The Power of Thankfulness: 5 Essential Tips

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G.K. Chesterton

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
Robert Brault

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week many of my readers will celebrate Thanksgiving.

So I thought it would be a good time to share a handful of my favorite tips for making thankfulness a daily part of life.

Because being thankful for what you have is one of the simplest and easiest ways to lift your mood. To give your motivation a jolt. And to live a happier life.

No matter who you are or where you live in the world.



1. Pause and look around yourself.

A simple first step to being more thankful is to pause during your day and ask yourself these two questions:
What are 3 things I can be thankful for in my life today?
Who are 3 people I can be thankful to have in my life and why?

If you don’t come up with 3 people and 3 things each day then that is OK. One thing or person is great too.

But if you can, try to not repeat yourself too often. Instead, think of more people and things to be grateful for to, day by day, expand your thankful view of your world.

2. Express your thankfulness.

Don’t stop at just coming up with people for whom you are grateful to have in your life.

Take a few seconds to tell them about it. This will make their lives happier. And as their faces light up with a smile you’ll feel happier too.

Now, that gratitude could just be a small sentence. But it can have a big impact on someone’s day, week or even life.

So be sure to make the small effort to express it.

3. Look towards yourself too.

It is not only things that are important. Or other people.

You are important and valuable too.

So appreciate that.

Ask yourself:

What are 3 things I can be thankful for about myself?

It could be that you were a good sister during a crisis last week. It could be that you finally got done with that boring or difficult task you had been procrastinating on.

Your self-gratitude does not have to be all about achievements. You can simply be thankful for your good sense of humor. Or the help you give your friends and family by being a good listener from time to time.

And the thankfulness doesn’t have to be about big things either. It could simply be about the fact that you floss for a couple of minutes in the morning.

4. Be thankful for the things you may take for granted.

The things we get very used to having can become things we take for granted. But they are not things everyone in the world has access to.

A few such things that I like to reflect upon and feel very thankful for having are:
A roof over my head and a warm home.
Plenty of drinkable water.
That I don’t have to go hungry.
Being able to enjoy the small and free pleasures of life.
Access to the internet so that I can learn and connect with people.

I have found that being grateful for things like these are especially helpful to zoom out and to put my situation in perspective when I am going through a tough time in life.

5. Start or end your day with thankfulness.

To make thankfulness into a habit that sticks find a regular time for it in your day.

For example, you can start your day in a good way by finding 3 things to be grateful for about yourself over breakfast.

Or you can take a few minutes in the evening, just before going to bed, to use a journal to write down 3 things you are grateful for about your day.

Try a tiny time commitment like one of these and see what impact it has on your life.

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3 Underrated Tips To Achieve Work-Life Balance

Is finding a work-life balance something that you struggle with?

The first thing to understand about work-life balance is that most people have the wrong idea of what that actually means. They think that their whole life should be balanced. That they should have a little bit of work and a little bit of play and a little bit of time on the weekends, in order to improve their quality of life.

When thinking about your quality of life, you have to ask yourself:

What do you really want to do with your life?

If the answer is that you want to be really successful in your career, you have to start a little earlier, you have to work a little harder, and you have to work a little later.
How Do You Manage Your Time?

Here’s an interesting discovery:

Almost all successful people work 6 days a week. Average people work 40, maybe even 30 hours a week. Now aside from actual time spent at work, the real problem comes down to what you accomplish while you’re at work.

Most people spend 50% of their time doing non-work related activities while they’re in the office.

Browsing social media, checking email, taking long lunch breaks, and chatting with co-workers are all examples of time-wasting behaviors. When these activities turn into habits, it becomes harder to get all of your work done in order to focus on other aspects of your life.

Here’s the key to achieving work-life balance: Choose to manage your time.

Choosing to manage your time effectively is the starting point of overcoming previous programming and eliminating mental blocks to time management. You must decide, right here and now, to become an expert in time-management in order to improve your quality of life.
Work-Life Balance Tips

Your aim should be to manage your time so well, that people admire you and look to you as a role model for their own work habits.

Here are three tips for time management that will help you achieve a work-life balance and improve your quality of life:

1) Use The Power Of Positive Affirmations

Positive affirmations, or positive self-talk, are commands that you pass from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind, that you either say out loud or to yourself, with emotion and enthusiasm to drive the words into your subconscious mind.

Sort of like instructing yourself to follow new operating instructions.

Begin by repeating positive affirmations over and over to yourself, “I am excellent at time management! I am excellent at time management!” Or “I have a work-life balance!”

My favorite time management affirmation is, “I use my time well. I use my time well. I use my time well.”

When you repeat positive affirmations over and over, they are eventually accepted by your subconscious mind and you will find that your external behaviors will start to reflect your internal programming.

