How To Identify Your Stress Points And Reduce Them

Most of our stresses happen for a reason. We are stressed for instance because of our work, because of a deadline or because of debt. Knowing what is causing the stress helps us to at least contextualize it and gives us hope that someday we might escape its clutches, but for many of us that is not enough.

The truth is when you break that stress down further and if you really get to know it, then you might just find that it starts to come apart and that it becomes much more manageable.

How To Reduce Your Stress So It's Not Too Much Of A Deal?

The trick is to break down your stress into specific things - into manageable chunks that you can deal with - and then to deal with the constituent parts.

So let's take a look at one of the biggest culprits: work. If your main stressor is work, then chances are that you can break this down further to identify precisely what it is about work that stresses you out. Here are some examples of aspects of our jobs that make us stressed:

Tight deadlines, angry demanding bosses, unpleasant colleagues, stressful workspaces, busy, long commutes, things you love doing but can't, wearing uncomfortable clothes, making cold calls, speaking in public, being overwhelmed but the amount of work you haven't completed etc.

All these things can make us feel stressed about our jobs and most likely there are a number of these things playing on your mind.

But now you've broken it all down and you know the specifics, you should find it becomes much easier to start dealing with the problems individually.

So for instance: if you have a colleague you don't like, you could ask to be moved to another part of the office. Likewise, if your workspace is uncomfortable, you could speak to HR about getting a new chair, or you could put a plant on your desk. Don't like the long commute? How about looking into a lift share, or finding an alternative route. Workload too big? Then again, speak to someone and ask to have it shared!

Likewise, you might find that other 'big' stresses in your life can be made easier when you break them down into their smaller constituents. Stressed about debt? Then perhaps one aspect of that is not being able to afford things - in which case writing a budget could help. Another aspect could be worrying about your credit score, in which case you could talk to your bank manager or a debt advisor.

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Take a Breath!

Well, don't we always get into certain situations, even very simple ones, in which we lose our temper? Be it not finding the shirt you were planning to wear, or being stuck at a traffic jam or even spilling coke on your jeans - such trivial situations, with such simple solutions, but still some people absolutely lose their temper - not knowing how to deal with it.

It is very crucial to manage your anger. A person who doesn't have control over his anger can never deal with difficult situations in life. They will always believe that the world is "conspiring" against them. One who can't manage their anger in a positive manner needs to learn how to.

Life gives a person many difficult situations, sometimes only to teach us patience which is important in our professional & personal lives.

Why professional life?

Let us take a scenario. You have worked hard for the promotion you really want and you believe you deserve. But, the "not-so-efficient" colleague gets the promotion. 

Now, the reasonable approach to deal with this situation would be to work harder and be happy for the colleague.

People who tend to have anger issues may abuse or even resort to physical violence to get the promotion- as they believe they deserved it more.

Why personal life?

We must have once in our life come across such a situation. If you have a younger sibling, all attention, importance and hopes are with the "younger" sibling, as they are usually the 'poor little things' and can't take care of themselves, even when they are adults they are treated the same way. In some cases discriminating between girl and boy. This enrages some people to no end and rightfully so. However instead of screaming and shouting and bringing the whole house down there are other ways to handle the situation.

How to deal with it?

Dealing with the situation positively would be to prove it to everyone that you are also important. Work hard and excel. Not for them, but for yourself too.

But, how do people normally deal with such a situation? They get jealous. They tend to see the negative aspect of the situation and give up.

So, seeing the above scenarios, these are basic things we deal with every day or things we have to deal with in life - it is crucial to deal with your anger.

But, how do we manage our anger?

Here are a few tips one must always follow to manage their anger.

1. Count to 10.

Think you're going to lose it and yell at the world? Count to ten. Relax your mind. Breathe.

2. Take a deep breathe.

Take long breathes and say Om. Repeat this 4-5 times. It relaxes the mind.

3. Meditate.

Meditation is actually a very simple way to gain peace of mind and lessen the anger one feels.

4. Introspect.

Try to think about the situation in a practical manner. Are you over-reacting? Can it be solved? Is it worth it? Analyze the situation instead of getting angry.

5. Go for a walk.

Nothing works better than taking a stroll in the park when you feel you're about to lose it. It makes you forget the situation or analyze it from every angle.

6. Talk it out.

When things have calmed down, take time and discuss what upset you about the situation and instead how it should have been handled.

So, here you go! These are the main things I keep in mind when I lose my temper. So have a go at it! 

