarcity mentality. A mentality that tells people that there is a lack in life. That opportunities are few and far between. This is of course useful for society because if people feel that there is a lack, then you can get them to buy stuff. And so the economy and society can continue to live and prosper by reinforcing a scarcity mentality in people. But the scarcity mentality can be quite painful for the individual and create a lot of unnecessary fear, anxiety and desperation. An abundance mentality, on the other hand, tells you that there are always new chances and opportunities. This 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. An abundance mentality allows you to see life in a more long-term perspective . And it can help you improve your performance since with it you're creating a lot less pressure and anxieties within your own mind. If you have a scarcity mentality then you will probably take things too seriously. You may think to yourself: “If I fail, the sky will fall”. It probably won't, though. But you think it will, you become overly nervous and POOF! you have created a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure because your inner, self-created negativity puts obstacles on your path to success. If it's a game, then you may fumble with the ball. If it's an exam, then you may not have been able to sleep and will perform poorly on the test. If it's a date, you may come of as too needy and nervous and not as your usual, more relaxed and confident self . Here are a few tips that I've found to be useful to create and reinforce your own abundance mentality. Focus on the abundance, not on the lack. What you focus on, you will see in your world. Since you can't take in all impressions around you, your reticular activation system – your focus system in the mind – will bring into focus what you focus your thoughts on. This will allow you to see the abundance in your world that you may be missing right now. If you for instance have a lack of money, then don't focus on your lack. Focus and think about the abundance of possibilities in the world to make money. Focus your mind on that and soon ideas and opportunities to make that happen will start to “pop up” in your world. It's almost a bit freaky how things that holds solutions for you – perhaps books or acquaintances – that have been there in the background for quite a while just one day suddenly jumps out at you. Appreciate. One quick way to revert from the pretty normal habit of thinking about what you don't have is simply to appreciate. Appreciate your food, life, your roof, your friends and family and so on. This can not only turn a sour mood into a more positive one within minutes but also help you notice possibilities you have missed or forgotten. And create a more open vibe within you, a vibe that makes it easier to focus on the abundance. So, make habit of appreciating for a few minutes each day. Get an abundance vibe from other people. Since you get a scarcity mentality from the input from, for instance, advertising and media then you can change your input to change your mentality. Cut down on watching the news. Tivo your favourite shows and skip the commercials. Or just cut down on your TV and media consumption, period. Replace the scarcity vibe your get from that input. How do you do that? “Hang out” with people that have an abundance mentality. Read, listen to and watch personal development material. Besides reading your favourite personal development blogs, check out products by people like Brian Tracy and Wayne Dyer. Read success stories in books and magazines. Have a positive attitude to the abundance and success of your friends, family and co-workers. Hang out with people in real life that has more of an abundance mentality and less of a scarcity mentality. Be selective with what you put into your mind. Create your own environment of abundance. Remind yourself. Even if it feels like you have a scarcity right now, you can turn that around by reminding yourself of all the things to appreciate in your life. Or you may remember previous times when you had an abundance. Perhaps you had several business or job opportunities lined up. Remind yourself of such times. Realize that you can recreate similar circumstances once again. Remind yourself on a daily basis. It's very easy to slip back into your old thought patterns. You just forget about what you should be thinking about. A useful tool to keep yourself from slipping is to use external reminders . You can for example use written notes posted at places you can't avoid seeing several times each day – your workspace, fridge and mirrors – or put a bracelet on your wrist. Seeing encouraging words or quotes that reminds you of your new abundance mentality can help your mind snap back into the right headspace once again. Finally, try to adopt a more positive mindset in general. Without such a mindset, if you are bogged down with negative thoughts all the time, then it will be hard to create and believe in an abundance mentality. One starting point for positive thinking with practical tips can be found in Take the Positivity Challenge!

“The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?” “Who was Dale Carnegie?” you may wonder. Well, he was a guy that was born 110 years ago. He died in 1955. He was a rich man, a very successful man. He wrote a little book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. It went on to sell over 30 million copies. It still sells today and is probably one of the best books on how to improve your social skills. Carnegie then continued to write more books and to create courses on how to interact with people, on how to make friends and on how to gain influence. In this article I'll explore 10 of my favorite tips from Dale Carnegie. And as the opening quote says, these tips have been time-tested for the last few hundreds or thousands of years. They are pretty solid. :) 1. Create your own emotions. “If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic.” Emotions work backwards too. You can use that to your advantage. If you are stuck in a negative emotion then you can often shake it off. Change your body – how you move, sit and stand – and act as you would like to feel. Enthusiasm and other positive emotions are much more useful and pleasurable for everyone in an interaction. Because… 2. It's not so much about the logical stuff. “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” This is so key. Logic is good but in the end, in interactions and in life, we are emotional creatures. We send and receive emotions from other people. That is one reason why body language and voice tonality is often said be up to 93% of communication. Now, those numbers were for some specific situations but I still believe that these two ways of communication are very, very important. The body language and the voice tonality is a bit like the rest of the iceberg, the great mass below the tip of the words we use. Those two things communicate how we are feeling and give indication to what we are thinking. And that's why it's important to be able to change how you feel. To be in a positive mood while interacting. Because that will have a great impact on how you say something and how you use your body. And those two things will have a big impact on your results and relationships. 3. Three things you are better off avoiding. “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.” Now these things may not be easy to avoid all together. Much of our interactions and perhaps even bonds are created and maintained through those three negative Cs. There is a sort of twisted pleasure in criticizing, condemning and complaining. It might make you feel more important and like a better person as you see yourself as a victim or as you condemn other people's behavior. But in the end these three Cs are negative and limiting to your life. Bringing up negative stuff and wallowing in it will lower your mood, motivation and general levels of wellbeing. And this can trap you in a negative spiral of complaining, complaining with other complainers and always finding faults in your reality . You will also be broadcasting and receiving negative emotions. And people in general want to feel good. So this can really put an obstacle in the way for your interactions or relationships. 4. What is most important? “The royal road to a man's heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.” Classic advice. Don't talk too much about yourself and your life. Listen to other people instead. However, if they ramble on and on, if they don't reciprocate and show and interest in your life then you don't have to stay. Some things people may treasure the most include ideas, children, a special hobby and the job. And… 5. 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.” 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 make 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. I would like to add that one hard thing about this can be to be genuinely interested in the other guy/gal. Your genuine interest is projected though your body language and tonality. So, just waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can talk again isn't really genuine interest. And that may shine through. And so your interactions will suffer. 6. Take control of your emotions. “The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another's keeping.” This basically consist of being too reliant or dependent on external validation from other people. External validation is something someone communicates to you that tells you that you are person of value. That you, for example, are pretty, smart or successful. This leaves much of your emotions in the hands of other people. It becomes an emotional roller coaster. One day you feel great. The next day you feel like just staying in bed. But if you fill that inner cup of validation for yourself instead then you take over the wheel. Now you're driving, now you control how you feel . You can still appreciate compliments of course, but you aren't dependent on them. This will make you more emotionally stable and enables you to cultivate and build your emotional muscles in a more controlled way. You can for instance help yourself to become more optimistic or enthusiastic more of the time. This stability and growth can be big help in your relationships. 7. No, they are not holding you back. “Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.” Caring too much about what people think will create self-doubt and feed imaginary monsters within your mind. You may for instance think that people will condemn you if you try something. Maybe they will. But most of the time people are thinking about their own challenges and ups and downs. They just don't care that much about what you do. This may feel disappointing. It can also be liberating. It helps you remove inner obstacles that are you holding yourself back. As you, bit by bit or in one big swoop, release those inner brakes you become more of yourself. You become more confident, you have a better chance at success , and you will feel more positive feelings and less negative ones. All these things can give a big boost to your interactions and help you sharpen those social skills. 8. So, whats in it for me? “There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.” If you want someone to do something then will they care about your motivation for getting this thing done? Perhaps. Often they will not have that great of an interest in what you want out of something. They want to know what they will get out of it. So, for the both of you to get what you want out of something tell that person what's in it for him/her. And try to be genuine and positive about it. A reason for them to do it delivered in a lame, half-assed manner may not be so persuasive. And so you both lose. 9. How to win an argument. “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.” Getting two egos wrapped up in an argument, having two sides defending their positions desperately, will not improve relationships. You are more likely to feel negative feelings towards each other long after the argument is over. And so you both wallow in negativity and you both lose. When possible, just avoiding unnecessary arguments is a win-win situation. 10. It's about more than your words. “There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.” I often feel that there is a bit too much emphasis and overthinking on the third way of contact (what we say). Don't forget about the rest. Most people stereotype people at their first meeting. They might not want to but it is a way for their – and perhaps your – mind to organize impressions and people. So think about how you look. Think about how you make first impressions. Think about your body language. And how you are saying your sentences. Think about how you feel because that will be reflected out into the world. And the world will often reflect back something similar.

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice. Wayne Dyer I think that becoming a happier person is not so much about changing external circumstances as it is about changing your thinking. You can pile up tons of positive external stuff in your life but if your internals are messed up then your life won't become that much better. And the thing is that if you get your thoughts into the right place then your outer world will start to align to those thoughts. Now, there are quite a few ways to make yourself miserable. Here are 9 of them that I believe are some of the most popular. I have used them time and time again. I still do from time to time. I'd recommend decreasing these thought habits as much as possible. Ditching them all together might be hard. But over time you can cut down on them significantly. To remind yourself of them you may want to print out this article or write down a few of these ways that you feel especially apply to you. You can use those notes as external reminders for the fridge or your bathroom mirror. 1. Compare everything you do to the lives and accomplishments of other people. The problem with comparing yourself to others is that there will always be someone with more than you. So you get a car that is nicer than the ones your closest neighbors drive. And that feels awesome for a while. But then one day you see the young kid on the next block driving around in his new, cool and expensive sports car. And once again, you don't feel so good anymore. A more useful way of thinking is to compare yourself to yourself. Appreciate the progress you have made. Take a closer look at the areas where you aren't improving as much as you'd like and try to figure out why. Then make a plan for how you can improve on those areas of your life. 2. Go along with what everyone else tells you. And try to please everyone. Recognize that everyone will have opinions on what you can do. That doesn't mean that you have to do what they say. You cannot live your life through the eyes of everyone else. Well, you can but then you'll most likely feel a lot of pressure from every direction and not feel that well at all. And even if you do try to please everyone you may find that some people aren't pleased anyway. That's because what they are saying doesn't have much to do with you at all. What they are saying is just an outer reflection of their life and how they feel. If they didn't say something negative to you then they would complain about cabbies, dog owners or whoever popped up in their mind or in front of their nose. Now I could tell you that you should always think for yourself instead and make your decisions on what you know. The problem I have found with that point of view is that you and I are bit like everyone else. We also like to feel like we are right and are sitting on the best advice. So what you are thinking is right may not always be the best solution. So try to do some research. Ask people who have actually been where you want to go what they have learned. Try to base you decisions on something substantial. Then just take action. In the end you have to experiment, fail over and over again and discover what actually works for you. 3. Live in a sea of negative voices. What you allow into your mind will affect you. So be selective. If you're hanging out with negative people all the time then that can really drag you down. It's not easy to stay optimistic when pessimism is the default mode in your world. Another part of this is getting hooked on the news and prophecies of the sky falling. The sky is probably not falling. Consider spending less time with negative voices. Cut back on – or cut out –seeing negative people. Cut back on watching the news or even more spectacularly negative TV-shows. You'll find yourself with a chunk of new, free and fresh time to do something more fun. 4. Never mix things up or try something new. This one is sneaky. It can fool you into feeling that things are pretty OK. You have your pleasant, safe routine. But underneath there are fuzzy negative feelings of dissatisfaction that sometimes move up to the surface. Remind yourself of the other times when you have tried something and how you most often don't regret it at all. In fact, you probably had a pretty good time. Don't fool yourself into complacency. I'm not saying that need to go sky diving. But simply that it's a good choice to mix things up, to get some diversity at least once in a while. The next time someone suggests trying something give a try. Or make a suggestion to your friends. 5. Spend too much of your time in the past and/or the future. How much time do you spend thinking about something that has happened? Or on something that you think will happen? How much time do you actually spend thinking about and observing what is actually in front of your nose right now? It may seem like a pretty good idea to think about a great memory. Or dream about what you will do for the weekend or your vacation. And it is. The thing is just that if you spend much time in the past or present then thoughts tend to spiral a bit out of control. You start to over think. You imagine future scenarios in an almost compulsive way. You replay and reinterpret old memories. You trap yourself in a negative downward spirals and moods. Getting lost in these trains of thoughts is very easy. But you can also train yourself to keep a closer eye on your thoughts. If you start to question your own thoughts throughout the day with questions like: is this useful? then you can improve your understanding of what you are spending your time thinking about. If you find what you are thinking isn't really that useful just drop it and start thinking about something else. If you can't just drop it – it isn't easy sometimes – here are three suggestions: Focus most of your thinking on finding a solution. Not on wallowing in your negative thoughts. There is often something you can do about a situation. Focus your mind on finding that or those solutions. Then take action. This can bring you out of a negative mood and make you see light at the end of the tunnel. Focus on your breathing. Take a couple of dozen belly breaths and just focus your mind on your inhaling and exhaling. This will calm you down, release anxiety and align you with the present moment once again. Focus on what is in front of you right now. Instead of thinking over and over again about what your boss told you yesterday or what you want for dinner just focus on what's right in front of you. When you are driving actually observe what is happening in front of you. When you ride the bus observe the people, trees and buildings. Like so much else, being present is a muscle you have to build. You learn to stay longer in the now and it becomes easier to snap back into it after some training. 6. Focus on what you don't want. If you focus on what you don't want then that is what your focus system in your mind, your reticular activating system (RAS), will find. If you focus on how everything is going down the toilet then your RAS will let you notice examples of that in your surroundings. You can only bring into focus what you are focusing on. The rest will blur into the background. So if you want to earn more money don't focus on your lack of money. Focus on how you can make more money. Opportunities will jump out at you in conversations, while you are reading the paper or watching TV or while you are just walking down the street. It can be a bit freaky sometimes. Suddenly, after having changed your focus, something that has obviously been there for quite some time in the background jumps out at you. Just focusing on what you want won't solve your problems though. You still need to take action over and over to take advantage of your newfound opportunities. 7. Spend your time looking for magic pills. Reading a book on personal development won't solve your problems. It's kinda devious though because reading the book can make you feel like you are making progress. But without action there is little progress. But this pleasant feeling of making progress can become addictive. It gives you an emotional high. So you read another book. And another. And you become a personal development junkie. Always looking for that one thing that will change your life. But there are no real magic pills. Some books are certainly more helpful than others. Especially if they wind up in your hand at the right time. When you are ready for them. And exposing your mind constantly to positive and helpful information is better than listening to negative voices. Over time it can help you change how you think and how you view your world. But it is no substitute for taking action. Someone might try to sell you something that they promise will bring big rewards with basically no action your part. That's probably just a sales pitch. The product itself may be good, great or useless. You never really know. You just have to try it out by taking action and see for yourself. My recommendation is to stop looking for magic pills. Instead just buy a classic personal development book from authors like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy or Eckhart Tolle. Then actually follow a tips or two of their tips for 30 days. Just focus on that. Then move on to another couple of pieces of advice. This will give you better results than running around in circles looking for magic pills. You can find some recommended books right here. 8. Always be looking for and relying on external validation. This can be a huge one. External validation is basically that someone other than you validates you. They might tell you that you are smart, pretty, cool, successful etc. They tell you something that tells you that you are a person of value. Now, this may sound all well and good. Getting compliments is wonderful. The problem is just that if you need 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 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 pause in the validation. So what do you do? You let go of the need for that input. But there will still be a need for validation. So you need to fill that up to not go back to really, really wanting validation from others. You do that by validating yourself instead. You think about how awesome you are. You appreciate how far you have come and the positive things you have done. You appreciate your own value in the world. You set goals and you achieve those goals. This builds confidence in yourself and in your abilities. These things will help you to build a habit of inner validation. Don't sell yourself short. Validate yourself and your accomplishments. Get off the roller coaster that is over-reliance on external validation. 9. Take things too seriously. Things are seldom really that serious. It's most often your ego trying to fool you into thinking so. Because if your problems are serious, huge and important then that means that you must be important. It's a way to try to raise your value for yourself and in the eyes of others. It's not a great way of thinking though. You'll spend far too much time thinking the past and the future. You'll create irritability and instability within yourself that is reflected into the outside world. You'll probably spend quite a bit of time being hard on yourself. Being hard on yourself might sound a like a good idea to “teach yourself a lesson”. I believe it's better to drop such behavior and learn what you can from mistakes and then move on. Being hard on yourself just seems to create a lot of negativity and problems within yourself. All in all, by taking things too seriously you can really go down, down, down into a negative spiral. Lightening up and not taking things too seriously is more pleasurable and useful thing to do. I have done this by for example using a note on my fridge to remind myself to “Lighten up!” and by not identifying so much with my ego, emotions and thoughts.

Emailing can be a tricky form of communication. There are mistakes to be made. I have made more than a few of them. I hope this can help you avoid some of the same mistakes. 1. Using a non-descriptive headline. A “Hi!” may be nice to start a regular conversation. But when we are talking about emailing and subject lines then a more descriptive subject line is useful. It will quickly convey what your email is about and it will stand out among the other 100 subject lines your reader is scanning through in his/her inbox. 2. Rambling on and on. It's easy to fall into the trap of wanting to talk on and on about your problem, question, new product etc. It's great or interesting, so why not? The problem is just that people get a lot of emails. Maybe dozens or hundreds each day. If you don't get to the point quickly then you may lose their interest halfway through the email. So, get to the point quickly. 3. Not explaining properly. It's easy to assume that people know as much as you do and that some things are just self-evident. That's not always the case though. You shouldn't write too long and rambling emails. But you shouldn't write too short emails either. If you have something that may need to be explained, explain it clearly but as simply as you can. Make sure that you get the point of the email across to your reader. 4. Being too formal. Having a really formal tone can be helpful sometimes. Other times a less formal tone is more useful. An email is often a way to build and develop a relationship of some sort. To do that, emotions must come into play. You want to create an emotional connection to your reader. That doesn't mean that you should be overemotional though. Just try to write to someone in a relaxed tone. The same tone that you would use if you met that person in a relaxed conversation in real life. Write kinda like you talk. Then your email will have a conversational tone. And the connection between the two of you will often be better and more natural. How do you write in a conversational tone? Be relaxed when you write the email and your tone will be relaxed. If you are tense or anxious, try a few belly breaths or take a short break out in the fresh air. 5. Messing up your contact information. Have you included all the necessary information on how to get a hold of you? What is your phone number or fax number? When are you available for calls? What is most likely the quickest way to get a hold of you? And, finally, don't forget to triple check the addresses and digits for your website, phone etc. 6. Using email in the first place. When phone or face to face is better. There is certainly a larger risk for misunderstandings if you use email. There is no body language or voice tonality to convey nuances and emotions. And emoticons can only go so far. :) If you have a possibly emotional issue to bring up consider using the phone or meeting face to face instead. No point in creating totally unnecessary conflicts. 7. Not reading through your email an extra time before hitting send. There may be typos, spelling errors or even things you thought about writing but forgot too add. Again, thoroughly check your contact information in the email. And don't forget to check that your attachment is actually attached to the email.

Here's a thing that I didn't really pay attention to for quite a while. I guess it became a kind of blind spot. Finding this obstacle and being able to remove it on a consistent basis has made things a lot easier and more enjoyable. I think it will be helpful to me this year and that's why it's the first thing I would like to share with you in 2008. One problem with being involved in personal development is that you can get a bit too serious. There are a lot of big, perhaps life-changing words, choices and products in this field. So there is naturally often a pretty serious tone overall. This is good because it can help people to take their life and time seriously and make them less prone to waste such valuable things. But having a too serious mindset isn't that great all the time. It can lead to taking things way too seriously and create big problems and negative feelings and events from pretty much nothing. Lightening up can help you to drop unimportant stuff and leave you with more time and energy for the really important things in your life. Now. This may sound all well and good but how do you actually lighten up consistently or at all? Here's what I have done. Realize that you are not your thoughts or emotions. One key to being able to lighten up is the ability to see that much of your seriousness, much of the need to for instance to be right comes from things that aren't really you. When you become more conscious of how your thoughts and emotions isn't all of you, when you are able to see a separation then it becomes easier to not take things – or yourself – so seriously and keep a lighter frame of mind. Realize that you are not your ego. If you are too much identified with your ego then the ego will – with a deceptive, negative inner voice – tell you things like “I'm very important” and “how dare they say such things as jokes or criticism about me”. This is the ego trying to protect itself from a perceived attack from someone. And so you may be convinced to go into a serious mood that leads to overreacting. But when you realize more and more that such instances in you daily life is just your ego reacting and not you then it becomes easier to not take things so seriously. It becomes easier to just ignore what the ego is shouting and determine your own reactions, thoughts and behavior. What you once may have blown up or been fuming internally about, you don't get that worked up over. I have found that quite often I just mentally shrug my shoulders and move on to the next thing. Again, as I have mentioned before, good books to read and reread to understand more about yourself and your ego, thought and emotions are A New Earth and the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And then you need to practise the advice and see how it applies you. This isn't really something you fix in a week but something that you can make progress with over months or years. Develop an abundance mentality. Now, to lighten up is still about taking your work seriously, do well and not slack off. It's not about finding a way to rationalise away the hard work as unimportant. It's more about not taking yourself too seriously. And being able to not take negative events and results that seriously. One helpful thing here is to develop an abundance mentality. Well, overall I think it's a good idea to have an abundance mentality rather than a scarcity mentality. An abundance mentality tells you that there are always new chances and opportunities. This 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. An abundance mentality allows you to see life in a more long-term perspective. And it can help you improve your performance since with it you're creating a lot less pressure and anxieties within your own mind. Tests in school can always be retaken. New dates can be arranged. There will be new business opportunities. You can start anew online or offline. Few things will actually be the end of the world even though an overly serious mindset may fool you into believing otherwise. One challenge with developing and maintaining an abundance mentality is that much of society is built upon using a scarcity mentality to make you buy stuff. So advertising and parts of social programming tries to reinforce the scarcity mentality in people. One couple of ways that I have found useful to handle that challenge is to cut down on your media consumption – reading less papers and watch less TV – and to use your new free time for things that reinforce your abundance mentality. Examples of such things would be self-improvement blogs. And books, tapes and dvds on the same subject. Because there you can find information and people that come from a place of abundance. Or you can hang out with people with an abundance mentality in real life. And I think it's not the words that these people use that are of most use to you but rather the underlying feeling and frame of mind that is flowing from that person over to you. Whatever flows into your mind will leave imprints, so be selective to be good to yourself. Remind yourself constantly. Your mind will easily slip into identifying with what your ego is trying to tell you or what your emotions are saying. It's very easy to forget to not take things so seriously. I have posted a reminder to Lighten Up! on my fridge so I see it several times each day. More on using such simple tricks can be found in How to Keep Yourself on Track: Using External Reminders . Assume rapport. When you meet people assume rapport. This basically means that you imagine that you are meeting one of your best friends. Doing this can help you to put yourself into a lighter and more relaxed mood. Often a more useful mood to be in than a really serious one when interacting with people. You can read more about this in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assume Rapport . You may also like: 101 Courage Quotes That Will Motivate and Inspire You 71 Inspirational Quotes on Understanding 201 Short Quotes and Sayings about Life

So it's New Year's Eve. The fireworks have rained and exploded across the sky, the dessert is all eaten and the champagne bottles are empty. You sit around talking and New Years resolutions come up. “Yeah, this year is gonna be different!”. You feel enthusiastic. Fast-forward to the middle of January. The weather's dreary. Enthusiasm has waned, dabbling has ensued. Maybe the resolution is abandoned altogether. How do you keep yourself from reaching that point? How do actually stick with your New Year's resolution? Well, in the end it's up to you and I don't have a solid plan that will work 100% of the time. However, I have a few suggestions that can help you to make this year's New Years resolution more than an empty promise to yourself. The first 3 suggestions – together with the last one – are probably the most important ones. So if you forget about the rest, try to keep these four in mind. Choose something YOU really want. It has to be something you, yourself really want. Or you will find it hard to keep the motivation up. It will be hard to keep going after a few days/weeks. You got 14 days until the New Year is here. Start thinking about what you really want. And find out what's in it for you. If you don't even have a clear picture of why you want to do something then there will be motivational problems. Write down all the reasons why getting your behind in gear and getting a handle on your New Year's resolution will help you. Remind yourself by reviewing these reasons regularly and by putting them up in visible locations in your daily life. Choose one thing. Trying to change more than one habit at the same time is a classic pitfall. It's possible to succeed with such an ambitious thing but it often takes quite a bit of time and energy. Keeping up with five resolutions at the same time will probably become too much work and you run the very possible risk of getting off the train too early and never solidifying any of your new habits. So focusing on one thing at time can be a more workable strategy. Focus on the process. For instance, focus on working out 3 times a week. This focus on the process is very important. For me personally it's made things a lot easier and it promotes one of the most important things for getting some real results: consistency. Don't get hung up on your distant goal of losing those pounds. Focus on the process and being consistent with going to the gym. The pounds will come off. If not, then you may need to educate yourself a bit more and tweak your process. And, if you can, try to enjoy the process as much as you can. It makes it easier to reach your goal. And it makes your everyday life a lot more pleasant. :) Remember to create a specific goal for the process, not just “I will eat better” or “I will go to the gym often”. Set specific goals that you will focus on. Otherwise there may be a lot dabbling and wishy-washy follow up. Make it easy on yourself. Work out in front of the TV if that will make it easier. Lift weights in the basement. Buy a stationary bike or a treadmill. Use it while reading, playing videogames or watching a movie. If you know that the darkness and cold of the winter will keep you from going to the gym consistently be creative and try to avoid that obstacle altogether. Educate yourself. Learning more about what you are about to do/are doing can be a great help. If you're about to quit smoking ask others who have overcome the addiction what their best tips are. Do some research on/offline. And, along the way learn and experiment to find the best solution for yourself. Bonus tip: If you are for example giving up candy, don't just throw it out and leave a vacuum in your life. Replace the old habit with another habit to make it easier to transition into your new lifestyle choice and reduce sugar cravings. Good replacements to fill your cupboards and drawers with would, in this case, be your favourite fruits, veggies and nuts. You can read more on replacing a bad habit in this article. If you fail don't beat yourself up. You will most likely have bad days and fall flat on your face. The important thing here is not to get yourself down too much 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. Just do it. Even if you don't feel like it. This last one is really important for consistency and achieving success. There may come a time when then initial enthusiasm has waned and your motivation is running low. Then you need to just do it. Meaning: try not to be so wrapped up in your thoughts and emotions. They are just things running through your consciousness. They are not you. They have a tendency of putting up obstacles – almost always imaginary ones too – on your path. Don't pay much attention to those roadblocks. Just ignore them and plow through. Even if your mind and feelings are disagreeing with your resolution just go and do it anyway.

