Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelogon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.”
Aldous Huxley

Last night, as I was going to sleep, I thought about the most common question in my inbox: “What are your tips for creating a successful blog?”. And as I thought about it I got an idea. Not about writing about what I have learned about blogging. But what blogging has taught me about life.

So here are 9 life lessons I have learned. Or in some cases healthy reminders of what I already knew. I hope you find something helpful for your life/blog.

1. Don’t wait for inspiration.

The most common question I get from people when I met them in real life and they learn that I do a lot of writing is this one: “How do you come up with all the ideas?”.

Well, I have never been one to rely much on inspiration. If you want to be able to write and produce articles consistently week in aand week out you can’t always wait to get inspired. You just have to work and think. Come up with ideas and drafts. Some will suck, some will not.

I don’t always feel like writing a new article. But I sit down and start writing anyway. And somewhere along the way inspiration and fun pretty much always catches up with me.

Now, how do I come up the ideas?

I have about a hundred drafts with post titles and brief outlines saved in a folder on my computer. By writing it all down I always have some idea to pick up and expand into an article.

After 3 years, I still have an interested in personal development. I have experimented and thought about it a lot. I have read a lot about it. When you really are curious about something and having fun with it then ideas and writing flows a lot easier.

A few more tips for inspiration are:

• Brainstorm. You can often get a good stream of ideas going if you just get started. You may not feel like you have any ideas at all. But as soon as you sit down and start to brainstorm to reach for instance 20 ideas on some topic your mind starts to spit out idea after idea. It’s a bit weird, but after the first idea pop out you often experience a sort of ketchup effect.
• Expose your mind to new ideas. Read a variety of stuff, not just the stuff you are used to. Talk to people about all kinds of things. Follow blogs and people on Twitter that aren’t your usual cup of tea.
• Expose your mind to stillness. If you overload your mind with too much knowledge and ideas you may not only start using it as way to avoid taking action. It can in my experience hinder creativity. Sometimes it’s good to stop exposing your mind to a lot of new information. This can help you digest the impressions you have picked up recently and combine a few of them into cool and exciting ideas.

2. More work. Less talk.

So there is the trap of waiting for inspiration. Also, don’t fall into the trap of talking a lot about what you are about to do. I have found that this just makes it harder to do it. And it can get you stuck in analysis paralysis mode for months as you argue about stuff that is probably irrelevant with other people or just in your own head. Plus, you don’t know much until you do and get some real experience.

So just do stuff. Learn from your failures. Do again.

A week of good work is worth more than a trillion theories that are never put into practice.

3. Learn from people with more experience.

This is so key – in any area of life really – and can really help you to improve quickly and avoid wasting time.

When I started blogging I spent two or three weeks reading lots and lots from the massive archives of Problogger.net. I learned a lot about blogging, marketing, monetization and what you should and should not do. Before I started this blog I knew very little about blogging. After those weeks I at least had a basic education that was very helpful. If you are thinking about creating your own blog or have just started one I recommend reading the big series Blogging Tips for Beginners over at Problogger.

As mentioned above, experience is most important. But there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Getting a bit of basic education and learning about common pitfalls can cut down on your learning curve in any area of life.

4. You need to set limits and focus on just what is important.

I have cut back on reading blogs, on Facebook and internet in general. When you cut out the less important stuff your mind clears up. It becomes focused. It becomes light and inspired more often.

All of us have a lot of stuff going on. If you never cut out anything of the things you do now, how will you have time to do all that stuff you really want to do? How will you do something in the best way you can if you mind is constantly overflowing with information and stuff you don’t really need that much?

To make room for all the new and cool stuff you want to do it is very likely that you in the end have to let go of some of that old stuff in your life that feels oh so familiar and safe.

5. You get what you give.

I think any social interaction is to a large part about exchanging positive feelings and people giving some kind of value to each other. That value could be helpful hints, hugs, a listening ear, something fun or just new photos of Lady Gaga with some strange hat on.

This goes for blogging. This goes for any conversation or interaction.

If you are trying to get other people to always give you more value than you give them – in real life or on your blog – then you suck the positive feelings out of the place. And people will become less and less likely to want to hang around and interact with you.

6. More external validation won’t save you.

Every day I get dozens of messages via comments, email, Twitter and Facebook about how cool some article I wrote was or how awesome my blog or I am. It is pretty nice. Here’s the thing though: after a while your mind gets used to it. You don’t get giddy or overly happy. It becomes a part of life.

Now, some comments or emails make me really happy (usually the ones that are really specific about how some article helped someone to overcome a dark period in their life or solve a problem). And I do appreciate all the kind words. But nowadays I mostly look at it as being happy for the people who said the kind things because I am glad that something on my website could help them and that they are in such a good place that they feel like expressing their appreciation.

But my main point here is that your mind gets used to pretty much anything. So if you think that getting more validation from other people via a blog or some other place will somehow save you then you may be disappointed. It’s all good and nice. But in the end I do believe that the only way to pull yourself up out of not being that fond of yourself or low self esteem is by creating more inner validation of yourself. You can’t find that groundwork outside of yourself.

But you can find it on the inside by for example viewing other people and the world in a kinder light and letting that flow over to how you view yourself too. And by doing what you know deep down is right – taking action, being kind, being positive, acting in a mature way etc. – instead trying to take what may feel like the easy way out.

By doing such things you create an inner spring of validation and positive emotions. You become steadier, calmer and more centred.

7. Ideas and insights are fleeting.

Always keep a pen and paper close by. I don’t know how many ideas I would have never gotten to explore here if didn’t have this habit. If you forget the pen and paper and get some idea, pull out your cell phone and type it down there instead.

8. How you present it makes a big difference.

I changed the design of the blog – to the Thesis theme – a while ago and the rate of added subscribers and the offers from advertisers have increased. The blog looks more professional and therefore I believe it looks more trustworthy now than it did before. It leaves people with a better first impression.

The same thing goes for your clothes. For your appearance. For how you say something – mumbly and barely audible or with a loud and clear voice? – and how you move, sit and use your body.

No, the surface – or what may seem superficial – is not just what matters. But it does have a big impact. Don’t neglect it.

9. Don’t think about what everyone else may think.

If you have a blog then after your first big wave of new regulars has arrived you may start to experience a sort of stage fright. You may think: “Oh, now I have a hundred regular readers, a hundred Joes and Marys waiting for some new content”. And then you start second-guessing yourself and worry that someone will be upset, mock you or that you will somehow screw up big time.

I don’t think too much about how many readers there may be. Or what they will think. When I write I either think about it as discussion that I have with myself or something I am writing to just one reader. Or I just focus on the fun and excitement of the article I am writing and nothing more. Feeding your own fears will not help anyone.

This works the same in any other part of life. Don’t be too concerned about what people may think of you (but of course use your common sense). You can never please everyone. Focus on doing what you think is right instead and on getting approval from yourself.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.”
Denis Waitley

“If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.”
Win Borden

Perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve your life is simply to do things. To take action and learn along the way.

Here are five suggestions for “do-habits” that are very helpful to adopt to radically improve your life.

1. Do it first thing in the morning.

How you start your day tends to have a big influence on that day. It sets the context in your mind. I believe that one key to better consistency and improvement in your life is what you do early in the day. Three ways to get a good start to your day are these:

• A morning routine. Center yourself and get into an organized and productive mindset by adopting a morning routine. The morning routine – you can read about mine and the routines of the readers here – gets you into the right headspace to take on the rest of the day.
• Do the hardest/ most important/ most uncomfortable thing first in your day. If you start your day by doing it you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed and good about yourself. And the rest of the day – and your to-do list – tends to feel a lot lighter and easier to move through. It’s amazing what difference this one action makes.
• Start small. To get from a state where you just feel like sitting on your chair and doing nothing much to one where you take action over and over you can do this: start small. Getting started with your biggest task or most difficult action may seem too much and land you in Procrastinationland. So instead, start with something that doesn’t seem so hard. One of my favorites is simply to take a few minutes to clean my desk. After that the next thing doesn’t seem so difficult to get started with since I’m now in a more of a “take action” kind of mode. Experiment with this one and the previous tip and see which one that suits you the best. Or mix them up as you wish.

2. Do it one more time.

Don’t give up too soon. It is very easy to give into feeling that you done something enough times and it will never work. You have tried it as many times as you would expect people to do. But these expectations I believe are often a bit unrealistic.
Society, TV and advertising tell us that there is an almost instant solution to any of our problems. You can easily lose 30 pounds within a month. Or with little work and time invested have another extra 20 000 dollars in the bank.

So it is not unreasonable to think that success will come quickly. But instead of doing something as many times as you think others have done it, talk to and read about people who have actually done what you want to do. This will give you a more realistic picture of reality.

Oftentimes you may have to do it more than one more time. But I have often found that doing it just one more time, doing it that extra time even though you may start to feel that this won’t work, can bring the results you want in many cases. I actually feel a little bit of excitement sometimes when I feel like giving up because then I remember that at this point success is often not that far away.

3. Do the unusual thing.

When faced with a choice in your daily life, step back for a minute and think. Then take the option that is and feels unusual for you.

If you often back down just don’t for this one time. If you are often get into arguments with people then just this one time don’t and instead just let it go or treat the other person with kindness. Do the opposite of what you usually do and see what happens (while using common sense of course). Do something new and something you wouldn’t expect from yourself.

This is a fun a great way to get new experiences and learn things you wouldn’t if you kept going like you usually do.

Getting stuck in the same old routine until it becomes a rut can suck the life out of you. Doing the unusual thing in small and big situations, no matter how it goes, is a great way to feel alive again.

4. Do less.

How do you find time to do what you really want? How do you not get caught up in minor tasks and fill you day with them?

By setting limits. By being a bit ruthless and cutting down on the least important stuff. At some point you will probably have to be honest with yourself and realize that you can never fit all that you want into your day or week. Something has to go. Not only because it takes up time. But also because you only have so much energy, focus and creativity available during your day. If spend it on the less important things then all of that will be gone each day before you get to the big stuff.

It may not be fun to give up a couple of those TV-shows or hanging out on Facebook. But to make room for something new you sometimes have throw out a couple of old things.

5. Do your best.

Why should you do your best? Why not coast a bit and do just what is expected?

Three reasons:

• You get better results. Sometimes immediately. Often not right away, but as all your awesome work adds up you start to see new and exciting results.
• You raise your self esteem. I already mentioned this in last week’s article. When you do what you think is the right thing – like doing your best – then your self esteem goes up. If you just coast then you tend to feel kinda lame about yourself. So do awesome work and you feel awesome about yourself. Do ok work and feel ok about yourself.
• Deservedness. When you feel awesome about yourself you do also feel like you deserve more in life. So you go after it and you don’t self-sabotage as much when opportunities pop up.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by tbondolfi (license).

“Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking.  There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught.”
J.C. Watts

“Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.”
George Bernard Shaw

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
Henry David Thoreau

One of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and your world is doing what you feel deep down is the right thing.

What is the right thing? Well, that is up to you. Often you have a little voice in your head that tells what the right thing is. Or a gut feeling.

Here are a few suggestions though:

• Being kind instead of being judgmental/ trying to put someone down to feel better about yourself.
• Eating a healthy meal and then going to the gym instead of lying on the couch eating chips and watching TV.
• Doing the dishes and other chores instead of slacking off.
• Putting a stop to feeling like a victim with everything against you and instead looking at the opportunities and taking action.

It isn’t always easy. So I use these win/win-reasons to motivate myself to do the right thing. If you know why you are doing something and how it benefits you and the people around you then it becomes easier to do. And over time you can become more and more consistent with it.

1. You raise your self esteem.

When you don’t do the right thing you are not only sending out signals out into your world. You are also sending signals to yourself. When you don’t do the right thing you don’t feel good about yourself. You may experience emptiness or get stuck in negative thought loops. It’s like you are letting yourself down. You are telling yourself that you can’t handle doing the right thing. To not do the right thing is a bit like punching yourself in the stomach.

But the more you do the right thing on a consistent basis the more you tend to like yourself. Your esteem of yourself goes up.

This is also a cure to the often common habit of being a validation/approval junkie. That’s when you do things to get people to like you, compliment you etc. You want to feel good about yourself so you try to get other people to give you those feelings.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with getting positive feelings from other people as an extra bonus. But if you have no inner spring of positive feelings about yourself at all then life becomes a rollercoaster of positive and negative emotions. Everyone around you control how you feel and may also wield a big influence over how you think.

By doing the right thing you create that inner spring of validation and positive emotions. You become steadier, calmer and more centred.

2. It feels really good.

One of the simplest ways to create positive feelings within and maintaining them in a steady way is to do the right thing throughout your day. This of course starts a positive upward spiral of positivity not only within you but around you as positive feelings are highly contagious.

3. You get great results.

By doing what you feel is the right thing you focus on creating a better outside and inside while at the same time you cut out less relevant stuff from your inner and outer life.

So you become more focused on doing that is most important to you.

And as with anything you tend to get what you give. When you give value to people, when you help them then they will often want to help you and give you value in some form. Not everyone will do it but many will. Not always right away but somewhere down the line. Things tend to even out.

But most people wait for the other person to do something positive first. Don’t get stuck in that wait that just causes frustration. Be proactive, create a habit of taking the first step, put in the extra effort and you tend to get good stuff back. Don’t do it and you tend to get less good stuff back from the world.

4. Deservedness.

I believe this may be one benefit of doing the right thing that people often forget about. Because is it just enough to get motivated and take action to get what you want?

Maybe. But if you deep down don’t really think you deserve what you go after then you will tend to sabotage for yourself. Perhaps in subtle ways. You may get a gut feeling that this success is wrong and so you start doing stuff that screws things up.

So how do you make yourself feel like you deserve something? Well, you may do affirmations or some other exercise to make yourself feel better about yourself. But I think that what is most potent for your mind is actual proof. When you do the right thing over and over you tell your mind that you are indeed a good person.

And slowly it starts to accept that this is indeed the new truth about you.

The feelings of deservedness are also essential to maintaining a new self image.

When you try to make a big change in your life and make it stick then in some way your self image needs to be changed. You need to start seeing yourself as a healthy and fit person for example instead of couch potato or you will easily slip back into your old habits once again.

Doing the right thing not only in the health area of your life but also for example your work and relationships provides your mind with a ton of proof that you are someone who deserves what s/he want.

Just from my own experience I have found that if I have a day when I do nothing right then it is very easy slip back into old thought patterns. But by doing the right thing in many areas I tend to rarely slip back into old and more negative behavior and thoughts. I become steadier in my new, more positive self image.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

Winston Churchill is probably no stranger to anyone. He was an inspirational British leader during the Second World War.

He was also a writer, historian, poet, artist and the only British Prime Minister to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Here are a few of my favorite fundamentals from Churchill on how to improve your life.

1. Focus on what you are doing right now.

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.”

When you start to look too far into the future then any task or project can seem close to impossible. And so you shut down because you become overwhelmed and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead. That is one of the reasons why it is good to plan for the future but then to shift your focus back to today and the present moment.

Then you just focus on taking the first step today. That is all you need to focus on, nothing else. By taking the first step you change your mental state from resistant to “hey, I’m doing this, cool”. You put yourself in state where you become more positive and open, a state where you may not be enthusiastic about taking the next step after this first one but you are at least accepting it. And so you can take the next step. And the next one after that.

The thing is, you can’t see the whole path anyway and it will shift and reveal itself along the way. That’s why the best of plans tend to fall apart at least a bit as you start to put it into action. You discover that your map of reality doesn’t look like reality.

2. Be concerned about action.

“I never worry about action, but only about inaction”

Yes, taking action can lead to failure, rejection or making mistakes. There is always a risk for that. But if you stay in inaction then you are pretty much guaranteed that nothing will change or improve.

How can you improve your action habit though? Three tips:

• Reconnect with the present moment. This will help you snap out of over thinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done. It is one of the best tips 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. Check out 7 more tips in 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment.
• 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 realize 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 becomes easier to get started with.
• Start small. To get from a state where you just feel like sitting on your chair and doing nothing much to one where you take action over and over you can do this: start small. Getting started with your biggest task or most difficult action may seem too much and land you in Procrastinationland. So instead, start with something that doesn’t seem so hard. One of my favorites is simply to take a few minutes to clean my desk. After that the next thing doesn’t seem so difficult to get started with since I’m now in a more of a “take action” kind of mode.

3. Be an optimist.

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”

Focusing on what helps you sure makes a huge difference compared to if you keep focusing on what is wrong in every situation or what makes you more of a victim. It’s like living in two different worlds.