Learn to live peacefully.

As Buddha said, "You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger."

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Patience, Understanding And Tolerance

Nothing is free and it all comes from somewhere and something. Everything worthwhile takes patience, understanding and tolerance to build. Without those qualities, you or anyone are like the playful grasshopper that cannot build an ant hill, and you just jump around impatiently. Without understanding, combined with that impatience, you end up freezing in the cold with total "I want to have fun in the present" intolerance just like the grasshopper in the old fable about the ant and the grasshopper.

I am not saying be overly cautious and save your whole life for the afterlife, but I am saying that you should make prudent choices that include patience, understanding and tolerance with them and in them. In short: Be rationally flexible and all else will be added to your life ultimately.

Let me go into what I mean by that word "ultimately": I mean the sum total of all your rational actions in existence and consciousness that are for total and completely beneficial to you, not those actions that feed you today and fill your immediate needs now and only now.

Now, that I have told you what I meant by "ultimately", you can breathe a sigh of relief that I am not telling you to save your whole life and future better existence for a "rainy day" and I am not telling you to take a "rain check" on what is currently going on, however undesirable or not ideal it seems.

So, do not lend me your minds, use your mind to make a better now and later out of the past, meaning learn from the past but do not live in it. Take from this article what is valuable and use it in your own life well. I am not an authority, I am not perfect or even great. I simply observe and write down "what is up" with it all realistically. That is it.

Listen, like anyone, I want to be wonderful, great, perfect and all of that at times when I miss the mark, like anyone. But, those times I miss the mark are valuable because I learn to be better and actually end up better. That is tolerance. As for patience and understanding, that is why I put them before the tolerance in the title, because you must have those first to get to tolerance. Indeed, life is as good as we make it through those three things. For, faking it until we make it never works, and it is real cheating anyway. Being real all the way through is where it is at and is "the real easy way" anyway. When you cheat, even if you succeed, what you skipped comes back to haunt you anyway. So, why not be real through genuine patience, understanding and tolerance anyway. The best way is the real way.

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5 Barriers That You Need to Cross to Achieve Success in 2017

It is a fact that success is achieved with a lot of hard work, struggle and persistence. However, one important factor that is usually ignored is mental strength. Some people are generally good when it comes to emotional stability or mental strength, however, others can work on it to make it better.

Mental and emotional strength can be developed with proper focus on it. However, to work on the development of emotional strength, it is important to analyze how you are spending your time. This will help you explore things that you need to quit doing and things that you need to work on.
Here are 5 barriers that you put into your own path:

1. Jealousy

When an individual decides to analyze and focus on other people’s blessings, this is where jealousy acts as a barrier to an individual’s own success. If you want to achieve success and mental peace, then it is very important to focus on things that you possess rather than things you don’t own. Moreover, somebody else’s luck cannot take anything away from you. Jealousy is an illusion and a barrier to success.


“Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” – Fulton J. Sheen

2. Seeking perfectionism

It is observed that individuals delay things as they seek perfectionism. It is important to understand that perfectionism is actually underestimating yourself that you are not good enough. Perfectionism acts as a barrier to success. It leads an individual to depression and anxiety. It is important to overcome this barrier in order to gain success in 2017.

3. Comparing yourself to others

A true waste of time, effort and resources is comparing yourself to others. Successful people would never do it as they know that they are one of a kind. So if you really want to compare anything, it must be what you have achieved and what you are willing to achieve. Overcome this obstacle to achieve success in 2017.

4. Blaming others

It is a common attribute where an individual takes all the credit for the achievements and success. However, when things don’t work out then it gets easier for an individual to blame others. Blaming others for your failures is actually the biggest obstacle to success. You need to stop blaming others and starting focusing on solving the problems if you are really looking forward to achieve success in 2017.


“Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.” – Joseph Campbell

5. Doubting yourself

Commonly, people doubt themselves on various occasions or instances. Where there is a doubt, there is no way. Hence, whenever a doubt comes in your mind, then it is time to remember all the things you have achieved. To overcome doubting yourself, it is important to remember the distance you have covered to be where you are today. Stop doubting yourself because it holds you back from moving forward.

Crossing these 5 barriers will help you gain mental and emotional strength. With enhanced and improved mental strength, you are going to be more powerful at work. This will definitely help you to overcome a lot of your weaknesses. In fact, it can be all that you require to achieve success in 2017.