Image by kalandrakas . Assuming rapport. This is definitely one of the best social skill tips I have ever learned about. Unfortunately I've forgotten a bit about it lately. Maybe you have too. Or missed it altogether. So I thought I'd bring it up again. Now, 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? You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one. I have found that this advice is surprisingly useful and easy to implement. Just before the meeting, you just think 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. This also helps you and the other people to set a good frame for the interaction. A frame is always set in the 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 last. If it's a very stiff frame then it may very well continue to be so until the end. It can be quite difficult to for instance change that frame into a more relaxed one. Often people – you and the others – adapt to the frame that is set and interact within it. Breaking or changing that frame may feel uncomfortable or a bit weird. And so you and the others can become reluctant to do so and instead just play along. First impressions last So setting a good frame at the very beginning can bring more enjoyment and better results out of any kind of meeting. That's one of the reasons why it's so useful to smile when you first meet someone. And it's also important to consider that the impression made and frame set may not just last during the first conversation. It may continue throughout your relationship with this new friend, classmate or co-worker. Now, meeting your best friend might not always be the best thing to think about before a meeting. If it's a meeting at work or in school then you may need to have use a more formal frame (for instance without hugs and the relaxed attitude you have with friends). In that case you may want to try to imagine a similar meeting that went well and your interactions with the people there. If you go into a conversation with the right frame of mind a lot of the problems you may have encountered before or created outside and inside your mind just never come up. Much of communication is non-verbal and can be difficult to manually correct in a conversation. But when you go in with a positive and relaxed energy then that is fed into the interaction by you using your non-verbal communication – like your voice tonality and body language – in good way. Just be yourself When you're with your friend you don't think about what you should say next or what funny comment you could pull out of your sleeve. You just stay in the present moment, moment by moment, and the conversation flows easily and naturally. I think this is what some people mean when they give the often confusing advice to “just be yourself”. When your friends give you that advice then they may mean that you should be like you are when you are hanging out with us. They want to see you bring out your natural and relaxed self in other interactions. One final useful thing about assuming rapport is that you may also start to feel positive feelings towards this new person, just as you do with your friend when you meet him/her. This is a pretty good starting point for getting the new person to reciprocate and for developing a good relationship. You may also like: 160 Deep Quotes That Make You Think 56 Growth Mindset Quotes to Motivate You 40 Moving Forward Quotes (to Help You Reach Your Dreams) 110 Never Give Up Quotes for When Life is Hard

Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most famous and hard-working inventors in history. When he died in 1931 he held 1093 patents in his name (though a lot of his inventions were collaborations). Some of his most used inventions are of course the light bulb and the gramophone. He also did quite a bit work to improve x-ray machines for while (until he almost lost his own eye-sight and an assistant died due to radiation poisoning). And he had a AC/DC-current war with the odd and fascinating inventor Nikola Tesla. Here are a few of my favourite tips from Edison. They are all about success. And what kind of work and mindset achieving such a thing may require. “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” One of the problems in life is that people just give up too soon. I think quite a big bit of this because of social programming and the expectations set by society. It's seen as pretty normal to try once or maybe a few times and then give up. There is also a ton of products, books and commercials that promises us that we can “Earn 20000 dollars in just 4 weeks” or “Easily lose 30 pounds in 30 days!”. And we hear these messages over and over throughout life. No wonder it's easy to fall into the trap of believing that everything should work out after about three tries or so. When the promise of a quick fix is sold to us all the time and people around us are buying into it then it becomes easy just do the same thing. And align our expectations of the world around how things “should” work rather than how they work. If one does not give up so quickly but tries perhaps 20-30 times or more there is a pretty good chance that success will come. If one keeps at it for not 3 weeks but 6 months then the likelihood of success often increases. If not, then you may spend a lot of time in a cycle where you try a new quick fix, get discouraged quickly and give up, spend some cash on the next quick fix and getting overly enthusiastic and then continue the cycle by jumping from one magic bullet to another, never achieving much of a result. “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” Now, how do you reframe failure? How do you look at it so you don't feel overwhelmed and give up? Well, you can look at failure as a part of a process. You look at it as ways that won't work. You draw lessons from those ways. Then you let that go, focus on the present and try again (this time perhaps in a different way). If you look at failure as something big, like it's the end of the world you'll probably be quite a bit afraid of it. And so it can feel too painful to go on after a few failures. Or you may never even try, since your mind is projecting all these horrible and painful future scenarios of what will happen if you try and fail. Also, if you come from a place of abundance then failure has less power over you. Failure can be really useful if you learn to redefine it for yourself. The key is to develop an abundance mentality – where there is always an abundance of opportunities – instead of a more common scarcity mentality where there is always a lack. If you start to think about your world this way failure becomes less painful and the fear of missteps lessens. Because with an abundance mentality you believe that there are more good opportunities out there even if you experience failure. So you are less inclined to give into fear and to pull away from taking a chance. Failure still hurts even if you think about things this way. But then you think about what you can learn from the failure. And then you start over again. And in retrospect you often discover that your previous failure provided some very useful, perhaps even necessary lessons, for your latest project to grow as well as it does. This way – seeing it as a process and have an abundance-mentality – is one way to reframe failure to keep yourself from giving up. If you look at it this way you'll be less prone to lie down and just give up. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” Useful information is good. But you have to put it to use sometime or you'll never reap any benefits or success. This is a pretty common problem when you for instance get interested in personal development. You get a lot of books, programs etc. and you study them. And then you get more. Always looking for the magic bullet that will give you success without you having to do anything. Confusing yourself and feeling like you are making progress by reading another book. That emotional high is dangerous because it can fool you into thinking that things are progressing. But then a few months later nothing much has happened, except you have a lot of knowledge (and have probably forgotten half of it because your mind couldn't retain it because you weren't putting it into action). To get results you need to take action. That's also the best way to really understand the information you have absorbed and possibly find ways to tweak and use it in an even better way for yourself. “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.” But just going for it, taking action and doing something isn't enough. You have to ask yourself if what you are doing is useful? Or is it just another way to keep yourself busy, to keep yourself from doing what you really want to do? You need to think about what you really want to do. You need to make plans. Then throughout your normal day you can remind yourself, by for instance using external reminders like written notes, to stay on track. To not get lost on the wrong track or in the busywork that is perhaps a normal routine or an easy escape from the things you'd like to do but that require more perspiration. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” There is a myth that geniuses mostly just are geniuses and can do great things pretty much as easily as you and I tie our shoelaces. But what is seldom mentioned or seen is how much the really successful people work. And how far the people that just practise, practise, practise can go. I think natural talent certainly plays a role. But I also think that it can become an excuse to slack off and never come close to your potential. To find something you can become really, really good at – perhaps even be regarded as genius at – I think you need to find something you really, really like to do. Otherwise, your inner motivation and passion will run out and you'll probably show up less and less. Until you one day just give it up. Maybe it wasn't the thing for you. Maybe you grew apart from it. And if that happens then you can try to find another thing that you really, really like to do.

Today I have gone without coffee for 30 days. It's been an interesting experiment. I started drinking coffee at a pretty late age, probably around 22 or 23. Since then I've consumed three cups or more every day. Lately I've become more interested in my own personal energy. And being hooked on coffee is a bit like the curve above. :) So I wanted to see how getting rid of the coffee would affect my energy, mood and effectiveness. I know that some get off coffee by slowly decreasing the amount of coffee they consume each week and perhaps by replacing it with tea or non-caffeinated alternatives. I took another approach. 30 days ago I came down with a bad cold and pretty much knew that I would spend a few days in bed doing nothing more than reading and watching some TV. I also knew that going without coffee would make me very sleepy. So I combined the two things. I stopped drinking coffee and then I was sleeping a lot the next few days. This made it easier to get through the most unpleasant days of sneezing and having a fever. And since I wasn't doing anything special anyway it was OK to feel drowsy and sleep a lot. Towards the end of that week my cold had decreased in power and so had my sleepiness. Since then it's been no problem to not drink coffee and I have experienced some positive benefits. The big one is that my ability to focus has improved. That has affected my life in a few ways: It has become easier to focus just on the task in front of me and shut out the rest of the distractions. I'm less prone to procrastination. I didn't really notice it while I was drinking coffee but my mind seemed to wander off in all kinds of ways a lot of the time. Now it's easier to single-task and focus on one thing and I don't feel the same need to check email or other distracting stuff. I'm calmer. I'm a calm person to begin with but getting off coffee calmed and slowed my brain down. So I feel more relaxed more of the time. And it's easier to think with clarity. Getting of coffee has been a positive experience for me. It's actually had more of a positive effect than I would have expected. I thought I would feel a little less stressed overall but it has made a significant dent in my ability to focus and concentrate. I also used to feel tired after a meal and used coffee immediately after the meal to boost my energy levels. Now I have a much more even energy-curve throughout the day. So I'll continue to stay coffee free and perhaps sprinkle in a cup of green tea or two once in while. I would recommend trying to go coffee free for 30 days and see how it affects your mind, body and life. One way is do it like I did and go cold-turkey (perhaps the next time you're ill or during some vacation days over the holidays). Another way is the one where you slowly decrease the amount of coffee you consume each week. And perhaps replace some of the coffee with less caffeinated teas or a couple of cups of decaf. If you get bad withdrawal symptoms then the second method may be the most useful one.

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” W. M. Lewis One big problem with trying to improve your life simply is that sometimes you never seem to be able to get started. You say to yourself: There is never really time. Sometimes that's true. Sometimes you're just procrastinating or postponing for some reason. There is often quite a bit of inner resistance when trying to get started. If you have trouble getting started here are at least a few tips you can try. I hope that you'll find them helpful. 1. Choose something you really want. One reason that you may never seem to get started is because your heart is not in it. If you set a goal but it isn't your goal then it will be hard to achieve or even getting started with it. If you realize that it's a goal set by people around you – parents, teachers, bosses or society in general – then, when possible, eliminate the goal and set a few goals you would like to achieve. Or try to find you own motivation and reasons for achieving a goal rather than the ones people around you have set. This could put the goal in different light and suddenly you'll feel a whole lot motivated to get started. 2. Research and make a plan. Downsides and problems that we imagine before getting started are often just in our heads. They are a bunch of excuses or opinions based on something you heard from someone at one time or another. Do a bit of your own research instead. Read books, do some googling and ask people who have actually been where you want to go. With a bit of research you can often reduce your inner resistance and anxieties and find more positive benefits in getting started. After you have done some research and know a bit more about your goal and the road towards it create a plan. Creating a plan, writing down when you have to do this and that can also calm you down and lessen much of the fuzzy anxiety and fear that can hold you back from getting started. With a clearer image of what you can do and how you should go about it a big chunk of your negative feelings will become less powerful. 3. Ask yourself: What is the worst that could happen? After you have done some research and made a plan you will probably have lessened your fears and anxieties a bit. If you still feel like you can't get started ask yourself: what is the worst that can happen? A lot of the fear we feel before getting started comes from fuzzy and foggy thoughts about what could happen. But if you actually imagine the worst scenario then it's often not as frightening as you thought. You won't die or anything. And it won't ruin the rest of your life. Imagine the worst scenario and then try to create a plan how you could get on your feet again if that scenario, against all probability, should happen. You'll probably realize that whatever your fear is you could probably get back on your feet and back to normal life pretty quickly once again. 4. Make it easy on yourself. You don't have to overcomplicate things. If you do there is bigger chance that you'll give up before what you started becomes a habit. Making it easier on yourself will make it easier to get started. So, for instance, instead of buying a membership at the gym that is located 20 minutes away from your house to improve your aneoarobic capacity invest in Stairmaster. And start working out while watching TV, playing videogames or doing some reading. 5. Pump your emotional state. If you just need a boost in motivation to head down the gym for the first time or try out something new there is a whole bunch of techniques you can use. Some of my favourites are guided mediation cds, changing your physiology to change how you feel and listening to inspirational material. You can find 25 ways to motivate yourself here and even more motivation tips here . 6. Find encouragement and help from other people. You may for instance find a buddy who also wants to start working out in a gym. So you motivate each other to get going and to continue that habit. I think this can become an excuse though. If you don't have friend that wants to start working out with you don't let that stand in your way. You can find motivation from others in other places. Start reading workout blogs and get involved in that community. Or start a blog of your own. Or start participating in a forum or two to find the support and help you may need. 7. Just do it . If you are sitting around just procrastinating day in and day out just stop over-thinking. Shut off you brain. Just put on your clothes – or sit down at the phone, computer or wherever you need to be – and go and just do it. When our thoughts and feelings and constantly holding us back then I think that you sometimes just need to stop listening to them and take action. This is easy to say of course. It's a bit harder to do and to develop into a consistent habit. But it is possible. Thinking has its place but it isn't action. No matter how much you think you still need to take action. Developing a just do it habit can make taking action easier and will stop you from wasting a lot of time going over different scenarios – that are mostly negative – over and over in your head. Just getting going and doing something even if your thoughts and feelings want to hold you back becomes easier if you have small list of positive benefits in your mind or on a piece of paper. Then you know why you should go even if you don't feel like it and are having negative and self-defeating thoughts and feelings at the moment. And if you think back to the times in past when you first felt hesitant you may remember that those negative feelings pretty quickly were replaced with more positive ones. And you were happy that you got started. It's pretty likely that the same thing will happen this time too. 8. Learn about time management. If your troubles getting started actually just are based in a lack of time have a look at these 6 Questions to Help You Free Up Time . Or check out this article on the 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People . Hopefully you'll find a few tips that can help you manage your time better and finally get started with that thing you've been wanting to do for some time now.

“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” Seneca Having goals is important because they map out a direction in your life, they challenge you to grow and over time they can help you achieve things that you at one point may have seen as just impossible. Setting personal goals is important because if you don't then you'll probably spend a lot of time working to fulfill the goals of others. Here are a few problems I've run into and mistakes that I've made while setting goals. 1. Not writing your goals down. If you don't write you goals down you will have a hard time to keep them in mind. It will be unnecessarily difficult keep your focus on what you want instead of all the random things that show up in your day to day life. If you write them down then it will be easier to remember. It will also often be easier to describe and develop the goals and to find more goals if you use writing rather than just your mind. Writing you goals down can bring clarity to what you actually want. 2. Not having a system for remembering them. Writing your goals down is a good start. But to keep them in mind beyond the first few days after set them you need a system. Otherwise it's likely that you'll veer off course and forget about your goals for days or weeks. And then you'll have start over. One way to remember your goals each day is to use external reminders. You can, for instance, write your goals on a piece of paper and put it where you can't avoid seeing it. Examples of such places are your bathroom mirror, fridge or computer. 3. Not reviewing and rewriting your goals often enough. This one is more about your journey towards a goal than setting the goal. But it's closely related to the previous mistake so I've decided to include it. Short written reminders are great for remembering your goals. But from time to time you'll also need to review your goals and see where you stand. And then you may need to adjust your goals depending on what has happened and what you have learned so far. Reviewing your goals regularly can also give you a helpful dose of motivation when you feel that you are having hard time staying on track. How often should you review and rewrite you list of goals? Well, I guess there are a lot of different answers for that question. But the more you do it the sharper and more refined your focus and goals are likely to be. An experienced self-improvement speaker like Brian Tracy often suggests that you go so far as to review and rewrite your goals every morning. If there is nothing to adjust, write it down anyway. Writing it down will make a bigger impression on your mind than just thinking about it. And each time you do that the importance of your goal will be reinforced in your mind. To actually remember to do this, use an external reminder like for instance a calendar. 4. Setting goals you don't really feel for/are interested in. What are your goals? This is crucial. As much as possible, you have to set the goals for yourself. Should and ought to-goals isn't good enough. Or goals that other's have set for you. Or other people's goals. Think about your goals. Think about who has set them. Then think about what you really want in life. Then set your own goals. It has to be your goals and you have to have a real interest in them to increase your chances to achieve them. Plus, when it's your own goals instead of ones imposed upon you the journey towards them becomes a whole lot more enjoyable. And so, everyday life – the bulk of your life – becomes more enjoyable. 5. Not setting clear goals. Make the goals specific, measurable and think about them in present tense. Don't go for more visitors for your website or just for running more. Go for a thousand visitors a day or running for 20 minutes three times a week. The more detailed picture you have of where you want to go, the more likely you are to actually get there. If you don't make your goals measurable then how will you know when you have achieved them? You will never be done with the goal of “making more money”. But you'll know when you have achieved a goal of “earning 5000 dollars a month”. The goals you think about and write down have to be in present tense too. Not: I will run for 20 minutes three times a week. You have to write: I run for 20 minutes three times a week. Why? Well, your subconscious mind needs clear direction of what is to be achieved. If you put your goal in an “I will…” form you mind will always strive to bring the goal of running into your life sometime in the future. It will always be out of reach. To actually bring the goal into your life, into the present moment, you have to write it down in present tense. 6. Not setting deadlines. Setting deadlines for yourself can be useful to actually finish something. If you don't you'll probably spend a lot of time procrastinating and getting things almost done. When setting deadlines it's helpful to give yourself some wiggle room. If you're doing a project at work or in school set a deadline with a bit of margin. If something goes wrong, which it often does, or something unexpected comes up you'll still have time to get it done. Plus, we often have problems estimating how much time a task or project needs. So don't let your initial enthusiasm do all the thinking. Setting totally unrealistic deadlines won't save you time. You'll just be forced to go back after you've passed the deadline to fix all those mistakes you made while hurrying and being stressed out. 7. Not making a plan. For some goals you just need to write a 1000 words a day or run for 20 minutes a day. But even then you probably need a small plan to find free time in your schedule. For other goals you need a more elaborate plan. In those cases I think that it's good to do a bit of research and educate yourself before making the plan. Just a bit of research can help you solve or avoid problems along the way. Do some googling. Ask someone who has been where you want to go where they ran into difficulties and what tips they can share. Educating yourself can help you save time, money and energy. And help you avoid anxiety and frustration. When you are writing your plan make it practical and specific. And write down actions you can start taking today to get going on your journey towards that goal. It's useful to always write down small, practical steps you can take so you know what to do next. But don't plan so much that you never get started. There is no perfect plan. Things will probably not go as planned. Unexpected things will happen and you will have to adjust your plan to keep yourself on course. Adjusting your plan once in while can also allow you to find a better, easier and more enjoyable path to where you're going. 8. Not reviewing previous failures. Failures can be useful to learn something about yourself and the world. If you review your failures you can get a hang of where your weaknesses lie. Where you are likely to run into problems? If you identify such weak points in yourself you can be prepared for when they may strike and lessen the blow. Or you can start looking for solutions to avoid at least some of the trouble spots along the way towards your goal. An example: you realize that a few days after setting goals you often seem to forget about them. One solution could then be to learn to use external reminders to keep your mind on track. 9. Not keeping your focus in the right place. Sometimes it can better to focus on the process rather than an outcome in the form of a distant, future goal. Instead of setting a goal that you will lose 10 pounds by December 31 and making intricate plans to get there you can set a goal to do 20 minutes of anaerobic exercise each day (walking, swimming, running etc.). And then just do it. Don't think, just go, go out and do your exercise. Sometimes can be useful to set a very simple goal where you focus on the present rather than some distant goal. If you exercise every day there will be less room for your mind to find great excuses to slack off and procrastinate until December 21. And if you have a goal where you can just go and do it, where there is little to think about you're less likely to be drawn into the trap of over-thinking. As soon as you start to over-think things there's a big chance that you will start to hold yourself back in different ways. Just doing it and keeping your focus on the process and present can be helpful to get better and more consistent results and to reduce self-defeating tendencies.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. Bruce Lee How do you keep yourself on track? How do you not let your goals get lost in the daily hustle and bustle? One way is to use something outside of your own leaky memory. In my article Change your environment to change your life I wrote about how you can more quickly change who you are by changing your surroundings. Using handy objects like external reminders is one good way of doing just that. And they come in a few different forms. Written notes. This is of course the simplest and most common form of external reminders. You just write down what you want to keep in mind on a piece of paper and then put where you can't avoid seeing it. You can, for example, make a to-do list of three things you want to get done today and then put that note in the pocket of your pants. But you can also use written notes to keep more long-term and less physically practical things in mind. You may, for instance, write down a very meaningful and inspiring quote and tape it on your wall, fridge or bathroom mirror to keep your motivation up and your focus on what is important. Or, if you taking some kind of challenge – like the Positivity Challenge – or doing a 30 day trial to change a habit – like only checking email and RSS-feeds once a day – you can put up many notes in your surroundings with some quick reminder to keep yourself from forgetting and slipping up. Paper is a useful for your notes, but not the only alternative. You can write down a reminder and use it as your screensaver. Or you can program your computer and cell phone to remind you about things with a beep and a small text a few times a day. One suggestion for such a message, if you are trying to improve your effectiveness, is to program your tools to ask you: is this useful? If you find that what you are doing isn't that useful, try to get it done quickly or drop it completely and move on to your most important tasks. Using your hands. If you are doing the Positivity Challenge then you need to be reminded of it often or your mind is likely to fall back in to old and negative thought patterns. If you are changing something that you have to keep in mind most of the day a piece of paper may not be the best solution. One thing that you see a lot during the day is your hands. So a reminder there can be helpful. One great idea for your wrist is the No-complaint bracelet. It's a simple purple bracelet with “a complaint free world” inscribed. Over 4 million of these bracelets have been sent out to people who want help to stay away from complaining for 21 days and form a new and more positive way of thinking. You can read more about the project at this website and order bracelets, the book “A Compliant Free World” and other stuff. If you have some other goal of challenge you can still stick to the bracelet idea. You can buy a cheap, simple and distinct bracelet to remind yourself. Maybe you can even get a small inscription. Or you can create and design your own bracelet just the way you want it. A super-frugal approach is simply to use a thick, brightly coloured rubber band on your wrist. Here are a few suggestions for thought habits to change and words to use: Positivity! This is not a rehearsal. (i.e. you will die. So take more chances and courageously live how you want to live ). Relax. Do you need to buy that? (when going for a more frugal lifestyle). Is this useful? (for becoming less busy and more effective. Am I just being busy? is a good alternative reminder.). Focus on one thing. (for improving your focus and reducing multi-tasking). Now. (for developing the habit of keeping your focus on the present moment rather than some memory or some future scenario). You can also use a ring to remind yourself of your goal. If you are using long sleeves a ring may be a better alternative since you'll probably see it more often during the day. On the other hand, making your own ring or writing a reminder on it can be a bit trickier. Your clothes. A classic. How you dress can affect how you feel and how you see yourself. Emotions work backward too. So the emotional associations you have to different pieces of clothing can change how you feel. It's not exactly a secret that people often feel cooler, more attractive and more enthusiastic when they wear a new awesome looking piece of clothing. So you may want to take a look at what you wear and what your shoes, shirts, pants etc. tell you and how they make you feel. And then think about how a change in how you dress could help you change your thoughts and behavior. Imagine how you would dress in the future, when you have reached your goals. If you, for example, want to become more organized and disciplined then you might want to have wear more structured and professional clothes. If you experiment a bit you can probably find a good style of clothing that is comfortable but also projects an image to yourself of who you're becoming. Try to match your clothes to the new self-image you are developing. This will reinforce your new self-image and can help achieve the change you'd like more rapidly.