How do you make the shift to a more optimistic attitude? Well, it takes time. But gradually you can change it. Four of my own most favorite tips are:

• Take care of the fundamentals. This is for me the most important thing you can do to maintain and strengthen your positive attitude. How you eat, sleep and workout is huge factor. A good lifestyle, how you live your life on normal days determine how you feel, think and how much energy you will have.
  For example, exercising and keeping my testosterone levels pretty high consistently – I do that by focusing on free weight exercises that target many and big muscle groups – is a very simple way to get a lot of positive emotions to flow through my body automatically. A good workout always seems to do the trick.
• Positive influences. Fill your mind and emotional system with positive input from people, music and programs/books. Other people’s thoughts have a big influence and emotions are contagious. Limit your time with negative people. Reduce TV or magazines that may make you feel worse about what you don’t own or your body. Or just create fear and negativity within you (for instance a lot of news shows). Limiting negative influences can make it a lot easier to keep the positive attitude up.
• Set the context for your day. What you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. We have a tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. You can use that your advantage in few ways. You can for example do the hardest thing on your to-do list first. When it is done you’ll feel good about yourself and it makes the day feel easier and you’ll have less inner resistance to getting the rest of the tasks of the day done.
• Act as you want to feel. Act as if you are feeling positive. After a few minutes you will actually feel it for real. So smile. Use positive language. And so on. It feels weird at first but it really works.

Just practicing these four things in a consistent way can make a huge difference in your life.

4. Be persistent. Don’t give up.

“Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential”

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Since society often tells us to look for quick fixes it’s easy to make the mistake of giving up to soon. After you have failed perhaps 1-5 times. That’s the “normal” thing to do. But what could have happened if someone just kept going after that? And for each failure learned more and more about what works?

I think people often make a mistake of giving up too early. Your mind probably has a reasonable time-frame for success. This might not correspond to a realistic time-frame though.

It’s useful to take a break from advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give complete plan but a clearer perspective of what is needed to achieve what you want.

Now, that’s not to say that you should never quit. But it can be helpful to keep going on your current path for a while longer.

And that’s not to say that you should do the same thing over and over in exactly the same manner. It’s better to do and get an experience. Take the lessons you can learn from that real life experience. And then adjust how you do things as you try again.

It obviously helps immensely if you find what you really like to do. And what you really, really want. Then you’ll find the inner motivation to keep going, to get what you want and to build on inner strengths like persistence.

5. Don’t lose the enthusiasm.

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

It’s very easy to get down on yourself and your results when things don’t go as planned. What was once enthusiasm can quickly become apathy and pessimism.

But how do you do keep up the enthusiasm after things have gone wrong and you just feel like giving up? Well, as I mentioned in the previous fundamental, it certainly helps to have something you really like doing and something you really want.

And the tips found in fundamental # 3 such as keeping your energy up, acting as you would like to feel and keeping away from negative influences work very well here too. A good additional tip is simply to ask better questions in “negative” situations. Instead of asking yourself why this or you suck ask yourself questions that empower you. Questions like:

What can I learn from this?
What is the hidden opportunity in this situation?

6. Remember, most troubles never happen.

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened”

One final, quick thought. But a very important one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say. But if you think back and remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more worry from your thoughts. This makes it a lot easier to start doing more of what you really want in life. And to move through your day to day life with a lighter, happier and more optimistic attitude.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/ / CC BY 2.0

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
Lao Tzu

One destructive habit is to constantly compare your life and yourself to other people and their lives. You compare cars, houses, jobs, shoes, money, relationships, social popularity and so on. And at the end of the day you create a lot of negative feelings within. And perhaps also outside of yourself.

But how can you stop doing it? Or at least get control of it and use it in a better way? Well, here are five tips that have helped me.

1. Be kind.

The way you behave and think towards others seems to have a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself Judge people more and you tend to judge yourself more. Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself.

A bit counter intuitive perhaps, but that has been my experience. The more you love other people, the more your love yourself.

So focus your mind on helping people and being kind. This is very helpful to move away from judging yourself and others so much. And instead focus on the positive things in yourself and the people around you. You become more OK with yourself and the people in your world instead of ranking them and yourself and creating differences in your mind.

You are OK and so are they.

2. Don’t fall into the trap of hero worship.

When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different. So it’s important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are.

When you have some heroes you are likely to think more about the opposite too. And place people into neat and tidy folders. You may create villain-like images of people in your world.

But in truth, things can be kinda messy. Putting someone on a pedestal or making a villain out of them create barriers in your head and life. It may give you a sense of being right. But it can hold you back from positive experiences too.

Openness is in the long run more fun than being judgemental.

3. Just realize that you can’t win.

Just consciously realizing this can be helpful. No matter what you do you can pretty much always find someone else in the world that has more than you or are better than you at something. Yes, you may feel good for a while when you get a nicer car than you neighbour. But a week or two later you’ll see someone from the next block with an even finer car than yours.

4. Give up both sides of comparing.

If you can’t stop doing the negative comparisons then stop doing them both.

Because if you’re in the headspace where you compare to feel better about yourself then it’s hard to stop it and not also start to compare in way that make you feel worse and inferior. So you may need to step out of that whole comparing habit because the two sides are often connected. Give up the upside to be able to move away from the downside.

5. Compare yourself to yourself.

Instead of comparing yourself to other people create the habit of comparing yourself to yourself. See how much you have grown, what you have achieved and what progress you have made towards your goals.

This habit has the benefit of creating gratitude, appreciation and kindness towards yourself as you observe how far you have come, the obstacles you have overcome and the good stuff you have done. You feel good about yourself without having to think less of other people.

Bonus tip: Use helpful comparisons.

So are there no helpful comparisons that you do between yourself and other people? Sure there are. One exercise I use when I for example feel sorry for myself is to ask myself:

“Does someone have it worse on the planet?”

The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you of a somewhat childish “poor, poor me…” attitude pretty quickly. I understand that I have much to be grateful for in my life.

This question changes my perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one. It helps me to lighten up about my situation.

But if doing such helpful comparisons also leads you to constantly compare yourself to others in a negative way then you may need to stop and give up the comparing habit altogether as I mentioned in tip # 4.

And then later on, sometime in the future, when your mind is more peaceful and positive, you may want to incorporate questions like the one above. Or not. Experiment and find a balance and way that works for you.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilerin/ / CC BY 2.0

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice”
Wayne Dyer

“For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else”
Winston Churchill

If you are reading this then there is good chance that you agree with me that positivity is pretty awesome. But it is not always easy to adopt a more positive attitude and there are some pitfalls. So today I’d like to share a few mistakes that I have made in this area and that I think are fairly common.

1. Thinking 100 percent positivity.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when you adopt a positive attitude then it’s just on. Like when you flick a light switch. And that would be nice and simple, wouldn’t it?

But in my experience you improve gradually with a few bigger leaps from time to time. For example, today I stay positive for about 80 percent of the time. Four years ago or so, I was probably positive for about 30 percent of the time.

So I have made big improvements in this area. But it has taken years and lots of exploring and work to have a more consistently positive attitude. And the work continues. Mental fitness is like physical fitness. If you let things slide then you get out of shape and then you can’t do the things you used to do.

I think it is very important to be aware that nothing will ever be perfect. Striving for perfection can be pretty dangerous. Because you will never feel like you are good enough.

Even though you may be positive 90 percent of the time you still feel deep inside like you aren’t OK. No matter what you do. You have set the bar at an inhuman level. And so your self esteem stays low even though your results may be very good.

So I think it’s better to just focus on gradually being more consistent instead trying to be perfect.

2. Thinking it’s just about your thoughts.

One good way to become a more positive person is to ask questions that empower you instead of making you feel like a victim. If you are in negative situation you can for instance ask yourself: what is the hidden opportunity in this situation?

So one part of a positive attitude is about learning to think in more helpful way.

But it’s not just about your thoughts.

I have found that one of the best ways to turn around a negative mood or just to remain positive and strong is to work out. After you are done it sometimes feels like you are different person. Doubt and worries just seem to fall away or at least become a lot smaller.

This nice thing about this is that it works kinda automatically.

Because sometimes you just can’t pump up your own enthusiasm or motivation. Or see things from a positive perspective. When working out you don’t have to think or push through such inner resistance. You go and you work out. And most of the time it works like pushing a stress and tension release button in yourself.

Being in pretty good shape and working out a couple of times a week is to me one of the most fundamental and effective things you can do to improve your attitude and life.

You may discover that if you improve this area of your life then many of the tips for how to think in more positive way become a bit superfluous.

3. Can’t let go of the benefits of your current attitude.

At some point you have to make up your mind. Will you go for the benefits of adopting more positive attitude? Or will you stay with benefits of a negative attitude?

Because there are benefits to both of them. It’s not like a negative attitude is something that is just stupid and something people do without any reason. A negative attitude can for example give you this:

• Attention and validation. You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out.
• No risks. When you are negative you can find explanations for why nothing will work. And so you don’t have to take action and have to risk for example rejection or failure.
• A feeling of being smarter and right. A common attitude of very negative people seems to be – and it was in my case – that you think you are smarter than other people. They do, fumble and fail. While you can judge and analyse life and them from a safe distance. It’s not hard to feel smarter than most people when you are always on the sidelines. But it’s not clever. In the end it’s just sad.

So there are a few benefits and quite a bit of pleasurable feelings to be drawn from a negative attitude. But I have found that a positive attitude – although it may sometimes be harder to keep up – is more helpful and just makes life a lot more exciting and fresh.

To be able to have a more consistent positive attitude you will probably have to let go of the negative attitude and those benefits or you’ll get stuck at a certain level. You can find some of the best reasons to adopt the positive attitude and how to do it in this article.

4. Swimming in a sea of negativity.

If you are trying to change your attitude then it’s not very helpful to live in a world where forces try to drag you back to your old mindset each day. It makes it very hard to change.

What you allow into your mind will have a big effect on 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. But don’t forget to replace that old stuff you cut out with something more positive instead. If you have a vacuum in your life then you are more likely to revert back to your old habits.

You can for instance replace reading the newspaper in the morning with listening to personal development CDs, watching something fun or just having a good conversation with someone.

5. Confusing positivity with trying to please everyone.

Positivity isn’t about being nice and trying to please everyone. Or accepting everything that people do to you.

Being nice is wonderful thing. But letting people walk all over you and accepting it with a smile and a positive attitude won’t help you.

We do to a large extent choose how we want to be treated. How you expect people to treat you can have a big effect on how you allow yourself to act and how people around you view and treat you. If you start creating a role for yourself where you always let people do what they want to you then you may create some pretty destructive and negative things.

• You may create an identity for yourself where you get used to always taking whatever anyone doles out. You create a kind of victim identity where you may look happy on the outside but don’t feel so good on the inside. But since you have gotten used to it after a while you may accept it and think that: this is just who I am.
• You may create a concept in the minds of the people around you that it’s OK to treat you this way. Either because you seem so positive despite what they are doing so they think it’s OK. Or just because you aren’t saying no and some people may take advantage of that.

Look, you can’t please everyone. I think both Eleanor Roosevelt and Buddha have mentioned something along the lines that whatever you do there will always be people who don’t like what you are doing. And that’s OK. That’s normal.

Going around trying to please everyone at your own expense isn’t healthy though. Or even a realistic thing to attempt. It eats away at you both mentally and physically.

So be nice. Be positive. But make sure you set your own standards, rules and limits too. Combine the positive attitude and smiles with assertiveness and with being proactive. And remember that you might as well do what you want because there will always be critics.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/circo_de_invierno/ / CC BY 2.0

”Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
Benjamin Franklin

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard

“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

Worries. They can circle around and around in your head. Becoming louder and louder as they sap your strength and make you feel you weaker. It’s no fun.

So what can you do about it? Here are five timeless thoughts to help you overcome or at least lessen the worries in your life. I hope you find something helpful.

1. 80-90 percent of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”
Winston Churchill

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
E. Joseph Cossman

This is a big one but one that is easy to forget about. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

2. Don’t mountains out of molehills.

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish Proverb

“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”
Arthur Somers Roche

“If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.”
Dean Smith

It’s very easy to fall into the habit of making mountains out of molehills. You think and think about a small problem until it becomes something that you believe may ruin your life.

So why do we do it? Why don’t strive to make things easy and simple?

Well, one reason I believe is protection from pain. By making the problem huge can you can invent a helpful excuse to convince yourself to not take action.

Another reason is that the ego wants more. It wants to feel better or worse than someone else. By making things more complicated than they need to be you can make them feel very important. And since you are involved in these important things, since you have these BIG problems, well, then you have to be important too, right? Plus, by doing so you can get a lot of attention and comfort from other people.

So how do you get out of the habit of making mountains of molehills? Three tips:

• Zoom out. Ask questions that widen your current perspective. Questions like: “Does someone have it worse on the planet?” The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you of a somewhat childish “poor, poor me…” attitude pretty quickly. This question changes the perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one and helps me to lighten up about my situation and to be grateful about my life.
• Bring awareness to you own thought patterns. Ask yourself questions like: “Honestly, am I overcomplicating this?” and “What is the simplest and most straightforward solution to my problem that I may be avoiding to protect myself from pain?”
• Realize that much of this is in your head. Your relationships to what you want to achieve are – just like your relationships to people – to a large extent just in your head. Think that something is easy and simple instead of “heavy” and complicated and your perception of that external thing you want to achieve tends to change too. Experiment and find healthy and effective relationships to what you want to achieve instead of just seeing something like many people may do.

3. Let go of that familiarity and certainty.

“Worry is like a rocking chair–it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.”
Unknown

”People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”
George Bernard Shaw

Whatever you have been doing perhaps for decades feels familiar and comfortable. Even if it may be something destructive as worrying. Taking a leap of faith and going into the unknown, making a change that may turn out to be positive, can feel scarier and more uncomfortable than what you are used to. Even if what you are used to is worse in the long run.

But at some point you have to make up your mind to start letting go of that old familiar part of yourself. You have to fill up the space all that worrying used take up with new thinking. It may feel uncomfortable. It is not so intimately familiar as your past thoughts.

It can be scary and exciting at the same time because now you are not just someone who sees him/herself as worrier and that uses some techniques to lessen that. You are instead making a deep change to who you are, to how you view yourself. You are letting go of something that has been a big part of you and are leaving it at the side of the road.

One great tip that I have learned for making it easier to let go is to first accept it. Then to let it go. When you accept something instead of resisting it you stop feeding more energy into your problem and making it even bigger. A bit counterintuitive.

This is useful when it comes to letting go. If you first accept what you want to let go you aren’t so emotionally attached to it and still feeding it with your focus and energy. And so it becomes less powerful and easier to just drop. As long as you resist it then it will be hard to let it go.

Another helpful hint for letting go is found in tip #1 in this article. All that worrying in your past may not have been very accurate at all. So perhaps it’s a smart choice to let go of that habit?

4. Focus on a solution.

“There is a great difference between worry and concern. A worried person sees a problem, and a concerned person solves a problem.”
Harold Stephen

“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.”
Robert Frost

”You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.”
Pat Schroeder

To move out of worry it’s very helpful to just start moving and taking action to solve what you are concerned about.

Two tips that have helped me to take action more consistently are:

Using a morning routine.

This is perhaps the most powerful tip I have found so far in this area. You simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. That’s one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day. Read all about my and other people’s morning routines in this article.

Focusing on and taking responsibility for the process, not the potential results.

I use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up and doing my workout. The results have come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”.

Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

5. Tomorrow will come anyway. Live and fully enjoy here and now.

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
Leo F. Buscaglia

It may sometimes seem that by worrying we can less the sorrow of tomorrow. But it never works. It only sucks the life out of today and this moment.

To be able to live better today and to be able to take that action to prevent the possible sorrow it’s important to learn to live in the present moment. Because it’s there that you can do things in the best possible way with your focus fully on what you are doing.

Three of my favourite techniques for drawing myself back to the now are these (the first one is the one I use most often right now):

• 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. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel. Be still right there and just take in the world around you.
• 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 then I have often recommended listening/watching to Eckhart Tolle in the past. I still do. I especially like his audiobook “Stillness Speaks”. Another guy that I find helpful for picking up presence from is Wayne Dyer.
• Paraliminals. I reviewed these guided meditation CDs during the spring and they have become one of my favourite way for reconnecting with the present. I just plop down on my bed for 25 minutes or so to relax and listen. Afterwards I feel relaxed and energized and my self-talk tends to shut down or decrease significantly for maybe half a day. This makes it a lot easier to be in the present moment and just focus on what is going on right now.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Sometime during the spring, when I first heard about using fasting from time to time to lose fat I thought it sounded a bit odd.

But then I thought about how people in all kinds of religions have been fasting for thousands of years.

I read a bit about it online and it seemed to be a pretty popular topic on various fitness blogs. Craig Ballantyne of Turbulence Training – the program I use every week and that helped me to lose 26 pounds – is a fan for example. So I got curious.

So I read a book called Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon (the guy above in the photo). It’s a pretty short and concise ebook at 91 pages.

In it Brad dispels many myths about fasting. He counters the arguments people may use to not try it out – like slowed down metabolism, fear of losing muscle, fear of becoming just too hungry – with facts and research (the book has over 50 references from different scientific studies).

The main idea of this way of losing fat is to fast for 24 hours once or twice per week. This will create a calorie deficit and you will use more energy than you put into your body. And so you lose weight. That’s it.

My Four Week Challenge

First, a quick note on fasting. As Brad writes in the intro to the book: “The information within this book is meant for healthy adult individuals. You should consult with your physician to make sure it is appropriate for your individual circumstances.”

Now, since I had gained back a few of those 26 pounds I lost earlier this year I thought I’d give it try. So I have fasted for two 24 hour periods during the last four weeks. The results? I lost 4 kilos/9 pounds.