2) Visualize Your Time Management Skills

Mental pictures almost immediately influence your subconscious mind. Begin to see yourself as well organized, efficient, and effective in time management.

Recall and recreate memories and pictures of yourself when you were performing at your best and getting through enormous amounts of work.

Through positive affirmations, you can create a picture of the coming event and see it unfolding perfectly in every respect. See yourself as calm, positive, happy and in complete control. See the other people doing and saying exactly what you would want them to do if the situation was perfect.

Play this picture of yourself over and over again on the screen of your mind.

3) Take Action Based On Your Visualizations
Now that you have visualized and concentrated on what your day and your future will look like with proper time management, it’s time to put it into action.

Do this by working the entire time you’re at work. When you walk into the office, you should work the entire time you’re there. Be pleasant and friendly to your co-workers, but get to work right away and work until you are finished.

By doing this, you’ll get on top of your work and will walk away feeling accomplished at the end of your day. When you don’t have lingering tasks to worry about, since you’ll have worked as hard as you could have during your time in the office, you’ll be left with plenty of quality time to spend with your friends and family after work.

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7 Overlooked Tips to Help You Become More Expressive

We are in an era where we seem so busy and drained to technology such that it is easy to forget the simple things that make life interesting.

Life is the best thing we could ever ask for and it is worth spending the best moments doing pleasant things with people we love. Sometimes it is good to restore this simplicity in our lives.


7 Tips to Help You Become More Expressive & Open

In the end, the important thing is to be happy and proud of who we are and what we do. With this in mind, here are some tips, not only to make your life easy and happier, but to help you become more expressive and open.


1. Open up about how you feel

Are you one of those people who hide their emotions when wronged?

Or, you keep everything inside?

Sometimes we cannot avoid being angry. But, some of us keep and hide the anger inside. When someone does something that irritates you, do you get the courage to tell them, or do you keep it?

If you find yourself doing this, then you need to start making changes as it can cause huge stress in your life. The whole feeling leaves you disappointed and unhappy.

Finally, these emotions pile up and come out all at once. It’s not healthy.

Instead find ways to release these emotions effectively. Go to a friend and open up about everything. In the long-run, this will help you remain happy and grow healthier.

2. Stop battling with issues you cannot change/control
The best lesson I have learned in life is to accept whatever comes and let go what I cannot control. If you suddenly land into problems and you have no control over the situation, stop blaming yourself for it. Just move on and accept that your day was off the rails and there is nothing you could do about it.

If there is drama in your life, you can choose to walk away. Most of us find it difficult to make the move, but there is saying that;


“10% IS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU, 90% IS HOW YOU DEAL WITH IT.”

Stop thinking about the issues you cannot change, just let them be.

3. Do some things with yourself and leave the rest to others

Remind yourself that you cannot do everything. Do what you can and leave the rest to others. Maybe you are a business owner and as usual, there are so many tasks to be done to make it grow.

If you are good at management do it perfectly. Assign qualified people to do marketing, public relations and more. This way you will not overwork yourself and it’s a good way to remain active both physiologically and psychologically.


4. Maintain open communication

Have you ever asked yourself what the people you love think when you do something? Maybe you thought they enjoyed watching a certain movie or going to a restaurant because you like it when, in fact, this was not the case.

Guessing what people think without asking them can create a lot of problems. But initiating communication and asking your spouse or loved one what they like, you avoid miscommunication down the line. This is a good way to maintain a happier relationship.


5. Try something new today

Are you scared to try something new?

Or do you find it hard to make decisions especially when you are in a compromising situation?

There is a saying that;


“IT’S BETTER TO ASK FOR FORGIVENESS THAN TO ASK FOR PERMISSION.”

In simple words, it’s better to act first and apologize later than to seek approval to act and delay in making an urgent move.

If you have something that needs to be done, do it. As long as you are confident and happy, make the move and don’t hesitate. Trying something makes you a lot happier than failing to try.

If it doesn’t work, that’s fine, at least you learned something. Move on to the next and keep doing that.


6. Live in the present

Have you ever heard the saying, “Live life like there is no tomorrow?” The more you live in the present, the happier your life becomes.

Lao Tzu said:


“IF YOU ARE DEPRESSED, YOU ARE LIVING IN THE PAST. IF YOU ARE ANXIOUS, YOU ARE LIVING IN THE FUTURE. IF YOU ARE AT PEACE, YOU ARE LIVING IN THE MOMENT.”

Live your life and be thankful for the little things you have. Happiness comes from within and we have to enjoy every moment.

7. Do not be afraid to ask for help

Asking for help is a simple action that seems hard to most people. People would rather struggle doing the wrong thing than ask for help. It takes a lot of courage to accept that you can do something on your own.