One source for pretty reliable advice is what has been repeated. Not what's been repeated throughout your life but throughout history. Time-tested advice, advice that has survived and been rediscovered over the centuries often has a good deal of practical value. I think this applies to tips on improving your social skills. Society may have changed but people are people. So what worked a couple of hundred or thousand years ago can still be useful today. Here are eight tips on social skills that have been told over and over. Maybe you'll find them helpful. 1. Listen “Nature gave us one tongue and two ears so we could hear twice as much as we speak.” Epictetus “The less you speak, the more you will hear.” Alexander Solshenitsen “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” Ernest Hemingway This is probably one of the most underappreciated social skills. People are often centred on themselves. Nothing surprising really, but it doesn't mean that they are selfish jerks either. But because of this a lot of people are just used to talking about themselves or waiting for the other person to finish so they can start talking again. I know I have done this many times and still do from time to time. How do you get past it? One useful way that I have found is to just forget about yourself. Focus your attention outward instead of inward in a conversation. Place the mental focus on the person you are talking and listening to instead of yourself. Placing the focus outside of yourself makes you less self-centred and your need to hog the spotlight decreases. If you start to actually listen to what people are saying it also becomes easier to find potential paths in the conversation. By asking open-ended questions – the ones that will give you more than a yes or no answer – you can explore these paths and have better and more fun conversations. And this ties into the next tip… 2. Actually be interested in the other person. “You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.” Dale Carnegie “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” Henry David Thoreau If you become more interested in people then you'll naturally become a better listener since you are actually interested in what's on their minds. And it becomes easier find out what someone is really passionate about and to dispel negative assumptions that can mess up the communication. If you listen to what someone has to say then you may find that s/he for instance isn't as boring or different from you as you may have guessed when you were first introduced. And as Carnegie says, it's a lot easier to create and improve relationships if you focus on the other person than on yourself. Why is that? Well, for one, as I wrote just a few paragraphs ago, people often don't listen that much. So you'll be a pleasant exception among the others that are waiting for their turn to talk again. But the big reason is simply that you make them feel good because of your attention, validation of them and their interest and the connection that is made. 3. Don't listen too much to criticism. “If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.” Epictetus “When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.” Unknown Well, Epictetus got this one down. Listen to criticism. If you feel that there is some relevance to it explore how you can change yourself. But also recognize that lot of the time criticism is mostly about the other person. Maybe s/he has had a bad day. Maybe a pet or child is sick. Maybe s/he is jealous of you or angry at someone else. Since people often are centred on themselves it's easy to make a mistake here. Someone may criticise you but is actually focused on something in their own life. And you are probably also focused on yourself. And therefore you draw the conclusion that the criticism must have something to do with you. But the world doesn't revolve around you. Which is bad if you want more attention and validation from others. On the other hand, it can be liberating since people don't seem to care that much about what you do. The big problem of not daring to do something because you're afraid of what people may say becomes a smaller obstacle. 4. Don't babble on and on. “The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.” Sir Francis Bacon “The more you say, the less people remember.” Francois Fanelon This one's connected to listening. If you talk and talk there will be little time, energy or focus for listening. But if you start to focus outward then your mind will become more focused and you'll spend less time babbling for too long about something. 5. Treat others as you would like them to treat you. “The people with whom you work reflect your own attitude. If you are suspicious, unfriendly and condescending, you will find these unlovely traits echoed all about you. But if you are on your best behaviour, you will bring out the best in the persons with whom you are going to spend most of your working hours.” Beatrice Vincent “It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate. It takes guts to be gentle and kind.” Morrissey The Law of Reciprocity is strong in humans. As you treat someone else s/he will feel like treating you. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But over time these things have a way of evening out. One of the most important things in relationships and conversations is your attitude. It determines a lot about your interactions and how you treat other people. The attitude you have, the lens you hold up and view the world through determines what you see. And the thoughts you keep in your mind control how you feel. Your thoughts and feelings direct how you say something and what your hands, eyes, posture etc. says through body language. So even if you say nice words you may create an different feeling in the person you are talking to because your thoughts, feelings, voice tonality and body language aren't aligned with your words. And words are only 7 percent of communication. So the attitude behind your words is absolutely crucial. 6. Keep a positive attitude. “I am convinced that attitude is the key to success or failure in almost any of life's endeavors. Your attitude – your perspective, your outlook, how you feel about yourself, how you feel about other people – determines you priorities, your actions, your values. Your attitude determines how you interact with other people and how you interact with yourself.” Carolyn Warner “Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.” Frederick Langbridge “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate.” Albert Schweitzer If your attitude is so important then what can you do about it? One good tip, that has worked for very long, is simply to keep a positive attitude. And by that I don't mean that you should just react in a positive way to events in your life that may be seen by society as positive. For instance, getting a raise in salary, an A on an exam or winning a competition. But before I continue with that train of thought I'd just like to say something about negativity. I wouldn't say that it is all bad. I wouldn't say that people want to get away from negative people all of the time. Sometimes you can find camaraderie in complaining about your boss, job, salary and the government. But overall and long-term I think that going positive is the more useful and fulfilling approach. Now, what I mean with adopting a positive attitude is choosing to stay positive regardless of your external circumstances. You may not be able to do this all the time, but being positive is habit just like eating well or doing your daily exercise. It can be hard to get started and slow going at first. But when your mind gets used to this new behaviour it becomes almost automatic. Your mind just starts to interpret reality in a different way than it did before. Instead of seeing problems everywhere it starts to zoom in on opportunities and what's good about just about any situation. Instead of sighing and feeling like you're working in an uphill rut you'll find reasons to be grateful and happy. Yeah, I know, it might sound like wishful thinking. But it really works. The problem is just that it is difficult to see this – and to realise that you can actually change – from a current worldview and attitude that may be a bit more negative. 7. Use silence. “A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence; which costs us nothing.” John Tillotson “Be silent, or say something better than silence.” Pythagoras “It's good to shut up sometimes.” Marcel Marceau There are several good reasons to learn to be more silent. It will help you to develop your listening skills. And instead of saying something you wish you didn't you can learn to keep your piehole closed. This can help you avoid unnecessary arguments and reduce the hurt you do unto others by, for example, criticising. Sitting in silence day in and day out while your inner pressure builds up is of course not good. Then you may need speak up, take charge and change whatever it is in your environment that causes the problem. But often a great deal of negative things can be avoided just by calmly staying silent. 8. Communicate with more than your words. “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Carl W. Buechner “I speak two languages, English and Body.” Mae West “We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.” Friedrich Nietzsche The words you use are just a small part of communication. How you use your tone of voice and your body language is over 90 percent of what you are communicating. To become a better communicator these two areas are ridiculously important. You can for instance improve how you say something by loading your words with more emotions. If you use tip # 6 – Keep a positive attitude – this often improves kinda automatically. You'll naturally convey more enthusiasm and positive emotions through your voice. Your attitude, as mentioned before, also has big impact on your body language. If you feel relaxed, open and positive this comes through in how you use your body. You may want check out these additional 17 body language tips though. Just to be on the safe side. And to not repeat and reinforce some old and ingrained body language habits. Manually correcting your body language can be useful. When you for instance are listening, you can lean in and keep eye contact to reinforce that you are actually listening. If you keep your body language interested you'll also be able to keep your focus and interest longer since emotions can work backwards. As your body is “interested” your mind becomes interested and focused on what is said.

What are some of the most common mistakes that people make when trying to improve their productivity and manage their time better? Here are some of the crucial mistakes I have made over and over again. I think many of them do not just apply to me. They are challenges I think many of us have faced at one time or other. 1. Taking on too much. You can increase your capabilities and capacity. But don't overdo it. At some point you may be taking on too much. This can cause a lot of stress and decrease your effectiveness. You can at least do tree things to help yourself if you feel you're taking on too much: Learn to say no. Set boundaries and limits. If you don't there is also risk that people will keep hoisting more work your way since the they think you have the time and energy to spare. Ask for help. Just as learning to say no, this can be hard. But if you are buried in work it may be necessary. Declutter. Perhaps you don't have to do all that work you are doing. Use the 80/20-rule and find out what your most important tasks are. Consider spending more time with them. And less or no time at all with some of those tasks that aren't that important anyway. Just like when decluttering your closet, decluttering your to-do list can reward you with a surprisingly large amount of free space. 2. Not thinking things through and planning before getting started. This can cost you a lot of time and energy. Take out a piece of paper – or create a fresh and clean document on your computer – and start thinking about how you will go about what you are about to do. Do some research online or through books to educate yourself. Or ask someone who has been where you want to go. Try to find out where possible stumbling blocks may lie. Spending an hour planning or some time sending out emails/asking questions on the phone before getting started can save you countless hours and a lot frustration and problems down the road. Things will probably not turn out exactly as you planned along the way, but some knowledge plus a plan is certainly better than nothing at all. 3. Overcomplicating your time management system. You may have a complicated time management system. If it works for you, then that's great. If it doesn't work, if you spend a lot time to keeping your system in order or slipping while trying to get things done then it might be time for a change. Try decluttering and simplifying. Take it back to basics so you don't have to spend half your time managing your system, trying to optimize it with more and more tools and feeling defeated when you can't keep up. Simplify and you'll save yourself a whole lot of energy, worries and mindclutter. And you'll probably get more done in a more enjoyable way. Simple time management tips can also be found in Tim Ferriss excellent 4-Hour Workweek. 4. Being busy instead of effective. How you spend a normal day? What you do actually do with your hours? Keeping yourself busy with low-priority activities that won't have much payoff can become a big problem. One way to keep yourself on track and your attention on what's important is to ask yourself questions a few times a day. I ask myself: Is this useful? If I find that what I'm doing is not useful then I move on to something that is. But how do you remember to actually ask yourself the question above? Write it down. Use it as a screensaver or write it down on a piece of paper and put it where you can't avoid seeing it throughout your day. Sometimes you still need to do boring stuff or low-priority tasks. When you do, try to bunch them. You can also bunch your more important tasks to keep your flow going and get a better performance and more done in less time. 5. Multitasking and getting less done with more stress. I'm sure that multitasking works great for some people. For me it doesn't. I just get less done, feel more stressed and I'm more prone to procrastinate. If you feel the same way give singletasking a try. Just focus on one task at the time. Do it until it's completed. It will be hard at first. But over time, just like with any other skill, it becomes easier and you can complete tasks quicker. One thing I've found to be quite helpful while singletasking is to work in a cone of silence. What this means is that you create a zone where there are few things to distract you. Or tempt you to veer off course and procrastinate. So I, for instance, clean my workspace and desktop. I shut the door and shut down and unplug what is not needed. That may include various phones and the internet cable. Then I work in silence and tranquillity. You may not be able to remove that many possible distractions when and where you work. But try your own variation and see if it improves your focus and clarity of thought. 6. Not writing everything down. If your memory is anything like mine it's like a leaking bucket. And there are many great reasons to write everything down. You'll have your ideas safely saved away instead of having them lost somewhere in the depths of your mind. If you don't write things down you'll forget many good and some great ideas. You'll free up your mind to analyse and create based on your ideas instead of occupying it with trying to remember everything. You'll feel more relaxed and be able to think about your ideas and what you have to do with more clarity. As described in mistake # 4, you can use paper or a screensaver as an effective reminder to keep yourself on track and away from just being busy. 7. Not taking breaks. You can't keep working non-stop. Well, you can. But if you do that there's a good chance your effectiveness will drop. And at the end of the day you will have kept yourself busy for most of the day doing low-priority tasks instead of working on and completing the most important ones. If you're tired and feeling down that may just mean that you need to take a break. Taking a few minutes to eat something, to go for a quick walk a get some fresh air or just to relax can make a big difference. Rewarding yourself with an icecream or some funny YouTube clips or doing a bit of meditation – I prefer the guided kind – are also good ways to lift yourself up again. How and when to take breaks is something everyone have to experiment with for themselves to find a good balance and a feel for when you a breather. Some factors that play important parts in how much work you can get done and when you need a break are your motivation and your ability to focus. But more basic stuff like how much sleep you are getting, what and how much you're eating and the shape you're in can make a dramatic difference.

Creativity is a strange, elusive creature. Sometimes is flowing like a river. Sometimes it's all dried up and nowhere to be found. Here are some thoughts and ideas that I like and have found useful to spark or improve my own creativity. Most of them are pretty obvious, like so much advice, but I have found that if I actually use them they can be quite helpful. Also, I find it useful to – as much as possible – have a notepad and a pen around to quickly jot down the new ideas before they disappear. 1. Generate a boatload of ideas. If you haven't had any it may because you haven't had enough ideas yet. 2. Take a trip outside your personal bubble. If you just have the same input every day it may be hard to come up with many new ideas. Take some input from outside own your little bubble. Meet new people, read book about something you don't anything about, take up a new hobby, listen to music you normally never listen to. Do something different and get some new input into your mind. This can set off a creative spark and generate fresh ideas you hadn't thought about before. 3. Get rid of all the distractions. Shut of your phone. Close the door. Close your IM-programs. As best you can create a space where you can be creative and focus without having disturbances or having to worry about them. Consider decluttering this space so your mind don't have to focus on unnecessary things. And decorating the space in a way that makes you feel relaxed, centred or however you want to feel to improve your creativity. You may also want to experiment with music and silence. I have found that music sometimes boosts my creativity – wordless music seems to work best – but that more often silence is the way to go for me. 4. Criticize later. Or some part of your mind may feel threatened and shut up and withdraw. Just let ideas flow out, don't try to censor yourself or worry about how silly the ideas may be. It's important to keep an atmosphere of openness when trying to generate ideas and being creative, either if you do it alone or in a group at work/in school. You can sort the ideas later and determine which ones may be of best use. 5. See yourself as a creative person. Everyone is creative. Not everyone think they are. If you do not see yourself as a creative person this can seriously limit your creativity, stop the flow of ideas and make you not believe in the ideas that do surface. Even though the ideas might be good or just what you need. Allow yourself to be a creative person. And think back to instances when you were creative and let those memories be proof that you really are a creative person. Don't focus on the memories of when you had troubles being creative. 6. Build it. Like so many things in life creativity is bit like lifting weights (or doing your sport/exercise/game of choice). You can't go into the gym and lift the heavy weights when you're there for the first time. You have to start with smaller ones. Then consistently and progressively work your way up. Over time you'll, if you train and work at it, build your creative muscles. 7. Sleep less. Here's something that works pretty good for me once in a while. When I feel a little groggy and sleepy because I've slept too few hours it's like words start flowing out of my fingers when I sit down to write. I think it's because when you're a bit groggily tired you don't think too much. Your mind doesn't have the energy to criticize and halt your creative outflow. It's like more doors than usual are open in the corridors of your brain and thoughts can run around more freely. However, what is poured out when you're in this state isn't always pure gold. So you may want to go back and edit on a day when you are more well-rested to cut down and rewrite the sometimes nonsensical ramblings of your sleep-deprived mind. 8. Relax and play. This is very useful and a great use of your time. Go out and do something with your friends or family and just relax and have a lot of fun. Doing this for a day or an evening can recharge not only your creativity but also your motivation and general sense of well-being for days or weeks to come. Working non-stop and never playing will not.

How do you change how you feel? There are many ways. Some of them need work over a longer time period. If you for instance do what you set out to do from day to day your self-esteem will, over time, go up. However, on some days you just fall into a slump. You feel a bit negative. Or just not that motivated or energetic. You don’t care that much really. I have found that certain actions can work as a new starting point on days like that. A starting point that you can build upon and that leads the day away on a more positive note than you may have predicted. Here are six of my favorite/most effective ways to pick yourself up and turn a bad/boring mood, morning, afternoon or evening into a more positive one. All of these suggestions are things you can do pretty quickly. Some of them can radically change how you feel in just a few minutes. 1. Work Out. Whether you go out running in the forest or head inside to pump iron in the gym, getting some exercise is one of the most effective ways to add energy and a more positive outlook to your regular day. Personally I prefer free weights most of the time because I can use them at home and because such a work out provides me with an energy boost topped off with a nice jolt of testosterone. And that boost always sharpens my focus and lifts my spirit. The interesting thing is that sometimes it will be enough to exercise for a few minutes to improve your mood. For instance, you can try to do 60 sit-ups. This micro-workout usually changes how I feel. 2. Listen to/watch inspirational material. I have found that this one of the best ways to start your day. Instead of reading the paper and getting hammered with negative news and views on the world try watching or listening to one of your favorite personal development products. Reading works too, but listening and seeing creates a more three-dimensional experience – with room for the always important body language and voice tonality to be included – and adds emotional power to the information. Some of my favorites at the moment are the audio version of The 4 Hour Workweek, just about any tape with Brian Tracy or watching a video by Eckhart Tolle. If I feel a bit down I just consume one of those sources for 15-20 minutes. After that not only has my mood changed. I’m also just about always reminded of some useful tip that I can use to improve my life. 3. Change your physiology. If you change how you move and use your body your mood will change. If you for instance want to feel happier, force a smile for about 60 seconds. You’ll feel happier. If you want to feel confident stand up and walk around for few minutes in a confident way (slowly, head held high, posture relaxed but not slumped). You’ll feel more confident. You can do these things for the specific effects. But a better way to use your physiology to change your mood is to just combine everything at once. Smile while you’re walking around in a confident and relaxed way. Get it all in there to maximize the effect. One key to better use of this technique is to focus on your body and changing your movements but to then turn the focus outward, into the world around you. Doing that has recently given me more dependable and consistent results. I think that may be because if you focus outward you don’t become that self-conscious. If you on the other hand keep your focus inward – on what you are doing – while you are moving around with a changed physiology you become self-conscious. And that self-analyzing and nervous self-consciousness counteracts much of the positive emotional effect that you can create by changing how you move and use your body. 4. Appreciate away. Perhaps the corniest suggestion in this bunch. It’s often seen as cool – or funny – to go around complaining and being a bit negative about everything. Going around appreciating isn’t that cool. But generally I’d say that almost everyone likes and finds a positive person to be cool. And a very effective way to become a more positive person and to enjoy your life more is simply to develop a habit of appreciating more. If you want a few suggestions, here are a few of the things that I like to appreciate: My food. The weather. My health. Friends and family. This blog and the opportunity to write about what I want. You, the reader. My roof and the heating. Especially since it's been raining constantly for the last few days. :) The funny thing is that if you just start appreciating something you can very quickly start jumping around with your attention and appreciate just about anything around you. You may start with the food you are eating right now. Then move your attention to the phone and appreciate that you can contact anyone – and be contacted by anyone – you’d like. You might then move your attention outside, through the window and see the wonderful sunshine, then kids having fun with a football and then a really attractive person walking by. And so on. Try doing that for 5 minutes. Try to come up with all the things in yourself and your world that you can appreciate. Move your attention around from appreciation-point to appreciation-point like when you are jumping from stone to stone while crossing a stream. Before those 5 minutes are up your mood will be a lot more positive and enthusiastic. 5. Act as you’d like to feel. Ask yourself: what would a very positive person do in this situation? Do that and then you’ll feel positive. Make a call or answer the phone in a positive way. Write an email in a positive and enthusiastic manner. Instead of thinking that a situation will probably be boring and not so beneficial think of it as something that will be exciting, fun and useful. By acting as you’d like to feel you just do things in a less common order. Just like when you change your physiology. Instead of being a positive person/having a positive mood for the day and therefore acting in a positive way when something happens you flip it around. You start by acting as you would in a situation if you were in a positive mood. And then you’ll create a positive mood and consequences both in the world around you – via the positive action – and within yourself. It often doesn’t take that much to change how you feel. And acting as you'd like to feel make everyday situations a lot more interesting and can open up new possibilities and opportunities in your life. 6. Just do it anyway. If you have a hard time doing something, a hard time getting started, a hard time changing your mood with the suggestions above just do what you need to do anyway. You are not your thoughts and emotions. They aren’t your boss or parents. You don’t have to obey them. You are the observer of your thoughts and emotions. Sometimes you listen to them. And sometimes you just see them as blabbering going on and on in your mind and body. And then you just go. You do what you want to do anyway. If you just jump into action and just do it soon your mood will change to a more uplifting one.

Tap water. Few things have such a boring and unglamorous image. Of course, it's hard to sell regular tap water in a cool and expensive way. So it becomes boring as nails and concrete. But just as useful. One healthy habit I've had for just about all my life is to drink water. A lot of water. And mostly tap water. For more than one reason. Actually, I've found nine of them. But first, how much water should you drink? Recommendations seem to fall somewhere between 2-3 liters (that's 67-100 liquid ounces) of water a day. And that does not include the 20 percent of your daily water that you get through food. If you are pregnant, exercising or in a hot and/or humid environment you may need more. It's quite a bit of water to drink every day. So it may not be so surprising that 75 percent of Americans do not consume the recommended amounts. If you want to drink more water my three best tips are: Always carry a bottle of water with you (at school, at work etc.). As soon as you have emptied it, fill it up again. And drink on. Substitute what you are drinking with your daily meals – maybe juice or soda – for a glass or two of water instead. If you really like your juice, try to at least replace it with water for a meal or two a day. Put a glass of water next to your bed. You may be quite thirsty when you wake up after a long night of sleep and no water. This is a simple way to replenish some of your fluids after the alarm goes off. Now, on to the reasons why you should drink more tap water: 1. Soda is bad in more than one way. One small can of soda – about 12 ounces or 33 cl – contains 10-12 teaspoons of sugar. This will not only help you put on pounds of fat. It will also damage your teeth. And going to the dentist isn't cheap. If you on the other hand drink more water and less soda you can both lose weight and use your dental money for something more pleasurable. 2. Juice is healthy but contains sugar. There are a lot of vitamins and healthy goodies in fruit juice. However, there is also quite a bit of sugar that will add to the weight and teeth-problems described above. So don't drink too much of the stuff. 3. Bottled water isn't good for the environment. Americans buy 28 billion water bottles a year. Then you have to add the rest of the world. That's a whole lot of bottles. All that plastic and the energy used for manufacturing and transportation wears and tears on the environment. Adding to the problem is the fact that few bottles are recycled or reused but instead just dropped in the nearest trashcan. 4. You'll save boatloads of money. Here's another good reason to switch from bottled to tapped water. And you'll not only save money by buying less soda, juice and water in a bottle. You can also avoid costs that come with the health problems caused by putting too much sugar into your body. You may save hundreds of dollars a year by drinking tap water instead. Over a lifetime you can save a whole lot more both health-wise and money-wise. 5. It tastes great. Here in Sweden the tap water is pretty delicious. You may have a different situation where you live. You can however often improve the quality of the water by getting a filter for your faucet. Or spruce up your cold glass of water with a slice of lemon or lime. 6. Better skin. I first heard about this one in a Cindy Crawford interview a long time ago. Drinking enough water keeps your skin hydrated and washes out toxins from your body. 7. More energy. If you keep your body properly hydrated you'll have more energy. You'll avoid the headaches, nausea, fatigue and concentration problems that come from not consuming enough fluids. And that's not just after a hard workout in the gym. It you feel a slump in energy in middle of the day that may be because you are becoming dehydrated. 8. Reduced health risks. Drinking more water isn't just about improving your health. You can also also prevent a few health problems besides the ones with your teeth and weight. According to studies you can slice the risk of bladder cancer or dying from a heart attack in half by consuming the recommended amount of water. Drinking enough water can also lower the risk for constipation and kidney stones. 9. It's convenient. You don't have to go to the store or supermarket. You get just walk over to the nearest tap and get some.