I did no cardio exercises – I usually do the bodyweight exercises from the Turbulence Training program – during these four weeks to see how much I could lose without that training. I did however do two 25 minute workouts with free weights per week to maintain my muscle mass and just lose the fat. I did not lose any strength during the four weeks.

So how was it?

Well, pretty unobtrusive and I guess that is the point of this way of eating. You don’t have to prepare special meals. Or constantly think about what you are eating. You just stop eating. Then you just eat again as if nothing happened. It’s a pretty relaxed and very simple way of eating to lose weight.

I had hunger pangs when I usually eat but they dissipated again pretty quickly as I kept busy with work and other stuff. An interesting side effect of fasting is that productivity goes up. When you don’t have to cook food, eat and wash the dishes you can get quite a bit more done during your day of fasting.

I did however notice that it did become harder to focus for maybe four hours before the fast was done. My mind was foggier. I could still work and do some light stuff but for example writing a blog post would be hard.

But the thing is, this way of eating is very flexible. Taking your fasting day on a day when you for example have an important test in school is nothing you need to do. You can take your fast any day of the week, when it fits you and your schedule.

Besides dispelling the myths about fasting and changing how you think about food and fasting Brad also goes into the benefits of fasting from time to time – like decreased insulin levels and increased insulin sensitivity and growth hormone levels – and gives you a how to guide to live the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle with a helpful frequently asked questions section.

Anything to improve?

So I really liked the book and the intermittent fasting. But were there any negatives about it all? Well, nothing major, but I found a few things.

• Plain standard design. Eat Stop Eat is designed with the plain standard white background and black text. That’s totally OK but I hope that perhaps more ebook authors follow the example of for instance Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and add a little more to the design to spruce things up.
• Few food tips. One of the upsides of intermittent fasting is that you don’t have to fret about every meal to get a calorie deficit. However, I would have liked to see a little more about some recommended food and tips for when you are eating so you don’t compensate the calories lost by overeating.

UPDATE: The Special Discount Offer is Now Over.

But you can still get just the the ebook or more more expanded options such as the Advanced package that contains all the items below plus additional audio files.

• The Eat Stop Eat ebook.
• How Much Protein – Brad’s latest ebook – 121 pages – on protein and how much you actually need each day to build muscle.
• The 10 day Diet Solution – Brad’s 25 page ebook on how to overhaul your diet in 10 days, how to erase bad eating habits in less than two weeks and how to avoid the biggest causes of overeating.

Brad offers a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee with no questions asked so there is no risk for you.

Click here to get you own copy of Eat Stop Eat

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“There is nothing permanent except change.”

“Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.”

About 2500 years ago there lived a man named Heraclitus in the city of Ephesus in Greece.

He lived a lonely life, created his own cryptic philosophy and wasn’t that fond of humanity. Still, he became a big influence on famous stoics like Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca.

And he had a few really good words of wisdom that I would like to share today.

1. Envy is a really good way to hurt yourself.

“Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.”

Happiness often seems to be fleeting. But people can hold onto envy and make it even stronger over the course of many years.

But how can you become less envious? Three of my favorite tips are:

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.

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.

Think about what’s in it for you.

I have found this to be helpful in many cases when I have negative thoughts or when I’m behaving in a less than useful way. Basically, I ask myself: “What’s in it for me?” And each time I fall back into that negative headspace and behaviour I remind myself of this question and the answer.

This reinforces to me the pointlessness of what I’m thinking. And often I just think to myself: “Oh, I’m being stupid again. Time to focus on something useful/fun/positive instead.”

Asking yourself what is in it for you is a good way to find distance from your thoughts and behaviour and to motivate yourself to just drop the less useful thoughts whenever you can.

Think about what your envy is telling you.

What you think and feel about the world can often tell you quite a bit about yourself.

So thinking about what your envy 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 envious of someone else.

Is it 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 envy. Ask yourself: “What can the envy reveal about me?”

2. Understanding can not be found in books.

“Much learning does not teach understanding.”

When you read a lot you may think that you understand things. But you never really understand anything until your experience it. Yes, knowledge can help you to avoid pitfalls and improve quicker. But it can’t relate how it feels to experience something. And it can’t relate how you experience something since we are all a bit different from each other.

So you have to take action and do things. And when you start doing things you might also discover that things are often a bit more messy in real life than in books where it may seem like you only have to follow a clean ten step method to get the results you want. But that’s part of the fun of living life rather than just thinking and reading about it.

3. Be like the child again.

“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.”

When you were a kid and were playing you were totally focused on what you were doing. You were curious rather than filled with fear. There were no worries about tomorrow or yesterday. You weren’t lost in endless looping thoughts. You were just in the moment.

You tried to learn to ride your first bike. You fell, scraped your knee, got up again. And again. And again. Until you could do it. Failure was just a temporary annoyance, not a reason to give up.

It is a bit funny and at the same time a bit sad how much of what one may strive for through personal development that is about being like a child again.

Because it’s about living in the moment. About not being bogged down by constant, often kinda pointless thoughts that just produce negative emotions within and outside of you. It’s about being open and curious and not getting trapped in your comfort zone or fear.

So I guess that personal growth may not be so much about adding new layers to yourself but to shed some those that you have gained over the last few decades.

All that positive stuff was there in the beginning. You may still reconnect with it from time to time. And you can learn to spend even more time in that wonderful headspace where you are present, positive, open, kind and curious. While still being a responsible adult.

And if you are looking for a good place to start with this, I would recommend to learn to spend more time in the present moment again.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/notsogoodphotography/ / CC BY 2.0

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”
Brian Tracy

I believe that one of the biggest reasons why people get stuck in reading and discussing things instead of taking action to change their lives for the better is simply that it is uncomfortable.

But to make real changes in your life you have to step outside your comfort zone. At least for a little while.

So how can you make that a little bit easier? In this article I’d like to explore a few tips that have helped me.

Curiosity.

When you are stuck in a bit of fear, when you get stuck in your comfort zone then you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people.

Curiosity on the other hand is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear.

Curiousness also opens you up to gain understanding of something. And with understanding vague, fog-like fears disappear.

The emotions you experience are often a result of what you focus your mind on. Change what you focus on about something and you can change your emotions about that thing.

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 to discover and experience. And then to work at it. Curiosity is a habit. The more curious you are the more curious you become. And over time it becomes more of a natural part of you.

Develop a habit of mixing things up.

This is related to the previous tip, it’s a way to expand your comfort zone and to keep your curiousness up. I do, for example, try new music every month.

I have a look at the best music on sites like Pitchfork and Metacritic. Then I load a few of those albums on Spotify and listen. You could do the same with food for example and try new things each month.

Such small habits allow you to keep from getting stuck in the same old rut. It allows you to discover a ton of new exciting things. And it’s just plain fun.

Do it in small steps.

What holds us back in our zone of comfort is often a fear or that facing that fear head on might be overwhelming. This is a solution to those two problems. It allows you to stretch your comfort zone and slowly making it less uncomfortable and frightening.

Let’s say you want to be less nervous and awkward in social situations.

To solve that you can take small steps. Steps like first just saying hi to people. And being more involved in conversations at work or in school to exercise your conversation muscles. After a while those things will feel more comfortable. And so you can expand your comfort zone a little bit more.

And so you gradually desensitize yourself to social situations or whatever you are uncomfortable with. You make it the new “normal” for you.

So, identify your problem. Then make a plan with some smaller steps you can take to gradually lessen your discomfort.

Bring a friend.

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.

Focus on the positive past.

Realise it can be fun to get out of your comfort zone despite what your mind and feelings might be telling you before you get started. Think back to the previous times when you have broken out of your comfort zone. Focus on the positive memories, when you got out there, when you took a chance. And you will probably remember that it wasn’t so bad, it was actually fun and exciting and something new to you.

A lot of times we automatically play back negative experiences – or negative interpretations of events – in our minds before we are about to do something. And we forget about the positive memories and our previous, positive achievements. Avoid that trap. Let the good memories flow through your mind instead.

Read about it.

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. Just getting some good information can, in my experience, dissipate quite a bit of your fear and nervousness.

Accept that it will be uncomfortable.

Even if you do the things above it can still be uncomfortable to step out of your comfort zone. If that is the case, accept it. That discomfort will be temporary and you can always take action and just do it even though you may not fully feel like it.

The thing is if you accept that the discomfort is just there then it tends to become smaller or not so significant. If you on the other hand focus on how hard it is, think about it a lot and create all sorts of drama around it then you feed it with more energy and it becomes so uncomfortable that you can become paralysed from taking action.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by *Zara (license).

“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.”
Richard Bach

“Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”
John W. Gardner

One big problem a lot of people have is that they slip into thinking of themselves as victims that have little or no control over their lives. In this headspace you feel sorry for yourself, the world seems to be against you and you get stuck. Little to no action is taken and you get lost in a funk of sadness and self-pity.

So how can you move out of that mindset? In this article I’d like to share a few things that have helped me.

1. Know the benefits of a victim mentality.

There are a few benefits of the victim mentality:

• Attention and validation. You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out. On the other hand, it may not last for that long as people get tired of it.
• You don’t have to take risks. When you feel like a victim you tend to not take action and then you don’t have to risk for example rejection or failure.
• Don’t have to take the sometimes heavy responsibility. Taking responsibility for you own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just heavy sometimes. In the short term it can feel like the easier choice to not take personal responsibility.
• It makes you feel right. When you feel like the victim and like everyone else – or just someone else – is wrong and you are right then that can lead to pleasurable feelings.

In my experience, by just being aware of the benefits I can derive from victim thinking it becomes easier to say no to that and to choose to take a different path.

It also makes it easier to make rational decisions about what to do. Yes, I know that I can avoid risk and the hard work of taking action by feeling like a victim. But I also know that there are even more positive results if I choose to take the other route, if I make the better choice to take a chance and start moving forward.

2. Be ok with not being the victim.

So to break out of that mentality you have to give up the benefits above. You might also experience a sort of emptiness within when you let go of victim thinking. You may have spent hours each week with thinking and talking about how wrong things have gone for you in life. Or how people have wronged you and how you could get some revenge or triumph over them.

Now you have to fill your life with new thinking that may feel uncomfortable because it is not so intimately familiar as the victim thinking your have been engaging in for years.

3. Take responsibility for your life.

Why do people often have self-esteem problems? I’d say that one of the big reasons is that they don’t take responsibility for their lives. Instead someone else is blamed for the bad things that happen and a victim mentality is created and empowered.

This damages many vital parts in your life. Stuff like relationships, ambitions and achievements.

That hurt will not stop until you wise up and take responsibility for your life. There is really no way around it.

And the difference is really remarkable. Just try it out. You feel so much better about yourself even if you only take personal responsibility for your own life for a day.

This is also a way to stop relying on external validation like praise from other people to feel good about yourself. Instead you start building a stability within and a sort of inner spring that fuels your life with positive emotions no matter what other people say or do around you.

4. Gratitude.

When I feel that I am putting myself in victim role I like to ask myself this question:

“Does someone have it worse on the planet?”

The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you of a somewhat childish “poor, poor me…” attitude pretty quickly. I understand that I have much to be grateful for in my life.

This question changes my perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one. It helps me to lighten up about my situation.

After I have changed my perspective I usually ask another question like:

“What is the hidden opportunity within this situation?”

That is very helpful to keep your focus on how to solve a problem or get something good out a current situation. Rather than asking yourself “why?” over and over and thereby focusing on making yourself feel worse and worse.

5. Forgive.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in thinking that forgiveness is just about something you “should do”. But forgiving can in a practical way be extremely beneficial for you.

One of the best reasons to forgive can be found in this quote by Catherine Ponder:

“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.”

As long as you don’t forgive someone you are linked to that person. Your thoughts will return to the person who wronged you and what s/he did over and over again. The emotional link between the two of you is so strong and inflicts much suffering in you and – as a result of your inner turmoil – most often in other people around you too.

When you forgive you do not only release the other person. You set yourself free too from all of that agony.

6. Turn your focus outward and help someone out.

The questions in tip #4 are useful. Another question I use when I get into the victim headspace is simply:

“How can I give value right now?”

Asking that question and making that shift in what you focus on really helps, even if you may not feel totally like doing it.

So I figure out how I can give someone else value, how I can help someone out.

And thing is that the way you behave and think towards others seems to have a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself. For example, judge people more and you tend to judge yourself more. Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself.

A bit counter intuitive perhaps, but that has been my experience. The more you love other people, the more your love yourself.

7. Give yourself a break.

Getting out of a victim mentality can be hard. Some days you will slip. That’s ok. Be ok with that.

And be nice to yourself. If you have to be perfect then one little slip is made into a big problem and may cause you to spiral down into a very negative place for many days.

It is more helpful to just give yourself a break and use the tips above to move yourself into a positive and empowered headspace once again.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfgangstaudt/ / CC BY 2.0

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely…”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another morning. Another day begins.

You get up too early, stumble into the shower and in somewhat of a haze try to get things together and get work or school on time.

But by applying a few simple tips you can make not only the morning but the whole day more relaxed and smooth.

1. Plan the night before. Choose the 2-3 most important tasks and put them on a to-do list. By choosing just the most important stuff instead of a dozen things you are less likely to start procrastinating or realize at the end of the day that you filled it with less important tasks.
2. Pack your bag the night before. This very simple habit can alleviate quite a bit of stress in the morning. If you pack your bag before you go to bed then you don’t have to run around in your house half panicked tomorrow while looking for your books or some important papers.
3. Make your lunch the night before. Pack the leftovers of your dinner in a container and put it in the fridge. Just don’t forget to put it in your bag in the morning. You may even want make an extra serving so you can quickly heat up dinner when you get home from work/school. Doing this the night before will save you a bit of time and possibly a bit of money.
4. Don’t forget to just relax. You can’t get much done if you never get any rest and revitalization. Well, you can for a while but soon you’ll start to feel run down, stressed out and fill up with all kinds of negative emotions pretty much all the time. So take some time to just relax. Meditate in one way or another. Take a warm bath. Take a walk in the woods. Listen to relaxing music. Have some fun with friends and/or family. Release pressure, stress and tension that can come from a hard day’s work so you don’t carry all of that into the following morning.
5. Get enough sleep. It’s tempting to stay up a bit longer and let the “morning-you” take care of the problems – I do for example become more likely to revert to old behaviour patterns such as negativity and being easily stressed – that come from lack of sleep. But be good to yourself at least some days during the week. Go to bed a bit earlier and catch up on your sleep.
6. Use a morning routine. What you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. We have a tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. So if you have the time – or are willing to get up a few minutes earlier – then a nice morning routine can be a great way to start a day. I do for example get up and drink a glass of water, pull the blinds from my windows to let in the sun, eat breakfast and drink a cup of green tea, brush my teeth, make my bed and declutter for a few minutes. Read more about my morning routine and the routines of many of the readers right here.
7. Keep everything in its place. If everything has its own place then it is whole lot easier to keep your home reasonably ordered and decluttered from day to day. And to find the keys as you are heading out the door.

What is your best tip for creating a better start to the day?

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside”

“The image is one thing and the human being is another…It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.”

If you haven’t lived under a rock since you were born I am guessing you know who Elvis Presley was.

So let’s just move on to a few of my favourite pearls of wisdom from the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

1. Put a stop to the downward spiral.

“When things go wrong don’t go with them”

As humans we always have a choice. We can interpret the reality around us as we choose. Two people may have the same things happen in their lives. One becomes negative and apathetic. The other one chooses to see what happened as an opportunity.

Now, I admit, it’s not always easy to not react negatively to things that happen. But what you do after that initial reaction – go down a downward spiral or look for what you can use – is in my experience something you can have a large control over.

There may however be some inner resistance to do so. Complaining and falling into a victim role can protect you from having to take chances and to avoid doing some hard work. It can also – for a while at least – get you the attention, comfort and validation from other people.

But in the long run it keeps you trapped right where you are.

So what do you do?

• Ask yourself better questions. I write about this quite a bit. That’s because it has worked very well for me. Asking myself questions like: “What’s awesome about this situation?” and “Where is the hidden opportunity in this situation?” helps me to reframe what happened and I can pretty much always come up with some good answers that helps me to start taking action towards positive results. Sure, sometimes I don’t feel like asking the questions. Then I just do it anyway. Just because I don’t feel like it doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.
• Understand yourself. Understand the patterns in your mind. Think back to your past and understand where the patterns lead and why you are using them. Whenever you find yourself in some difficult situation say to yourself that you will not take a negative path because you already know where it leads. Then tell yourself that you instead will ask useful questions, make a plan or something that will help you.

You can read more about adopting a positive attitude in 8 Awesome Reasons to Blast Negativity Out of Your Life, and How to Do It.

2. Understand through experience.

“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of criticizing things because, well, you feel like it’s wrong. But do you really understand what you are criticising?

From my own experience I have found that one tends to become less critical of things when you have experienced it for yourself and have an understanding. Instead of just knowledge about it.

It’s easy to be the armchair general, knowing what is always right. Especially in hindsight. It makes you feel good and like you are right.

But in the end the credit does not belong to this person. It belongs to the person who is out there actually doing things.