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How to Overcome Perfectionism: 6 Powerful Habits

“Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.”
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it.”
Edith Schaeffer

One of the most common challenges that people email me about – and I myself have had quite a bit of trouble with – is perfectionism.

It’s an issue that can hold you back in life. Not only from achieving and finishing what you want.

But sometimes from even getting started. While at the same time draining your self-esteem and getting you stuck in a negative spiral where it can become harder and harder to start moving forward.

So today I’d like to share 6 things that have helped me – and still helps me to this day – with this destructive and distracting thought habit.


1. Go for good enough.

Aiming for perfection usually winds up in a project or something else never being finished. So go for good enough instead.

Don’t use it as an excuse to slack off. But simply realize that there is something called good enough and when you are there then you are finished with whatever you are doing.

So find a balance for yourself where you do good work and don’t slack off but at the same time don’t get lost in trying to improve and polish something too much.

How to find that balance? I have found my own balance through trial and error and experience.

2. Realize that you hurt yourself and the people around you by buying into myths of perfection.

By watching too many movies, listening to too many songs and just taking in what the world is telling you it is very easy to be lulled into dreams of perfection. It sounds so good and wonderful and you want it.

But in real life it clashes with reality and tends to:
Cause much suffering and stress within you and in the people around you.
Harm or possibly lead you to end relationships, jobs, projects etc. just because your expectations are out of this world.

I find it very helpful to remind myself of these simple facts.

Whenever I get lost in a perfectionist headspace I remind myself that it will cause me and my world harm. And so it become easier to switch my focus and thoughts because I want to avoid making destructive choices and avoid causing myself and the people closest to me unnecessary pain.

3. Accept that you are human and so are everyone else.

Set human standards for everyone and accept that life is like that.

Everything and everyone has flaws and things don’t always go as planned. You can still improve things but they will never be perfect.

And realize that you won’t be rejected if things or you aren’t perfect. At least not by reasonably well-balanced human beings, like most people actually are in reality.

4. Compare yourself to yourself.

Comparing yourself to other people on a regular basis can easily lead to feeling inferior. There will always be a lot of people ahead of you in any area of life.

So compare yourself to yourself…
See your improvement, see how far you have come.
Look back at what you have overcome.
Appreciate yourself and focus what you have done and are doing rather than what everyone else is doing.

5. Do what you think is the right thing.

So you realize that perfectionism will harm you and you try to avoid it. But people and media and the society around you have an influence over how you think and feel.

One of the best ways I have found to practically lessen that influence is by doing the right thing as much as possible. When you do that other people’s expectations have less and less power over you and you take more charge of your life.

Because by doing the right thing your self-esteem goes up and other people’s opinions about you and life will matter less to you. You have become stronger, more certain in who you are and you are not so easily swayed by external forces.

6. Shape an environment of human standards around you.

Emotions are contagious. So is perfectionism.

And even though you can lessen the impact that your environment has you can also work at the other end of things.

You can reshape your environment by for example:
Reducing or cutting out the sources that try to reinforce perfectionism in you. Take a little time to review what websites, magazines, podcasts, TV-shows and books you spend a lot of time with. Take a look at if they have realistic and positive expectations or views on you and on life. And if not, choose to spend more of your time with the sources that lift you up and support you.
Spending less time with nervously perfectionistic people. And more of your time each week with people who are trying to improve themselves and/or are living a good life in a positive, healthy and relaxed way.

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Steps to Building Self Confidence

Self confidence, as the words suggest, is your inner feeling that gives you the assurance that you can achieve your desired results with a greater sense of responsibility. It is a belief in yourself that you can take up responsibilities and challenges in your life.

In order to attain this, you need to recognise your potential and know your inner strengths. Look at your achievements in your life's journey. Identify what is important to you and where you want to go. Replace any negative thoughts in your mind with positiveness and commit yourself to face challenges.

In order to cultivate and develop such a positive self-image the following needs to be enhanced:

1.Goals and Vision - Set realistic goals. Be a visionary and dream your goals. Convert your dreams into plans and plans into action. Stay focussed and persist in your efforts. Divide your goals into sub-goals and keeping work on them and lead them to your final goal.

2.Interpersonal Relationships - Participate in social activities. Join social clubs or charitable organisations. Get involved with people as this will channel and renew your energy. Share your thoughts, view, hopes and aspirations with your near ones.

3.Communication Skills - Learn to interact with people using charm in your conversation. Recognising and complimenting others for their achievements will boost your desires to achieve similar results.