It creates a strange feeling of being afraid and vulnerable, and many people do not want to go down that road. One of the things that makes us not seek help is pride. Believe me, I have been there. I thought asking for help would show that I was weak.

No one wants to be seen as weak and most people choose to struggle on their own. Everything is fine in the first place until anxiety sets in. You start to worry about people seeing through you and see yourself as incapable.

But, this should not be the case. Loosen up and don’t be afraid to ask for help whenever you get stuck. You will find that you learn more and live happier.

Summary

No one knows exactly how the future will turn out, but the important thing is living simple and happier. My wish is that you will use these tips to focus on your living the best way possible and take control of your own life.

If you agree with me, you are on the right track to living a brighter and happier future.

Make it count!

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The Top 5 Timeless Tips for Handling the Holiday Stress and Finding Inner Peace

“May you have warmth in your igloo, oil in your lamp, and peace in your heart!”
Eskimo proverb

The holidays are upon us.

A time of needed relaxation and more time with the people closest to us.

A time of stress and worries. A time of not all the joy you may have hoped for or been promised by upbeat advertising and movies.

It can be a time of mixed feelings.

So today I would like to share 5 powerful and timeless tips that can help you to make these holidays a more joyful and peaceful time.

1. Slow down.

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”
Lily Tomlin

First, slow down. Even if it may feel silly and if you have to force it a bit. Slow down your body, move and walk slowly.

Breathe slower and more deeply with your belly (and focus on doing just that for two minutes and see what happens).

Slow down your eating (this will not only help you to relax, it will also help you to not eat too much during the holidays since it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that you are full).

Slow it all down and pay attention to what you are doing. Be here now and focus on doing just one thing at a time. By slowing down, by being here now, by not having your focus split between many things you – your body and your mind – start to relax.

2. Appreciate the little things instead of focusing on perfection.

“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”
Winnie the Pooh

Daily happiness is to a large part about appreciating the small things. If you just allow yourself to be happy when accomplishing a big goal or when everything lines up just perfectly then you are making life harder than it needs to be.

Instead, focus on appreciating things that you may take for granted.

Take two minutes and find things in your life you can appreciate now. If you want a handful of suggestions, here are a few of the things that I like to appreciate around the holidays:
All the tasty food.
My health.
My family and friends.
That I have a roof and a warm home as the snow is falling and the cold winds are blowing.
The beautiful wintery landscapes.

3. Give a bit of joy to someone else.

“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

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

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

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or like paying it forward to someone else.

And so the two (or more) of you keep building an upward spiral of for example positivity, of helping out, of cheering up and of lending a listening ear and support.

4. Focus on what is most valuable.

“You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
Eric Hoffer

“Joy is not in things; it is in us.”
Benjamin Franklin

Instead of focusing on a lot of things focus on what is most important and valuable to you.

If you still have Christmas gifts to buy then instead of giving away a lot of expensive stuff it may be better to give one thing that the person you are giving it to will truly appreciate.

Or maybe you could skip giving a physical thing altogether. And instead give away an experience that will become a special day and cherished memory for him or her or for the two of you.

However you choose to go about things over the holidays make it YOUR choices as best you can and not a bunch of shoulds that mostly make you feel deflated.

5. Just accept how you feel right now.

“We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”
Carl Jung

Maybe you try some of the tips above. And they still can’t help you to shake that negativity, worries or stress you are carrying around. I would then suggest that you just accept that the feeling is there.

Tell yourself: This is how I feel right now and I accept it.

This might sound counter-intuitive and like you are giving up. However, by accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into this conflict or problem.

And it then tends to lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel. Sometimes the problem or conflict will then become so weak that it just moves out of your mind.

By accepting what is you have now freed up energy and your attention so your mind can become more level-headed, open and constructive once again. And you can see more clearly and take focused action towards a solution

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6 Everyday Tips on How to Stay Happy No Matter What

We are used to thinking our happiness depends on external circumstances. We are waiting for something magical to come into our lives and make it bright.

Some of us are waiting for real love. Others — for a great job. The list of our wishes is huge. And it is amazing that we have dreams, that we make wishes and look for something special to fill our lives with.

However, life happens here and now, and it is wrong to spend it waiting. There is no sense in going through it blindfolded, waiting for tomorrow, the next week or the next year to finally find happiness and the meaning of our life.

It’s not going to happen. We simply need to start living. Right now.


How to Stay Happy No Matter What

There is no magic. It’s how our life is created, actually.

There are a lot of theories on what we were born for and what the goal of our existence is. We could discuss it for years and still there is no guarantee we’ll find the answer. And moreover, there is no guarantee the answer will help.

The best you can do is to let it go and live your life today. With no purpose. But feeling love and happiness. Here is how to stay happy no matter what:

1. Don’t look for happiness — radiate it.

I know, it’s hard to radiate joy when you slept bad, or have troubles at work. But look at it differently. Maybe, the reason for your insomnia and troubles is the lack of good thoughts?