3. Face the truth.

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”

Although I write a lot about positive thinking and how it can be very helpful there is also the risk of overdoing it. So be a bit careful so you don’t get trapped in a bubble of positivity. The bubble of positivity is when you lie in your bed going “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!”. While your bed is on fire.

Don’t use positivity to repress and stop thinking about real, practical challenges in your life. If you are having real problems with money, relationships, work etc. don’t repress them with positive thinking until everything spirals out of control and comes crashing down on you like 30 story building. It’s always better to try and deal with a problem in the early stages.

So be positive, but use common sense. Face the truth but see it through a positive lens that allows you to take action – like described in the first section of this article – instead of getting stuck in a sad funk.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabiovenni/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

”Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don’t miss it.”
Leo Buscaglia

Some days you fall into a negative funk. You don’t feel like doing anything much and are just going through the motions. Or you don’t seem to get anything done.

Maybe today is such a day for you. If so, remember that the day isn’t over yet. You can still make something good out of it. And you can do so by changing your mental and emotional state.

Here are five of my favourite ways for doing just that in a matter of minutes.

1. Appreciate away.

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 and sunshine we are having today.
• My health.
• Friends and family.
• This blog and the opportunity to write about what I want.
• You, the reader.

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 the kids having fun with a football and then a really attractive person walking by. And so on.

Try doing that for two or three 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.

2. 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. You’ll feel more confident.

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 so has given me more dependable and consistent results than when I focused inward.
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.

3. Act as you’d like to feel.

If you want to feel more positive then 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.

This is about doing things a bit backward. 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 positive consequences in the world around you and within yourself.

4. Ask the right questions.

If you are asking yourself disempowering questions like: “Why did this happen to me? “, “How can get out of doing this?” and “What are all the awful things about this?” then of course you are going to feel lousy and get very little done.

If you on the other hand start asking yourself useful questions about the situation you are in or the day you are having then you can quickly change how you feel and get yourself into action mode. You become empowered instead of getting stuck in victim thinking.

A few good questions are:

“What is awesome about this situation?”
“Will this matter 5 years from now?”
“What is the opportunity hidden within this situation?”

5. Recall your positive experiences and memories.

It’s easy to be overcome by negative internal chatter.

Nonsense like: “I can’t do this, what if they think I’m incompetent, I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail and this why did I take this shirt, it’s so ugly”. And so on.

When preparing for a meeting, a job interview, a presentation or anything that makes you really nervous recall your positive memories from similar experiences. Think back to when you were funny and charming. Remember the times when you were confident and relaxed during previous meetings and interviews. Let a few of your best memories wash over you. Let them comfort you and help you realize that you have been here before and things went well during those situations in the past.

Doing so helps you remember the positive and wonderful sides of yourself. The qualities and your inner possibilities that are always there.

You can also use this tip to remember how you felt when you felt confident in the past. How you moved, what you said. Then use those memories of actions and emotions to more easily slip into a confident state of mind by using tip #2 above.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much!

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/ / CC BY 2.0

“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
Anthony Robbins

“The one who asks questions doesn’t lose his way”
African Proverb

Asking yourself questions is a great way to keep yourself on track in day to day life. Cutting out and letting go of irrelevant stuff can help you to simplify and relaxify your life. It can help you to find more time for the things that are fun and really important to you.

So combining these two things can be very helpful. Here are three quick questions that can help you to cut irrelevant stuff out of your life.

As you use the questions more and more they tend to start to pop up almost automatically at useful points in your everyday life.

1. Who cares?

A very simple but a very powerful question. Whenever you feel like delving into some nitpicking or some pettiness ask yourself this question. Or whenever you feel an overwhelming need to be right in some discussion.

Yes, nitpicking or having to be right can give you sort of high. You feel good. But it’s a dirty high. It never lasts for long. And you just create a lot of negativity within yourself and outside of yourself in the long run.

Asking yourself “who cares?” is a way to lighten up, to not take every little thing so seriously. It’s way be more open and relaxed with yourself and the people around you. It’s simply a way to be cool about stuff.

2. What is the most important thing I can do right now?

If you are lost in what to do next in your day, week or life, ask yourself this question. The answer might not always be what you want to hear because the most important thing is often one of the harder things you want to do too. But it can help you to check your priorities and stop you from getting lost in busy work – or Facebook or checking some inboxes/blog statistics etc. over and over during the day – and instead start tackling the big stuff.

3. Will this matter in 5 years?

This one can really puts things into perspective. It can make just about any difficulty that you are having right now seem a bit trivial and not as important and heavy as you had imagined the last few days, weeks and months. You may discover that you had expanded a problem and made it a lot more terrifying than it actually is. And that you can actually solve it more easily than you thought you while you were in a somewhat panicked state of mind.

It’s a bit similar to the first question, so try them both when faced with a appropriate situation and find out what works best for you.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozzy5836/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

“I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.”

“Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.”

Back in the old days, when movies where shot in black and white – and later on too – Audrey Hepburn was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Not only did she win an Oscar for “Roman Holiday”, she was also an ambassador for UNICEF and she is a timeless fashion icon.

Here are three of my favourite words of wisdom from her.

1. Your outside is a reflection of the inner you.

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

I think this is a wonderful quote and in my experience a very true one.

How other people  see you aren’t just about cheekbones and a good sense of style. People view people through filters in their minds. A kind person may seem more handsome when you get to know him/her. A handsome person may suddenly not seem that attractive as you are confronted with his/her negative and whiney attitude. And this goes for pretty much any meeting or relationship you have with someone.

What you feel and think has a big impact not only on you. It is also spread to the people around you. Emotions are contagious and people form opinions about others oftentimes in subtle and almost unconscious ways. Now, this may sound a bit silly or like it is not of that great importance.

But if you try assuming rapport or just focusing on the good and positive you can find in others you find that overall they respond very differently than if you are negative and have a distant attitude towards them. It’s sometimes almost like speaking to two different people. Because people tend to reflect each other and adapt to each other very often in interactions.

Of course, it’s not always easy to look for the good in others, speak only kind words or to not put up walls in your mind between you and others. Sometimes you just have bad days.But it is important to keep this stuff in mind and use it as much as you can.

Whatever that is inside of you is always shining out and through in one way or another.

2. Don’t worry what others are thinking about you.

“I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.”

One of the biggest part of thinking and doing what you really want is to stop caring so much about what other people think of you.

A lot of the actions you take – or do not take – may be because you need approval from other people. When we are young we get grades in school that tells us that we are “good”. This makes it very easy to create a life where you always go looking for the world to give you the next hit of approval. It may be from your family, boss, friends, co-workers and so on.

But this need creates neediness. And the stronger the need the stronger the neediness. And so other people will sense this. And approval may be withheld or used to manipulate you. Or they may just not like your neediness.

The people on the other hand that does not care that much about getting approval often do more of what they want deep inside. They may be considered courageous for instance. So the way they live their lives will gain appreciation and approval from the people around them. It’s a bit counterintuitive.

3. Finally getting something may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

“Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.”

Often we wish for something. A new job or promotion, a new relationship or perhaps a new pair of shoes. And you think: “if I only get this thing, then I’m home, then I’ll feel happy and good all around”.

And then you get it. And it’s awesome. But often for just a while. And then you may feel like maybe something went a bit wrong. Like it didn’t fulfil you or complete you like you thought it would.

Why? Well, after while when you get used to something, when it becomes normal, then the ego tends to want more once again.

Or maybe you can’t enjoy something for what it is because even though your environment changes, you are still the same. The same person with the same outlook on life. With the same self-imposed barriers for your own success and happiness and maybe self-sabotaging behaviour. And until you take a look at those things you may find yourself repeating the same patterns over and over. Real change in your world tends to be a reflection how you have changed yourself.

Also, any success is often accompanied by unexpected and not always so pleasant side effects. Things may seem just perfect when you dream about them. In reality, it can become a little more complicated and messy.

Now, new things or people can be great. But if you think this one success or event you are looking forward to in life will fix all your problems or if you focus on the wrong aspects – what is not perfect, how can I get more etc. – instead of the positives and gratitude then you may find yourself always looking for the next thing and create quite a bit of stress and unhappiness within.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eelssej_/ / CC BY 2.0

As school has just started and the weekend is approaching I thought it might be useful to share a couple of tips that can help you to easier establish a relationship with someone. Maybe in a new class. On a date. At work or in a job interview. Or at some party tonight.

Ok, it might a bit overoptimistic to think that all of this will work perfectly tonight. But tip # 1 is actually one tip that you can get to work well right now.

1. Assume rapport.

Yes, this one can work quickly. That is, if you can suspend you disbelief for while and keep your mind open. It won’t work if you don’t think it will work.

So, what is assuming rapport?

Basically, instead of going into a conversation or meeting nervously and thinking “how will this go?” you take different approach. You assume that you and the person(s) will establish a good connection (rapport).

How do you do that? Just before the meeting, you just think/pretend that you’ll be meeting a good friend. Then you’ll naturally slip into a more comfortable, confident and enjoyable emotional state and frame of mind. In this state of mind conversation tends to flow more naturally too, without much thinking. Just like with your friends.

I have used this small tip many dozens of times by now and have found it surprisingly useful and easy to implement. It’s a sort of variation of acting as you would like to feel.

This tip also helps you and the other people to set a good frame for the interaction. A frame is always set at the start of an interaction. It might be a nervous and stiff frame, a formal and let’s-get-to-the-point kind of frame or perhaps a super relaxed one. The thing is that the frame that is set in the beginning of the conversation is often one that may stay on for a while. First impressions last.

Now, meeting your best friend might not always be the best thing to think about before a meeting at school/work. In that case you may want to try to imagine a similar meeting that went well and your interactions with the people there.

But what if you come of as a weird person? Well, that is always a risk in the beginning when you start using this tip. But I believe that most of the time such thoughts are only in your head. No one likes awkward and uncomfortable interactions. So if you just assume rapport immediately then most people that may have been nervous/felt awkward will adapt to your more comfortable and relaxed frame.

This is also a quick way to reconnect with the mental and emotional state your friends might be referring to when they give you the classic advice to “just be yourself”.

2. See yourself in other people.

“Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.”
Isa Upanishad, Hindu Scripture

The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation and loves to play the comparison game. The game where people are different compare to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates fear in social situations. Doing the opposite removes fear.

That there is no real separation between beings, that we are one and the same, might sound a bit corny.

But one thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend. You do this practically by using the previous tip.

Another idea is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet.
As I mentioned above, there is pretty much always a frame set in any interaction. It may make you and the others feel awkward or comfortable. But underlying such feelings is a frame of mind.

Either it asks us how we are different to this person. Or how we are the same as this person. The first frame is based in how the ego likes to judge people and create separation to strengthen itself (either through feeling better or more like a victim). The second one creates warmth, an openness and curiosity within. There is no place to focus on fear or judgement anymore.

3. Practise.

Although the two ideas above can be very useful, the most important thing – as with anything – is practise. By doing things and learning from mistakes, failures and successes you can improve any part of your life. Your social skills too.

But just reading some tips will not magically improve any of your skills or transform you in some way. You do that yourself by being patient and persistent.

One interesting thing I have discovered after having been interested in personal development, positive thinking etc. for a few years now is that over time you can improve what may be called emotional and mental flexibility.

What I mean by that is that you don’t become so identified with your current thoughts and emotions. You realize that they are just there right now but will not be there forever. You stop being so reactive to what happens in your surroundings and stop thinking that you need to feel/think a specific way in a specific situation.

What you feel and think becomes more of a choice. Just like you can choose to turn right or left while walking. I don’t use assuming rapport in the way I mentioned above that much anymore. I have slipped into that emotional state so many times by now I can just recall how it feels to be relaxed and comfortable and choose to put myself in that state. It doesn’t work all the time of course, but most of the time it does.

But if you have been totally identified with your feelings and thoughts for decades then it can be hard snap out of that. Choosing how you think and feel may sound kinda stupid or impossible.

That is why you need to practise. To convince itself and to silence your inner doubts your mind needs proof that this stuff actually works for you. The proof is the experiences you have.

And by practise I mean using, for example, assuming rapport a couple of dozen times. Not two or three times.

By being open and believing that this stuff works and by practising it over and over – just like a tennis serve – it become easier and easier to do it.

The point of all of this I guess is that the distance between you and someone else is in your mind. And by changing your behaviour you can change your results. And by doing that over and over you change your beliefs about yourself and other people.

If you liked this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

UPDATE: The offer is now over. Click here to read my Paraliminal review.

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Just a quick update today. For the last two months Learning Strategies have been offering all Positivity Blog readers a free download of their Peak Performance Paraliminal and a 35% – $160 – discount on the Ultimate You Library. This offer expires in 7 days, on the 15:th of September.

So if you are interested in this discount or just in trying the free Paraliminal then a good time to do so is now.

What are Paraliminals?

Paraliminals are CDs that are focused on various aspects of your life. One is about getting you to become more focused and effective. Other ones are focused on such things as overcoming anxiety or improving relationships, confidence and health.

You use the Paraliminals by first reading through a few short instructions in the small booklet included with each CD (the instructions for this free session is included in the very beginning on the recording). Then you just sit or lie down for about 20 minutes per Paraliminal and listen with headphones and closed eyes.You can read the full review that I did right here.

Paraliminals are one of my absolute favourites among all the personal development products I have tried so far (well over a hundred by now). I have tried all the Paraliminals – except Smoke Free – and have been using them many, many times since December of 2008.

Instructions to claim your free Paraliminal and discount

As you have completed the process for getting the free Paraliminal you will receive an email with your link to download the mp3. This email also contains the special offer with greatly reduced prices on the Ultimate You Library – a collection of 22 Paraliminals. It normally goes for $450 dollars but through this offer you can get it with 4 payments of just $72 dollars instead.

If you choose to take that deal you can also add four of the newest Paraliminals to your collection for only 14 dollars per CD. The regular price is $29.95 per Paraliminal.

Just enter the Customer Codes that you received in the email when you order to get these discounts and to be able to split up the payments into four parts.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/notsogoodphotography/ / CC BY 2.0

“I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.”
Henry Ward Beacher

“We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?”
Jean Cocteau

“Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers.”
Unknown

Luck. Some hope for more of it. Some don’t believe in it. Some think that everyone but themselves are lucky.

But can you create more of your own good luck in life? Here are a few timeless thoughts on that topic.

1. Work hard. Be proactive.

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more luck I have.”
Thomas Jefferson

“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
Bruce Lee

This is in my experience very true. The more I work, the more I take chances and am proactive in life the more times I tend to be lucky.

Just sitting around and waiting for some good luck to land in your lap tends to be a pretty bad strategy. Creating your own opportunities and taking massive action simply gives you more of most things. Even luck.

Also, the more you practice the more you improve a deciding factor like your intuition. A better gut feeling can result in more decisions that may seem lucky from an outside perspective.

2. Be prepared.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Seneca

“One-half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck.”
Carl Zuckmeyer

Now you that you have spotted an opportunity, what to do? Exactly. It’s a great idea to have an idea about how you can use an opportunity in a way benefits you. If you are unprepared then it’s easy to fumble away half of your lucky moments.

So, read. Talk about what you want with others that have more experience and knowledge than you. Ask them a lot of questions. Practice and educate yourself so that you are ready to make good and useful decisions when the opportunity arises.

3. Luck may often just be the golden rule.

“Your luck is how you treat people.”
Unknown

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.

So what looks like someone being lucky a lot from an outside perspective may just be s/he using the golden rule in a good way.

4. Being unlucky can be a sort of luck for you too.

“Luck never made a man wise.”
Seneca

“All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck – who keeps right on going – is the man who is there when the good luck comes – and is ready to receive it.”
Robert Collier

“Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow’s good luck.”
Og Mandino

Having some bad luck can in many ways be a good thing too.

When things are rough but you somehow get through them you tend to gain strength and perhaps a bit of wisdom and perspective on life. It may not have been fun. But those gains can be very helpful in the future.

I think that things do often balance out over time. You have bad meeting, date, day or even week. But, in my experience at least, then you often have something good happen or you get a lucky break the next day or week. Of course, in that situation it is important to be attentive and not still be focusing on that negative situation in the past.

The important thing is to keep going through ups and downs. The worst thing is when you just go passive and don’t do anything. Because then nothing seems to happen in a good long while.

I also find it useful to ask helpful questions when having a “negative situation”. Question like these:

• What is the good thing about this?
• What can I learn from this?
• What hidden opportunity can I find within this situation?

At first it might seem stupid to ask such a thing when having a bad day. But after a while you get used to it and your mind even starts to do it automatically from time to time.

Another important benefit of having some bad luck is what Robert Collier mentions above. When the good luck comes you are ready to recieve it.

You feel that after that bad luck you actually deserve your lucky break. This ties into hard work too. When you feel you have deserved your lucky break then you will have no or less problem with taking it.

There will be less self sabotage. There will be less situations where you start telling yourself that you can’t handle it or don’t deserve it.

You just go for it. And by having kept on going through the rough times you have gained strength and wisdom that will enable you to make the best out of this new and lucky situation.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon or Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by gutter (license).

”Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.”
Miguel de Cervantes

In many ways personal development material can help to change a life for the better in a big way.

But like pretty much anything, if used the wrong way to it can stop you from growing and instead create more problems for you.