So, yesterday my internet connection went out. After quickly accepting that I started thinking about what I could do now. Here's what I came up with and got done (which to a large degree was stuff I usually forget to do). Maybe you'll find something of use for the next time you run into the same situation. Write a post. If you're a blogger you can work on your next post. It is easier to focus on your writing when the tempting internet is out of the picture. And even if you have written a post for today or tomorrow it is always good to have an extra post of two done in case something happens (you get sick, you have to do some travelling for a few days etc.) Clean your desk. I find it pretty satisfying to remove old coffee-cups from my desk, sort my stuff and throw out what I don't need. A decluttered and ordered workspace brings clarity and order to the mind. Plus, according to a series of interviews that Brian Tracy cites 50 out of 52 managers would not promote a person with a messy desk. Even if the person was doing a good job. They couldn't trust a position of responsibility to someone who couldn't keep himself organized. Take a look at you workspace and see what it might reflect about you as a person. Clean up your computer. Cleaning up your computer has the same benefits as uncluttering your desk. You can think more clearly without 43 icons and files on your desktop. And you can find things more easily if they are put in the right folders. Plus it can improve your productivity and decrease procrastination. If you for instance have a habit of checking website statistics, RSS-feeds, email etc. too often delete the most accessible shortcuts to those things. Remove shortcuts on your desktop and bookmarks from your browser. This has helped me to cut down on such addictive checking and rechecking. You can also uninstall programs that are wasting too much of your time (or you never use anyway). Get things organized. I remembered that I hadn't changed some passwords in ages so I did that (and wrote down what those new passwords are). I added and removed some names from the address book in my email-program. I also ran a full scan for viruses with AVG and one scan for spyware with Ad-Aware. And plugged in my mp3-player to remove some old songs and fill it up with new stuff. Back up important information. If you're at work I guess this often already taken care of. But if you have a computer at home you may also want backup important financial documents, emails and precious vacation photos. If you're a blogger it can be useful to backup old texts – if you have them saved in Word or something similar like I do – and graphics you use for the blog. Take a break and go for a snack. If you have been working for a while and your are starting feel unfocused there is sometimes a simple solution. Get up, walk a round for a bit and eat something. Go for a walk and some fresh air. If the snack and the break didn't boost your energy levels try going for a short walk and get some fresh air. This can both raise your energy and lower your stress levels. Or if you have the opportunity, take it a step further like I did and go to the gym.

When I had signed up for Blog Action Day I did a little brainstorming to generate some good ideas. After half an hour I came up with this one and decided to stick with it. I liked it because of its simplicity. And because one thing I and I think many of my readers use for several hours each day is a computer. Plus, many of the tips can – over time – save you quite a bit of money. These are just 20 ideas on what you can do reduce the wear and tear on the environment. Some may contradict each other a bit. How far you want to take them is up to you. Pay your bills online. Instead of using paper to pay your bills pay them over the internet instead. At least for me this has been a cheaper option too, since my bank has a lower fee for paying online compared to using the mail. Shop online. Instead of taking the car to, for instance, buy a couple of books buy them online. You'll cut down on your polluting. And save money on both gas and the books since they are often cheaper online than in the store. Throw out your TV. Your TV draws electricity by just being plugged in. If you don't use your TV that much consider getting rid of it. Or putting it in the closet/unplugging it while you wait for the Olympics or something you really want to see. You can watch TV-shows via DVD, Itunes or the websites of various broadcast companies instead. You'll waste less electricity and time watching shows you don't care for that much anyway. Throw out your stereo. Just like with the TV, your stereo uses electricity by being plugged in. And these days I don't really use the stereo that much anyway. Watching TV, movies and listening to music has been simplified by using my computer for all three purposes. It doesn't just save electricity, it also makes you more focused on using your time for experiencing what you choose. Rather than what's just on. Find recipes and other useful tips online. You won't waste as much paper and clutter up your bookcase as when you buy tip/recipe-filled books and magazines. And you'll save money. Read your morning paper online. A lot of people want their morning paper in paper-form. Frankly, I have found it easier and quicker to just scan through it online. Plus, it saves a tree or two. Click ads and donate money. There is a whole bunch of sites with ads where the money goes to the helping the environment. If you for instance click an ad at The Rainforest Site a small amount of money goes to protecting a piece of rainforest. Another such site is The Ecology Fund . You may also want to check out Charity Navigator . It evaluates different charities and is, as the slogan says, a “guide to intelligent giving”. Look for shopping discounts and offers online. At least here in Sweden, you can often find what's on sale for the week at the website of your local grocery store. So I'e put up a small note on my mailbox that tells the postman that I don't want any direct mail, junk mail or similar kinds of mail. Throw out the phonebook. Instead of flicking through your phonebook do a simple search for the number online. I guess it may vary from country to country how well this works, but over here it has worked out really well. Find the quickest route. To avoid getting lost and to not use more gas than necessary look up where you are going before you leave. Look up bus- and train-schedules online. Instead of flicking through those small books with the schedule try to look it up online when you can. Download programs and games. Valve sells downloadable games online. Many other companies sell games and programs the same way. This reduces packaging, gas use if you normally take the car or bus to the store and the time until you can start playing (if you have a fast connection). Download books. You can skip CDs and download audio books directly from services like Amazon and Audible . If you journal, use your computer instead of a notepad. It makes it easier to edit your entries and keep them organized. Just don't forget to backup once in a while. One good program for journaling is The Journal by David RM. It comes with a 45 days trial. Or you can just create your own blog. It's free . Email what you can. Ridiculously obvious advice, but you can a save a lot of paper by emailing whenever it's possible at home, at work and in school. When you print, print double-sided. If your printer has the option, print double-sided to make the most of every sheet of paper. Work from your home. If you can, try to work from home. It might be just one day a week but that can save you and the environment a whole lot of gas, pollution and stress. Tim Ferriss has some good tips on how to handle it practically with your computer and how to convince your boss to let you work from your home. Read The 4-Hour Workweek for the whole plan. Shut off the lights in the room. I've found that at night I don't have to have a lot of lights on when I'm using my computer. I can rely on the light from the computer screen instead. Just don't forget about the energy-conserving options in the next tip for when you're not using the computer. Put it to sleep when you're not using it. There are energy-conserving options for every computer. You can for instance set the computer to go into a low-energy usage mode if you haven't used it for 10 minutes. It's useful to check to check these settings after you have bought a new computer. On the laptop I'm using to type this, the screen was set to power down after 15 minutes of not being used. I've changed that to 5 minutes. Shut if off. When you know you aren't going to use the computer for some time or you are going to go to sleep shut off the computer to not waste electricity. Now, what more can you do with your computer to reduce the wear and tear on the environment?

Sometimes it can feel like you are carrying a piano on your back. Pressure can really weigh you down. Too much pressure can make a lot of us angry, feed up or sad. Or simply, over time, knock you out cold with a burnout. Now I don't how your mind works but personally I perform better without a lot of pressure. It's easier to focus on your task and not second-guess or hold yourself back when you feel light and relaxed. Like most problems in life this one is mostly in our minds. You can actually remove some of that pressure before it gets the best of you. Here are a few of the things you can do to accomplish that. 1. Don't listen too much to others. Or worry about what they might think. Or getting their validation. If you use too much time and energy to focus on these three things you may be heading down a pretty harmful road. And the thing is, most people aren't thinking about you, what you do and your problems as much as you may fear anyway. They are busy with being focused on their own life and challenges. An important part of this is to not to see yourself through the eyes of others. Doing that can build a self-image and expectations that become very hard to live up to. It can make you end up filled up with negative feelings and that won't help anyone. And, as I said above, you don't really know what people think about you anyway. Your worries about what people may think about you are probably mostly in your head. What they may actually think about you shouldn't take too seriously anyway since it's just their opinion. And such things are often more about the guy/gal with the opinion rather than the person/thing they have an opinion about. 2. Forget about perfectionism. Perfectionism is pretty pointless. It's just you putting unnecessary pressure on yourself and thereby reducing your ability to do excellent work. Take a look at the next point to find a better replacement for perfectionism. 3. Focus on the process, not on the outcome. Detaching from the possible outcomes and just keeping your focus on the work you are doing makes it easier to both live and live up to your potential by reducing many of your inner, mental obstacles such as performance anxiety and other worries. 4. Be OK with mistakes and failure. This one ties in to the two previous tips. If you allow yourself to redefine mistakes you'll be less prone to get yourself stuck in perfectionism. And the world won't collapse if you make mistakes or fail. The morning of the day when you learned to ride a bike you fell off it time and time again. But you just brushed yourself off, perhaps cried for a minute or two and then you got up on the bike again. And towards the afternoon, or the next day, you probably started to become pretty good at riding your bike. The same applies here. You have work on your skills to sharpen them. See failure or rejection not as something incredible negative that might end your life if it strikes. Redefine it in your mind to lessen the negative emotional impact and the fear. See failure simply as feedback on what you need to improve on. Listen to the advice that failure gives you and you will improve. 5. Just do it! If you often get stuck in procrastination and get little done the pressure can start to build up. “Just doing it” is a great way to get out of an overthinking or procrastinating state and just get going with what you want to do. But that's not always so easy. Then everybody would be doing it. So, what's the problem? I think two important factors are that you may get too wrapped up and too closely identified with your thoughts and emotions. But you aren't them, you are the observer of them. So you don't have to obey what your thoughts or what your inner emotional resistance may say. You can get going anyway. 6. Cut down on busywork and unimportant stuff. Feeling like you just have too much to do and too little time for the most important things? Then you probably need to do some decluttering in your life. Eliminate some of the less important stuff. To prioritize and find what's really important to spend most of your time on, both at work/in school and life in general you can use the 80/20 rule. To not get stuck in that unimportant busywork ask yourself: “Is this, what I'm doing right now, useful?” a few times throughout your day. To remember to actually ask yourself this, consider writing it down on a piece of paper and put that paper where you can't avoid seeing it. Or use that question as your screensaver. I also think it's important to realize that you don't really have to do everything you are doing. You always have a choice. Sometimes there will be big consequences if you choose to do or not do something. But you always have a choice. And if you choose to spend more of your time on the most important stuff and less – or none – on the unimportant things your life will most likely improve in any area you apply this thinking. 7. Don't take things too seriously. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do a good job. Or that you should avoid responsibility. But having the attitude that the sky will fall down if something goes wrong is most often inaccurate outside of your own head. And it's not a good headspace to be in to perform or feel well. I guess this one ties into many of the other tips but I think it's good to emphasize how helpful a more relaxed attitude can be both for you and the people around you. Realize you have a choice about what attitude you should adopt, just like with what you choose to do/not do. It might take some time to replace an old and ingrained habit for another. But over time you can do it 8. Take 30 belly breaths. This is more of a temporary solution compared to the ones above. But it's also an immediate one. If you are feeling pressured and stressed out right now, you can use a few dozen belly breaths or so to relieve some of that for a while. Here's what you do: – Sit in a relaxing position with your legs apart. – Put your hands on your stomach. Using your stomach breathe in slowly through your nose. If you are doing it right your stomach will expand and you'll feel it with your hands. – Breathe out slowly through your nose and do it with some force so you feel your stomach pull slightly inwards towards your spine. – Breathe in and out 30 times. Take slow and deep breaths.- After you have taken 30 breaths and focused on counting them you should not only feel more relaxed and centered. Your body will also be able to continue breathing in this manner without you focusing on it. And that's it. Continue with your normal day.

Trying to reach where you want to go, trying to be successful can have it's obstacles. Maybe you procrastinate a lot. Maybe you have some doubts that you'll be able to get there. You may feel anxiety when creating something new as everything has gone well so far. You don't want to fail and disappoint the people around you. Like most obstacles in life these obstacles are inner, mental obstacles. So what do you do? One thing that has helped me to keep striving towards where I want to go is to focus on the process instead of the outcome. You just focus on what you are doing. You don't think about the possible outcomes of what you are doing when you are doing what you do. You detach from that. You just keep your mind focused on doing the work. You don't think about how you may fail, disappoint yourself or have great success. You don't think about how you may disappoint, amuse or in some other way be seen through the eyes of others. You just focus on what you do. For instance, don't focus on getting great reactions from your audience while writing your blogposts. Focus on writing excellent articles without thinking about what people will think about them. Don't focus on losing 10 pounds. Focus, for instance, on walking for 45 minutes each day or running for 30 minutes every other day. Just go and do it and don't think about the outcome while walking/running. In time your pounds will come off. 7 powerful advantages of focusing on the process You feel less anxiety and stage fright. As you detach from the possible outcomes – like what your audience will say about your new post or song – you can just focus on the moment and your performance. You don't care about outside pressure as much. Regardless if it's real or mostly in your head. And you'll put less pressure on yourself. As you detach from the results inner pressure and outside influences matter less. You can only focus on one thing at a time. If you focus what you are doing you'll enjoy just doing instead of worrying about what may come up. You are more creative. When your mind isn't stuck in worrying about potential negative outcomes it opens up and allows you to be both more creative and open to your own, perhaps slightly odd ideas. You procrastinate less. That has been my experience anyway. It's often the negative feelings described above – stage fright, worry, pressure – that makes you procrastinate about important stuff. If those feelings lessen then you'll also have less of a need to procrastinate. Bad days don't stop you as easily. Your focus is on the process, not on what happened yesterday or might happen today. And even if you feel bad about what happened I've found that the feeling isn't as strong as when you are wrapped up in potential outcomes. This makes it easier to keep going. Following up on a success will be easier. You'll have less of a problem with living up to perceived expectations after having done something well. Expectations can put a bit too much pressure or doubt in your mind. You have less fear and more freedom overall. If you are detached from the outcome you can – from what it may look like from the outside – take larger risks. You'll have less fear of failure and rejection since those fears to a large degree are based on worrying about outcomes. Focusing on the process doesn't mean that you stop planning or tweaking your processes. Focus on your goals while you plan. Focus on educating yourself so you can improve and tweak your processes. And focus on what you are doing while performing the tasks that will get you where you want to go. Focusing on the process works well in combination with a Just do it! mentality. The combination gets you out of an overthinking state and into action. It helps you get going and do the things that will give you results. Results that sitting around thinking can never give you. Patiently building your own inner freedom Now I'm not saying I've got this down perfectly, that I never worry and that I stick to focusing on the process every time I for instance write. But I'm pretty enthusiastic about this because it gives you an inner freedom to do what you want and less power to your own, inner mental obstacles. I have found two things that make it easier to become process-focused. One is that focusing on the process instead of worrying about the outcomes is like working a mental muscle. At first it's weak and your old worrying habit often sneaks up on you. You have to be patient just like when you are improving your discipline or anaerobic capacity. Two is that worrying is just a habit and a pretty useless one. And the important thing is that you don't have to keep it up just because you are used to it. It's easy to assume that you should keep on worrying because you've always done it and everyone else seems to be doing it. But leaving this habit behind and instead focusing your mind on what's important and on strengthening your new habit is a possible and more useful choice. So, focus on the process and it becomes easier, smoother, more relaxing and more enjoyable to do your work. Focus on the process and doing what you are doing right now in an excellent way. Focus on the process to rediscover the joy you once felt when doing something but that lately has been buried in a pile of expectations and negative feeling. Do that continually and you'll be in a much better place to achieve the success you'd like.

If you want to learn how to become a better writer then where do you go? Well, you can take a creative writing course. Or read the books, biographies and studies of men and women hailed as literary geniuses throughout history. For today, I've chosen to take some advice from one the most popular fiction writers of the last few decades: Stephen King. Now, great sales figures aren't always an indication of greatness in any field. But it probably means that the creator knows what s/he is doing and what works. Plus, I have found that that quite a few of Stephen King's books like Insomnia and The Long Walk are really good reads (and sometimes even greater films. I've learned/been reminded about these seven tips by rereading King's memoir/how-to-write book On Writing – highly recommended for many good insights into writing and a writer's life – and by a whole bunch of his novels I've sacrificed sleep to keep on reading. Many of these tips can be useful no matter if you are a blogger , writing reports at work/in school or quietly spending your nights secretly working on that great novel that will astonish the world. How to Become a Better Writer 1. Get to the point. Don't waste your reader's time with too much back-story, long intros or longer anecdotes about your life. Reduce the noise. Reduce the babbling. In “On Writing” King gets to his points quickly. Get to your point quickly too before your reader loses patience and moves on. 2. Write a draft. Then let it rest. King recommends that you crank out a first draft and then put it in your drawer to let it rest. Now, how long you let your text rest may vary. King puts his manuscripts away for several months before rereading and start the editing process. I often let a post rest for a day or two before I start editing (as I'm sure many other bloggers do from time to time too). This enables you to get out of the mindset you had when you wrote the draft and get a more detached and clear perspective on the text. It then becomes easier to edit, add and cut in a sometimes kinda ruthless way. The result is most often a better text. 3. Cut down your text. When you revisit your text it's time to kill your darlings and remove all the superfluous words and sentences. Removing will declutter your text and often get your message through with more clarity and a bigger emotional punch. Don't remove too much text though or you may achieve the opposite effects instead. King got the advice to cut down his texts by 10 percent from an old rejection-letter and has followed this advice for decades. While editing my blog I've found that 10 percent seems to be a pretty good figure not just for mammoth-sized books. 4. Be relatable and honest. King has an honest voice in his fiction and in his memoir. He tells it like it is and makes us relate to him and his characters. Since King's fiction often is of an odd kind with strange plots that seldom happen to normal people I think one of his strengths as a writer is being able to write relatable content anyway. One of the keys to doing that is to have an honest voice and honest characters with both bad and good sides to them. People we can relate to with all of their faults, passions, fears, weaknesses and good moments. King's characters seem human. That creates a strong connection to the reader who starts caring about the characters. Another key to being honest and relatable is keeping a conversational style. Keeping it simple and using language that isn't unnecessarily complicated. Using the words that first come to mind. 5. Don't care too much what others may think. King admits to being needy about the emotional feedback he gets when he lets his wife read a new story for the first time. He gets a kick out of hearing her laugh so she cries or just cry because something in manuscript really touched her. But he has also gotten tons of mail over the years from people who confuse his sometimes nasty characters with the writer. Or just thinks he should wind up in hell. And King hasn't always been a favourite among literary critics either. But from what I gather he just sits down at his desk and keeps writing every morning anyway. If you listen too much to your critics you won't get much done. Your writing will probably become worse, less fun and reflect your own growing self-doubts . And criticism is often not even about you anyway. 6. Read a lot. When you read you always pick up things. Sometimes it might be reminders about what you know you should be doing while you write. Sometimes it's some cool idea or just the world and atmosphere the writer is painting. Sometimes it's something totally new that makes your jaw drop. That one is my favourite. And sometimes you learn what you should avoid doing. There are almost always lessons you can learn. If you want to be a better writer you need to read a lot to get fresh input, broaden your horizons and deepen your knowledge. And to evolve you need to mix yourself up with new influences and see what happens. How do you find time to read more? You can cut down on other evening activities like watching TV-shows you don't care for that much anyway. Or, as King suggests, you can bring a book to waiting rooms, treadmills or toilets. I like to plug in an audiobook while I'm on the bus or walking somewhere. 7. Write a lot. I've saved the most important tip for last. To become a better writer you probably – and not so surprisingly – need to write more. Many of the best in different fields – Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods – have gone beyond normal limits of practise. And so they reap extraordinary results. But what do you do when you don't feel like writing? Waiting for inspiration can become a long wait. One good way to get around this is to find an effective solution to reduce procrastination. You may have to try a few before you find one that works for you. Another way is well, just to do it. And if you just get going your emotions changes a lot of the time and any initial resistance or laziness becomes fun and enthusiasm instead. You may also like: 145 Words of Encouragement (Uplifting and Positive Quotes) 87 Inspirational Quotes for Work 71 Self Care Quotes to Help You to Take Care of Yourself

“For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.” – Badlands A couple of days ago you could pick up Magic, the new album from Bruce Springsteen in your local record store. I haven't listened to Bruce that much these last few years, but I used to be really into his music. I even saw him when he played in Gothenburg in 2003. It was pretty awesome. In retrospect I think that some of the things that attracted me to Springsteen are the same things that got me interested in personal development. While a lot of the other music that I listened to at the time was kinda negative and whiny Bruce radiated positive energy and thoughts. It wasn't depressing but it was also not optimistic in a cheesy way. There was an incredible enthusiasm in the music and often a thought about how there is something more to life than just sitting around or trapping yourself in a boring and depressing rut. And while sitting here, looking back and listening to the wonderful “Your own worst enemy” on repeat I thought about a few of the things I've learned from Bruce Springsteen. 1. Practise, practise, practise. It's tempting to believe that talent is just about everything. But of course we mostly just get to see really successful people at their big, crowning moments. We don't get a feel for, or seldom even a picture of or text about, all the time and energy they have put into creating and practising and refining a song in some dingy basement. Or the hours and years that have been spent hunched over a keyboard or a golf club. Now I'm not saying that talent doesn't play a part. But when I think about what I've read in biographies about Springsteen I'm reminded about how anyone who is really good at anything didn't get there without lots and lots of work. Probably more work than some of the people that didn't get so far. So maybe it isn't always the talent that decides who is going to be really successful and who is not? 2. Give it all you got. It's really fun to see how much someone can give. Seeing someone just giving it all over and over, seeing how energetic and creative they can be, for so many years is really quite inspiring. Seeing Bruce Springsteen on stage is a good reminder that most of us probably have a whole lot more to give, a whole lot more potential hidden somewhere within. …Even if you only have few fans. It's a bit easier to give it what you got when everyone is cheering you on. But you may not get the great response you'd like immediately. I remember an anecdote from one of the biographies about Bruce when he and the E-Street Band is out on tour in the late 1970's. In one town they discover that there are only something like 9 people and a dog at the concert. So do they try to sneak out early? Nope. I think Bruce says something about the audience having paid for the tickets with their hard-earned money just like everyone else. And then Bruce and the band plays for 4 hours. That's not just a great and giving attitude. I also think that there is a joy and validation that comes from within that made Bruce and the band go about business as usual and give a great performance. And I think this mindset is one of the things that propelled them towards a bigger breakthrough and larger audiences. It's easy to get stuck in a reactive frame of mind where you need the outside validation to keep going. One way to not do that is to choose to do something you really like. Then your motivation will come from the inside rather than the reaction of others. This is for instance important if you're a new blogger. Choosing the right topic to blog about can carry you through the first few months and help you write some really good stuff even though it might seem like only 9 people and a dog are reading your posts. 3. Be bold. There are a whole lot of bold lines and emotions in Bruce's music. And I think there is something to be said about boldness in any communication between people. When you keep at a normal tone you can get normal or sometimes little attention. But when you go bold you start something bigger. You hook your listeners not just to your words, but you suck them into your world. You arouse all these different kinds of emotions in them. You create a stronger experience and a powerful connection. Being bold can of course be scary, but there are payoffs too. 4. Have fun. This is something that sometimes gets lost in the mix. But one of the biggest lessons I have learned from Bruce is to relax and have fun. When you watch him and the E-Street Band on stage you realise how much fun they are having while creating and performing. And I think this is an important point too: together they create their own fun from the music. They don't wait around for someone or something else to bring the fun and excitement. They produce it from within. 5. Emotions are contagious. And that fun they create doesn't stop within the group. The emotions, the energy from one person travels outward and onward to the next person. So enthusiasm is contagious. And so is optimism. And anger, boredom and apathy too. I think one of the biggest keys to Bruce's success is how he is able to convey his own emotions through your speakers (or on stage) and make you feel a lot too. As I said above in point #4, when you go bold with your emotions you create a strong connection to other people. So going bold in a positive emotional way is a good tip for creating a real connection and perhaps starting a good relationship. 6. You are the one holding yourself back. As I'm listening to “Your own worst enemy” over and over again I'm reminded about one of the most important things I've learned over the last year. Most of the time it's not someone else holding you back. It's you. If you go beyond the surface of a problem you often discover that what seemed like an external problem actually has a solution within you, within your thoughts and behaviour. And not saying this in a rah-rah motivational way. It's just what I have discovered to be accurate a lot of the time.