We can’t stop wars and cataclysms by smiling to strangers, but we can change the atmosphere around us doing it.

Everyone wonders why there are so few smiling faces; why people sometimes are rude and indifferent.

Don’t wonder, reduce the number of such people by changing yourself.

Create your own rules and follow them strictly. Fill your mind with positive thoughts and spread them around. Soon your entourage and your perception of the outside world will change beyond recognition.


2. Stop trying.

You’ve heard what you’ve heard: stop it. Stop trying too hard to look good, stop trying to impress someone. Stop pretending you are someone else. It is so exhausting, still — useless.

Let yourself have a rest. This crazy race in quest of a better life is a fallacy.

This illusion of the «normal» life the public has put in your mind (and you have thankfully accepted) leads you to the wrong destination. Besides, it hinders you to enjoy the way.

There are a lot of words and pieces of advice. Now it is time to listen to yourself. And, if you feel it’s not right, stop. Take a break. Turn back. Or continue doing what you were doing. But this time, consciously realizing it’s your life that happens now.


3. Enjoy being alone.

It’s the logical continuation of the previous paragraph and the necessary part of being happy in the moment. And it is not scary at all.

Today the solitude isn’t in the trend, so we do our best to avoid it and fill our life with something we don’t actually need. Just not to be alone.

There are tons of articles which tell you how to find your soul mate, how to get married, how to make friends. It forces us to feel bad about being alone.

Don’t get sucked into these tricks.

If we can’t be happy alone, being happy with someone else seems to be a daunting task.

Get acquainted with yourself. You are amazing.


4. Stay open-minded.

Paradoxically, but as a rule, being alone helps to keep your mind open.

Diving deep into your own thoughts, exploring your own feelings, you realize you don’t actually differ from others all that much. Despite the fact that we look different and that we have different jobs and hobbies; we do have common goals. And it rallies us stronger than anything.

As soon as you understand this, the outside world won’t seem hostile. You realize it’s your home — our home — we are all connected and need each other to make this world a happy place for everyone.


5. Be grateful.

Sometimes I look around and see people who are enjoying their troubles. They treat them as though they’re the most valuable and important things in the world. And if there aren’t any, they feel confused, as if they miss something they could be whining about.

Are you such a person? Don’t be.

Be grateful for those wonderful things you have: food on your table, warm blanket, education, paid work. Rights, abilities, opportunities. Don’t take all these things for granted.

Politeness, respect, and other good manners should be perceived as usual things. Be grateful when people have them and express them. It’s easy, but it makes a huge difference for you both.

6. Accept yourself.

Being yourself is not the same as accepting yourself. You could force yourself to act naturally, and still feel uncomfortable with it, and with who you are.

Accept yourself. Radiate love not only among others but among yourself. Let yourself make mistakes, act illogically and be imperfect.


Summary

All the things I’ve written above doesn’t mean you need to stay positive permanently.

Melancholy, bad mood, and even anger are normal things. They also need to be a part of your life. As the beauty of the life is in its variety.

Just pass it through you, take a deep breath and concentrate on the positive.

Happiness is a choice. Just make yours.
What do you do to stay happy? Leave a comment below.

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10 Less Stressful Ways to Get Your Daily Work Done

“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
Jose Ortega y Gasset

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle

It is early morning. You’ve had your breakfast and done your morning routine.

So you head out into your day. And in a short while you’ll sit down in school or at your job and get started with your daily work.

But how can you get that work done in a way that is less stressful, less energy consuming and simply a bit smarter?

Today I’d like to share 10 tips that have helped me with that. I hope you will find something here that will help you too to simplify and relaxify your own daily work.


Do just one thing at a time. It will help you to get your task all the way to done, to feel less stressed and confused and you’ll do a better job compared to if you multi-task things. And if you feel stressed and overwhelmed during your day then you can tell yourself this simple thing to regain focus and inner clarity again.

Keep a minimalistic workspace. It makes it easier to keep your focus and attention in the right place and to keep your thinking clear. I keep a workspace with just a small wooden desk, a chair and my laptop and a glass of water or mug of tea on that desk.

Go slow. One good way to do more focused work is to go a bit slower than you may usually do. I have also found that by just doing something at a slower pace it feels less like a mental burden and so I am less likely to procrastinate.

Eliminate. From time to time ask yourself: what one task during my day or week can I simply eliminate and not do with few or no consequences? It’s easy to just keep doing everything simply because “you should” or because you’ve always done so. So question how you go about things to free up energy and time. There is often room to at least simplify a bit through elimination.