So here is, from my personal experience, five ways that personal development information can screw with you head if you let it. I believe these are very common problems for people who get into this stuff and some stage or another. I hope you can learn something from some of the mistakes I have made.

1. It helps you to overcomplicate stuff.

You and your friend have the same problem. While you look for answers in personal development books and on blogs your friend don’t really knows what to do. So he tries something. He fails. But he learns something and does some other things. And so he starts to solve the problem while stumbling around a bit and realizes that it isn’t such a big deal and that he can probably figure it out.

Meanwhile, you have looked in books and on blogs. You haven’t found perfect answers so you look a little more, just to be on the safe side and to avoid failure and the pain that comes with that. And so the problem becomes bigger and more complicated in your mind for every book or article you read. Taking action becomes something you start to fear more and more because it all seems so huge and complicated now.

2. It gets you emotionally hooked on reading more and more.

And so little action is taken because that is uncomfortable and scary. While getting another hit from some personal development source feels pleasurable and safe.

It kinda feels like you are making progress and going somewhere as you read that awesome book. But shortly after you have read it that feeling diminishes. And so you read another one to get a rush of those positive feelings again.

Just like you can hide from life, reality and the inevitable pain, embarrassment etc through shopping too much, playing too much video games or through drugs these personal development books can become just another addiction. You feel good in short bursts. But over the months or even years of time you don’t really move forward that much at all.

3. It leaves you confused.

One problem with the information overload age we live in is that you can get more than you can handle. For free.

And it’s not always easy to move forward if you take in too many perspectives at once. Tony Robbins may say one thing. Eckhart Tolle might say another thing.

Taking in various perspectives over time can help you to increase your understanding of your world. Taking in advice from 10 people at once can confuse you and lead to paralysis analysis.

4. It makes you feel like you aren’t ever ready or good enough.

This can become a big problem. When you get hooked on reading this stuff you may start to feel that aren’t quite good enough yet to start taking action. That you aren’t good enough to succeed with something you’d like to do. In part it can be a form of protection from the pain and effort that comes with action. In part it can be because knowing more and more but not using it keeps a low self esteem in its place (or makes it sink even lower).

And so you study, study and study. And it is never enough. Until one day you just make a decision to tell yourself that you are good enough. Because reading more will not take you to that point when you feel that you are enough.

When you make that decision for yourself it’s doesn’t mean that you have to stop studying. It doesn’t mean that you have to stop growing. You can feel good enough and still feel that it is fun to explore and grow in various ways.

So you become more relaxed and not so desperate anymore to solve your problems. And when you feel like you are good enough then taking action and succeeding becomes less “heavy” and complicated. When you are good enough instead of desperate then, in my experience, life becomes lighter and doing becomes easier.

5. It makes you think that things will be perfect and you will be too.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of looking for magic pills. That basically mean you look at something – a book or a just a tip – as a complete and quick solution for your problem. You think that this thing will “fix you”, just like a pill from the doctor could.

But this is self improvement. Sure, someone may make a lot of money or lose a lot of fat really quickly. But for many any improvement will be gradual. It will be slow sometimes and quicker at some points. It’s a process that takes months or years.

But little by little you improve yourself. Never to perfection. Life and progress will still be messy. But over time all those small steps forward really start to add up.

So what do you do?

How can you avoid these problems? A few tips I use:

• Keep these things in mind. Just keeping these pitfalls in mind and being aware of them helps me to be a bit careful about how I think and behave.
• Set limits. It is useful to set limits for yourself so you don’t overconsume personal development material. For example, make sure that you are consistently taking action towards your goals 80 percent of the time. And then you read and study 20 percent of the time. And not the other way around.
• Take some action immediately after having learned something. Don’t wait, then you just want to read and prepare even more. Jump in instead and do one little thing to get started.

If you like this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“It’s heavy duty to try to do everything and please everybody . . . My job was to go out there and play the game of basketball as best I can, … People may not agree with that . . . I can’t live with what everyone’s impression of what I should or what I shouldn’t do.”

“I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot . . . when you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result.”

Since posting My Favorite Top 7 Inspirational and Uplifting Videos last week the one video that has been on my mind a lot more than once was the one from Michael Jordan.

So today I’d like just do one post with just a few of my favorite inspirational videos from Michael Jordan and Nike. I hope you find something here that motivates you and lifts your day among these short films.

Note: If you are reading this post via RSS or email the embedded videos may not show up. Click here to see them.

1. On failure.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2. On persistence.

Click here to view the embedded video.

3. There are no Cinderellas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. Look me in the eyes.

And, the video I posted last week, the one that inspired this post:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bonus: No excuses.

This one doesn’t feature Jordan, but it’s from Nike and it’s centered on another basketball player named Matt Scott. It’s been years since I saw it but I still remembered it and decided to include it. It’s a great one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you like this post, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by *Zara (license).

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus”.
Bruce Lee

To get the results you want out of life you have to be a to stick with what you are doing. Day after day. Focus and consistency is key to success in any area of life.

But the problem is that it’s very easy to get off track. It’s very easy to make a few common mistakes and shot yourself and your potential success in the foot.

Here are four mistakes that I have made many times. And a few solutions I have used to make them less frequent.

1. You get distracted.

Maybe the biggest problem when trying to stay on track is all the distractions around us. There is however a few things one can do to decrease the number of times you get distracted in day to day life.

Use a cone of silence.

How do you create one of those? You unplug and remove as many distractions in your work environment as possible. Some examples:

• Unplug your internet cable. If you don’t, it may be tempting to just take a short breather online. Perhaps check your email or your RSS-feeds. Or chat for a few minutes with some friends via IM. This breather usually expands and before you know it your 5 minute break has become a 35 minute procrastination-session.
• Unplug the phone. If have the possibility, consider unplugging or shutting off the phone for a while. Talking, texting and emailing can become big distractions and time-thieves
• Shut the door. Get away from the voices and noises outside your room. Try to keep it as silent as possible to be able to focus on your work.

Reduce and clean up visual clutter.

Clutter in your work space can also be distracting. So:

• Declutter your desk. I remove old coffee mugs, put things back where I got them, order any loose papers in neat piles and throw out what is not needed. This creates a clean workspace with a minimum of visual distractions.
• Declutter the desktop. If I have any files/icons on the desktop that should be stored somewhere else on the computer I move them. What I don’t need anymore I throw out. I have also incorporated a bit of quick decluttering into my morning routine now. I make my bed and clean up for a few minutes. This declutters my space and mind and creates a good and focused start to the day.

Ask yourself helpful questions.

Be alert. Ask yourself questions throughout the day. Questions like:

Is this useful?
Will this matter 5 years from now?
Is this the most important thing I could be doing right now?

Whenever you feel like you are heading down a path of irrelevant thoughts or distractions ask yourself a question like the ones above to snap yourself into a better headspace.

2. Your simply forget.

In my experience one of the most common mistakes is simply forgetting what you should be focusing on. You fall back into your old ways and habits or get distracted into some different path during your day. Especially in the beginning, when you are starting to establish a new habit or working towards a goal.

So you need a bit of help. One thing that has worked well for me in this case is to use external reminders. To use something outside of your own leaky memory. 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. This helps to reinforce each and every day where you are going and what is most important to do.

3. You choose something you don’t really, really want.

I think this is a very, very common. You think you want something. But deep down you soon discover when you get started that you don’t really want it that much. Or you fool yourself into thinking that you want it and keep going. This can lead to many new problems as you try to go forward and start looking for solutions to resolve the new difficulties that pop up. But the big problem may simply be on the basic level you are overlooking.

So set goals you 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 biggest part of your life – becomes more enjoyable.

And when you really want it simply becomes easier to push through any inner resistance you feel. You are so motivated to achieve whatever it is you want that the risk may be scary but smaller than your desire. This is crucial when you hit an inevitable rough spot.

When considering what you want to do it’s also helpful to keep in mind that things can seem a certain way in your head when you think about doing them. But you have to actually do them for a while to gain understanding of how they really are. So to find what you really want to do you may have to try a few of your ideas and experiment to find what you love doing.

4. You don’t add clarity to what you want.

Really, really wanting it is great. Adding as much clarity as you can makes it even easier to stay on track.

A few good guidelines to add clarity to what you want is to set goals and make them specific, measurable and to 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”.

It’s also important to keep your goals in present tense. 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 think about it/write it down in present tense.

My experience is that the more clarity I can add to a goal the less I procrastinate and the less I get off track.

Of course, you may still not achieve the goal as quickly as you’d like. And you will probably still get sidetracked from time to time. That’s pretty normal. Things are seldom perfect, except in our dreams. But you can improve your consistency and focus in a big way by avoiding those four easy to make mistakes.

What is your best tip for staying on track in day to day life?

If you found this article helpful, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

A few years ago I used to post inspirational and uplifting videos once in a while here on the site.

Today I’d like to post 7 of my own favorites from then and more recent times. Maybe you have seen a few of them before, but I hadn’t in quite a while so if was good to revisit them.

I hope you’ll find something here to lift your day and inspire you.

Note: If you are reading this via email or RSS then the embedded videos might not show up. Click here to watch them.

1. Tony Robbins at TEDtalk

22 short minutes of a, as usual, pumped up and enthusiastic Tony Robbins. In the video he talks about the six human needs while having a bit of fun with Al Gore who’s in the audience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2. Team Hoyt

Team Hoyt, father and son from Massachusetts, has competed in 66 marathons, in 229 triathlons, climbed mountains and trekked across America.

One really inspiring story.

Click here to view the embedded video.

3. Matt does happy dance across the world

In 2003 Matt Harding started traveling around the world. Some months into the trip he got the idea to dance in every country and record it on camera. In 2005 he got sponsorship from a chewing gum manufacturer and went on another trip through 39 countries.

This awesomely uplifting video with Matt happy-dancing across the globe is the compiled result. You can’t help but smiling while watching it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bonus: More recently Matt did another trip and now he got people to dance with him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. Steve Jobs – Stanford commencement speech

Perhaps the most watched and popular video on this list. It’s a moving and inspiring commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave to the graduating students of Stanford University in 2005.

He spends his 14 and a half minutes at the podium talking about his own experience in school, about being fired from Apple and about life and death.

Click here to view the embedded video.

5. Why you are supposed to sing or dance while your music is being played

A quick 2 minutes and 21 seconds of goodness. A short South Park-like video put together with a recording of philosopher Alan Watts.

In the video he makes a great point about life. Something to keep in mind so you don’t wind up bitter and feeling like life is just empty and pointless. Or get stuck in always wanting to get to the future.

Click here to view the embedded video.

6. Look me in the eyes – Michael Jordan & Nike

Many of the Nike commercials that Michael Jordan have done together with Nike are really inspiring short films. Here is one of my personal favorites.

Click here to view the embedded video.

7. Trust me on the sunscreen

Back in 1999 director Baz Luhrman (the guy that made Moulin Rouge and the Claire Danes-version of Romeo & Juliet) made a popular spoken word-song called Everybody’s free (to wear sunscreen).

They played it over and over on the radio and on MTV for what must have been months. I even bought and still have the now dust-covered single somewhere in my bookcase. It’s still kinda awesome in it’s own insightful way.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is your favorite inspirational and uplifting video?

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Learn more about the science of happiness from the experts, and take free psychology tests at happier.com.

Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“Aim for the highest.”

“You cannot push anyone up the ladder unless he is willing to climb.”

In the late 1800s there lived a very rich man. In fact, he was so rich that he is now considered the second richest man in history. And, at least as I remember it, he became an inspiration for Scrooge McDuck.

His name was Andrew Carnegie. You may have heard this name before if you have read the classic personal development book “Think and Grow Rich”. It was Carnegie that gave the author Napoleon Hill the assignment to interview hundreds of wealthy people about success. And those interviews became the foundation for the book.

Here are four of Carnegie’s own top tips for massive success.

1. Pay attention to the more important things.

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

This is one of my favourite quotes at the moment. And I have to agree, I pay less and less attention to what people say. Because in the end, what someone does is the most important thing. Talking is easy, but walking your talk is harder. And walking it consistently even though you fall, slip back into old habits and make mistakes is a huge part of success.

Now, talking and discussing what you want to do can be very helpful. But at some point you also follow that up and take action.

And this not just a good way to see people in a clear way. It’s also a good way to look at yourself more clearly. Because you can tell yourself and others all kinds of things all day. But what you are actually getting done shows a lot about who you are right now and how you future will look.

2. Make it fun, make it light.

“There is little success where there is little laughter.”

If your life and striving for success becomes just a big struggle then it will be very hard to keep it up.

If you want something bad then it it’s very easy to overread or overthink that thing. It seems more complicated in your mind and it also becomes “heavier”. What may have been pretty straightforward in real life becomes this huge struggle, where you are Rocky Balboa taking slow painstaking steps uphill against horrific odds. Yep, it’s a real inspiring thing as you struggle as the heroic underdog.

It’s also a great way to make things so much harder for yourself. It’s you putting up imaginary obstacles in your own mind that aren’t even there in reality. The Rocky way of thinking about these things is very seductive. But life becomes so much lighter and more fun when you just let that stuff go.

Sure, things may be vary in difficulty. But I believe we often make things more difficult and heavier than they really are.

So simplify it, don’t overread or overthink it. This makes it a lot easier to relax and have fun while still working towards what you want.

Also, create a habit of simply making it fun. Keep a positive and fun attitude with the friends you are working with. Don’t take things too serious. Learn to laugh about them a bit more. This does not only make it easier to consistently keep up the good work. It also makes it easier to handle what would previously be “huge setbacks/problems”.

3. Be persistent. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

“The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.”

How do you never get much done? Well, one good way is to try everything at once and spread yourself too thin. You get super enthusiastic for month and then you get deflated. You may even get an emotional backlash and start to feel negatively towards what you were so pumped up about since you aren’t seeing the results you’d like as you quickly as you’d like to.

But on the other hand you have to get started and take action. Things can seem a certain way in your head when you think about doing them. But you have to actually do them for a while to gain understanding of how they really are. So to find one line that you want to stick with in some area of your life you may have to try a few of them and experiment to find what you love most to do.

I don’t have many more tips really on how to find your line. I think you just have to think about some options and then try them to find out for yourself what you like and where there is opportunity.

I have for example been writing on this website for almost three years now. And I still find it fun and fascinating to write about these things. It’s fun to be able to share my thoughts and what I have done and perhaps not only gain a clearer understanding for myself but also help out someone out there. I enjoy tinkering with the design and improving that. I enjoy learning more about how to spread the articles on this website to an even wider audience (and taking action on what I learn).

I think those are some good reasons to stick with what you are doing. And so I continue doing this.

4. Motivate yourself. It’s your choice.

“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”

I wrote about this just a couple of weeks ago. Like Carnegie, I believe you have to rely on yourself to be able to keep taking action patiently and persistently. Sure, help and motivation from others is always good. But they can not always be there to support you.

The only person who is always with you is you. So you have to choose to place the most importance for motivation on yourself and then add help and inspiration from blogs, books, friends and family when you can or feel the need.

Like anything, this takes time and you slip and fail along the way. But over time your can become better and better at motivating yourself (or skipping the need for motivation to get started and instead just springing yourself into action).

Without developing this habit then action and results will go up and down and be very inconsistent. And without consistency over a longer time period it does not matter so much what other talents or gifts you may have inside of you.

Check out the recent article How to Motivate Yourself: 4 Timeless Thoughts for more tips on how to motivate yourself.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
Sydney J. Harris

“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

Maybe you are on vacation right now and are trying to relax and release the pressure and tension from a year of school or work. And maybe you are soon going back again.

So what can you do to increase your sense of centeredness and relaxation not only during these remaining weeks of summer but also during this fall?

Well, here are sevent tips that have worked well for me. I hope you find something useful.

1. Spend time online in a focused way.

One big change I have done during this summer is to minimize the time I spend online. I have cut it down to the essentials. Basically that means I update the blog. And check my email/Twitter/Facebook maybe once every other day. Of course, you may not have the option or want to make exactly those changes.

But you may want to try to cut down on your online time a bit. Maybe just check all the things you check online once a day. I have found that it has made me a lot more relaxed, focused on the most important things and left me with more time to use for other things. I will certainly keep this habit of minimized and focused internet use up – although perhaps in a slightly different form – during the fall and winter.

2. Let go of what you “have to do”.

If you are feeling totally stressed out and wrapped up in everything you “have to do”, here is a good question: “Will this matter in 5 years?”. This is of course not an excuse for you to not do anything. But a reminder that the small things we get wrapped up in when we feel stressed are often not that important when you view it from a wider perspective.

In the end you can choose what you want to do and not do. There are of course consequences to everything that we do and that is something one must keep in mind. But I think it is very important to feel like you are in control of your own life to be able to stay centred and minimize stress and pressure. It’s important to choose what you want to do instead of always living in reaction and feeling controlled by outside forces all the time.

You may for example feel like you have all these things you “just have to do before the summer is over”. If such thoughts are stressing you out, you may want to choose to say no and take a day to take it easy and do pretty much nothing. It can do wonders.