When I started studying self-improvement I often thought about a few of the little catchphrases I have heard throughout life. I thought about well, how kinda stupid they were. How self-help catchphrases like “Just be more confident, man!” or “Just be yourself” were pretty worthless pieces of advice. And I thought about Nike's old catchphrase – “Just do it!” – that seems to pop up from time to time too. I thought: “Well, that's easy to say, but it's not so easy to just do”. So I concluded that it was just another catchphrase that people throw out because well, they have to say something. Now I can see that there is actually some really useful advice in that catchphrase. So what changed? Well, I guess I figured out that you can't really sit and think yourself out of something. And I figured out that I was thinking way too much. And that I identified closely with what I thought and felt. Over thinking is quite a nifty trick that you can play on yourself. It tricks you into believing that you are on your way to solve your problem. It keeps you protected against perceived dangers out there in the world like failure, rejection and embarrassment by keeping your actions to a minimum. It feeds your ego and tells you that you know more than others, that you are a clever person that has things figured out. I still think you should make a plan or at least have some thoughts about what you are about to do before you do it. But then, “Just do it!” becomes pretty useful. To me it's a reminder to just go. To disregard what my thoughts are babbling about, how my emotions are trying to hold me back and just go and do what I need to do. It's a reminder to focus on the present moment and forget about the rest. Just do it and you'll change your mind Just doing it is for instance useful when you don't feel like working out. Sometimes you don't feel like going to the gym and can find 27 reasons not to. Then it's useful to disregard your thoughts and just go. The same goes for writing posts for your blog. You can find a lot of reasons to watch TV and slack off instead. But in both cases I have found that if I just get started and focus on what I am doing I flip around mentally. What felt like a drag before I got started instead turns into positive feelings about what I'm doing. Even if you want to do something, your mind will often find reasons not to. And your emotions may become negative in some way. Maybe you'll feel nervous or lazy or bored. So you may think about it and do something to relieve your nervousness or pump up your motivation . And maybe that works and helps you to take action. And sometimes it probably doesn't. You still get wrapped up in the thoughts and emotions that are holding you back. So you think a bit more, perhaps to find a solution, perhaps to wallow in your thoughts and feelings. And often get nowhere. What you are not Just doing it is still not always easy to pull off. But I've found a few insights that makes it a whole lot easier than it once was. You are not your thoughts. Yeah, I thought this perspective sounded a bit weird when I first heard about it from Eckhart Tolle. But what I have realised is that I am not really my thoughts. I'm the one observing my thoughts. The thoughts are just something that moves through my mind. But it is not me. And when this close identification with your thoughts starts to break up you realize that they are often just ramblings that spin around and around most of the day. You are not your emotions. Not listening to your thoughts too much gets easier after a while. It can be harder not to listen to your emotions. But when the identification with your thoughts starts to loosen I have also felt how I'm less tied up in my emotions. And the thing is, a million movies and TV-shows may tell you that you should follow your emotions. But your feelings aren't really as reliable as pop-culture can make us think. Sometimes they just come from some outdated habitual thoughts that we established 10 years ago. Sometimes they come from how we act and move (since emotions work backward too). And I guess you can put a whole lot of trust in your emotions once you have recalibrated them and weeded out most of your irrational fears, anger, not-so-useful social programming and negative habits of thought. Until then you may not want to have too much belief in what your emotions are telling you. And as I wrote above, after you just go and get started you often find that your emotions can change quickly and drastically. This is not to say that your thoughts or emotions are worthless. But sometimes – and you can often tell when – they are mostly just holding you back. And if you are less identified with them and less wrapped up in them it becomes easier to act in spite of what they are suggesting that you should do. This can be helpful if you want to establish a new habit. You'll improve faster and stick to your new habit until it sticks to you if you don't fold as quickly as your mind gets over the initial enthusiasm and starts to invent reasons for you to give up, excuses for you to fail (since success can be scary) or starts producing all kinds of negative and/or protective emotions. And the fun thing about this is that it's kinda liberating. You realise that you don't have to obey or act in accordance with your thought loops or emotions. It's not the police, your mom and dad or teacher. You can just move and go do it. And so you take control of your thoughts and emotions instead of other way around.

What do you want? A great job? A fulfilling relationship? Go sailing around the Pacific for a few years in your very own luxurious boat? Or just to get along better with yourself? Perhaps you want one of more of those things. But beneath those and many common wishes, if you take it a step further, often lies a wish to find happiness. One good way to find a few useful, life-improving and time-tested tips is to look back. To look way back through history. To find ideas that have arisen in minds over and over the last few thousand years. Here are seven such ideas about how you can find happiness. Maybe you´ll find them helpful. And if you want to learn much more about inner happiness then have a look at my 12-week Self-Esteem Course . 1. You choose. “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Abraham Lincoln “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus “The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.” Ludwig Wittgenstein How your view yourself and your world are conscious choices and habits. The lens you choose to view everything through determines how you will interpret what is happening. And from your interpretation you act. And all of this becomes your life. You can choose to find happiness in small, everyday things. You can choose to interpret what happens in a positive way. Or in a negative way. And your choices controls much of how much happiness your will find and create in your life. 2. Focus on the present, not yesterday or tomorrow. “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 that has been opened for us.” Helen Keller “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” James Oppenheim You only have now. And now. And now. Yesterday is a memory and you cannot change it. Tomorrow is just a fantasy in your mind right now. So live more in the now, focus on the present moment and today. Think and worry less about yesterday and tomorrow. Otherwise you might miss a great deal of happiness that is available to you right now. 3. Don't forget to be grateful. “Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.” Fyodor Dostoevsky “We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.” Frederick Keonig “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust One of the simplest and quickest ways to turn a negative and sour mood into a more positive one is to be grateful . A few things you can feel gratitude for are for instance: The sunshine and the weather. Your roof. Your health. A good TV-show, a movie or a song. Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking down the street. Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it's a win/win solution. You feel great because you are grateful about your world and the people you are grateful for feel great too because they feel appreciated. So don't forget about gratitude or you may forget about the happiness that is already in your life. 4. Help someone else find happiness. “Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.” Eleanor Roosevelt “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Buddha “If you want happiness for an hour – take a nap. If you want happiness for a day – go fishing. If you want happiness for a year – inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime – help someone else.” Chinese Proverb “Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.” Bernard Meltzer This is certainly one of the most popular ideas I've found about happiness. And it might sound cliched and empty. But it works very well. When you make someone else happy – by, for example, helping them with something – you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you'd like, you can boost you own ego by thinking something like: “Wow, I really made him/her happy!” And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or they might feel like helping/sharing it with someone else. And so the two – or more – of you keep spreading the happiness. 5. Get rid of a couple of your less valuable desires. “If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.” Epicurus “You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.” Eric Hoffer “That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.” Henry David Thoreau If you want less instead of more, more, more then your desires are more likely to be fulfilled. And if you throw away a few of those desires that you may not really want or need that much anyway you'll probably start to feel less stressed and worried. This is a calmer and better place to be to enjoy your day (tip #2) and to take the time discover the happiness that is already in your life (tip #3). 6. Do what you like to do. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” Albert Schweitzer “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” Franklin D. Roosevelt A pretty obvious one. But it's still easy to trap yourself into doing what you don't want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you really love to do. And I guess this one ties into tip #1. You may not be able to choose to do what you want to do right now. Or for many hours each day or week. But you almost always have a choice to do more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you can free up . You have a choice. 7. Or at least do something. “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” Benjamin Disraeli “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.” Mark Twain One of the best ways to not find happiness is just to hold yourself back and do nothing. Seldom show up. Paralyze yourself through over analysis. It's not always easy to take action, it can be scary and hard and difficult. But if you don't take action you'll be missing out on a lot. Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a lot of happiness.

Mornings can be hectic. There are a whole bunch of things that need be done in little time. Especially if you turned over in bed and hit snooze several times after the alarm-bell rang. The rest of day can also be hectic at times. But if you take some time tonight to prepare you can make tomorrow at least a little easier, more exciting and smoother to handle. 1. Plan your day. Use the 80/20 rule or some other way to find your most important tasks for tomorrow. Write them down in order of importance so they don't slip your mind and get lost in all the busywork of tomorrow. If possible, start with most important task first thing in the morning. This will often raise your productivity plus self-confidence and set the mood for the rest of the day. 2. Visualize your day. Take a few minutes in your most comfy chair or in bed. Close your eyes and visualize how well everything will go tomorrow. How good your breakfast will taste, how easily you'll get to work (or handle delays if there are any), how you will be effective and not get stuck in busywork in school or at work. And so on. And make sure you don't just see it in your mind but also hear and feel it. Make it come alive as much as possible. This may sound a bit corny but visualizing a good next day can really change your mood, heighten your performance and make tasks, meetings and your whole day run smoother. I have found that it is quite a bit of an improvement compared to if you do what a lot of us do; visualizing tomorrow but in a negative way. Everything that will happen tomorrow may not be as fun as your weekend was. But how you think about your day – what attitude and perspective you choose – certainly changes how you interpret and create it. 3. Make your lunch. 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 tomorrow. You may even want make an extra serving so you can quickly heat up dinner when you get home tomorrow. Doing this tonight will save you a bit of time and possibly a bit of money. 4. Pack your bag. This very simple habit can alleviate quite a bit of stress in the morning. If you pack your bag tonight you don't have run around in your house half panicked tomorrow looking for your books or some important papers. On a related note, it's also useful to check that your keys are hanging where they should hang before you go to bed. Looking for them in the morning – just as your bus is leaving – can create unnecessary stress. Keeping a place where you always hang or put them is an easy way to avoid a lot of keysearches early in the day. 5. Invest in yourself. Cut out a bit of TV. Do a bit of reading instead. Learn something you can have use for. Take an evening class, read a self-improvement book, learn a language or a dance. Or go out running or exercising in some other way. This might not change much for tomorrow. But if you have an hour or so over every other night you can make some real progress and in the longer run change your future tomorrows a whole lot. 6. Journal. Review your day and get what is on your mind out on virtual or tree-based paper. This can bring calmness and clarity to your mind. Journaling can also give you more structure in life and is a way to find focus and to think things through in a better way. It can help you to find solutions and opportunities in your challenges. 7. Ask gratitude questions. If you don't have the time for this little exercise in the morning or want to end your day on a positive note give it a try tonight. Here's what you do; ask yourself five empowering three-part questions in this way: What am I ______ about in my life right now? What about it makes me _______? How does it make me feel? Put in your own value in the blank space. For instance, a couple of my questions are: What am I happy about in my life right now? What am I excited about in my life right now? It's important that you really feel how it makes you feel. When I think about the last part about what makes me happy right now I really feel it. These questions are great because: a) the way they are set up makes you recognize things you take for granted b) and then they really get you to feel those positive feelings. 8. Relax. These last two tips are in the super obvious category. But reminders are good from time to time. And 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. So find a way to relax that suits you. Meditate in one way or another. Take a warm bath. Take a walk in the woods. Listen to relaxing music. Or just catch up on sleep. 9. Do something fun and exciting. Do something more active than watching TV-shows you aren't that fond of anyway (just watch the ones you really like). Don't just get stuck in a boring rut that keeps your mood low and level. It's important to just find something fun and exciting to do. Something that can cheer you up. Something that can make you feel better as the alarm clock goes off tomorrow morning.

This is a reminder. You probably already know all – or most – of this. But reminders can be useful. 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 truth. And then when you try to remember that interpretation of an event later on it can change even more. So we need external systems. And there are a lot of them to experiment with. Until recently I have preferred to mostly keep it simple with paper and a pen. I feel that overcomplicated programs seems to encourage being busy rather than being effective. Getting a dozen things done quickly isn't that helpful if what you are getting done isn't that important. I also use this blog not only to share useful tips and information but also to keep a record for myself of thoughts on different areas of self improvement. This has been helpful to remind myself of various ideas and techniques that can help me improve my life and of mistakes that are so easy to make . Journaling A few months ago I made an addition to the blog and the paper notebooks where I wrote my to-do lists, short notes and goals. I started journaling using my computer. This allowed me record a fuller picture of events, thoughts and emotions. Instead of being confined to small notebooks I could get it all down. This was a relief and allowed me to capture a whole lot more nuance and think things through more easily. I wish I had started earlier. At the moment I use less paper. Instead I record thoughts, goals, ideas and then work on them using The Journal by David RM . From what I have seen so far, I haven't used it long, it seems to be an excellent piece of software with a 45 day free trial. And I'm sure there are also a number of good and free alternatives out there too. I still use small notebooks to write down my to-do lists and shopping lists for the day. But since my thoughts and ideas have grown to a quite a large number it's easier to keep them in a one piece of software rather than a few notebooks. This also makes it easier to be more creative and find connections and combinations between different ideas. And since I have just started journaling I guess there are more insights to come. So, I have already mentioned a few ideas on why you should write things down. Below are few more. 9 more reasons to write things down Written goals are 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 have found 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 track. To remind yourself to focus. You can use paper or your screensaver or another program to give yourself reminders. 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. I like the reminder: is this useful? Then put that reminder where you can't avoid seeing throughout your day. 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 more calm and relaxed does not only improves your health but also makes life easier. 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 you thoughts, facts and feelings about it. Then you don't have to worry your mind about 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. A record of what you were thinking. I have already noticed how interesting it is to just go back a month to see what I was thinking then. I believe that when you have kept a record of your thoughts for quite a while you'll have some fascinating reading on your hands. It can also show you how you have changed and improved. A record of your positive qualities. When I read what have written it is sometimes fuzzy and unfocused. But other times I'm kinda surprised at how clever I was. Keeping a written record could be a good way to remind yourself of your positive qualities. Improve long-term focus on what's important. Reminders that I described above can be useful to keep you on track in your normal day. But you can also 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. 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. This can help to spot trouble and keep you on track within a larger time-frame. Become better acquainted with yourself. You may, for instance, have an image of your life where you are a positive person 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. This might tell you something that you haven't really paid much attention to about yourself and/or something about that job or relationship. This can bring clarity to your life. Track your achievements. If you are working out or investing in stocks it can be useful to keep written record of your results and thoughts over a longer time-span. It can not only motivate you when you are feeling down about your perceived lack of positive results and let you see how far you have really come. It can also help you use problems and solutions from the past to find solutions to new problems (or readjustments to prevent problems before they even appear). You may also like: 160 Deep Quotes That Make You Think 56 Growth Mindset Quotes to Motivate You 40 Moving Forward Quotes (to Help You Reach Your Dreams) 110 Never Give Up Quotes for When Life is Hard

Over the last 11 months I have written a whole bunch of articles on how to improve one of the most valuable skill sets; your social skills. Some of you that have read this blog from the beginning might have already read these articles. But since a lot of new readers have joined throughout this year I thought I'd collect and bring up the articles again in case you have missed some of them. I hope that they will provide you with at least a few useful tips. And that you will give yourself a break. Take it easy. Don't beat yourself up if you at first fail when trying to improve a skill. And don't try to improve everything at once. Focus on one or a few things for a month and try to work on them in your day to day life. If you fail, that's OK and normal. Just brush yourself off and try again. And if you want more in-depth training then join us in my 12-week, step-by-step Smart Social Skills Course where I share the very best things I have learned in the past 8 years about improving social skills and relationship habits. Want better results? Take more action. The most important part of improving your social skills is just to take more chances, show up at more social functions and to interact more with people. So a good place to start might be with these three articles: 7 Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone and Live a More Exciting Life “If you want to improve your life you'll sooner or later need to step out of that zone. Because it's there you'll find all those new and exciting experiences. Where you'll find freedom from boredom.” Top 24 Tips for Making Your Self-Confidence Soar “Although we may not want to admit it publicly I think a lot of us feel like we could use an improvement in self confidence. Fortunately there are better advice out there than the often exclaimed “Just be more confident, man!” or “Have another beer!” 5 Life-Changing Keys to Overcoming Your Fear “What is stopping you from getting what you want in life? Your friends? Your family? A sense that failure – or success – might change your life and that feeling uncomfortable? A sense that the people around you might disapprove of you aiming for what you want, of you succeeding or failing.” Body language is a BIG part. I think it's pretty important to note early on that what you say is only 7 percent of communication. Body language is 55 percent and voice tonality 38 percent. So if you are not getting the results you'd like, if something in general feels off about your people skills then it might have little to do with what words you are using. So, say that you'd like to improve your body language since it's such a huge part of communication. Where do you go? 18 Ways to Improve Your Body Language “Here is just a few of many pointers on how to improve your body language. Improving your body language can make a big difference in your people skills, attractiveness and general mood.” Talk, talk, talk. Now, on to conversations. Here are six articles with both broad pointers and smaller, specific tips: How to Make a Great Impression “First impressions can be quite important. Everyone stereotypes everyone on first impression, even if we are reluctant to do it. We all get a first impression of a new person that creates a mental image of his or her personality in our minds. That image of you often lasts and can affect the relationship that follows.” Five Awesome and Five Awful Conversation Topics “So, what should I talk about?” When it comes to conversations I think this is one question we have asked both others and ourselves many, many times. Often in our heads, when already in a conversation, with an awkward silence looming and while trying to scramble for something to say. Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation? “Can you improve your conversation skills? Certainly. It might take a while to change the conversation habits that's been ingrained throughout your life, but it is very possible. To not make this article longer than necessary let's just skip right to some common mistakes many of us have made in conversations. And a couple of solutions.” 5 Conversational Mistakes that Can Make You Look Dumb “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” – Dorothy Nevill Focus Outward to Win Friends and Improve your People Skills “One common mistake in conversations of any kind is to turn your focus the wrong way. You (and I) may often focus too much on ourselves while at a party, at work, at school, online or in just about any setting instead of shifting your focus outward, toward the person we are talking with. Why do we do that?” On Criticism. Criticism is often a sore spot in communication that creates a lot of misunderstandings and can become hurtful (even if it was not intended to be). I've written one article on this topic. How to Handle Criticism and get Something Good Out of It “Receiving criticism isn't always fun. However there are ways to handle it in a less hurtful way and – sometimes – get something good out of it. Here are a few pointers I have found useful when dealing with criticism.” What all those other people said about communication and relationships. Finally, there are quite a few small collections with quotes from various wise and clever people in the archives of this blog. At least six of these collections are relevant – in some way or another – when you want to improve your social skills and relationships. 73 Inspirational Quotes on 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.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson 52 Inspirational Quotes on Forgiveness “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.” – Catherine Ponder 17 Inspirational Quotes on People Skills “You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.” – Dale Carnegie 10 Inspirational Quotes on Relationships “Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.” – Anthony Robbins 25 Great Quotes on Leadership “To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate. When the best leader's work is done the people say, We did it ourselves!” – Lao-Tsu 9 Great Quotes on Criticism “Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.” – Emmet Fox

With a twist to the common list of habits that are useful to establish, here are 7 habits that you do best to avoid. Just like finding habits that can be useful for you it's important to find habits that are holding you back. Most of these 7 habits can easily become such a normal, everyday part of life that you hardly notice it (or how it's affecting you). I've dabbled with all of them quite a bit. Not surprisingly I didn't get much of the important stuff done. I'd also like to add that these are just 7 broad habits you can establish to become highly ineffective in most parts of your life. I pretty sure there are several more. 1. Not showing up. Maybe you've heard this quote by Woody Allen: “Eighty percent of success is showing up” One of the biggest and simplest thing you can do to ensure more success in your life – whether it be in your social life, your career, starting your own business or blog or with your health – is simply to show up more. If you want to improve your health then one of the most important and effective things you can do is just to show up at the gym every time you should be there. The weather might be bad, you might not feel like going and you find yourself having all these other things you just must do. If you still go, if you show up at the gym when motivation is low you will improve a whole lot faster than if you just stayed at home relaxing on the sofa. I think this applies to most areas of life. If you write or paint more, each day perhaps, you will improve quickly. If you get out more you can meet more new friends. If you go on more dates you chances of meeting someone special increases. Just showing up more can really make a big difference. Not showing up will not get you anywhere. 2. Procrastinating half the day. To keep it short, my 3 favorite ways to get out of a procrastinating state are: Swallow that frog. What's this means is simply to do the hardest and most important task of the day first thing in the morning. A good start in the morning lifts your spirits and creates a positive momentum for the rest of the day. That often creates a pretty productive day. How do you eat an elephant? Don't try to take it all in one big bite. It becomes overwhelming which leads to to you getting stuck in laziness and in procrastination. Split a task into small actionable steps. Then just focus on the first step and nothing else. Just do that one until it's done. Then move on to the next step. The Get around to It Paraliminal . I find this guided mediation to be very useful. After 20 minutes of mostly just lying on my bed and listening I'm far more productive for a few days. I don't feel the urge to sink into that procrastinating state or the need to find out what's new over at one or five of my favourite websites. 3. When actually doing something, doing something that isn't the most important thing right now. One of the easiest habits to get stuck in, besides procrastinating, is to keep yourself busy with unimportant tasks. To be effective you probably need some kind of time management-system. It might be something really simple, like using the 80/20-rule at the beginning of each day. The 80/20 rule, or the Pareto Principleas it's also known, says that you'll get 80 percent of your results from only 20 percent of your tasks and activities. So you need to focus most of your energy on those few important tasks to be effective. When you have prioritized using this rule just write down the top 3 most important things you need to do that day. Then, from the top, start doing them. Even if you just get one of the things done, you have still done the most important thing you could do today. You may perhaps prefer some other system, such as GTD . But however you organize your work it's still of highest priority to find the most important tasks so you don't spend days, weeks or months doing busywork that isn't that essential anyway. Just getting things done faster isn't that useful if the things you get done are unimportant to you. 4. Thinking too much. And thereby seldom taking action. Paralysis by analysis can waste years of your life. There is nothing wrong with thinking before you do something. Do some research, make a plan, explore potential upsides and problems. But compulsively thinking and thinking and thinking is just another way to waste your time. You don't have to examine everything from every angle before you try it. And you can't wait for the perfect time to do something. That time never comes. And if you keep thinking you'll just dig yourself down deeper and deeper and taking action will become more and more difficult. Instead you just need to stop thinking. Shut of your mind – it just helps you up to a point – and go do whatever you need to do. 5. Seeing the negative and downsides in just about anything. When you see everything from a negative perspective you quickly punch a hole in your own motivation. You find faults everywhere and problems where there are really none. You cling to details. If you want to find a reason to not do something then that's no problem. From a negative viewpoint you can find ten reasons every time. And so very little gets done, you whine to anyone who wants to hear – and many who don't – about how crappy your job, life and boss is. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as you create the life that is appropriate considering how think and see your world. A solution is to realize the limits of a negative perspective. And that your perspective isn't some kind of 100% true picture of the world. Then try other perspectives. For instance, trying to establish a habit of seeing things in a more positive and optimistic light can be quite useful. In that vein, you may want to try the Positivity Challenge. It's not easy, but if you do the challenge and try to only think positive thoughts for 7 days it can give you an insight in how much your perspective and beliefs changes how you interpret your world. And what results you get. 6. Clinging to your own thoughts and being closed to outside influences. It can be hard to admit that what you thought or believed was not the best alternative. So you cling to your thoughts harder and harder and keep your mind closed. This makes it hard to improve and for instance to become more effective. Even really considering the possibility that you can change your life can be difficult in this position. One solution, obviously, is to open up more. To open up and learn from the mistakes of others, from your own mistakes and from other sources like books. This is easy to say though. It can, as almost anything, be harder to do. One suggestion I have is to, like I said about the previous habit, realize the limits of what you know and the way you going about things. And then just try something new. Another tip is to read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and especially look at the chapters about the Ego. If you stop identifying so much with your thoughts and your Ego, as Tolle prescribes, it becomes a whole a lot easier to let new ideas and thoughts come into your life. And to let go of old thoughts that aren't useful to you anymore. On the other hand I'd like to add and counter-balance with these tips: don't get stuck in reading, in just taking in new information either or you might become a self-help junkie. Use the new information, put what you have learned in to action and try it out. 7. Constantly on information overload. With information overload I don't just mean that you read a lot. I pretty much mean an overload in all input. If you just let all information flow into your mind it will be hard to think clearly. It's just too much stimulation. A few more potential downsides to this habit are: Some of the input you receive will be negative. The media and your surroundings often put a negative spin on things for various reasons. If you aren't selective in what input you want in your life then you'll be dragged into this negativity too . This affects how you think, feel and act. It creates an urge to keep up with what's happening but there are always ten more things happening so you can't keep up. This makes life stressful. It becomes hard to make decisions and take action if your mind is constantly bombarded with information or trying to sort through it all. Personally I find that if I get too much information it leads to a sort of paralysis. Not much get's done. Or you get stuck in habit #3 and keep busy, busy, busy at high speed with low priority activities. To be able to focus, think more clearly and take action it's useful to be more selective in what you let into your mind. When you work shut out as much distractions as possible. Shut off the phone, internet and shut the door. It is strange how much you can get done when you aren't interrupted every fifth minute or have the opportunity to procrastinate by checking your RSS-feeds or favourite websites. Now I'm not suggesting that you should stop reading all blogs or newspapers. But think about what you really want to read and what you read just read to fill your time. And have a look at other areas of input where the doors are wide-open. For instance, you don't have to let in all the negative emotions from your surroundings. If everyone else are procrastinating or are anxiously keeping themselves busy by doing low-priority tasks at warp speed it's easy to be influenced by that mood. If you have a door, then it might be good idea to shut it and focus on doing more important things.