Cycle 100% focused work with 100% full rest. This is a big one for me. By doing things this way you’ll help yourself to keep your mental sharpness and energy up for the whole day and workweek. I do this by setting my egg-timer for 30 minutes (or sometimes 15 minutes).
During those minutes I only focus on the one task at hand and it becomes easier to do so because I know that I only have to do it for this limited time period. When the egg-timer rings I leave my work for 5-15 minutes. During those minutes I focus only on resting by having a snack, taking a short walk or by relaxing with my eyes closed on the couch.

Don’t beat yourself up when things don’t go as planned. Instead, be kind to yourself and smart with your energy and ask yourself: what is one thing I can learn from this? Use what you can learn to do things better and to avoid making the same mistake in the future. It’s a better use of your time than spending it on regretting a past that you cannot change anyway.

Let emails and other online checking wait until the end of the workday. Or at least for a few hours. Don’t start your day with going through your email – if possible – because it can add a lot of stress and suck away your limited energy and attention early in the day. It can also make it hard to even find enough time for your most important tasks if you get too distracted by your inbox.

Limit your daily information input. Regularly unsubscribe to blogs, podcasts, forums and email newsletters that doesn’t add much value to your life anyway. Keep only the most helpful, funny, inspiring and best ones. This very simple thing can free up quite a bit of both time and attention during the course of a month.

Ask yourself questions every day that help you to find your focus.It’s so easy to get off track during a day. To stay on it or to get back there if you get lost use one – or both – of my own favorite questions:
What is the most important thing I can do right now? And what would I work on if I only had 2 hours for work today? If you like, write these questions down on a note and put that note where you cannot avoid seeing it during your day.

Focus mostly on the how to and not so much on the what-ifs.Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis, overthinking and in the worry and lack of self-esteem that usually comes from those destructive thoughts. Instead, focus on what you actually can do, on what action you can take to move forward.
Empower yourself by asking yourself: What is one small step I can take right now to move forward towards my goal or out of this situation?

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Go Easy on Yourself: 4 Tips to Help You Do What Matters in a Self-Kind Way

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
Buddha

“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 common way to get things done, to achieve and to motivate yourself is to be kind of hard on yourself.

To set very high standards for yourself that you want to stick to every time.

Now, this way of going about things can indeed help you to accomplish big things in your life and to get things done every week.

But it comes at a price.

Three negative things about taking this position towards yourself are:
You tear your self-esteem down. As you achieve things you tend to tear down your own self-esteem at the same time. So you feel less and less like you deserve success. And frustration and being angry can become more and more common as you fail to reach those very high standards.
You suck the fun and excitement out of things. A hard or harsh attitude towards yourself has a tendency to make things that used to be fun and exciting less and less so. This attitude does instead over time turn those things into just work that you may start to dread because you fear failure or not meeting your high standards.
You’ll perform worse and worse. As your self-esteem goes down you’ll feel less motivated to tackle the tasks and projects in your life. As the fun and excitement goes out of many of the things you do procrastination tends to become more and more common. Plus, the work you put in becomes less energetic and focused and so the results aren’t that good anymore either.

I used to take the harder and harsher path. It did help in some ways. But it wasn’t worth it.

So what can you do if you feel that you are maybe too hard on yourself or you beat yourself up quite often?

Here are 4 tips that helped me to become kinder towards myself, to get more of the most important things done and to feel better about myself and my life.

1. Remind yourself of the negative effects of this attitude.

To just remind yourself of how damaging being hard on yourself has been is in my experience a very effective way to replace the old habit with going easier on yourself.

2. Go for more human and smarter standards for yourself.

Movies, books and the people around you may push standards on you that are just pure fantasy or some kind of perfect dream.

But life is life, not a fantasy or dream and to set such extremely high standards that no one can live up to just leads to what you may see as failure and disappointment in yourself and in your life.

Instead, relax a bit and accept that everything and everyone has flaws and things don’t always go as planned.

Accept that 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.

3. Focus on the positive and helpful feedback in setbacks.

It is very common to be hard on yourself when you make a mistake or fail.

But it is also a very destructive habit because it can magnify one such event into something that makes you feel depressed for weeks or makes you quit altogether.

So when you are hard on yourself for a failure or mistake then relax a bit and go a bit easier on yourself. Remind yourself of why this is a much better strategy to keep the motivation and self-esteem up.

And ask yourself:
What is one thing I can I learn from this situation?
How can I use what I learn from this to not make the same mistake again and to move forward in a smarter way?

4. Celebrate your small steps of progress.

If you are in the habit of only celebrating when you reach a big milestone or a perfect moment or two then you may lose your motivation and feel like you are never happy or arriving where you want to be.

So make a habit of celebrating your small daily and weekly successes too.

This will help you to keep the soul-tiring monotony away and help you to stay enthusiastic instead of getting more and more unmotivated until you may even consider quitting halfway to that big milestone.