3. Don’t take things (or yourself) too seriously.

Taking things or yourself overly serious adds a lot of unnecessary negativity and stress to your life. A minor situation may be blown up to a major one in your mind. If you just learn to lighten up a bit then life becomes more fun and you realize that you get great results even if you aren’t superserious about everything. Here is one article about how to lighten up. And another one about how to simplify things.

4. Take 30 belly breaths.

This is the quickest and most consistent way to relax that I have found so far. It can be done anywhere and anytime. It’s great way to release pent up tension and to centre yourself in the present moment once again as you bring your focus to the in and out breaths.

Here’s a simple instruction on what to do:

• Sit or stand in a relaxed way.
• 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.
• Breathe in and out 30 times. Take deep and slow breaths.

5. Act as you would like to feel.

Another simple tip you can use just about anywhere. Your emotions work backwards too. If you slow down then while walking, moving your body or talking you can often start to feel less stressed (compared to if you move/talk fast).

Slowing down to decrease stress goes for many other things you do in everyday life too like riding your bicycle, driving the car and eating.

6. Stop thinking the world revolves around you.

One great way to make your life unnecessarily hard and difficult is to assume that the world revolves around you. It can make you feel like you are trapped in a cage built out of social pressure. Not pleasant at all.

But is everyone watching everything you do? Thinking about you a lot and discussing what you said or did? Probably not. It’s very seductive to think they do because it makes you feel important and it gives you validation and attention. But they are probably spending their time worrying about their own challenges in life and what other people think about them.

It’s not easy to let go of the belief that the world revolves around you. But there are huge benefits such as decreased shyness and increased openness towards people and trying new things.

So you give up or decrease the importance you put on validation from the outside. And by doing so you can release a lot of pressure and stress and increase your own inner centeredness and freedom to feel that you can do what you want in life.

And as you do so you stop raising your self esteem and positive feelings about yourself through the validation people may give you (or at least you cut down on it a lot). Instead you now raise it by doing more of what you think is right in life. And by caring more about what you think and feel about yourself and how you are living your life.

7. Just accept how you feel right now.

Maybe you try out some of the tips above. And maybe they still can’t help you to shake that stress, inner pressure or whatever you are carrying around. I would then suggest just accepting that it is there. To tell yourself: “This is how I feel right now and I accept it”.

This sounds counterintuitive and like you’re giving up. However by accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into this conflict/problem. It tends to just kinda lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel. And oftentimes it becomes so weak after while that it just moves out of your inner focus and disappears.

Image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/notsogoodphotography/ / CC BY 2.0

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/abnelgonzalez/ / CC BY 2.0

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”
Mark Victor Hansen

“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

Motivation can be a huge help for you to achieve what you want in life. But how can you find all that motivation you need?

Here are four timeless thoughts on motivation. I hope you find something useful.

1. Make a conscious choice.

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”
Wayne Dyer

“I was thinking one day and I realized that if I just had somebody behind me all the way to motivate me I could make a big difference. Nobody came along like that so I just became that person for myself.”
Unknown

Help and motivation from others is always good. But in the end you to be able to rely on yourself. And there is really no escaping it, because as Dyer says, it’s always your choice what to do.

So you have to consciously choose to motivate yourself. You can do that by:

• Doing what you really, really like to do. When you really like doing something then the motivation do it comes automatically (most of the time). And when you really want something then it simply becomes easier to push through any inner resistance you feel. You are so motivated to achieve whatever it is you want that the risks you may encounter may be scary but smaller than your desire.
• Make a list. Write down all the benefits you will get from achieving something, like for example getting into better shape or making more money. Save it and pull that list out of the drawer whenever your motivation is lacking and review it. Or put it somewhere where you will see it every day. This is a powerful way to reconnect with your motivation and reasons for taking action.
• Find what works for you. There are many ways to motivate yourself. You can for example find a list of 25 ways here. Try different ways and find one or a few that work well for you. And then apply them consistently in your own life.

The most important thing is to take responsibility for your own motivation and feelings and not wait around for someone else to do it. When you do that you will most often find a way to get yourself to start moving towards what you want.

2. Walk your talk.

“Walking your talk is a great way to motivate yourself. No one likes to live a lie. Be honest with yourself, and you will find the motivation to do what you advise others to do.”
Vince Poscente

This is great tip. Whenever you don’t follow your own talk or just your inner rules of how you want to behave your tend to feel bad. Your esteem of yourself sinks and your motivation to get going does too.

So you have to be honest with yourself when you feel like you are out of alignment. You have to get up and get started again. When your talk and inner standards you have set for yourself align with what you do then you your self esteem goes up. You feel great because you are living like you want to deep down. And you are getting all these important things done and can enjoy the results. And then you want more of that good stuff, you sometimes feel so motivated that you can’t wait to get going.

This is not always easy. In the short run it’s often easier and less uncomfortable and scary to lie to yourself a bit and hold yourself back. But the rewards for walking your talk are big. Both on the outside and the inside.

3. Set goals that really inspires you.

“Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us. They are essential to really keep us alive.”
Robert H. Schuller

Without inspiring goals you tend wander around aimlessly in a confused funk.

I think the most important thing about setting goals is to find goals that really inspire and motivate you.

What are your goals? As much as possible, you have to set the goals for yourself. Should and ought to-goals aren’t good enough. Or goals that other people have set for you.

Think about your goals. Think about who has set them. Then think about what you really want in life. Then set your own goals. Write them down.

I also don’t think one should be afraid of setting big goals. Set a big goal that inspires you even if it may seem a tad unrealistic at the moment. If you have too easily achievable goals then you may find that they don’t give you that motivational spark and drive. When you start to think a bit bigger then you get motivated and your mind starts looking for the how that will help you achieve that goal. Thinking too small and can leave you with a “meh…” feeling or make you feel like you can do it later.

And a benefit of this is - even if you don’t quite achieve your big, big goal or it takes a while longer than you may have hoped for – can be found in a quote from Les Brown:

“Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.”

4. Don’t get too hung up on being motivated to get started.

“The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.”
John C. Maxwell

Here’s another view on motivation. Maybe you don’t need it to get started? Maybe you can create it along the way?

Many times I have found it better to just do it and start working instead of trying to motivate myself to get going. At first what you do may suck quite a bit and it’s hard going. But after a while inspiration and motivation seems to catch up with you. Things start to flow easier and your work is of a higher quality.

And after you have kept going for a while you become more and more motivated. Because you start to feel like you can actually do this and you can keep going to achieve your goal. And now you are also walking your talk which boosts your motivation.

On some days you may not seem to be able motivate yourself into action. Even if you review your goals or reasons to achieve something.

That’s ok. You can still make a conscious choice based on what you know deep down is right and just start moving your hands and feet anyway. No matter how you feel inside, no matter what negative thoughts may be circling around in your head.

Try both to get yourself motivated before you begin and to just do it and find the motivation along the way. Try both ways and see what works best for you.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by nattu (license).

“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

“Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles, they toughen and make strong.”
Norman Vincent Peale

“Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.”
Richard Bach

Are you having a problem in your life right now?

If so, maybe these six quick tips can help you to solve it a little bit easier.

1. First, ask yourself: is there really a problem here?

Often we create problems in our own heads – as I mentioned a bit about a few days ago in Things May Be Simpler Than You Think – that aren’t really out there in reality. So relax a bit. And think about if this is really a big problem.

Is it something that will matter in 5 years? Or even in 5 weeks? Life becomes so less stressful when you stop making mountain out of molehills (or just out of thin air).

2. Accept it.

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). 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.

3. Ask for help.

You can ask people for advice on what to do and what they did in similar situations. 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.

If you just ask you may find that people will often be willing to help you out.

4. 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 for you and others than doing the opposite.

5. Break the problem down into smaller pieces.

Solving a problem can sometimes seem overwhelming and impossible. To decrease anxiety and think more clearly break the problem down. Identify the different parts it consists of. Then figure out one practical solution you can take for each of those parts. Use those solutions.

They may not solve the whole problem immediately. But those solutions can get you started and might solve a few pieces of the it.

6. Find the opportunity and/or lesson within the problem.

I have found that there is almost always a positive side to a problem. Perhaps it alerts us of a great way to improve our business or relationships. 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. You may even start to see the situation as a great opportunity for you.

When you are faced with a problem ask yourself:

What is the good thing about this?
What can I learn from this?
What hidden opportunity can I find within this problem?

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by alicepopkorn - busy (license).

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Albert Einstein

Is personal development and improving yourself complicated? Sometimes. But in my experience, it’s very easy to make things a lot more complicated than they need to be. This can make goals a lot harder to achieve than they really need to be and add unnecessary stress.

So why do we do it? I mean, we don’t really want things to be more complicated and harder than they really are?

Well, actually, I believe that from time to time we may want them to be complicated. Two key reasons are:

Protection from pain.

By actually doing things, failing and learning you also need to expose yourself to pain and discomfort. By overcomplicating things and over thinking them you can create a helpful excuse to not take action. Instead you can remain in a state where you are “still trying to figure things out” for a long time.

The ego want more, more, more.

The ego tends to want to more. It wants to feel better or worse than someone else. By making things more complicated than they need to be you can make them feel very important. And since you are involved in these important things, well, then you have to be important too, right?

So you feel more important and often smarter since you are involved in all this complicated stuff – which feels good - but at the same time you make it harder to make actual progress and to take action by making things overly complicated, important and “heavy” in your own mind. You overcomplicate every issue and make it an intellectual discussion instead of a solution.

Another variation of this can be to make any personal development goal – or just anything your want out of life – in to this epic struggle. Either just in your mind or also by reading more and more about a topic.

The more you read about a topic the more complicated it seems in your mind and is also becomes “heavier”. What may have been pretty straightforward in real life becomes this huge struggle, where you are Rocky Balboa taking slow painstaking steps uphill against horrific odds. Yep, it’s a real inspiring thing as you struggle as the heroic underdog.

It’s also – again - a great way to make things so much harder for yourself. It’s you putting up imaginary obstacles in your own mind that aren’t even there in reality. The Rocky way of thinking about these things is very seductive. But life becomes so much lighter and easier when you just let that stuff go.

It’s a bit counter-intuitive and it took me quite some time to understand this. You think that an overly serious attitude may seem like the right attitude to help you achieve your goal.

But a more relaxed attitude where you tell yourself that what you are doing isn’t really that complicated, epic – millions of people have probably done what you want to do in last 1000 years or so – or super serious is often more effective to get the result you desire.

How to simplify your thoughts, plans, actions and life.

Here are four tips I use to simplify my life.

1. Bring awareness to you own thought patterns.

Ask yourself questions like:
“Honestly, am I overcomplicating this?”
“What is the simplest and most straightforward solution to my problem that I may be avoiding to protect myself from pain?”

2. What would Jason Bourne do?

I like to ask myself this question from time to time when I feel that I am making things a bit too complicated or when I’m thinking too much.

Now, the Bourne frame of mind isn’t about putting your car in reverse and going off rooftops.

It is about putting a stop to thinking and allowing yourself to work with what you already know. You allow the right action to arise from within rather than think a lot about it. You have trust in yourself and your experience.

This is what Jason Bourne does a lot of the time up on the movie screen. He does what he has learned, he let’s his body and subconscious do most of the doing. A lot of thinking would only hold him back.

As I have mentioned many times, I believe that thinking has its place. But to be wrapped up in it all the time often leads to much doubts within and little actually getting done. The thing is, you know what to do most of the time already. Don’t put up obstacles in your own way.

3. Let go of the need to feel smart or important.

Instead of deriving a sense of feeling good about yourself by feeling smart and important through over complicating or over thinking things just relax. Derive those positive feelings about yourself by doing what you know deep down are the right things to do instead. This will make your feel good about yourself – raise or maintain your self esteem – and give you practical results you can enjoy.

4. Realize that much of this is in your head.

Your relationships to what you want to achieve are – just like your relationships to people – to a large extent just in your head. Think that something is easy and simple instead of “heavy” and complicated and your perception of that external thing you want to achieve tends to change too. Experiment and find healthy and effective relationships to what you want to achieve instead of just seeing something like many people may do.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“Luke: I can’t believe it.
Yoda: That is why you fail.”

Back when I was younger and first watched the Star Wars movies my favorites were Yoda and Han Solo.

I recently watched the two latest Star Wars movies again and thought they were better than I remembered.

Again, one of the best parts was definitely Yoda.

I guess he was an early introduction to personal development and spirituality long before I had much interest in this stuff.

So today I’d like to share three of my favourite words of wisdom from that green little awesome guy.

You could do very well in any area of your life by just focusing on these few tips. Things don’t really have to be that complicated. Get these things handled reasonably well and your world opens up big time.

1. Don’t try. Do.

“Do or do not… there is no try.”

When you tell yourself and/or someone else that you will try you are in my experience more likely to give up or just stop when the first obstacle shows up.

When you say that you will do something there is more determination and power behind that decision. When the inevitable obstacles that always show up start to block your path you are determined. You will do this. So you find ways over, under, around and through the obstacles. And that’s what you have to do most of the time to actually get things done. Smooth sailing with no problems at all is pretty rare.

By making clear choices to do or not do something – and putting power behind those choices – you are more likely to actually get things done and succeed.

2. Overcome your fears.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”

Overcoming your fears is one of the most important things to improve yourself and grow. If you don’t you will just get stuck. But how do you do it? Well, first, as Yoda says, you have to stop avoiding your fear. You have think about it and see what is you really fear.

After you have brought some clarity to the situation, here are three of my favourite tips for actually overcoming that fear.

Face your fear.

Maybe not what you want to hear, but in my experience and from what I have learned from others this is the best way to overcome your fear.

And if you have to handle a big fear, whatever it may be, and later realise you actually survived it, many things in life you may have feared previously seems to shrink. Those fears become smaller. They might even disappear. You may think to yourself that what you thought was a fear before wasn’t that much to be afraid of at all.

Everything is relative. And every triumph, problem, fear and experience becomes bigger or smaller depending to what you compare it to.

Be curious.

This frame of mind makes it easier to face what you fear. When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. When you shift to being curious your perceptions and the world just opens up.

Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear.

How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity and to remember all the cool things it helped you to discover and experience.

All is one.

The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation and loves to play the comparison game. The game where people are different compare to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates fear.

Doing the opposite removes fear. That there is no real separation between beings, that we are one and the same, might sound a bit corny.

But one thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend. Another one is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet. And what parts of yourself you can see in him/her.

There is often an underlying frame of mind in interactions. Either it asks us how we are different to this person. Or how we are the same as this person. The first frame is based in how the ego likes to judge people and create separation to strengthen itself (either through feeling better or more like a victim). The second one creates warmth, an openness and curiosity within. In that one there is no place to focus on fear or judgement anymore.

This is a bit similar to the previous tip. Use both and see what works best for you.

3. Your world is a reflection of you.

“You will find only what you bring in.”

That’s what Luke is told in “The Empire Strikes Back” before he goes into the cave on Yoda’s home planet. Inside the cave Luke battles his demons – more specifically an illusion of Darth Vader – and are confronted with his owninner darkness. The darkness he brought into the cave and that could pull him over to the dark side if he allowed it to.

I think this is relevant in our world too. You find in your world what you bring into your world. And in your world you can see yourself – your thoughts and behaviours – reflected. By observing the world around you can gain insights into yourself and what you may need to improve.

Because even though there is big, big world out there with many possibilities and people in the end big change in your life comes down to you changing yourself.

It’s very easy to get stuck in thinking that your perspective, the lens through which you view reality is reality itself. But you can’t really see reality. You can only see it filtered through the lens. And the lens is you.

Changing, for example, a very negative attitude to a very positive one changes how you view yourself and your entire world. But it’s very hard to convince anyone of this. You just have to choose to try another perspective and use it for a month or so. Even though old thought patterns may want to draw you back to the comfortable stability of your old viewpoint. Which may cause you to rationalize that this positive attitude stuff is uncool or cheesy.

Truth is life will never be as in your dreams if you don’t change and correct yourself. No one is coming to save you. No book or personal development guru, not your parents, no knight/lady in white armour. Yes, people around you can of course be a big help.

But as an adult in this world it is time to grow up and save yourself. It is time to do things. To face your fears. Not just because those things are the right things to do. But also because these things are what actually work.

Image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrojp/ / CC BY 2.0

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Learning Strategies are now offering a free download of their Peak Performance Paraliminal (more specifically session B on that CD) plus a special offer with greatly reduced prices for all Positivity Blog readers. These offers are only available for a limited time, so if you’re interested I would suggest following the link above now.

Paraliminals are CDs that are focused on various aspects of your life. One is about getting you to become more focused and effective. Other ones are focused on such things as overcoming anxiety or improving relationships, confidence and health.

You use the Paraliminals by first reading through a few short instructions in the small booklet included with each CD (the instructions for this free session is included in the very beginning on the recording). Then you just sit or lie down for about 20 minutes per Paraliminal and listen with headphones and closed eyes.

Paraliminals are one of my absolute favourites among all the personal development products I have tried so far (well over a hundred by now). I have tried all the Paraliminals – except Smoke Free – and have been using them about 5 times a week for the last six months. You can read the full review that I did a few months ago right here.

Instructions for listening

These are just some instructions I personally follow and I have found that they improve my results. Don’t worry about them though. Just relax and plop down on a chair or bed and listen. You don’t have to hear or remember everything that is said on the recording.