4.Knowledge - Enhance your knowledge by reading as much as possible on varied subjects. Newspapers, magazines provide lot of information and updates. Watch appropriate channels and programs on television to broaden your knowledge. This will give you confidence when you meet people, make presentations etc.

It is worthwhile that whenever you achieve something, take pride in your achievements. Congratulate yourself. It will boost your morale. Reflect on your successes and consolidate your confidence.

A good way of doing this is to display in your house any certificates or awards you have won in the past as this will motivate you to win more laurels. Keep appreciating these small achievements for enhancing your positive attitudes and inner strength.

One must however be also ready to face setbacks as these are only challenges that occasionally stand between you and your goals. Persistence is the key to success. Analyse the situation and take corrective steps. Do everything possible to bounce back with much more vigor till desired results are obtained.

Self confidence is all about you and your goals. You can only draw inspiration from other sources, but action is what you have to take. Action in the right direction. When you are self confident, you do what you believe to be right even if others mock or criticize you. You take risks and go the extra mile to achieve better things.

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5 Tips Make Your Goals Come to Life

1. Do something different. Go for a walk to clear you head, or meet friends at the local coffee shop to brainstorm or respond to questions or to make plans can do you the world of good. Sometimes a new environment has been the key to increasing productivity and creativity for me. Just change things around from your normal day.

2. Setting goals inside and outside of work place are necessary to keep me motivated. If I am just concentrating on work and not also on my home life, I find it harder to want to work.

We all need life outside of our 9 - 5 day. We also need goals for ourselves. You might choose to learn to cook, learn a new language or speed read. Whatever you choose, make it something you will enjoy.

3. Create a to do list. I love lists and highlighting the completed activities makes me happy! Creating a to do list not only helps you to get your must do's out of your mind, it also helps you to think clearly as you are processing less information at any given time. I love that feeling when I get the end of any tasks that I complete, as it gives me a great feeling of accomplishment. I can also reflect on this list in the future to see how I worked through problems if something similar arises.

I write my list in order of priority. I can then to see the scale of what I am working on and be able put my to do's in an order to work in with my day. I usually have several projects on the go at once and this helps me to be balanced over my schedule.

4. Sometimes there are things we just cannot do alone this is when we need to ask for help. This can be one of the hardest things to do, but remember that you can return the favour one day so it does not all need to be one-sided.

If you are at work, make your goal a joint effort and get buy in from the team. If the goal is at home, maybe you could ask your partner, family member or friend if they would like to learn that new language with you so you can practice on each other. Two brains are sometimes better than one.

5. The most important for me is to reward myself when I get to the goal. Don't fall in the trap of constantly looking for the next thing. Take a break, reward yourself and those who helped you get there and appreciate the journey. If you know the reward is coming, it makes it that bit easier to work towards the big goal at the summit.

I find that the main thing for me is to chip away a bit every day. It might be to reach out to someone, write a quick article, remind myself of the purpose or to read over the plan each morning. The focus of the goal must be big enough to make you really want it enough to motivate you to move forward.

Reaching the goals and rewarding yourself will give you the improved mood and revitalised mind and body that will make you and your team want to achieve more! Enjoy the process and reaching the end goal.

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Why It Is A Bad Idea Comparing Yourself To Others

Why It Is A Bad Idea Comparing Yourself To Others

Why compare yourself to others?

It is a normal human behavior to compare ourselves to other people, but doing it in a negative way is something we all should be avoiding. Comparing yourself with someone else that is working in the same field of work to improve is one thing, but it is really a bad idea if it makes you doubt yourself and gives you a negative mindset. Let us say that you are a online marketer and you are comparing yourself with a very successful marketer. It will not make you any more successful comparing yourself with that person, because you need to focus on your success on not theirs. If you just focus on other peoples success, then your own development and success will be so to say put on hold. Besides that fact, the online marketers who you are comparing yourself with have more experience regarding marketing then you and therefor they are able to have a higher level of success then you as well.

Self development.

If you are having low confidence and are having negative thoughts about yourself then you must maintain your mindset more than you do. To keep negative thoughts away you need to maintain a positive mindset through reading books and listen to audio recordings daily. Every marketer no matter of what kind of level of success they have achieved must maintain their mindset in this fashion. Allow yourself to set bigger goals, not to big of a goal but a goal that makes you more dedicated and focused. Then really take action on reaching that goal with all your focus and energy. Do not just set a goal because you think you have to. Set a goal and go all in towards that goal.