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How to Build Self Confidence: 6 Essential and Timeless Tips

“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.”
Helen Keller

“Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Brian Tracy

“Confidence is courage at ease.”
Daniel Maher

I believe that one of the most common wishes is simply to feel more confident in various situations in life.

But how?

Confident friends may say: “Well, just be confident, man!”. However, to a person that doesn’t feel that confident this piece of advice may not be very helpful. At all.

There are however some time-tested and timeless advice. And in this article I’ll explore some of those tips. You can learn much more about becoming more sure of yourself and building your inner strength and assertiveness in my 12-week Self-Esteem Course.

Now, I hope you will find something useful in this article to help you improve and maintain your own levels of confidence.

1. Take action. Get it done.

“Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.”
Thomas A. Bennett

“Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.”
Thomas Carlyle

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
Dale Carnegie

The most important step in building self confidence is simply to take action. Working on something and getting it done. Sitting at home and thinking about it will just make you feel worse. Simple. But not always easy to do. To make it a bit easier, here are a three of my favourite ways to make it easier to take action:
Be present. This will help you snap out of over thinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done. This is probably the best tip I have found so far for taking more action since it puts you in a state where you feel little emotional resistance to the work you’ll do. And it puts you in state where the right actions often just seem to flow out of you in a focused but relaxed way and without much effort. One of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on your breathing for a minute or two.
Lighten up. One way to dissuade yourself from taking action is to take whatever you are about to do too seriously. That makes it feel too big, too difficult and too scary. If you on the other hand relax a bit and lighten up you often realise that those problems and negative feelings are just something you are creating in your own mind. With a lighter state of mind your tasks seems lighter and become easier to get started with. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this.
Really, really want it. Then taking action isn’t something you have to force. Taking action becomes a very natural thing. It’s something you can’t wait to do.

2. Face your fear.

“The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear.”
William Jennings Bryan

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

Look, I could tell you to do affirmations or other exercises for months in front of your mirror. It may have a positive effect. Just like preparing yourself it may help you to take action with more confidence.

But to be frank, if you don’t listen to the quotes above and face your fears you won’t experience any better self confidence on a deeper and more fundamental level. Having experiences where you face your fear is what really builds self confidence. There is no way around it.

However, there are ways to face your fears that do not include that much shaking of the knees. There are ways to make it easier for yourself.
Be curious. When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. When you shift to being curious your perceptions go SWOOSH! and the world just opens up. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity and to remember all the cool things it helped you to discover and experience.
Realize that fear is often based on unhelpful interpretation. As humans we like to look for patterns. The problem is just that we often find negative and not so helpful patterns in our lives based on just one or two experiences. Or by misjudging situations. Or through some silly miscommunication. When you get too identified with your thoughts you’ll believe anything they tell you. A more helpful practise may be to not take your thoughts too seriously. A lot of the time they and your memory are pretty inaccurate.


3. Understand in what order things happen.

One of my favourite snippets of movie-dialogue is this one from the 1999 film “Three Kings”.

In this scene Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) wants the small team to save a fellow soldier and steal Saddam’s gold just after the first Gulf War has ended.

The young soldier Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) has his doubts about the plan:

Archie Gates: You’re scared, right?
Conrad Vig: Maybe.
Archie Gates: The way it works is, you do the thing you’re scared shit less of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it.
Conrad Vig: That’s a dumb ass way to work. It should be the other way around.
Archie Gates: I know. That’s the way it works.

Great movie. Great little piece of dialogue. Even though it may not be what people want to hear.

The thing is, when you do things you don’t just build confidence in your ability to handle different situations. You also experience progressive desensitisation. What that means is that situations – like for example public speaking or maybe just showing your latest blog-post to an audience out there – that made you feel all shaky become more and more normal in your life. It is not longer something you psyche yourself up to do. It just becomes normal. Like tying your shoes, hanging out with your friends or taking a shower.

It may seem scary now. But after having done whatever you fear a few to a dozen times or so you may think: “Is that it?”. You almost feel disappointed of how anticlimactic it has become. You may even get a bit angry with yourself and wonder why you avoided doing it for so long.


4. Prepare.

“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self- confidence is preparation.”
Arthur Ashe

When you know nothing of what you are about to do it’s very easy to get lost in vague, foggy fear and start building big horror scenarios in your mind of what may happen if you give it a try.

Preparing yourself and educating yourself can be a big help here. By for example rehearsing and rewriting your speech over and over you can pretty much learn it by heart. By doing research you can find breathing techniques that can quickly make your calmer and present. Or simple visualisation techniques that make you feel more confident and positive as you step out on the stage.