• Download it. Download the Paraliminal mp3 to your computer by following the instructions on the download page. You can also just listen to it on your computer but I would prefer to download it so you can use it on other devices like portable mp3-players  too.
• Be here. I have experienced that I get the best results when my thoughts don’t drift too much. Whenever they start to do so I usually re-centre myself my taking a few belly breaths and then I continue to focus on the recording.
• Be open. Even if you think it might be a bit weird to listen to the Paraliminal just suspend that disbelief for a short period while listening. Be open to the possibility that the recording can help you achieve what you’d like in life.

This Paraliminal session is 22:58 minutes long and the filesize is 31.8 MB.

Discount offer for Positivity Blog readers

As you have completed the process for getting the free Paraliminal you will receive an email with your link to download the mp3. This email also contains a special offer with greatly reduced prices on the Ultimate You Library – a collection of 22 Paraliminals. It normally goes for $450 dollars but through this offer you can get it with 4 payments of just $72 dollars instead. That is a discount of about $160.

If you choose to take that deal you can also add four of the newest Paraliminals to your collection for only 14 dollars per CD. The regular price is $29.95 per Paraliminal.

Just enter the Customer Codes that you received in the email when you order to get these discounts and to be able to split up the payments into four parts.

If you like the free Paraliminal and decide to buy the Ultimate You Library then I do get a commission. So thank you for helping me to be able to devote time and energy to keep writing and providing you with free and hopefully helpful articles (there are over 300 of them by now on this website)!

Click here to download your free Peak Performance Paraliminal now. I hope you will enjoy it.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by muha… (license).

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”
Charles Richards

“A well-spent day brings happy sleep.”
Leonardo Da Vinci

One thing many of us want is simply to free up time so we can do more of what we really want to do.

Here are three simple tips that have enabled me to find more time for myself to do so. And since I have a lot to do this summer I will apply them even more diligently than usual. I hope you will find these three tips helpful too to get more time out in the sun, to work on your book or blog, to play some Frisbee or just relax and take it easy.

1. Find out where your time is really going.

This is like when you are trying to lose fat. It’s very easy to fool yourself and think you are doing “pretty good” when you in actually are not doing really that good. Thinking that you are doing “pretty good” won’t get you’re the results you want though. Actually doing what is needed gives you the results you want.

An easy way to stop fooling yourself in both cases is to use a log. If you are trying to lose fat, use Fitday.com to keep and eye on how much you are really eating.

If you want to find out where your time in a normal day or week are going create a simple time log in a Word-document or something similar and simply type down notes about everything you are doing.

I have for example found that I have spent too much time on social networks like Facebook over the last few months. I will cut that stuff down to a minimum to be able to have more time to relax and rejuvenate. And to keep up with the writing on this blog and other important stuff.

2. Realise that you don’t have to do everything you do.

And that the sky might not fall if you do/don’t do something. One thing that’s stopping people from improving themselves or just finding time for themselves is all the things they ”have” to do. You don’t really have to do anything.

Try to look at it as you choosing what to do instead.

Of course, if you choose to do or not to do something there will be consequences. Sometimes big, sometimes small. Sometimes bad, sometimes good. Sometimes one thing disguised as the opposite.

But the point is to take control of your life and feel like you choose. Instead of having your world choosing and controlling your life. This makes it easier to find out what isn’t really that important and eliminate or reduce to free up time for more interesting things.

3. Show up and just do it.

When you have found out what you are actually doing with your time and let go of some of the things you “had to do” then show up and just do the rest.

Instead of procrastinating, instead of thinking, instead of hoping someone else will do it or take an initiative, instead of rationalizing and inventing excuses for not doing something establish the habit of just doing it.

Most of the time you need to do it anyway sometime in the future and until you are more or less forced you’ll just waste a lot of time procrastinating and thinking – and feeling bad - about having to do whatever you need to do. And if you wait for someone else to do something about it can take a lot of time before someone does so. Establishing this habit can be a bit difficult if you are used to thinking - or over thinking - a lot.

One useful way that I’ve found to develop this habit is simply to not identify so much with my thoughts and emotions and realize that I can control them instead of the other way around. I still think you should think a bit. But after that it’s most often just better to go and do whatever you want to do.

What is your best tip for freeing up more time for yourself?

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by vramak (license).

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”
Anthony Robbins

Maybe the biggest problem people have when trying to improve something in their lives is that they never take much action at all.

Perhaps the second biggest problem is that they don’t take consistent action over a longer time period.

Now, consistency isn’t really the sexiest or most exciting word in personal development. But it is, coupled with time, what will give you real results in your life. Sticking with the program and doing something consistently – and not just when you feel inspired or something like that – is very, very powerful.

To me it’s also – at least at the moment – one of the most frustrating parts of personal development. Some days go great. Some days really don’t. Quite a few days wind up somewhere in between.

I’ve been able to become more consistent in many areas and there is no thing as perfection where every day is plain awesome. So no point in striving for some illusory perfection in any part of life. And variation and setbacks are stimulating and valuable parts of life. But still, improvements can be made.

These tips can be used to make it easier to get through the period that is needed to establish a new habit in your life (about 21-45 days or so in my experience). They can also be used after a habit is established because even then you will have bad days or slip up.

1. Use a morning ritual.

This is perhaps the most powerful tip I have found so far in this area. You simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. That’s one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day. Read all about my and other people’s morning rituals in this article.

2. Do things even if you don’t feel like it.

Your inner voice and feelings can be disregarded if you like. You can do whatever you want to do anyway.

3. Don’t hurt yourself.

Realize that when you disappoint yourself and don’t think and do as you really deep down want to you hurt yourself by lowering your self esteem. Whatever you do during your day sends signals back to yourself about what kind of person you are. Do the right thing like being effective, kind or go to the gym and you feel good. Get lazy, negative or just plain mean and you tend to feel worse after a while. You don’t get away, there is no escaping yourself. And there is always a price to pay. This is a powerful motivator to become a better person.

4. Focus on and take responsibility for the process, not the potential results.

I use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up and doing my workout. The results – 26 pounds lost during this spring - has come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”.

Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

5. Find and do what you love or like to do.

It always easier to stick with the program if you love or at least like what you are doing every week. So experiment and find what suits you best.

6. Let go of old self images.

A few years ago I saw myself as someone who didn’t eat healthy food or was athletic and worked out. Even when I started to do that a bit more I still kinda felt like the person I used to feel like when I was living in an unhealthy way.  Over time I started to think more and more of myself as someone who was healthy. But I still shifted back and forth between the two self-images of being a healthy person and an unhealthy person.

So since sometime around the beginning of this year I let go of that past image of myself that felt kinda comfortable but didn’t help me. Since then, as my self-image as a healthy person has become consistent in my mind, I find it much easier to work out and eat healthy food. It seems like the natural thing for me to do now.

7. Use reminders in your environment.

I have been posting about this concept for years now. What you do is simply to write down what you really want to make into a habit or a natural part of your life on a post-it, on your screensaver on the computer etc.

At the moment I use a small whiteboard on my wall that has stuff like “I make $5000/month” and “Remember to have fun” written down on it. I have found this to be very useful to keep myself on track, to keep my focus on the essential stuff and not get so distracted by everything around me.

What is your best tip for taking more consistent action?

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, that I never dog it.”

Wayne Gretzky needs no long introduction. He is the most well-known ice hockey player of all time and one of the absolute best that there has ever been.

But how did he make that happen? Here are three of Gretzky’s tips that may give some insight into his phenomenal success.

1. Remember to have fun.

“The only way a kid is going to practice is if it’s total fun for him… and it was for me.”

I think this is a step that many of us have a big problem with. Or just forget about. Especially as we grow older.

Because when you find something you really love to do it doesn’t seem like work that much anymore.

When you do something you love you don’t have to push yourself so much. You keep going because you like doing it, not just because your want to reach some goal (although that can be exciting too). Taking action also becomes natural when you doing something you really want to do. A lot of the time you can’t wait to get going with it.

So the problem many of us encounter may not be that we don’t know enough tips to keep ourselves motivated to keep going. The problem may be that we are working on the wrong thing all together.

So do you find out what you really want to do?

I certainly don’t have all the answers for that one, but one tip is just to explore life.

To just try things out and see what you love. It’s easy to have theories about what you or may not like. But you never know until you have tried it for a while in real life.

And even if you haven’t found that yet remember that you can have fun with a lot of things in life. A light attitude where you look for the fun in stuff instead of a grown up kind of attitude where just about everything can start to feel like dreary work makes life a whole lot more enjoyable.

I think it’s important to remember that it is OK to have fun. And that it is your responsibility to find and create that fun. No one is going to just give it to you.

2. Practise, practise, practise today.

“Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.”

Anyone who is really, really great at something has put in a huge amount of practice. More practice than most people are willing to put in. A big part of that of course comes from having fun with what you are doing.

But another – perhaps not as exciting – part is simply to have the self-discipline to not procrastinate and not bury yourself deep in a hole of boredom and inaction. Because some days are just rough or you have tough time getting started.

There are a lot of tips for overcoming procrastination on such days, here are three of my favorites:

• Recognize that there is more pain in procrastinating than not. If you have procrastinated a lot (like me) you might have discovered that: You procrastinate to avoid doing something that is boring, hard or something like that. You want to avoid that pain.  But after having some experience with procrastination you’ll probably realise that procrastination itself causes your more pain than actually just doing what you were supposed to. Realising the true amount of pain in the two choices will make it easier to get things done.
• Just take the first step. When you start to look too far into the future any task or project can seem close to impossible. And so you shut down because you become overwhelmed and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead. That is one of the reasons why it is good to plan for the future but then to shift your focus back to today and the present moment. Then you just focus on taking the first step today. That is all you need to focus on, nothing else. By taking the first step you change you mental state from resistant to “hey, I’m doing this, cool”. You put yourself in state where you become more positive and open, a state where you may not be enthusiastic about taking the next step after this first one but you are at least accepting it. And so you can take the next step. And the next one after that.
• Start with the hardest task of your day. Maybe you have an important call to make that you also fear might be uncomfortable. Maybe you know you have gotten behind on answering your emails and have big pile to dig into. Maybe you have the last five pages of your paper to finish. Whatever it may be, get it out of your way the first thing you do. If you start your day this way you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed and good about yourself. And the rest of the day - and your to-do list - tends to feel a lot lighter and easier to move through. It’s amazing what difference this one action makes.

3. Take the chances you get.

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

It’s easy to find a million excuses to not take a chance. To not take a risk. But as Gretzky points out, if you don’t take it then there is absolutely no way of succeeding. If you give it a shot there is always a chance that you might make it, even if the odds suck and you don’t even believe in it yourself. If you do that enough times then you will most likely have some success.

And succeeding is great. But just doing something and trying is great too. Because sometimes you will succeed. And the other times you can learn valuable lessons that will improve your skills and understanding and make it more likely that you will succeed the next time.

That’s what all the most successful people throughout history have done. They have failed more than most people and thereby learned more and in the end they have had a lot more success.

So the the absolute worst thing you can do is to try nothing at all.

Image license.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by left-hand (license).

“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere”.
Lee Iacocca

“The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.”
Voltaire

One way to make conversations a lot more awkward and unfulfilling is to bore people to half to death. Sometimes you don’t even know you are doing it (that’s at least what I have done). So today I’d like to list 7 common mistakes that I have made in conversations to help myself – and maybe someone else too – to avoid them in the future.

If you find you might make one or a few of these mistakes a bit too often don’t beat yourself up about it. That’s pointless. Just be conscious of it in your daily interactions and do the best you can to improve.

1. Babbling on.

I have found it to be helpful to be reasonably brief when, for example, telling someone a story. The long and very convoluted version seldom seems to be as appreciated as the shorter and snappier one.

Babbling on too much is, at least in my opinion, something that often comes from being too focused inward. Being too focused on yourself in a conversation.

If you instead focus more outward you’ll be less self-conscious. This reduces nervousness and slightly nonsensical babbling.

And if you focus more outward, on the people you are talking to and less on your own glorious voice and golden words you’ll be more aware of what you are saying and how the conversation is going. If you focus on the other guy/gal you’ll be more focused on getting through and you are more attentive to how your message comes across and what reactions you bring out.

2. Clinging to a topic like a drowning man.

Hanging on to a topic for too long can make a conversation boring and awkward. Often there is a natural transition from topic to topic. But if you keep coming back to the same topic over and over again or cling to it while the other(s) want to move on then you are interrupting the flow.

This can also evolve into a situation where you feel you need to be right at all costs. That’s when things tend to get really awkward. Try lightening up and letting go if you feel that is a common problem you are experiencing.

It can be interesting to listen to someone talking a lot about their passion in life. But you still have to be flexible, let the conversation flow back and forth and be mindful of the fact that not everyone will be so interested in something as you are.

A lot of the time people just want to share moments, exchange positive emotions and feel like they are connected by for example being able to relate to you in some way. I still think you talk about a hobby or passion no matter how odd it may be but it is helpful for you and the other person to avoid technical jargon, acronyms and details that only you and other enthusiasts understand.

Try to keep it simple and understandable instead. No one wants to listen to a topic that they can’t relate to in some way. Not for too long at least.

3. Being negative and whiny.

Now, it’s normal to have a bad day or just be in bad or whiny mood from time to time. But if you do it a lot or pretty much all the time, if you spend most of your time in that headspace then simply put people will probably not just be bored. They will start to avoid hanging out/talking to you.

We all have a lot going on today. And as I grow older it seems to me that people simply don’t have time or patience to listen to that negative stuff. They have more exciting things to do and more positive people that they will choose to hang out with and talk to instead.

I’d say that one of the most attractive qualities a person can have is a positive attitude and energy. It is attractive to people at your job/school, family, friends or just that cute girl/guy in the bar. And as I mentioned above, I think that one of the big things people want in any relationships is positive emotions. On a fundamental level people simply want to create a flow back and forth with people where all of you exchange positive emotions and feel good.

It is often said that enthusiasm is contagious. So is every other feeling. So not just the words you say but the mood you are in has a big effect on how people react to you and interactions and relationships develop. So be careful with your emotional states. Here is a guide to how I have improved my own attitude and maintain it at a more positive level than I used to.

4. Not listening.

Not really listening is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes people make. It has certainly been one of my biggest issues in conversations and although I think I have improved it still is.

If you are just waiting for your turn to talk instead of listening then you’ll often miss much of what is said (verbally or non-verbally). There will be a lack of genuine understanding and disconnect that makes the conversation less exciting than it could be.

Just like I mentioned in tip #1, focusing outward and on the other person and not on yourself makes it a lot easier to be a better listener.

5. Thinking it’s all about me, me, me!

So it’s pretty obvious from what you have already read so far in this article that if you focus too much on yourself then a conversation or any sort of relationship will probably become pretty boring. You will become a bad listener. You will tend to prattle on endlessly about what you like to talk about.

People are interested in themselves. That is one big reason why for example a lot of people always think everyone is thinking or talking about them and so they become shy or they don’t experience the sort of social freedom that they could.

People want to be understood and feel a connection. If you can shift your focus away from yourself, away from having your focus split between yourself and the person you are talking to then you will be a powerful and exciting exception in their week, month or life.

6. Asking a million questions.

This can become really boring pretty quickly.

A few ways to avoid this is to:

• Make statements. Mix things up and instead of asking what someone’s favorite sports team is, just declare what yours is and see what they have to say about that. And don’t be worried about making a statement the other person may not agree with. That’s ok, they won’t get mad. Instead they probably like that you are being proactive and open and are sharing what you really think instead of putting up a front to avoid a confrontation and to get them to like you.
• Try being quiet if there is a pause. There are sometimes pauses in conversations. You don’t have to be the one to always dive in and ask a new question to get thing rolling again. Try just being at ease with being quiet and let the other person continue instead.

7. Not being right here, right now.

This is perhaps the biggest mistake one can make. And if one can avoid it then many of the other problems above tend to reduce themselves.

Being present is not a magic pill but in a conversation it can be huge.

You are right there and you are listening just to what the other person is saying. You focus is not split. You are not thinking about what to say. Instead you let the conversation evolve naturally as you say what comes to mind. You are more relaxed, positive and open because you are not somewhere in the past or future reliving bad experiences or imagining some horrible scenario.

In this headspace people also tend to be funnier, more fun and exciting and playful in general. It’s like bringing out a better self but not having to rely on “having a good day” to do it.

My top three ways to reconnect with the present moment right now are:

• Paraliminals. I reviewed these guided meditation cds a few months ago on the blog and they have become my favourite way to reconnect with present. I just plop down on my bed for 25 minutes or so to relax and listen. Afterwards I feel relaxed and energized and my self-talk tends to shut down or decrease significantly for maybe half a day. This makes it a lot easier to be in the present moment and just focus on what is going on right now.
• Focus on your breathing. Take belly breaths for a minute or two and just focus on them and nothing else.
• 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. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel. You can for instance use the summer sun or rain and how it feels on your skin to connect with the present.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

The very best thing I have done  in the area of personal development so far in 2009 is to get into better shape.

I did it with one of the most popular workout programs right now, Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training for Fatloss.