Self improvement is often described in a rosy manner. It's all upsides and money in droves, speedboats, a 500% increase in productivity, great relationships and instant weight loss. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. But there are, of course, potential downsides and challenges to be aware of. Below I've listed a few of them. They aren't that serious really, most of them are just things that easily slip your mind. Getting stuck in the self-help junkie mode of spending thousands of dollars on books/cds/dvds and seminars or getting lost in some kind of destructive cult is a lot worse. But since these five things are easy to forget about – or miss, especially when you first start learning about self improvement – I thought I'd write them down. That's always a good way to, well, remind you of the important things and not let them get lost in everyday worries and life. 1. Things will take time. Maybe a longer time than you at first hope. Why? Well for one, we are often pretty bad at estimating how long time something will take. Things often take a whole lot longer than we at first thought. Partially, this is probably because we often have at least some addiction to instant satisfaction. Something that advertising reinforces by promising us “you'll lose 20 pounds in a month!” or “you'll become a millionaire online in 30 days!”. It gets easier to improve yourself when you get your mind used to this thought. When you know it will take time to improve a part of your life and have realistic expectations everything runs smoother and you don't get so impatient and give up before all your hard work really starts to pay off. One good way to figure out how long time something will actually take is to ask/read something from someone who seems honest and realistic and has already arrived at the place where you want to go. 2. It will take effort. There are very few quick ways to achieve anything worth really doing. But there are some short-cuts in the field of the self improvement, I believe. On the other hand, personal development doesn't have to be an enormous effort filled with tons of blood, sweat and tears. You don't have to work 20 hours a day to get somewhere. But even if you work smart – like, for instance, Tim Ferriss recommends in The 4 Hour Workweek – you still have to put in effort. You have to fail and get up, dust yourself off and try again. You have to do things over and over again. Things are seldom really easy outside of an advertisement. 3. Many things work, but maybe not all of them for you. It's easy to fall into the beginner's trap of thinking that getting one book will solve all your problems. And then a week later angrily curse the book and author for disappointing you and fixing nothing much at all. A book will not change you. You change yourself (although sometimes a book can be so powerful that it seemingly changes you). But an answer to this problem – besides having patience – may be that it's not the right book for you. I think you have to find your own style and information, methods, ideas and people that resonate with who you are right now. I don't think all books or ideas are equally suited for all people. So explore different resources and be prepared to try more than one tip, method or author before you start getting some really good results. Stay curious. Keep building your own personal development library. And if you don't have the money for that right now, use your local library instead. 4. If you keep at it you will change. The thing is, if you are patient, if you keep at, you will change. This can be scary. As your identity changes it can become confusing. You might experience discomfort as things are not as familiar and comfortable as they used to be. People may become jealous or negative in some way because you are changing your life. Change can be scary both for the one changing and for the people watching it. And – as you change – you may not be able to go back to your old life even if you wanted to. Because as Oliver Wendell Holmes said: Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. So be prepared for both the upsides and more uncertain or negative aspects of change. 5. A lot of it is counter-intuitive so just give it a try. As you expose yourself to much of the self improvement material you realize that this is perhaps not what you have heard for most of your life. It's often almost the opposite of what media, movies, TV and people have advised you. So you become wary. You think “This can't be right. This isn't what I've heard for years and years. If it was true then someone would have told me before”. Maybe someone did. But maybe it got lost in the noise of all that other advice. Or maybe you just heard that kind of advice more often so it stuck, while some great thing your uncle once said got lost in your memory. My advice is to just jump in and try something. Of course, you should think before you act. And be careful with advice from someone who seems overly eager to sell you something or appeals to your sense of instant satisfaction. But a lot of advice may not make much sense in relation to what you have previously learned about the how the world works. You just have to try it and make up your own mind if it works or not.

It's easy to get stuck. Nestle yourself deeper and deeper into that warm, safe and comforting comfort zone. But if you want to improve your life you'll sooner or later need to step out of that zone. Because it's there you'll find all those new and exciting experiences. Where you'll find freedom from boredom. Here are 8 ideas that can help you get out of your comfort zone. Some are ways to make the process easier. Some are ways you may not have thought of (or forgotten). 1. Face your fears. But do it in small steps. This is one of the best ways to overcome fears and get out of your comfort zone. What holds us back in our zone of comfort is often a fear or that facing that fear straight on might be overwhelming. This is a solution to those two problems. It allows you to stretch your comfort zone slowly making it less uncomfortable and frightening. If you're for instance nervous socially you might not feel able to ask people out on dates right away. The fear of being rejected and that others might think less of you if you get turned down can make many of us feel unable to ask the question. So you take small steps instead. Steps like first just saying hi to people. Or starting to talk more to people online via forums and Instant Messaging. And then trying to be more involved in conversations at work or in school to exercise your conversation-muscles. I guess one could say that you gradually de-sensitize yourself to social situations or whatever you are afraid of. Or, seeing it in a more motivating light, that you are building courage and expanding your comfort zone in this part of your life (which is something that often seeps over to other areas of life too.) So, identify your fear. Then make a plan with some smaller steps you can take to gradually lessen your discomfort. 2. Try something weird. One obvious way to move out of your comfort zone is to do something new. But a more interesting option might be to think of doing something weird. When you choose something new you may choose something that is line with your personality. So your experiences can become limited. Instead, choose something that's out of character for you. Something that isn't you as you are right now. Something that you – and/or the people close to you – wouldn't think that you would do. 3. Make a new acquaintance. This will expose your to new experiences, opinions and interests. And it's not just about meeting new people the usual way. Try just picking up a biography about someone you know nothing about. Start reading a book from a writer you haven't read before. Read about a random topic at Wikipedia. Or add an unexpected RSS-feed about something you normally never read about. 4. Take a friend with you. In general, it's often easier to not go it alone. And this applies to many situations. Including when you are going for the emotional bungee jump that getting out of your comfort zone can be. I'd say this probably the most popular way to get yourself out of comfort zones. 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 keeping 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. 5. Educate yourself. Your comfort zone might be protecting your from imaginary dangers. Maybe things aren't as difficult or scary as you imagine? Do a bit of research. Getting some good information can dissipate quite a bit of your fear and nervousness. Do a bit of Googling. Read books and blogs. Ask someone who has been there before. By reading/hearing about what others that have done the same thing you are about to do saw, heard, felt and did you can not only lessen negative feelings but also get some very valuable and practical tips. 6. Awash your mind with positive memories. 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 it wasn't so bad, it was actually fun and exciting and something new to you. A lot of times we automatically play back our 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 and let things become easier. 7. Use other methods to pump yourself up. Besides remembering positive memories, there are a whole bunch of things you can do to pump up your emotional state temporarily. Here is a small list of such tips within in this list: Use Music. Listen to uplifting and motivational music. Use Your Body. How you use your body affects how you feel. Move in a confident way and you'll soon feel more confident. Move in an excited way and you'll soon feel more excited. Use Your Imagination. Close your eyes. Visualize how great everything will unfold. How wonderful and excited you will feel. This is a whole lot more useful than seeing in your mind how everything will turn out badly. Use Guided Meditation. I like Talking to Win and Self-Esteem Supercharger by Learning Strategies. They are useful for giving you a positive boost for a couple of days. Use Your Breathing. Not exactly a way to pump yourself up but rather to calm yourself down quickly by taking deep belly breaths for 1-2 minutes.

What would you like to improve about yourself? Although we may not want to admit it publicly I think a lot of us feel like we could use an improvement in self confidence. Fortunately there are better advice out there than the often exclaimed “Just be more confident, man!” or “Have another beer!”. There are actually quite a few practical tips you can use to raise your self confidence. Here are 24 of them. As usual, with these tip-lists, don't try it all at once. Just try a few suggestions and see which ones work best for you. Some of them you'll need to practise a bit before they start to pay off. It's like playing the guitar or soccer, it might not work too well the first or second time you try it. And keep in mind that you have a choice. You can choose if you want to raise or lower your self confidence. Many of these suggestions can only boost your confidence temporarily. But this can allow you to do something you may not have been able to do before. And as you do it you build a deeper confidence in yourself. And collect concrete proof that you can actually do and achieve a lot of things. 1. Ask yourself: What's the worst that could happen? It's easy to get lost in a vague fear – or very improbable scenarios – of what might happen if you go through with something. When you really ask yourself what the worst thing that could happen you get a clearer picture, a bit of fear vanishes and you discover that the potential consequences are seldom as frightening as you first thought. By doing this you define the potential consequences and also discover that whatever the might happen you can manage and recover from it. 2. Use uplifting music. A classic. Use inspiring and motivating music to pump up yourself before leaving for a night out, before a big test or meeting, before anything that might make your confidence unstable. This works pretty well as a temporary state-booster. 3. Try something new. When you break out of your comfort zone and try something you haven't before you not only challenge yourself. You expand your own limitations and your confidence in your own abilities, in how many things you can actually do. By trying something new on a continual basis you can also lessen your fears and live a life with less barriers and limitations. 4. Make a plan to do something. Then follow through. This is probably one of the most important and effective ways to building lasting confidence. When you decide to do something and don't back down but go through with it you get proof of your – often underestimated – capabilities and your confidence in yourself soars. If you need motivation to get going have a look at 25 Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself . 5. Use Guided Meditation. I find that guided mediations such as Paraliminals are an excellent way to break out of negative emotional states and ease into more positive ones. For feeling more confident for a few days I recommend trying the two Paraliminals called Self-Esteem Supercharger and Talking to Win . They are sold by The Learning Company for $29.95 each and there is a 30 day money back guarantee. 6. Exercise. This one definitely makes an impact on my self confidence. Regular exercise improves your energy levels and produces various chemicals – for example testosterone and endorphins – that put you in a more positive state. This seems to often almost automatically improve your confidence and outlook on life compared to if you spend your time on the couch, eating Pringles and watching TV. Plus, getting in shape and looking better can be a powerful confidence-booster. 7. Face a fear. This is not an easy one. But the reward is big. If you face a fear then your confidence takes about ten steps up. And for every time you face a fear you can slowly start to discover that the classic quote “There is nothing to fear but fear itself” was not just another empty cliche. For tips overcoming your fears check out 5 Life-Changing Keys to Overcoming Your Fear . 8. Create something. Everyone is a creative person. But after childhood and the teenage years this is sometimes forgotten. Rediscovering your creativity is a good way to improve your confidence in yourself. Creating something is a wonderful but not always easy experience. But when you're done you not only feel good about yourself. Sometimes you discover new, previously unknown parts of yourself. Being creative is good a way to get to know yourself and your hidden capabilities. 9. Fake it til you make it. One way to break out of your own self-imposed limitations, take a step out of your comfort zone and build confidence is to play a part. This might sound like it couldn't work. Like you are just making things up and lying to yourself. Well, that might be the case. But it still works. If you don't feel confident, fake it and play the part of how you would think and behave if you were confident. Soon you'll really start to feel confident. The part becomes real. 10. Use your environment. One effective way to change yourself is to change your environment to match the person you want to become. If you want to become more confident read autobiographies/watch documentaries of confident people, change your music from depressing songs to confident and positive ones and try to find confident people to hang out with. You can read more about this topic in Change Your Environment to Change Yourself . 11. Use your imagination. Your mind is a great instrument. By learning to use your imagination in a positive way you can improve your confidence. One way is to use visualization. Let's say to you have an important meeting coming up. Visualize how great the events will unfold – see and hear it – and also how great will you feel at this meeting. See yourself smiling, being positive, open and having a great time. See the excellent outcome in your mind. Then release by visualizing that it has already happened, that the meeting is over with the desired result. This is surprisingly effective and will get you into a great and relaxed mood before even stepping into the first, second or twentieth meeting. If you are having trouble seeing yourself as confident then imitate someone else. Find a confident person – perhaps an athlete, perhaps a movie star, perhaps a relative – and copy him/her. See how/she walks, talks, moves and carries him/herself. Then just imitate that behavior in your visualization. 12. Use your body. If you start fidgeting with your leg you'll soon start to feel nervous or anxious. If you start to walk slower you'll soon start to feel more relaxed. To feel more confident, use your body in more confident way. Walk, sit, stand and move in a more confident way. If you don't know how, imitate as described in the previous tip. Copy how confident people in your surroundings, on the TV or at the movies use their bodies. 13. Awash yourself in positive memories. It's a common habit to let previous failures and bad experiences wash through your mind before you do something important. Replace that habit by actively letting positive memories, accomplishments and experiences wash through your mind for a minute or two instead. We often forget these positive things and our minds become focused on the negative memories. But this is up to you, you have a choice. And the product of your choice is a factor in your level of self confidence. 14. Take it into the future. One great way of putting things into perspective and choose how much you let everyday happenings affect your confidence is to take a look from the future. Ask yourself: Will this be a big deal in 5 years or something I'll even remember? This takes you out of being wrapped up in what just happened. And the answer to the question is almost always a no. By using this question it gets easier to handle your day to day troubles and realize that in a larger context most stuff is small stuff you don't really need to sweat. 15. Realize that the past does not equal the present. What happened last year, last month or yesterday does not equal tomorrow, next month or next year. You create your future in the present and you can to a large degree decide for yourself how much you let the past affect you and your future. Even if your confidence has been low for the last 10 years does not mean that it has to stay that way. You can choose to change your future and life. You can let go of previous thoughts that have not been useful for you and that's ok. You can choose new thoughts to think. This realization untangles your mind from a self-made prison, creates a sense of possibility and makes it easier to change negative thought patterns. 16. Be good to yourself. You might treat yourself badly. Realize that there is no need for doing that. Even if you have done up until today, you can choose to stop it. Be good to yourself instead. It's ok. It's allowed. It's pretty pointless doing the opposite unless your goal is to make unhappy, complaining people happy through shadenfreude. An important part of being good to yourself is recognizing your strengths and developing them. This will not only helps to improve your skills but also your confidence in your own abilities. Another and smaller – but important – part is simply learning to accept a compliment. It's ok to say “thank you!” and feel good about yourself. 17. Learn about how your mind actually works. If you haven't already start reading about personal development and psychology. Everybody is different but what is more important, people share a lot of similarities in how our minds work. What has worked for others may work very well for you too. For me it's been quite enlightening to learn about different common patterns of thought. Now, when I know what some of them are it becomes easier to not respond in a knee-jerk manner when for instance my ego feels threatened or when someone is trying to influence me through various popular methods of persuasion. This process of getting to know yourself better has certainly increased my self confidence. 18. Improve your social skills. Relationships is one of the most important areas of life and I'd say that improving your social skills is one of the top things people want to learn. Improving your results in this area and finding a larger confidence in your social skill-set can be a really big boost for your overall sense of confidence. Some popular previous articles for pointers are: Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation , 18 Ways to Improve Your Body Language and How To Make a Great First Impression . 19. Focus outward instead of inward. When you interact with others and sometimes when you are by yourself it's good to try to keep the focus of your mind outward instead of inward. The problem with a focus inward is – in many situations – that it makes you focus on how you look, what you just said and what the other person – or a whole bunch of people – thinks of you right now. This can reduce anyone to a bumbling, second-guessing, fidgeting shadow of their former self as the self-consciousness becomes almost paralyzing. Focusing outward is, besides being a good tip for keep your self-confidence up, also a good way to improve your people skills . 20. Keep a positive crowd. The people you hang out with can either drag you down or lift you up. Since we spend so much of our time with other people it's important to keep positive – or at least reasonably neutral – people around you as much as you can. One or a few negative people can affect you in a big way – perhaps through nagging – and pull you down day after day. 21. Keep a positive intake of information, influence and emotions. Much of the news and society brings a bleak and negative picture of both the world and yourself to your doorstep each day. Just like the people that surround you the information that surrounds you can affect you in big way. Don't just stay passive and take it all in. Choose what you want to watch, hear and read. Choose what's useful and beneficial for you. 22. Positive thinking Learning to see the world and your life through a more positive lens can be a bit difficult and takes some time. Especially if you've spent several years with a negative view on things. Have a look at Take the Positivity Challenge! for pointers on how to change your mindset to a more positive one. 23. Compare yourself to yourself. Not to others. This will eliminate a lot of unnecessary pain in your life. The thing is if you pass one person then you'll just find another person more successful than you. And your brief sense of being a winner will once again transform into anxiety and fear. Focus on yourself, not the other people around you, no matter if they are more or less successful. Compare yourself to yourself. Improve yourself and see how you grow and become a more successful, more confident and happier person. 24. Redefine failure. How you view failure controls how much your confidence drops before or after a failure. The definition of failure we are brought up with in society might not be the best and most useful to have. If you look at the most successful people you quickly notice that they have a different response to failure than the more common one. They don't take failure or rejection that seriously. They know it's not the end of the world if they fail. Instead they look at each failure and see the good part: what they can learn from it and improve next time. They have an abundance-mentality. They know that if their first business-venture fails it feels like crap for a while but it's ok in the long run. They learn from it and then they try again. If they are rejected for date, do they give up? Probably not. They know that next week or the week after they might find someone else that's interesting and ask them out. They know that there are a lot of good people out there. That there are a lot of good business opportunities out there. But they have also learned that to become successful at anything you have to fail perhaps 5, 10, 20 times or more. You have work on your skills to sharpen them. See failure or rejection not as something incredible negative that might end your life if it strikes. Redefine it in your mind to lessen the negative emotional impact and the fear. See failure simply as feedback on what you need to improve on. Listen to the advice the failure gives you and you will improve. And, by redefining failure this way your level of confidence will not take a drastic drop every time you fail or fear failure.

“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 How do you relieve stress and live a more relaxing life? I've already written about a few long-term and short-term answers to that in a whole bunch of articles. But what can you do about it if you feel stressed out right now? Here are 7 quick and immediately applicable tips to lower your stress-levels. 1. Go for a walk and an ice-cream. Slowly. The exercise and fresh air is great to clear your mind and I find eating ice-cream to be a pretty relaxing thing. If you are stressed out then you'll probably move fast and do things quickly. But it works the other way around too. So focus on walking slowly, enjoying your surroundings and eat that ice-cream at reasonable pace – depending on how hot it is outside – and you'll soon feel more relaxed. 2. Take 30 belly-breaths. This is probably the most efficient way to relax I have found so far. It's easy, quick and you can do it anywhere. And it works pretty much every time. Here's what you do: – Sit in a relaxing position with your legs apart. – Put your hands on your stomach. Using your stomach breathe in slowly through your nose. If you are doing it right your stomach will expand and you'll feel it with your hands. – Breathe out slowly through your nose and do it with some force so you feel your stomach pull slightly inwards towards your spine. – Breathe in and out 30 times. Take deep and slow breaths. – After you have taken 30 breaths and focused on counting them you should not only feel more relaxed and centered. Your body will also be able to continue breathing in this manner without you focusing on it. And that's it. Continue with your normal day. 3. Find five things you can be grateful for right now. Being grateful and appreciating your life and surroundings is one of the most effective ways to turn a negative emotional state to a more positive one. So find a few things you are grateful for right now. Perhaps it's the sunny weather, that you feel healthy and energetic today, that you have just eaten a delicious after-noon snack, that the guy/gal that just walked by had a great looking jacket on and that tonight there is a new episode of your favourite TV-show to enjoy. 4. Make a list of the three most important things you have to do today. Then do them, one at a time. Start with most important one. Don't worry or think about the rest of the stuff you need to do. Procrastinating or just keeping busy to avoid doing the big and truly important tasks creates great amounts of stress. Once you are done with the most important task you not only feel calmer but also more self-confident and the two remaining tasks will become easier to handle. 5. Write everything down. Write down your thoughts, appointments, commitments and shopping lists. Don't try to keep it in your mind. This only adds stress as you worry about forgetting something and uses a good chunk of your mental RAM for remembering rather than thinking. Writing everything down is great and simple habit to keep your mind clear and focused on more important things than remembering how much milk you need to buy. 6. Declutter your workspace. A clean and organized desk and workspace creates a clean and relaxed mind. Just take 5 minutes right now to clean up. Forming a habit of doing this on a regular basis is an easy way to not only keeping the workspace looking nice and clean but also to improve your mental focus and clarity. 7. Read Steve Pavlina. This one might sound a little odd but when I feel stressed I read one or two of Steve Pavlina's long pieces of writing. And it calms me down. I don't really know why, perhaps it comes from focusing for quite a few minutes on a long, lucid and often pretty inspiring article. There is a different pace over at Steve's blog compared to most of the internet and real-life, I guess.