This is obviously more work than not doing anything about the speech at all before you start giving it. But it can make a huge difference in your confidence levels if you take the time to prepare yourself. And of course, the speech and the delivery of it will most likely be a lot better too.

So prepare and you will feel more comfortable and confident. Just don’t make the mistake of getting stuck in the preparation phase and using it as a way to avoid taking action and the possible pain that it may result in.

5. Realise that failure or being wrong will not kill you.

“Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.”
Peter T. Mcintyre

“I quit being afraid when my first venture failed and the sky didn’t fall down.”
Allen H. Neuharth

Again, you have to face your fear. Because it is only then that you discover the thing that billions of people throughout history have discovered before you. Failure won’t kill you. Nor will being wrong. The sky will not fall down. That’s just what people that haven’t faced their fear yet think.

The thing is to re-frame failure from being something that makes your legs shake to something useful and important for the growth of your self confidence and your overall growth as a human being. Here are four ways that failure can help you out:
You learn. Instead of seeing failure as something horrible you can start to view it more as a learning experience. When standing in the middle of a failure, you can ask yourself questions like: What’s awesome about this situation? What can I learn from this situation?
You gain experiences you could not get any other way. Â Ideally, you probably want to learn from other people’s mistakes and failures. That’s not always easy to do though. Sometimes you just have to fail on your own to learn a lesson and to gain an experience no one can relate to you in mere words.
You become stronger. Every time you fail you become more accustomed to it. You realise more and more that it’s not the end of the world. And, again, you get desensitised. You can handle things that would have been very hard to handle a few years back. Failing can also a have an exhilarating component because even though you failed you at least took a chance. You didn’t just sit on you hands doing nothing. And that took quite a bit of courage and determination.
Your chances of succeeding increases. Every time you fail you can learn and increase your inner strength. So every failure can make you more and more likely to succeed.

And remember, the world doesn’t revolve around you. You may like to think so. But it doesn’t. People really don’t care that much about what you do. They have their own life, problems and worries that the world revolves around them to focus on. They don’t think that much about you or are constantly monitoring what you do wrong or when you fail.

Maybe a disappointing thought. But a liberating and relieving one too because now you can let go of that worry that everyone is watching you.

6. Get to know who you are and what you want out of life.

“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.”
Napoleon Hill

“Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you can’t do this or that. That’s nonsense. Make up your mind, you’ll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.”
Douglas Bader

To build and find more confidence in yourself you have to get to know yourself better. Go exploring. Face some of your fears. Fail over and over and understand that it isn’t really that big of a deal. Grow stronger through such experiences and also become more internally relaxed. Figure out what really excites you by simply trying a whole bunch of stuff out.

When you know more about who you are and what you want out of life – not other people say you want – you will have more confidence in yourself and what you can do.

What other people say or think will have less of an impact than it used to because you know who you are better than they do. And since you have had all these experiences, since you have taken time to really get to know yourself and stretch yourself you will trust your own opinion and ability more than anything outside of you. You become stable and centred in yourself.



This will of course take time. It may be something that never really ends. So you might as well get started now.

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A Good Chance In Succeeding

We all want to succeed in life. There might be some people who are better than others but there are certain factors that determine just how successful we will become at reaching a particular goal or dream. We need to take charge of our life and never let anything hinder us.

In order to have a good chance to succeed, we need to know who we want to be and let go of our present self to be who we envision ourselves; find satisfaction in pursuing our goals; pursue a realistic goal that can improve our lives; think positively and let go of our fear of failing; acknowledge little rewards along the road to success; take responsibility for our actions and outcomes; build a strong support system and strong confidence and not to blame others for our lack of resources or accomplishments in life.

Another good chance in succeeding is to keep on trying. Success has something to do with how we react to our circumstances. It's actually a matter of attitude and principle. In order to be more successful, we must have a deep connection to the things we want to accomplish. We need to seek for something that is emotionally fulfilling like financial stability so we can spend more quality time with our family.

Many people feared to pursue something because of losing out on something else. Sometimes we think negatively when we consider pursuing a goal or dream. Most people think about all the negatives that may come along with that pursuit. Negative thinking is much easier to do than positive thinking, and those negative thoughts put fear in your heart which is detrimental to our success. When we develop our ability to look at things in a different perspective, we can increase your chances of success.

There are also times when people tend to quit before even starting. That is the reason why it is important to set up our goals. Let us focus on things that have short-term rewards. This will allow us to be more patient in reaching our goals. When we Improve this delay factor, improve our chances of success.

When we feel like we can't make something happen, it's easy to put the blame on other people rather than take responsibly for our lack of accomplishments. It's a well-known fact the we cannot control the situations that may arise in our quest, but we can control our actions.

We need also to improve the number of people who support us to increase our chances of succeeding. If we believe that we can do something, we won't mind the distractions that are holding us back and we can make it happen.