Get in touch with them

If you see a person within your niche that has achieved great results, well then connect with them. They may be willing to show you what strategies they have used to become successful. Because an important key to success is that you need to surround yourself with already successful marketers that are having the results that you personally want to have as well. But never compare yourself with those successful online marketers, so that you end up in a negative state of mind. There will always be someone who knows more than you about various things in life, so the key for you to have your breakthrough is to surround yourself with successful people who knows what works and what does not work within marketing. You will never reach the level of success that those people you are comparing yourself with are enjoying, if you do not take action and work on your mindset.

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7 Ways to Beat Procrastination and Start Taking Action Today!

With the advent of the Internet, smartphones, and Wi-Fi, low productivity has become one of the most prevalent diseases across the globe. It will be a long battle to regain our attention control, and I recommend you to take baby steps during the process.
Below are 7 simple ways to help you beat procrastination so you finally take action on the goals you have set.

1 No More "Someday I will... "
Recognize that the best time to take action is 10 years ago, the next best time is now.
Stop living in the delusion that you have millions days in the future to pursue something your heart desires.
If there's something that you really want to do - whether it's to start a blog teaching people your cooking expertise, or making the phone call and ask your crush out, or giving a surprise visit to your parents whom you haven't seen for a year - you've got to plan when you are going to do it.
Time doesn't wait.
According to Bronnie Ware, author of the bestselling book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, the number one thing people regret is that "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
Procrastination may be a short-term relief, but it's not going to get you anywhere.
Choose the pain of discipline over the pain of regret.

2 Take Massive Imperfect Courageous Action
Forget about perfectionism, just aim for the "85% good enough" standard and get it out there.
Your life-changing products or services aren't going to change a single life until you push it out to the market.
Your relentless studying and reading won't do humanity any good until you go out and implement the wisdom.
Your genius ideas aren't going to turn into a billion dollar business until you pitch it in the Shark Tank.
The key to success, especially entrepreneurial success, is your speed of execution.
Results come from nothing but massive imperfect courageous actions, not affirmations, visualizations or meditations.

3 Action Leads To Motivation
Do you think you need motivation first before you can take action?
Do you believe you need to wait for the "perfect moment or timing" before you can take action?
Do you trust yourself that you are good enough to at least start taking action?
In the self-help world, many people fall into the thinking trap that they need to "prepare more" before they can really initiate the task they want, whether it's about starting a conversation with a lady, starting an online business, or starting to workout.
Sadly, these preparations often become excuses for them not to take action.
The truth is motivation comes when you take that scary action.
If you're willing to force yourself to "do that thing" for just 5 minutes, you'll be surprised that action is easier than you thought and you'll be motivated to continue taking action and make some real progress.

4 Plan Your Day the Night Before
You never want to wake up not knowing exactly how the next 16 hours will be.
Planning should always happen the night before, so that the moment you open your eyes, you are in automation mode and you don't need to spend extra thoughts to craft out your day.
Before you know it, you're already spending your first 2 hours doing the one big thing of the day that will yield you 80% of the progress.

5 Stop Multitasking
Science has proven that our brain is incapable of multitasking.
All we are doing is reacting to that stimulus, switching our attention to a different task, finishing the unimportant stuff, coming back to the original task having no idea where we are at, spending extra time & energy to get back into flow.
CNN World has reported that switching tasks make you dumber than being stoned, because our IQ drops by 10 points when we switch tasks while our IQ drops by 5 points when we smoke marijuana.
Don't want to be an idiot?
Time to cut off all the emails, phone calls, Facebook, app notifications, news updates, or chit-chat with your colleagues while you work!

6 Chunk Things into Baby Steps
I am annoyed by this cliché but it's true: You eat an elephant one bite at a time.
One main reason we procrastinate is because we feel it's too difficult, too long and too much to do it.
Big goals are fantastic, but when it comes to action, you want to make them seem as easy as possible.
So chunk them into mini segments so that the pleasure of completion outweighs the pain of taking action.

7 Reward & Celebrate
Nothing pisses your brain off more than enduring some painful discipline for a long time and not getting rewarded at the end of the process!
You've got to reward yourself kindly at the end so that you anchor massive pleasure to the beautiful moment of task completion.
Pet yourself on the back so that when you start another boring, mundane, yet significant campaign, you can motivate yourself to finish it as soon as possible and arrive at the end of the pleasurable tunnel!
I'm going to reward myself now, how about you?

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