How can a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us help us? That’s what I want to explore in this post filled with the very best quotes on understanding. These timeless, thought-provoking thoughts from the past 2300 years will help you to build a deeper, richer and more successful life. And if you want more motivation and wisdom from the past then have a look at these empathy quotes and this post with quotes on new beginnings . Quotes About Understanding Life and Yourself “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Carl Jung “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.” Dale Carnegie “Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.” Aaron Burr “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” Galileo Galilei “You don't need strength to let go of something. What you really need is understanding.” Guy Finley “Everyone hears only what he understands.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.” Kahlil Gibran “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” Marie Curie “Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.” Richard Bach “You do not understand even life. How can you understand death?” Confucius “Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.” H.H Williams “If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.” Lyndon Johnson “A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.” Friedrich Nietzsche “The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather what he does not say.” Kahlil Gibran “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Søren Kierkegaard “Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.” John Steinbeck “We are all so desperate to be understood, we forget to be understanding.” Beau Taplin “The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.” James Patterson “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” Khalil Gibran “If you know the why, you can live any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” Fyodor Dostoevsky “Understanding your past can help you create a better future.” Robert Tew “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” Kahlil Gibran “Just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.” Madeleine L'Engle “Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.” Douglas Adams “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning to understand because to understand is to be free.” Baruch Spinoza “Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.” Dalai Lama Quotes About Understanding Love and Relationships “Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.” Paulo Coelho “Do not seek the because – in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.” Anaïs Nin “One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.” Seneca “One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.” John O'Donohue “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” Henri Nouwen “If I know what love is, it is because of you.” Herman Hesse “Love does not dominate; it cultivates.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.” Marvin J. Ashton “You know it's love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you're not part of their happiness.” Julia Roberts “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.” Eleanor Roosevelt “You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” Dr. Seuss “Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear; all he or she needs is to talk it out. Just offering a listening ear and an understanding heart for his or her suffering can be a big comfort.” Roy T. Bennett “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” Anaïs Nin “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi “The art of love is largely the art of persistence.” Albert Ellis “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” Elbert Hubbard “To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.” Criss Jami “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” Blaise Pascal “Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s greatest gifts. It involves many things, but above all the power of going out of one’s self and appreciating what is noble and loving in another.” Thomas Hughes “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” James Baldwin “If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.” Barbara De Angelis “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” Rainer Maria Rilke “A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.” Honore de Balzac “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate.” Albert Schweitzer Quotes About Not Understanding “Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.” Lemony Snicket “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” Albert Einstein “Rabbit's clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully. “Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit's clever.” “And he has Brain.” “Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.” There was a long silence. “I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that's why he never understands anything.” A.A. Milne “Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.” Euripides “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair “Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.” Bob Dylan “Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.” Charles Kettering “I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you do not understand me.” Elizabeth Gaskell “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.” F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes About Patience and Understanding “Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.” Phillips Brooks “Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle.” Lao Tzu “Patience is the mark of true love. If you truly love someone, you will be more patient with that person.” Thich Nhat Hanh “I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.” Paulo Coelho “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.“ Albert Einstein “What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!” Alfred Adler “Patience is the companion of wisdom.” St. Augustine “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.” Charles F. Kettering “Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.” Saadi “Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in your mind.” David G. Allen

“So, what should I talk about?” When it comes to conversations I think this is one question we have asked both others and ourselves many, many times Often in our heads, when already in a conversation, with an awkward silence looming and while trying to scramble for something to say. :) That's not an entirely bad place to be though. Pauses in conversations are natural and it's good to get used to the social pressure of a conversation gone quiet. However, if you too often run into silences, if they have a tendency to go on for a little bit too long then it's always good to have few pointers stored at the back of your mind. Here are 5 great things to talk about. And a little bit further down, 5 things you should probably try to avoid talking about. And if you want more in-depth training then join us in my 12-week, step-by-step Smart Social Skills Course where I share the very best things I have learned in the past 8 years about improving social skills and relationship habits. 1. The person you are talking to For many the favorite subject to talk about is themselves. Be curious about people and who they are. As Dale Carnegie said: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.” Figure out what the other person does besides work. What s/he really likes, passions and things that brings out the enthusiasm. Ask and use open-ended questions so s/he can't just answer with a one-word answer. If you just get hmms and vague answers out of open-ended questions try leading questions. And try to actually listen instead of just waiting for you turn to talk. Focus outward instead of inward to improve a conversation. Talk about what the other person really likes. It generally makes for more fun and compelling conversations to hear and see the enthusiastic and passionate part of a person than if you both stick to talking about the weather and work. And don't worry about getting stuck in listening-mode. Most people will be glad to reciprocate and be interested in you if you are interested in them. 2. Your surroundings It's easy to become too focused on just one thing in a conversation. Widen your focus a bit, look around. There is always interesting stuff in your surroundings to start a conversation about. For example, at a party or a dinner in someone's house it might be the fishes in the aquarium, the record collection, books and movies on the shelves, some cool piece of clothing someone is wearing and so on. 3. The news and water cooler topics Keep an eye on the papers, there is almost always something interesting there to bring up in a conversation. Fascinating or funny topics are always good. Bringing up death, misery and controversial topics might not always be a great idea. Besides the news there are always water cooler-topics to discuss. These often make for fun discussion. Such topics might be the latest episode of Lost or Prison Break, something big and brand new (in Sweden a big water cooler topic a while back was our first astronaut in space; Christer Fuglesang), which of the summer blockbusters that are actually good or some new, spectacular band. It might be useful to quickly browse social bookmarking-sites like Reddit to find some of the things everyone seems to be talking about right now. And to discover a few fascinating new stories or trends. 4. Likes and dislikes A classic. People always like to discuss their likes and dislikes. Some examples: Favourite songs/albums. Favourite movies/TV-shows. The nastiest tasting piece of candy/food you have eaten. Best/worst GTD software. The best vacation ever vs. the worst one. The best or worst job/boss/co-worker you've ever had. 5. Relatable emotions and experiences This topic might seem a little fuzzy. In a way, it's another way to look at some of the above topics. I think it's a useful perspective to keep in mind though. What I mean by this is what you share in the conversation is not the facts. What you share are experiences and emotions. The underlying excitement and the emotions that we all share regardless what we do. One example might be how you discover that the other person loves travelling. So you ask: what is it about travelling that you like so much? S/he might say the excitement of discovering something new, something s/he's never seen before. And maybe you have similar feelings about travelling too. So you might say something like: Yeah, I know, it's great when you have that fresh, totally new experience. But you don't have to be a enthusiastic traveler to relate. Perhaps you love books or movies. And then you can relate to how each time you discover and new author or great movie it's like travelling into a totally new and exciting world where you never know what you will find. So you can share similar feelings and experiences even though you might not seem similar as people. You may seem very different to one another, live different lives, but there are often connections to be made between you. There are several powerful motivators and needs behind and in conversations and communication. One is to boost one's ego. Something that can be done, for example, by using topic #1. Another is the feeling of connecting and sharing. Something you can do by using topic. Five Potentially Awful Topics to Talk About So, what topics should you avoid? None, really. But some topics are perhaps are only suited for some conversations. Maybe with close friends or family. Some topics can get out of hand. You might need to limit the amount of time you talk about them. When people's eyes are starting to glaze over, when people are starting to look around in the room and stop listening it's time to change the subject. Don't suck the fun and positive energy of conversations. Think before you talk when the subjects below are on your mind. 1. Illness. No-one wants to hear too much about illness and bad health. It's a downer. And people in general don't want to reflect too much on things like: “Hmm, I wonder when I'll get sick and how that will be”. It can put anyone in a sad and negative emotional state. 2. Your crappy boss, job etc. It's no fun hearing someone harp on and on about how unfair their boss is or how much their job suck. Complaining becomes draining to listen to rather quickly. Try to keep your complaining down or if you can just stop it all together. 3. Your boring job. If it's a fascinating job then it might be interesting to talk about. If you're enthusiastic about your job and really love then it can be fascinating to talk about it. If it's just a job you're not too fond of or a boring one try to limit the time you talk about it. If you like it but people don't seem to be interested either drop it or find a way to improve how you talk about your job. No one wants to listen for too long to a topic they have no interest in. 4. Hard to relate to hobbies and similar subjects. Well, actually getting technical and talking too much about the content of the hobby rather than what excites you about it. Try to avoid technical jargon, acronyms and details that only you and other enthusiasts understand. Try to keep it simple and understandable instead. Try topic #6 above: Relatable emotions and experiences. Try to relate what excites you about your bicycling or recycling instead of getting lost in facts and details. 5. Serial killers and other creepy subjects. An obvious one. Just like talking about illness talking about Jeffrey Dahmer, stalkers and similar subjects can make people really uncomfortable.

What is one of the most effective ways to change your own behavior and habits? Doing things backwards. What I mean by backward is that if you for instance start moving slower you soon start feeling calmer. If you start to smile – even if your force it – you soon feel happy and like you actually want to smile. It's kinda strange but it sure does work. This is not just limited to your body. Instead of changing yourself and through that changing your surroundings you can turn it around. Change your surroundings to change yourself. How I Changed My Information Diet During the last year I have changed my information intake habits quite a bit. First, about a year and a half ago, I realized that there wasn't much I watched on the TV that I really wanted to watch. It was mostly a habit I used to fill out time. So I put the TV in my closet and it's been there pretty much even since. Nowadays, when I'm at home, I watch just what I want to watch on my computer. I don't miss the TV, but one thing I've noticed is that I have seldom seen popular TV-commercials that people keep bringing up in conversations. After I started blogging I read a lot of blogs and my bookmark folder became hard to manage and get an overview of. I read online for hours each day. Finally, I got tired of this and it was time to eliminate. So cut I ruthlessly among my RSS-feeds and reduced about 15-20 of them to 7. Then I deleted about 95% of my bookmarks. One important thing I did was deleting bookmarks for sites I was addicted to such as email, RSS-feeds and blogstatistics. Now, when I want to access these sites I have to type in the address manually (or Google it). This has reduced the checking of those sites from about 8 times a day to once or twice. I've used the same method for limiting my use of social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg. And to go from checking three of the biggest Swedish newspapers online 3-4 times a day to checking one paper once each day. I did all the switches pretty fast. When the short-cuts were gone the habits and temptations ceased pretty quickly. The new habits were established in about two weeks. Other Areas of Your Life Where You Can Apply the Same Method Here are three important areas people often want to change and a few environmental suggestions for each of those areas. Your Health You can replace a bad health habit with a better one by for instance throwing out your cookies and candy. Then fill your fridge and cabinets with healthier snacks such as carrots, fruits and nuts. It might not sound like fun. But you'll get used to it and appreciate the new replacements sooner than you might think. Buy healthier cookbooks – or look for healthy recipes online – and throw out your take-out menus. Subscribe to RSS-feeds from the best health blogs and create a bookmark-folder for the best health websites you can find. Make these daily reading to reinforce your new and healthier outlook. Leave your running-shoes or soccer out in an easy-to-see place in your apartment/house instead of tucking them into your closet. It's easy to just get caught up in everyday life and forget exercising (or remember it when you are lying in bed waiting to go to sleep). This is a simple reminder to help you avoid such situations. Join a local group and for example start practising yoga or playing basketball. You'll not only get more exercise but you might also find some new friends that can act a positive health influence on you. I wouldn't go so far as to ditch the friends you go out drinking beer and sit around watching TV with. But you can expand your circle of friends to reflect and reinforce your new way of living. Your Income and Financial Situation Cut your credit-cards to get out of one growing debt-trap. Get a clear picture of your finances and eliminate the things you don't need. Take them out of your life and soon you may think: Why did I ever start doing those things in the first place?. If you have debts or financial problems, don't use your time by focusing on how bad your situation is. Focus on finding ways to solve the problem. Whatever the challenge is focus your mind on finding solutions. Read free and high-quality blogs about finance like Get Rich Slowly and I Will Teach You to Be Rich . Delete the bookmarks to sites where you have spent too much money. Or even better, erase your account at those websites. Write down your financial goal(s) on pieces of paper. It might be something like increase your monthly income by 30%. Or reducing your spending each month by 20%. Then tape those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror, workspace and computer to see your goal(s) many times a day. This will help you keep your focus on what's important and what you want. Join an online forum for money and finances to get support, new ideas and good conversations going. This can be especially valuable if no-one in your immediate surrounding is interested in managing or discussing money. Your Social Life Join local groups of like-minded people to find new and potentially great friends. Try to find friends that can be a positive support. Spend more time with them. Limit you time with negative friends/co-workers. Who you spend time with will decide much of how you'll feel and what you'll experience. Hanging with the right crowd for you can do wonders. Instead of being hesitant and saying no, say yes for a month whenever someone invites you for something. It's good to try new environments, and you never who you'll meet. Try replacing the newspaper in the morning with a good sit-com episode or listening/reading a self improvement book. Starting your day on a positive note can lift your spirits and when you are positive rather instead of negative socialising becomes a whole lot easier. Try online dating, blind dates or speed dating to get away from the bar/club-scene for a while. If your special-interests are too obscure – or your town is too small – go online to find people to discuss with. Or consider joining a group in a larger, nearby city and taking the car, bus or train there. If you want to be a more social person, put yourself in more social situations, take more chances, and take more action. People will seldom come to you. If you want to wait for that, prepare for a long wait. Instead, be proactive and take the first step. It can be scary but there are practical ways to overcome that fear. Have a look at Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation? and How to Make a Great First Impression for tips and pointers on improving your people skills. Read 5 Life-Changing Keys to Overcoming Your Fear for practical advice on how to overcome social fears and anxieties. Try brainstorming environmental factors for the change you want to achieve in your life. Have a look at How to Spark Your Creativity and come up with ways to change your environment so it more suits and is a natural part of the life of the person you want to become. One thing about changing your life is that you can promise yourself to do anything in the future. And that sounds good and feels even better. But later on we can always come up with reasons to rationalize doing what we decided to never do again just a week ago. And those reasons don't even have to be that great or logical. When we feel like doing whatever it is we want to do – smoke a cigarette, buy a new expensive coat or shy away from facing a fear – then out mind will find ways to rationalize it. And we'll do it, feeling we have a good reason to. And then the next day we promise ourselves and others to not do it again. And so on. By removing these things from your environment as best your can and replacing them with more suitable things you take away many of the opportunities to both do and to rationalize doing something. By replacing them with the things, people etc. that the person you want to become would have a around himself or herself it kinda forces you to live up to and adapt to your new surroundings. And so it becomes easier to change and reach your goals. Your environment is an important part of you and your identity. Every day it reinforces who you are. Tear your environment down and rebuild it to help create and reinforce a new part of yourself and the person you want to become.

What's the best way to solve a problem? I really don't think there is one way to do it. And the ways you can use to solve a problem depends on the problem. But I have found a few tips that have helped me solve problems more easily. I seldom use all of the tips for solving one problem and they aren't arranged in any special order. However, I find doing some of these things early on can really help you solve the problem faster and with less struggle and pain. 1. Accept the problem. This is the one I try to do first when I run into a problem and I use it almost every time. When you accept that the problem already exists and stop resisting then you also stop putting more energy into the problem and feeding it. Now it just exists (well, more or less, you might still feel a bit down about it). And you can use the energy you previously fed the problem with – the energy that probably made the problem look bigger than it was – to find creative solutions to the challenge. 2. Ask yourself: what's the worst that can happen? This is another one to do early on. You can easily to use your mind to blow problems all out of proportion. By asking this question you can restore the problem to it's original size. And realize that the worst case scenario – if you actually define it – is perhaps not so pleasant but something you can handle and solve. 3. Gather some good knowledge. Information about your problem can often decrease that uncertain anxiety and fear we face when we are challenged with something. Knowledge wisps away the clouds of fear around a problem. And we often find that the problem might not be as bad as we thought. 4. Try to figure out possible problem along the way. This is something you can do before the problem even arises. Be prepared. When you research – as described in point # 3 – also try to find out what others in the same situation ran into, what kind of challenges they faced. Ask people what they did. If you don't have anyone to ask then books, forums and blogs are good resources for gathering the personal experience of people. Also, be on the lookout for local groups and organizations. Google it and see what you find. If you keep your eyes and ears open you are sure to find something helpful. 5. Ask for help. You can ask people for advice on what to do and what they did in similar situations like yours. But you can also ask for more practical help. You don't have to solve every problem on your own and sometimes it feels better to have someone by your side, even if it is just for emotional support. 6. Let go of the need to be right. Open your mind to a solution that may work and try it out instead of just making snap judgements based on little information and experience. The need to be right can make you disregard solutions that are just what you need for far too long. 7. Come up with more than one solution. You don't know what will actually work before you try it. What may seem like a good solution in theory doesn't always work in reality. So brain-storm and come up with at least a few solutions. If the first didn't work, try the next one. 8. Redefine failure. This is important both to handle fear of failure for the whole problem and to get you start trying different solutions without too much hesitation. The definition of failure we are brought up with in society might not be the best and most useful to have. If you look at the most successful people you quickly notice that they have a different response to failure than the more common one. They don't take failure or rejection that seriously. They know it's not the end of the world if they fail. Instead they look at each failure and see the good part about it : what they can learn from it and improve next time. They have an abundance-mentality. They know that if their first business-venture fails it feels like crap for a while but it's ok in the long run. They learn from it and then they try again. Redefine failure as feedback and as a natural part of a successful life. 9. Break down the problem into smaller pieces. Completing a task or solving a problem can seem overwhelming and impossible if you take it all in at once. To decrease anxiety and think more clearly try to break the problem down. Try to identify the different things and people it consists of. Then figure out one practical solution you can take for each of those pieces. Try those solutions. They may not solve the whole problem immediately. But they might solve a few pieces of it. And then you can keep trying other solutions for the rest of the pieces until there are none left. 10. Use the 80/20 rule. Use 80 percent of your time to find solutions and only 20 percent to complain, worry and whine. It might not always be easy but focusing your energy, time and thoughts in this way is much more beneficial to you and others than doing the opposite. 11. Use Parkinson's Law. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you'll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you'll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution. Combine this law with the 80/20 rule to find solutions quickly. Focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action. 12. Find the lesson or opportunity within the problem. There is almost always a good side of a problem. Perhaps it alerts us to a great way to improve our business. Or teaches us how our lives perhaps aren't as bad as we thought. Finding this more positive part of the problem reduces its negative emotional impact and you may even start to see the situation as a great opportunity for you. When you are faced with a problem ask yourself: How can I use this? What is the good thing about this? What can I learn from this? What hidden opportunity can I find within this problem? 13. Actually talk about the problem and communicate clearly. Many problems arise because someone misinterpreted what someone else said. One way to make sure that you and everyone else have the same interpretation of for instance a project is to have people repeat back their view of the project and their part in it. See if your and their view matches. If a conflict arises then maybe you need to just talk it out, let go of a bit of steam, emotion and tension instead of everyone bottling it up. After that the discussion may be less emotionally charged. And it becomes easier to communicate clearly and reach a good solution for everyone involved. 14. Create fewer problems. A lot of our problems are created by ourselves. You save yourself a lot of trouble by being proactive, thinking before you speak and trying to avoid creating or complicating problems more than necessary. One way to decrease problems is to follow – as much as you can – Dale Carnegie's wise words: “Never criticize, complain or condemn”. Many problems are somehow connected to relationships with other people so a good way to create less problems is to improve your social skills. Check out Do You Make These 10 Mistakes in a Conversation? And go down to your local library and borrow a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. 15. Use the power of words to your advantage. Our minds respond more than one may think to what words that are used to describe something. A problem is a negatively charged word. To make it easier to handle the problem use the more neutral or positive word challenge instead. This may sound like some empty and in reality just useless advice. But, at least to me, I have found that doing this small change has some impact on how negatively/positively I view a situation. 16. Keep your motivation up. It's easy to be discouraged, especially if you fear failure and your first and second solution to a problem didn't work. You might feel like just giving up . Then it's time to give yourself a boost of motivation. Changing your mental state to a brighter, more positive and more motivated one can make all the difference in the world. It will keep you going . Even though you might just a few minutes earlier felt like all hope was gone.

“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” Dorothy Nevill Social skills and relationships are probably two of the most important things in life. So it always strikes me as a bit odd that while we learn so much when we grow up there is often somewhat of a lack of advice on how to improve our communication skills. If there is something that we should learn more about in school, then this is one of those things since it can improve lives and society in a big way. Of course, if you do some digging and browsing and looking you can find solid and time-tested information from throughout the ages on this topic. And since communication and relationships is a pretty intuitive and free flowing process, advice that applies in all situations is pretty hard to find. Much of these things you have to learn from experience. But there are some good pointers. Here are five of them. And I think that if you avoid these five mistakes at least most of the time then you can really improve your relationships, your communication skills and your life. 1. Bragging. You may think bragging about your new car or what you make money wise will impress people. But consciously trying to impress anyone quickly becomes pretty apparent and transparent. And you are likely come a across as an annoying try-hard and insecure person with low self-esteem rather than the coolest kid in town. 2. Being judgemental. Now, what I'm talking about here is being judgemental about what Paul does for a living, what Lisa defines as her unique fashion style and what Larry did in a drunken haze last weekend. If you keep up such topics in conversation then soon the people you talk to will probably start to assume that you talk the same way about them when they are not around. And that can put a negative dent and barrier into your relationship. Besides, being judgemental might make you feel superior for a short while. But overall, it puts negative energy into your own mood and thoughts. And that isn't especially fun or useful. 3. Putting the spotlight on ME, ME, ME! An obvious and obnoxious one. A couple of common ways to put the spot-light on yourself are: Talking too much. Hijacking someone else's story by interrupting and then relating it to some anecdote in your life. Thereby taking the focus off the other person and on to yourself once again. Not really listening, just waiting for your turn to talk again. Trying to steer the conversation back to your favourite subjects. And then clinging desperately by talking about them as long as you can. 4. Always be giving advice. I've been guilty of this so many times. :) And I think a lot of people don't really realize that it might be something to hold back on a bit. If someone is telling you about a problem or situation then it's easy to assume they want your point of view and advice. And it's easy to feel clever by dispensing your wisdom. But sometimes people just want to you to listen and hear them out. It might be a way for them to handle, understanding and solving their own problem. So just listen instead of busting out your problem-solving skills immediately. Assuming a parental role where you are telling what someone what to do can become irritating. When they are done talking they might ask for your input. Or you can ask if they want to hear what you would do in a similar situation. Or if they want someone to bounce around thoughts and ideas with. 5. Worrying about making mistakes in conversations. One big problem in conversations is to turn the focus of your mind too much inwards. As soon as you do that conversations stall, you can feel flustered and everything becomes awkward. You can escape being worried about looking dumb and making mistakes by not focusing on it. Work on focusing your attention more and more outwards, towards the person you are talking to. If you think you look dumb then it is probably because you were worried about it and became self-conscious. If you can decrease the worry you can decrease the time you feel self-conscious. And if you aren't self-conscious then you are far less likely to feel bad and affecting the conversation. Even if you said or did something that might be perceived as kinda dumb. If I'm not self-conscious then I have found that don't react that badly to what I said/did (even if it was kinda dumb). Most of the time I just move on with the conversation and the people I'm talking to follows. So, should you try to decrease the attention and focus you put on yourself? Frankly, at the moment I find it more fun – and difficult – to forget about myself entirely. I just try to be and observe the reality around me. I focus on that. And not on myself (well, a little self-focus is hard to avoid but I try the best I can). It doesn't work for that long, at least for now. But I find it more interesting experimenting and experiencing with that frame of mind. 3 Solutions for Better Relationships Try to avoid doing these mistakes. Don't just sink into the regular unconscious routine of life. Try to be conscious and aware of how you think and what you say as much as possible. This will allow you to more easily observe your behaviour and bit by bit decrease the number of times you make these mistakes. Replace your habits. Since these mistakes quickly become habits you may not just be able to put a stop to them. Instead try a time-tested way for changing habits. Replace the habit rather than removing it. Instead of for instance judging people, try to see a positive side of everyone you meet for 30 days. It might be hard, but there is just about always something positive in everyone. Adopting this new habit not only replaces a less useful one. It has the added benefit of improving your outlook on the world and can pretty radically change how you view your closest environment such as friends, family and co-workers. Focus less on yourself. All of these mistakes are pretty much rooted in being too focused on yourself and boosting your own ego. But you don't have to keep on boosting your ego to feel good. The most helpful way I have found so far for overcoming the ego boosting-addiction is by reading – and applying – something by Eckhart Tolle. He discusses the ego in-depth in his books/tapes/dvds and they are great ways to understanding how the ego works in your life and how to get a handle on it. Very useful information that improves your life once you start understanding and applying it.