If we happen to have no available resources, we need not blame it to someone else because there is always a way to make a goal achievable. For example, seeking out new experience. The wider the range of experiences we pursue, the more we will be exposed to different people, lifestyles and perspectives. Seeking out new experiences means that we're willing to challenge ourselves and want to keep learning about the world around us.

When we have high expectations in life, the more we are disappointed if we cannot achieve them. We need to be open-minded. When we are open to possibilities without necessarily expecting anything immediately or directly in return, amazing things can happen.

We need to treat everyone we meet with respect. Each of them has something to offer. We'll be surprised at how many people are willing to support and follow us if we treat them with respect, regardless of what they've achieved or where they are in their life. To be successful, we all need help. People are dynamic and situations do change. We need not to be judgmental, we need to have friends and build network and linkages.

From time to time, we also need to share what we have. By doing this, we become better and we focus less on our own shortcomings. There's so much for us to appreciate in life even if our road to success has many stumbling blocks.

In fact, our mistakes can lead us to success if we learn from them. People who are willing to take risks inevitably make mistakes but have more chances in succeeding life.

People are often easily discouraged when they encounter difficulties in their pursuit to success. This article somehow provides some recommendations on how improve our chances of succeeding by never quitting.

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5 Tips from Billionaires to Help Achieve High Productivity

There are a ton of viral articles out there that are about “habits of millionaires” or“habits of successful people.”

Quite frankly, they are a bit plain and overdone.


5 Billionaire’s Tips to Achieve High Productivity

This advice comes directly from dozens of interviews and books by billionaires I have consumed. I decided to get advice from only the best of the best.

Here are 5 tips from billionaires on how to achieve high productivity:

1. Keep Your Calendar Simple

Keep your calendar clear and organized. Rather than having hundreds of complicated tasks on there, simplify it to the most important. Drop the rest.

The average person has many low-priority tasks that distract them on their calendar. It’s not a good idea to stuff your calendar with a thousand, small random tasks.

Warren Buffett has mentioned this many times in interviews.

Bill Gates has remarked about how amazing this is after learning it from Warren. Bill has used it himself since then.


2. Do What’s Most Important First

Your most important task should be done first when you start the day.

Average people fill their day with unimportant tasks. The start of their day is filled with tasks that could have gone undone and had minimal impact.

By the end of the day, their most important tasks are still incomplete and often pushed off until tomorrow. This leads to further procrastination and small results.

They were busy but not effective or impactful. You don’t want to be the person who does busywork to look busy rather than strategic, smart work.

Warren Buffett’s pilot, Mike Flint, learned this lesson after talking to Buffett.


Mike learned that the biggest threat to finishing the #1 most important task on your list is #2, #3, #4, #5, and so on. Throw out the other tasks until you finish #1.


3. Delegate Lower Priority Tasks

If your time is worth $50 an hour, every hour you waste doing tasks that can be outsourced for much less is a waste of time.

Do you know why billionaires don’t shop for groceries or cook themselves?

Part of the reason is because they can afford to. But according to billionaires like Richard Branson, part of the reason is because it’s an inefficient use of their time.

According to the book 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, failing to delegate low cost tasks can cost you tons of money.

If your time is worth $1000 an hour, you shouldn’t spend an hour a week buying groceries because you can get the same result in less time and earn more money.

Pay someone $20 an hour to do it for you and spend that time you bought back working. You have now earned $980 after expenses rather than losing an hour doing it yourself without earning anything.

OK, so you might not be making as much as $1000 an hour. But the same thought process can apply to how you spend your time. If your time is worth $25 an hour, how much time are you wasting at work and at home goofing off? 

4. Find Your Peak Performance Environment

People are different. Your most productive environment may be different from someone else’s.

Look for what time of day and what type of surroundings are you most productive in.
For example, some people find that they do the most creative work in loud, crowded coffee shops. Others prefer complete, isolated silence. Some people are most alert and focused in the mornings, while others do better late at night.

Build your environment and schedule to fit your optimal levels of performance.


5. Plan Out What You Will Do

According to the book, top performing billionaires plan out what they will do next ahead of time.

Plan out what you will do tomorrow and the next week. You can save hours of time by working more efficiently from the plans you made.

Without proper planning, your disorganization will cost you efficient moments of optimal workflow.

You’ll be confused and unsure of what to do. You’ll spend extra time trying to figure out what’s more important. You will be dazzled if you get interrupted and unsure where to resume.


Conclusion

There should be no excuses. Anyone is capable of turning these productivity tips into habits. I think the reasons people don’t are the lack of awareness and laziness.

Remember to keep your calendar simple, do what’s most important first, delegate lower priority tasks, find your best environment, and plan out what you will do next.
Are you as productive as a billionaire? Leave a comment below.

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