Today I'd like to share a collection of the 52 best forgiveness quotes that I’ve discovered over the years. I hope they will help you to forgive, let go and move on from hurt, resentment and anger. Away from feelings that may drag you down and thoughts that can slowly poison you and your outlook on life. Because forgiving someone for what they said or did isn't always easy – it can in my experience honestly be one of the harder things one can do – but it can also set you free and be something you need to do for no one but yourself to be able to fully move on with your life. I think Catherine Ponder says it in a better way than I so let’s get started and begin with her quote on forgiveness. Quotes on forgiving someone you love “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.” Catherine Ponder “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” Paul Boose “The act of forgiveness takes place in our own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person.” Louise Hay “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.” Oscar Wilde “We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.” Sir. Francis Bacon “Most of us can forgive and forget; we just don't want the other person to forget that we forgave.” Ivern Ball “To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.” Robert Muller “Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” Anne Lamott “Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.” Emma Goldman “Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.” Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy “True forgiveness is when you can say, “Thank you for that experience.” Oprah Winfrey “Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.” Marlene Dietrich “Forgiveness is a sign that the person who has wronged you means more to you than the wrong they have dealt.” Ben Greenhalgh “Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.” Will Smith “The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” Thomas Szasz “Forgiveness isn’t approving what happened. It’s choosing to rise above it.” Robin Sharma “If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.” Robert Brault “Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.” Marvin J. Ashton “To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it.” Confucius Quotes on the power of forgiveness “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” Nelson Mandela “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Mahatma Gandhi “Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.” Roberto Assagioli “Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.” Marvin J. Ashton “Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.” Isaac Friedmann “True forgiveness is not an action after the fact, it is an attitude with which you enter each moment.” David Ridge “Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.” Tony Robbins “Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.” Mason Cooley “Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.” Hannah Arendt “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Mark Twain “The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbour as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.” Eric Hoffer “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.” Marianne Williamson “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” Abraham Lincoln “A broken friendship that is mended through forgiveness can be even stronger than it once was.” Stephen Richards “Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.” Cherie Carter-Scott “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” Louis B. Smedes “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” Alexander Pope “Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.” William Arthur Ward “Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.” Martin Luther King Jr. “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.” Nelson Mandela Forgiveness quotes to help you to let go “Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” Deborah Reber “As long as you don’t forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy a rent-free space in your mind.” Isabelle Holland “Why do people persist in a dissatisfying relationship, unwilling either to work toward solutions or end it and move on? It's because they know changing will lead to the unknown, and most people believe that the unknown will be much more painful than what they're already experiencing.” Anthony Robbins “Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.” Bob Newhart “Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life.” George MacDonald “Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energy moving forward together towards an answer.” Denis Waitley “You don't need strength to let go of something. What you really need is understanding.” Guy Finley “When we go back in to the past and rake up all the troubles we've had, we end up reeling and staggering through life. Stability and peace of mind come by living in the moment.” Pam W. Vredevelt “Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.” Wayne Dyer “Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?” Leo Buscaglia “We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Joseph Campbell “Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.” Jonathan Huie “You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.” Jan Glidewell You may also like: 101 Monday Motivation Quotes 110 Never Give Up Quotes for When Life is Tough 101 Short Quotes and Sayings about Life 68 Inspiring Relationship Quotes 41 Inspiring Quotes on Failure

Feeling less than motivated all too often? I do ( especially on Mondays ). Sometimes I just feel really unmotivated and wonder to myself how I can stop being so lazy? But over the years I've found solutions to this very common problem. Here are 25 of them. Try a handful. Let me know which ones work well for you. I’m sure you’ll find at least one or two that do just that among these suggestions. 1. Make a deal with yourself. Good for overcoming procrastination and getting things done. You can make the deal small or large. You simple tell yourself something like: When I'm done with this chapter/these reports I can take a walk in the park and enjoy an ice-cream. 2. Act like it. If you don’t feel motivated or enthusiastic then act like it. The strange thing is that within a few minutes you actually start to feel motivated, positive or enthusiastic for real. 3. Ask uplifting questions in the morning. Here’s what you do; every morning ask yourself five empowering three-part questions this way: What am I ______ about in my life right now? What about it makes me _______? How does it make me feel? Put in your own value in the blank space. For instance, a couple of my questions are: What am I happy about in my life right now? What am I excited about in my life right now? It’s important that you really feel how it makes you feel. When I think about the last part about what makes me happy right now I really feel it. These morning questions are great because the way they are set up makes you recognize things you take for granted and then they really get you to feel those positive feelings. RELATED: 101 Good Morning Quotes to Help You to Start Your Day Right 4. Move the goalposts. Set a large and specific goal. This will motivate you much more than small goals. A big goal has a big effect and can create a lot of motivation. 5. Do something small and create a flow. Just clean your desk. Or pay your bills. Or wash the dishes. You just need to get started. When you have finished that small task you’ll feel more alert and ready to go do the next thing. You just to get started to get motivated. So if you really don’t feel like doing anything, start with something small and work your way out up. 6. Do the toughest task first. This will ease a lot of your day-to-day worries and boost your self-confidence for the rest of the day. 7. Start slow. Instead of jumping into something at full speed start slow. When you do that your mind will not visualize the task as something hard that you have to do fast, fast, fast. If your mind sees such things guess what often happens? Yep, you don’t get started. Actually getting started, even if it’s at a slow pace, is a whole lot better than not getting started at all. 8. Compare yourself with yourself. Not with others. Comparing what you have and your results to what other people have and have accomplished can really kill your motivation as it ups your self-doubts . 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 them. Reviewing your results is important so 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. 9. Remember your successes. And let them flow through your mind instead of your failures. Write down your successes. Consider using a journal of some kind since it’s easy to forget your successes. 10. Act like your heroes. Read about them, watch them, listen to them. Discover what they did that was special and what made them tick. But remember that they are people just like us. So let them inspire you instead of looking up at them admiringly. 11. Remember to have fun. Or create fun in a task. Then you’ll stay motivated to do and finish it. 12. Get out of your comfort zone. Face your challenges to get a real boost of motivation. It can help you get started and take that first scary step outside your comfort zone. 13. Don’t fear failure . Instead redefine it as feedback and as a natural part of a successful life. As Michael Jordan said: “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Also, try to find the valuable lesson(s) in each of your failures. Ask yourself: What can I learn from this? 14. Do some research on what you are about to do. Then your expectations will be more grounded in reality and you can also get good hints on what difficulties that you might run into along the way. Managing your expectations can lower the often almost explosive initial enthusiasm. But it can also lessen the lack of motivation that usually follows when most of that enthusiasm has dissipated. When you know what has happened to others in similar situations – what path they have walked – you can adapt and try their solutions (and personal variations of those) and your own. This makes it easier to stop worrying. And challenges easier to handle. Both emotionally – since you know at least some of the things that will happen and that others have lived through it before – and practically. 15. Figure out why you’re doing something. If you don’t know or don’t have good enough reason to do something then it will be hard to get it done. Do things that you have really strong reasons to do. If you want to do something then figure out a good reason to do it. If you can’t find one consider dropping it and doing something that you have a good reason to do instead. 16. Write down your goals and reasons for working towards them. Tape them on your wall, computer or bathroom mirror. Then you’ll be reminded throughout the day and it becomes easier to stay on track and stay focused. 17. Focus on the positive. Learn to think more positively most of the time. Learn to let to go of negative threads of thought before they have a chance to take hold of you. You might not be able to be positive all the time no matter what happens. But I think most of us can improve on our positive thinking and the results it can lead us to. Perhaps more than you realize right now. 18. Cut down on TV. Do you watch it too much? Watch less of what they are doing in TV-land and do more of what you want to do in life. 19. Break it down. Break down your task or project into small steps. And just start with focusing on that first small step. When you are done move on to the next and just focus on that one. The small successes will keep your motivation up and keeping your focus away from the big picture stops you from overthinking , becoming overwhelmed and discouraged. It’s amazing how much you can get done if you follow this simple method. 20. Reprogram your information intake. Program out negative and cynical thoughts from the media and society. Reduce your information intake. Then program in positive news and entertainment, more of your own thoughts and useful information such as personal growth podcasts and books. Be selective and keep it positive. 21. Make use of your creativity. Take out a piece of paper. Write at the top of the page what area in your life you would like to have more ideas about. Perhaps you want ideas to earn more money or become a healthier person. Then brainstorm until you have written down 20 ideas on that topic. Then try for 10 more. Not all ideas will be good. But some will. And as you make use of your creativity you not only discover useful ideas. You also discover just how creative you can be if you try and how motivating and great that feels. 22. Find out what makes you happy. Then do that. As much as you want or can. 23. Listen while you're on the move. Build your own small library of motivational/personal development tapes. Listen to them while you are driving, riding the bus or your bike, while you are out running or walking. Take a peek at my recommended personal development products if you are looking for a good place to start. 24. Think outside your box. Don’t imagine the future from the box of what you have now. Just because your mind is in box of previous experiences doesn’t mean that’s the limits of the world. Your possibilities are much larger . Create the future from the now and from nothing rather than your past to experience bigger changes with fewer limitations than you would if you created it from what you can see from your box. 25. Make each day count. We don’t have all the time in the world. So focus on today and do the things you really want to do.

We've all been there. You’re in the waiting room. Or just waiting somewhere. Soon it will begin. Your leg is shaking nervously. You can’t really hear that well what someone next to you is saying. Your thoughts are one big jumbled incoherent mess. Perhaps you have a big test in school or an important meeting/job-interview. Maybe you have an uncomfortable appointment with your doctor or dentist. Whatever it is, it makes you feel worried and anxious. Now, what I’m talking about here aren’t anxiety attacks or anything that serious. I know very little about such problems and possible solutions. But the following 8 tips have helped me handle the lower and medium levels of anxiety and worrying that most of us experience from time to time. 1. Take 30 belly-breaths. Actually I’ve found that just after 10-15 belly-breaths stress or anxiety will dissipate and you’ll feel a lot calmer. But you may want to take 30 just to be on the safe side. This simple exercise works remarkably well whenever you feel negative emotions like anxiety or anger trying to drag you down. For practical instructions about belly-breathing, have a look at this short article. 2. Get good knowledge. Anxiety often comes from uncertainty. Knowledge blows away uncertainty and replaces it with more certainty and a clearer picture of what is to be expected. And when you dig up some information then the problem is many times not as bad as you imagined. So, ask someone who has been where you are how it is, what they did and what’s to be expected. Read about it in books or magazines. Research and Google it. 3. Redirect your mind. You don’t always have to think about your problems and create more anxiety. If it feels bad redirect your mind. Watch a couple of episodes of an excellent sit-com like The Simpsons or Seinfeld. Have a great conversation or night out. Go to the gym and really focus on the workout. When you are done your feelings will most likely be more positive. If there’s something you can do about whatever is causing your anxiety now you are in a much better position to do something about it than when you were all wound up in those negative feelings. 4. Don’t forget to eat. The most obvious advice of this article. But I know that if I don’t eat when my body needs to then my blood-sugar drops and I more easily become irritated, nervous or anxious. When your body needs energy feed it. If your negative emotions start to pop up in your day without much reason then it might just mean that you need to eat something. 5. Ask yourself: is this useful? I often stop and ask myself if a train of thoughts I’m having is useful. I have found it to be quite helpful to put a stop to negative thoughts and negative thought spirals (when you get more and more negative during several minutes while thinking about that big meeting that’s coming up). If I ask myself this question and realize that my current thoughts aren’t that useful at all then it becomes easier to just let go of them. 6. Observe the feeling. Sometimes the anxious feeling can be quite intense and sticky. It’s hard to get rid of it. A good way, in my experience, to let go of such a feeling is to surrender to it. If you have read this blog for a while then I’m sure you have heard about this method before. But the reason I keep mentioning it is because it’s simple and more effective than you might expect at first. Here is what you do: When you feel a negative feeling then accept that feeling. Don’t try to fight it or to keep it out (like many of us have learned throughout life). Say yes to it. Surrender and let it in. Observe the feeling in your mind and body without labelling or judging it. If you let it in – for me the feeling then often seems physically locate itself to the middle of my chest – and just observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. And your mind will stop putting in new energy into the problem. 7. Stay in the present. Anxiety is sometimes a fear of the future. One way to lessen anxiety on a more long-term level is to not to think of the future more than necessary. Instead stay in the present as much as you can. This is not that easy if you are used to spend much time thinking/worrying about the past or imagining the future. So you need to work on it, just like when trying to learn a new sport or instrument. You can start by just paying attention to what is happening right now. Just focus on the scene and the sounds right in front of you. Don’t think about the reports you have finish before 5, the meeting tomorrow and what you want for dinner. Just pay attention to the present moment and nothing else for a few moments. Make it a habit and try to expand the time you can spend in the present moment before your thoughts drift away again. You can also look into some form of meditation to strengthen your connection to the now. 8. Find good ways to relax and deal with stress. A good place to get started with that is with this article , it contains 33 tips that can help you with the stress.

Making money and creating wealth is one of my weakest areas – knowledge wise – when it comes to self-improvement. So I thought it would be useful for me – and hopefully for you too – to put together a list of some of the best quotes on wealth and money that I have come across. I especially like the ones by William A. Ward, Benjamin Franklin, Gandhi and Henry Ford. This is 103 motivating and sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking quotes on money and wealth from the past few thousands of years. I hope you'll find them as helpful as I have. And if you want more inspiration then have a look at this post filled with quotes to help you through the midweek slump and this one with quotes on inner peace . Inspiring Quotes on Money and Wealth “Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give.” William A. Ward “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” Seneca “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” Ayn Rand “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shuts down for ten years.” Warren Buffett “Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.” Erich Fromm “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” Jim Rohn “The person who doesn't know where his next dollar is coming from usually doesn't know where his last dollar went.” Unknown “It doesn’t matter about money; having it, not having it. Or having clothes, or not having them. You’re still left alone with yourself in the end.” Billy Idol “Money does not buy you happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery.” Daniel Kahneman “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” Zig Ziglar “It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.” George Lorimer “I don't pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.” Robert Bosch “Making money is a common sense. It’s not rocket science. But unfortunately, when it comes to money, common sense is uncommon.” Robert Kiyosaki “That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.” Henry David Thoreau “Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man.” Kahlil Gibran “It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.” Albert Camus “The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” Henry David Thoreau “Money is like muck—not good unless it be spread.” Francis Bacon “It's not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It's the customer who pays the wages.” Henry Ford “Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it.” Tim Ferriss “If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.” Ben Franklin “I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.” Warren Buffett “Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.” Gandhi “They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.” Kahlil Gibran “I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.” Malcolm Forbes “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.” Edmund Burke “When a fellow says it ain't the money but the principle of the thing, it's the money.” Artemus Ward “Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.” Arthur Schopenhauer “The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” Unknown “He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.” Eleanor Roosevelt “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” Franklin D. Roosevelt “To acquire money requires valor, to keep money requires prudence, and to spend money well is an art.” Berthold Auerbach “Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience.” P.T Barnum “Never spend your money before you have earned it.” Thomas Jefferson “The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind.” T.T. Munger “Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.” Françoise Sagan “Many folks think they aren’t good at earning money, when what they don’t know is how to use it.” Frank A. Clark “When I had money everyone called me brother.” Polish proverb “Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time .” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “Earn with your mind, not your time.” Naval Ravikant “Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.” Miguel de Cervantes “I pity that man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth shall starve in the process.” Benjamin Harrison “ Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that .” Norman Vincent Peale “Money often costs too much” Ralph Waldo Emerson “If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.” Simone Weil “A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.” Jonathan Swift “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.” Benjamin Franklin “Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it’s about having a lot of options.” Chris Rock “A simple fact that is hard to learn is that the time to save money is when you have some.” Joe Moore “Know what you own, and know why you own it.” Peter Lynch “Money isn't everything…but it ranks right up there with oxygen.” Rita Davenport “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you.” Maya Angelou “Don't tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I'll tell you what they are.” James W. Frick “It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.” Oscar Wilde “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” Jim Rohn “Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That's not just a catchy slogan. It's the very essence of successful investing.” J. Paul Getty “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” Robert Kiyosaki “If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.” Henry Ford “I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.” Steve Martin “Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” Oprah Winfrey “Every time you borrow money, you're robbing your future self.” Nathan W. Morris “Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.” Paul Samuelson “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Sam Walton “Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success – and success is in direct proportion to our service.” Earl Nightingale “The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient .” Warren Buffett “Like Warren, I had a considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris – I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it.” Charlie Munger “Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we’d want to get involved.” Bill Gates “If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know & start charging for it.” Kim Garst “If you want to get rich, remember that the way to do it is via equity, not salary.” Sam Altman “No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.” Plato “There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money.” Alan Watts “It’s simple arithmetic: “Your income can grow only to the extent you do ”. T. Harv Eker “The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” Ben Graham “Wealth does not make people happy, but positive increases in wealth may.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb “99% of all problems can be solved by money — and for the other 1% there's alcohol.” Quentin R. Bufogle “Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.” Haruki Murakami “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.” John Bogle “The fools in life want things fast and easy — money, success, attention.” Robert Greene “It’s amazing how fast later comes when you buy now.” Milton Berle “Remember that the only purpose of money is to get you what you want, so think hard about what you value and put it above money.” Ray Dalio “Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.” Charles Caleb Colton “A sign of wealth: No longer needing an alarm clock to wake up.” Greg Isenberg “Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.” George Orwell “The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’” Sir John Templeton “Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.” Epictetus “Money grows on the tree of persistence.” Japanese proverb “The more you learn, the more you earn.” Warren Buffett “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” Jim Carrey “Real wealth is not about money. Real wealth is: not having to go to meetings, not having to spend time with jerks, not being locked into status games, not feeling like you have to say “yes”, not worrying about others claiming your time and energy. Real wealth is about freedom.” James Clear Motivational Saving Money Quotes “Try to save something while your salary is small; it’s impossible to save after you begin to earn more.” Jack Benny “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” Epictetus “The rich invest their money and spend what is left; the poor spend their money and invest what is left.” Jim Rohn “How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” Robert G. Allen “So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.” Alan Watts “Stop buying things you don’t need, to impress people you don’t even like.” Suze Orman “Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.” Benjamin Franklin “It's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it.” Ransom Riggs “In the Middle Ages, the rich spent their money carelessly on extravagant luxuries, whereas peasants lived frugally minding every penny. Today, the tables have turned. The rich take great care managing their assets and investments while the less well go into debt buying cars and televisions they don’t really need.” Yuval Noah Harari “Money moves from those who do not manage it to those who do.” Dave Ramsey “If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.” Warren Buffett “Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don't want..to impress people that they don't like.” Will Rogers “It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” Robert Kiyosaki “You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.” Dave Ramsey

I hope you can have some use of these tips to decrease stress and negativity and to relaxify your life. 1. Change your way of looking at life. You can choose how you look at things and how you react. As Holocaust-survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl says in one of my favourite quotes: “Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.” 2. Do what you really like to do. It might be playing with your children, fishing, playing video games/board games/water polo, collecting something, writing or painting. Or something entirely else. Whatever it is, do it on a regular basis. And perhaps try to find time do it more – and/or in a better and more focused way – than you do today. Immersing yourself in such a joyous activity is a great and rewarding break from the stress of your life. 3. Have a good support-group. Don't listen too much to people that are very negative or overly critical of you. It can really drag you down and the negativity is most likely more about them and their life than you (don't block out all criticism though, it can be both valid and useful). If the situation gets really bad try to find ways to spend as little time as possible with such people. Or put an end to the relationship. 4. Finish what you started. An unfinished task or project can create a lot of underlying anxiety and stress. It picks and picks at the back of your mind even if you aren't consciously thinking about it. There is an uneasy feeling that you just can't rid of. Fully finish what you have started. And your mind will relax. 5. Schedule breaks into your calendar. A jam-packed calendar full of meetings and appointments back-to-back can become overwhelming and exhausting . You may have to schedule breaks into your calendar to be sure to actually take and enjoy them. Otherwise you may get stuck in a never-ending loop of thinking that “I'll take a break later”. That “later” will, of course, most often mean never. 6. Educate yourself. Good information can lift the fog of anxiety when faced with a problem or the unknown. If you prepare by reading a bit about what you are about to face then you may not only find some useful solutions that have worked for others before you. You may also discover that the problem is perhaps not as gigantic as your mind is trying to fool you into believing. By educating yourself you can also set your expectations about the world and how it works to a reasonable level and work better with less disappointment after the initial enthusiasm has dissipated. Knowing what problems you might run into when, for instance, starting a new project can soften the emotional blows and arm you with a few potential solutions. A third advantage of self-education is that it can help you improve your life and your work in many different ways. Not only by helping you find ways to increase productivity and such things but also if you want promotions, a raise in pay and new opportunities, challenges and other upsides at work etc. 7. Outsource. If you have a lot to do, don't do everything yourself. There are only so many hours in a day and, at least sometimes, you cannot do everything yourself. Figure out ways to get good people to exchange their time for your money (or some other value like your time or knowledge) so you can do more of what you really like doing. Or just get some more sleep. 8. Find a solid solution (or two) for beating procrastination. Consider picking up Brian Tracy's Eat that Frog! 21 great ways to stop procrastination. As always with Tracy, it has some good and solid advice. 9. Do just one thing at a time. Single tasking and focusing on doing just one thing at a time not only decreases stress but from my – and many other's – experience gets things done a whole lot quicker than if you multitask. 10. Take a vacation. It's not very healthy to work all the time. Just about everyone needs a vacation where you just let go of everything. Much-written-about author Tim Ferriss even suggests that you take mini-retirements once in while. 11. Stop reading. Don't become a self-help junkie. Don't become an information junkie. You don't need more information (and faster) all the time. Instead, give you brain a break, sit down at a pub or cafe and just watch the world while sipping a coffee or a beer. 12. Get off the internet. It's easy to become a RSS/Email-junkie. Or a Reddit/Digg-junkie. That's when you check these endless information sources maybe 5, 10 or 20 times a day thinking: “What's new?”. Get off the internet once in a while or as much as you can. Bunch emails/RSS-reading and similar tasks. Disconnect your internet-connection for at least a while each day or week. It not only calms the mind but also lets you get more of the most important stuff in your life done quicker and easier. 13. Create a space of silence and stillness. When working block out as many distractions as you can. Besides unplugging your internet-cable and phone-cord also make sure your door is shut. If you can you might even want to lock the door while you work for a specific block of time (perhaps an hour or 90 minutes). This might feel a little uncomfortable at first but it really increases your focus, clarity of mind and puts you in a productive state of well-being.

Today I’d like to share 101 of the best and most powerful courage quotes that I’ve found. Timeless thoughts that will inspire and help you to take that big – or sometimes small – leap that you need to take to move forward towards a dream or goal. These thought-provoking quotes will help you to build your own courage in life no matter if you need it in your love life or relationships, to go after what you want at work or in your business or to make positive change in your life. And to not give up even when things are tough and you may feel like giving in and going home. NOTE: The original version of this post from way back in 2008 contained only 14 quotes on courage but it has now been updated with 87 additional quotes. Courage Quotes That Will Help You to Make Your Dreams Real “One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” Maya Angelou “Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.” Baltasar Gracian “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.” Anais Nin “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt “A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.” John A. Shedd “Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.” Napoléon Bonaparte “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu “When things go wrong as they sometimes will, When the road you're trudging seems all uphill, When the funds are low and the debts are high, And you want to smile but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit Rest if you must, but don't you quit. Success is failure turned inside out, The silver tint on the clouds of doubt, And you can never tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems afar. So, stick to the fight when you're hardest hit It's when things go wrong that you mustn't quit.” John Greenleaf Whittier “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” Bertrand Russell “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” Ralph Waldo Emerson “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” J.K. Rowling “The best way out is always through.” Robert Frost “Don't get discouraged; it is often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.” Unknown “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” William Faulkner “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 “Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.” Robert Louis Stevenson “To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” Soren Kierkegaard “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” E.E. Cummings “If you’re not willing to risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot be your best. If you cannot be your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else is there?” Les Brown “To overcome fear, here’s all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.” Peter McWilliams “Trust the still, small voice that says, “this might work and I'll try it.” Diane Mariechild “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” Christopher Reeve “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Marie Curie RELATED: 140 Funny Quotes to Lighten Your Mood and Reduce Stress “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” Steve Jobs “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” Dale Carnegie “The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.” R. G. Ingersoll “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” James Stephens “Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.” Orison Swett Marden “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” Albert Ellis “If you're going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” Unknown “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela “Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that’s what makes you strong.” Sarah Dessen “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” Zig Ziglar “Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.” Unknown “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” Marie Curie “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” Winston Churchill “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” Seneca “It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more ‘manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.” Alex Karras “It’s your life; you don’t need someone’s permission to live the life you want. Be brave to live from your heart.” Roy T. Bennett “Believe you can and you're halfway there.” Theodore Roosevelt “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” Mark Twain “Courage is found in unlikely places.” J.R.R. Tolkien “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” Ann Landers “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Andre Gide “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” Coco Chanel “Always do the things you fear the most. Courage is an acquired taste, like caviar.” Erica Jong “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” Vincent Van Gogh “Where your fear is, there is your task.” Carl Jung “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” Atticus Finch “Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.” Victor Hugo “You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Roy T. Bennett “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” Shannon L. Alder “You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.” Mary Tyler Moore “No one knows what he can do till he tries.” Publius Syrus “All happiness depends on courage and work.” Honoré de Balzac “One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.” Michael J. Fox “Have the courage to be who you are, not what people expect you to be.” David Goggins “We can't be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don't have something better.” C. JoyBell C. “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” Plato “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.” Stephen Hawking “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” John Wayne “Understand: we are all too afraid – of offending people, of stirring up conflict, of standing out from the crowd, of taking bold action.” Robert Greene “Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.” Thucydides “Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.” W. Clement Stone “Courage is a love affair with the unknown.” Osho “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” Brene Brown “The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your action will be.” Dalai Lama “Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.” E. M. Forster “Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.” Terry Goodkind “Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.” Shannon L. Alder “Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” Marianne Williamson “If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.” Brené Brown “Courage is the only virtue you can’t fake.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” Winston Churchill “When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” Paulo Coelho “A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.” Lao Tzu “Freedom lies in being bold.” Robert Frost “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” Ralph Waldo Emerson “Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.” Roy T. Bennett “It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” Erma Bombeck “Just because you fail once doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything.” Marilyn Monroe “Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.” Ursula K. Le Guin “I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back….” Erica Jong “Courage means doing what’s right no matter what they say.” Maxime Lagacé “I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits” Anaïs Nin “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” Mark Twain “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” Alan Cohen “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.” Maya Angelou “You can choose to let this thing bother you or let this be an adventure and welcome the challenge.” Fred Rogers “Stand for something or you will fall for anything. Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.” Rosa Parks “Trying to run away is never the answer to being fully human.” Pema Chödrön “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” Brené Brown “Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.” Dale Carnegie “Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” George Sheehan “Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.” Ralph Waldo Emerson “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill “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.” Mark Twain “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” Mary Anne Radmacher [ Note: this post originally contained 46 quotes but I've added 55 more on courage in 2021).