Over the last four months I have used the program and by doing so I have reaped these pretty awesome benefits:

• I have lost 26 pounds. My belly is flat, I have lost quite a bit of body fat and 12 kilograms/26 pounds of weight since I last weighed myself in the very beginning of February (both I and friends/family were a bit shocked at how much I had lost, we were guessing that I maybe had lost half that weight over these months).
• My day to day energy has gone way up (at least doubled).
• I am stronger.
• I am more productive and find it easier than ever to be and stay positive.
• I may even look younger. One amusing side effect is that I also seem to look younger since I have had to show my driver’s license a few times over the last weeks in places where the age limit was 25 years (I’m 29). Haven’t had to do that in probably over three years.

Me - before and after

Here are a few photos of me. A bit of before and after I suppose.

To the left is a picture of me at a wedding in October 2008 (I couldn’t find an image that was closer to the start of my training, but I looked pretty much that way until February when I started with this program).

To the right is a picture of me from the beginning of May of 2009.

It’s pretty obvious that I was chubbier and just looking wider back then compared to now.

What is Turbulence Training?

Turbulence Training is a program consisting of downloadable e-books, audio and social support through a online forum by fitness trainer and writer Craig Ballantyne. Craig has written for magazines like Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness and Oxygen and been coaching people in Turbulence Training for years. You can see a picture of him and his dog Bally at the start of this review.

In Turbulence Training you combine brief weight lifting workouts focused on compound exercises - movements where you use many muscle groups - with about 4-6 intervals of running, cycling or body weight circuits to burn a lot of fat while maintaining/increasing your muscle mass.

Each workout takes only about 45 intense minutes all in all – this includes warm-ups and a cool down - and you do three of those per week. You shake things up and switch workout programs every fourth week to keep your body guessing – or in turbulence – and this makes it easier to keep losing fat and to avoid plateaus in your progress.

5 Reasons Why I use Turbulence Training

Besides the obvious positive health effects there are a few other good reasons why I chose Turbulence Training and why I am sticking with it. These reasons are also solutions to some of the most common reasons/excuses why people don’t get in shape and make regular exercise a part of their lives.

1. You can do it at home. You can do Turbulence Training workouts at home right now. So I have no excuses to skip workouts. This is especially great here in Sweden where we have pretty bad weather a large part of the year. Instead of going to the gym or going out running I can do a 45 minute workout right here in my apartment.
2. It’s cheap. I use two dumbbells and a stability ball for my workouts. But some of the body weight circuits can be done without any other equipment other than your own body. It doesn’t get much cheaper or simpler than that.
3. You can do it quickly. Squeezing in three 45 minute workouts a week isn’t too hard, even if you have a busy schedule. You also save a lot of time and stress by being able to skip all the travelling to and from the gym.
4. Concise and easy to understand instructions. I’m no fitness expert so I really appreciate that the workouts are laid out in a simple and easy to follow manner with pictures and detailed descriptions of each exercise. Craig also keeps things lean and focuses on the just essential stuff instead of padding out the various books in the program. He has also included a helpful Common Questions & Answers chapter in the main manual.
5. Variation. I have found that since I have increased my own energy I have also become more restless. So I appreciate that you get to switch workout programs every fourth week. And that you never actually do the same workout on two occasions in a row since you switch back and forth between an A and B (and sometimes C) workout within every four week workout schedule. This keeps things interesting.

Body weight circuits instead of regular cardio

I really don’t like jogging. Or using a stationary bike. So it has been hard for me to be consistent with cardio training over the years. I have lifted weights pretty consistently but always stopped doing cardio exercise after a couple of weeks. Body weight circuits – my favourite part of Turbulence Training – do however fit me really well.

They are quick - only about 15 minutes per workout - and I can do them right here on my own floor. A bodyweight circuit is basically a number of exercises - like pushups, planks, running in place with high knees and sitting against a wall - stringed together without any rest. After you have done about 8 such exercises in a row you get to rest for just one minute.

Then you do them all over again. And after one more minute of rest then you do them one last time. So it’s three circuits, with only 2 minutes of rest all together.

It is pretty intense, I am usually sweating and breathing like crazy after each workout.

I use the Deluxe version of Turbulence Training. It includes a whole lot of body weight exercises compared to the basic version of the program like for example a manual with 6 months of just bodyweight workouts.

What I eat

Craig says, like many other fitness experts, that your diet is the biggest part of what determines your fat loss. You can’t compensate for a bad diet no matter how much or hard you work out. So I followed the instructions from Craig and ate a lot of veggies, whole foods and kept an eye on my calories by using Fitday.com to make sure I had a calorie deficit in my diet. Sure, I slipped and cheated a bit with candy and beer and it wasn’t easy on some days but kept myself on track most of the time.

It’s not just me that got in shape

Although I am very happy with my own results so far I wanted to add a few other before and after pictures that kinda blew my socks off. Jason, Catherine, and Hal have all been a part of the 12 week Turbulence Training Transformation Contests that Craig holds a couple of times a year.

Get your own copy of Turbulence Training

There are two versions of Turbulence Training, the basic one and the Deluxe version.

The basic version of Turbulence Training includes these e-books in PDF-format plus other bonuses:

• The Turbulence Training Manual. 128 pages of advice on what to eat, general training and motivational advice and 9 specific workouts laid out for beginners, intermediate and advanced people in simple formats. You can print out your workouts and put a checkmark for every exercise and workout you have completed. This makes it easy to just follow along and track your workouts. A big part of the book are detailed descriptions with photos on how to do each exercise.
• Two Workouts especially for abs: Amazing Lower Abs & Turbulence Training for Abs.
• Bonuses for Men: The Busy Dads Workout, Turbulence Training for Mass and the DB-BW Fusion Workout.
• Bonuses for Women: Fit Yummy Mummy by Holly Rigsby, Mastering the Fat Loss Mindset and Turbulence Training for Women.
• The 4 Week Bodyweight Workout.
• The Fusion Fat Loss Program (includes specific instructions for mealplans that Craig uses himself to get really lean).
• The Nutrition Guide by Dr. Chris Mohr. A short and simple guide on what and how much to eat.
• Tranformations Secrets. Interviews done with Craig and other fitness experts like Brad Pilon.
• 30-Day for Maximum Fat Loss Workout.
• A one hour interview with Craig in mp3 format where he explains what Turbulence Training is and how it works.
• 1 month forum access. You get access to Craig’s online forum where you can ask questions and get social support from other members. The forums are quite active and Craig is too as he seems to check out most discussions and answers any questions people have.

The Deluxe version of Turbulence Training includes all of the stuff above plus 9 months of workouts in these 5 body weight workout e-books:

• The Turbulence Training 6-Month Bodyweight Manual.
• The Bodyweight 500 Workout Challenge.
• The Athletes 8-Week Training Program.
• The Ultimate Advanced Bodyweight Workout.
• The Bodyweight 1000 Fat Burning Challenge.

The basic version of Turbulence Training costs 39.95 dollars and the Deluxe version goes for 97 dollars (but if you like you can split that into two payments of 48.50 dollars each). And Craig offers a 60 Day Money Back Guarantee with no questions asked.

So if you want to get in better shape over the summer and for life click here to get the basic version of Turbulence Training + the bonuses.

Or click here to get the Deluxe version with all the extra body weight workouts + all the bonuses.

60 Day Money Back Guarantee with no questions asked so there is no risk for you.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by ePi.Longo (license).

One big problem for people is that they are inconsistent. Some day go really well.  Some days don’t.

So how can you increase the number of positive and effective days? Maybe the best way I have found so far is to make sure you have good and consistent start to your day.

I do this by using a morning ritual.

Why is it helpful to start your day with a specific morning ritual?

Basically, what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. That’s one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day.

My morning ritual

• Get up, drink a glass of water. You get dehydrated when you are asleep.
• Pull the blinds from my windows and open a window to let in the sun and more fresh air.
• Eat breakfast and drink a cup of green tea.
• Brush my teeth and tongue.
• Make my bed.
• Declutter for a few minutes. I wash any remaining dishes from yesterday. I put anything that is out place back into it’s right place. I clean up my workspace so it’s clean and organized.

Basically, I center myself and get into an organized and productive mindset by doing these simple things to order and clean up my environment. It is also a good way to warm up for your day, get out of a procrastinating mindset and it makes it easier to consistently take the next step where I start doing the most important thing right now.

I have also started to use a Paraliminal each day over the last week or so after doing my morning ritual. This helps me to for example strengthen my motivation, to cut down on self-talk significantly for many hours and generally keeps me more focused and effective during the day.

My ritual is very simple but it really improves my consistency on a day to day basis. It lets me slip into the right mindset at the start of each day. I highly recommend coming up with own ritual and using it every morning for 30 days.

My ritual is still under construction and I’m optimizing it.

So I’m curious: are you using a morning ritual and how is your ritual set up?

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon. Thanks a lot! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Today I’d like to take a break from long articles and just focus on one practical tip you can use right now or whenever you need it.

A few years ago – well, probably 10 years ago by now – I discovered a really good way to get rid of hiccups. It has worked every time I have used it. In the following years I have told family and friends about it and as far as I can remember it has worked as well for them as it has for me.

You need to focus

Here’s what you do. When you have the hiccups just focus your eyes and attention on something in front of you. Maybe it’s a road sign, a painting or some other object. Focus on just that thing. Don’t let anything or anyone else enter your field of focus. Just focus 100% of your attention on that object. Do so for a minute or two and you should have stopped hiccupping.

Why does it work?

My theory, and it’s just a theory, is that hiccups continue because the person having them focuses too much on wanting them to stop. Just like in the case of much of the mind made suffering in our lives it is fed by you focusing on it and giving it more mental energy. If you shift your focus totally away from thinking about it and just stare at that object in front of you then you stop feeding the hiccups with mental energy. And so they vanish.

This explanation may of course be totally wrong. But the trick still puts a stop to those annoying hiccups.

What is your best tip for getting rid of the hiccups?

Image by sergis blog (license).

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

“The great breakthrough in your life comes when you realize that you can learn anything you need to learn to accomplish any goal that you set for yourself.”

”Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.”

“Success comes when you do what you love to do, and commit to being the best in your field.”

One of my absolute favourite personal development people is Brian Tracy. He has written many, many books about success, effectiveness and leadership.

What do I like about him?

• He gets to the point quickly. Brian Tracy is one of the most concise writers I have found in the personal development niche so far.
• His products are often jampacked with practical value. You get stuff you can use when you buy one of his products rather than just a few tips and a lot of motivational padding.

Here are just 11 of my favourite tips from Brain Tracy at the moment.

If you want to learn much more I highly recommend checking out books – either in paper or audio form - like Time Power and The Psychology of Achievement. Also, check out the Focus & Concentration Paraliminal, it’s my favourite to sharpen my focus and boost effectiveness.

1. Change your self image.

“The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.”

“We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.”

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”

You will often stop yourself from doing stuff that “just isn’t you”. But when that stuff is the new normal, the stuff you just do because you are you then it becomes a lot easier.

How can you change your own self image?

Here’s what I used to see myself as a fit and healthy person rather than a person who dabbles in such stuff occasionally:

• A ton of proof. Your mind needs proof that you are this new person. The proof is the experiences you have had. So if you really dive in and immerse yourself in something like fitness and work out every other/every day, read a lot about it all and are eating healthy stuff in a conscious way you change a lot about your day to day living environment. Expanding your comfort zone like this will quickly give you a lot of experiences and so the change can come about quicker than if you dabble a bit with it for a few years.
• Let go of your old self image. In my experience you can shift back and forth between two self images. I think at some point you have to make a shift and let your old identity go if you want to grow. It may be your identity when it comes to health. Or money. Or socially. The problem is that the old image is so familiar and reassuring that your mind may not want to let go. I recommend checking out Let Go! to learn how to better let go of your past self image and other things in your life.

2. Create helpful habits.

“Successful people are simply those with successful habits.”

Pretty simple. Our habits are what we tend to do consistently in our day to day life and so they control our success - or lack of it - very much.

What are successful habits? Some you can find in this article. A few others are:

• Do the most productive thing right now.
• Do one thing at a time.
• Do things even when you don’t feel like it.

How do you install them in your life? Two tips:

• The 30 day challenge. You have probably read about this old personal development concept before. Basically, you make a deal with yourself to do one thing for just 30 days (one example: exercise every day) and no more than that. But after those 30 days you may discover that your mind will have become so accustomed to this new behaviour that it will be easier to continue doing it than stop doing it.
• Just focus on the process. While doing something for those 30 days you focus on the process rather than the results. I for instance use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up – even the days when I don’t feel like it - and doing my workout. The results come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action and establish the new habit when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”. Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

3. Focus on what is useful.

“Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience.”

“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.”

This is very important and something I think many people don’t grasp the full extent of. I certainly didn’t before. When your focus is split, when you fill your mind just the “normal amount” of negativity or dwell on for example mistakes you are using up valuable time, energy and available focus to pull yourself backwards and to make mountains out of molehills.

Problems seem to become bigger in your mind than they actually are when you dwell on them. But so does, for example, opportunities and gratitude. Your surrounding reality is huge. And the room for interpretations of that reality is wide. What you focus is what you will see in your reality (opportunities vs. more reasons why things suck). What you dwell on becomes bigger and bigger in your mind. And what you think about is what you will act upon.

That’s basically why it’s absolutely crucial to keep your focus and your thoughts in right place and on the positive and useful things in your life as consistently as you can. If you focus on the negative and irrelevant stuff it is quite likely that you never get all those most important things done.

4. Set clear goals. And write them down.

“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.”

To be able to focus consistently on what you want you can use goals. If you use them, write down so they transform from thoughts into something physical and real. You can use that piece of paper as a reminder - posted on a wall for example - later on to keep your focus in the right place each and every day.

5. Ask yourself helpful questions.

“After every difficulty, ask yourself two questions: “What did I do right?” and “What would I do differently?”

The questions you ask yourself in life determine much of your outlook and success. If you ask disempowering questions like “what sucks about this?” in any situation then you are creating a lot of unhappiness and victim thinking. If you on the other hand keep it on a useful and empowering level with questions like the ones from Tracy then your chances of succeeding goes up.

You can find more empowering questions in 11 Questions That Could Help You to Vastly Improve the Quality of Your Life in 2009.

6. Luck is predictable.

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.”

People who take the action and more chances in life tend to get the luck. If you never take chances or action you don’t get the opportunity to get lucky. You might just sit around doing nothing and rationalize it as “being unlucky”.

Also, if someone focuses on what s/he wants s/he tend to find more opportunities and other useful things that someone with a negative focus will simply not “be lucky enough” to see.

7. Focus on the activities that brings you results.

“Most people engage in activities that are tension-relieving rather than goal-achieving.”

This is very true. People love to just take it easy or relieve tension – and create more of it – by procrastinating and complaining instead of doing. It seems easier on the surface but in the long haul it tends to cause you more pain.

Of course, you must take time to relax too. But find a good and helpful balance for the two aspects of life and the best ways and most positive ways to relieve tension. Three suggestions could be regular exercise, meditation in some form or just watching a good movie.

8. Realize that you have to pay the price.

“The price of success must be paid in full, in advance.”

Nothing you really want in life is free. You have to put in hard work to get it. And usually over a long time period. You have to make hard choices and sacrifices.

Now, doing so can produce a lot of happiness along the way and when you reach your destination. But when you take the step from comfortable dreams about success and happiness to actually start doing things then there is always a price to pay. So be prepared for that.

9. Keep going.

“Every great success is an accumulation of thousands of ordinary efforts that no one else sees or appreciates.”

That’s what people like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Bruce Springsteen did. They practiced a lot.

How do you put in all that time and effort if no will reward you right now? Well, you find things you love doing, things you do for yourself – rather than to get someone else’s attention and appreciation – and when things feel rough you just do what you know is the right thing to do anyway. You keep going with persistence but also simple the joy of doing what you love as two supporting friends.

10. Make a decision. Any decision. Just do something.

“Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.”

I harp on about this a lot on the blog from time to time. That’s because it’s one of the most fundamental things that hold people back. Sitting on you hands and hoping that someone else will do something for you usually results in a lot of waiting.

Just make a decision. Try something. The sky will most likely not fall if you fail. You will just feel bad for a short while and learn a few things from asking the question in tip # 5. Then you make new decision based on what you learned and take action again.

11. Take responsibility for your life.

“The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.”

“The more you like yourself, the better you perform in everything that you do.”

“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem and personal satisfaction.”

A lot of the tips in this article are based in taking full responsibility for your own life. When you do that you will start doing many of these things naturally like making decisions, putting in hard work and really trying to keep your focus in the right place.

When you decide to take responsibility for your life and doing what you know deep down is right – for example, going to gym instead of lying on the couch eating potato chips – you increase your esteem of yourself. You like yourself more and more as your self esteem goes up.

When your self esteem goes up you feel more worthy of any success and you are less likely to self sabotage in subtle and not so subtle ways. This is crucial and ties back to tip # 1. You tend to behave in alignment with your own self image.

Taking responsibility for your own life and doing the right thing are not the only things you can do to increase your self esteem and success. Another powerful tip is to like/love other people. Why? Because how you view, judge and think about people is usually how you view, judge and think about yourself.

This may sound a bit weird. But try it out for a week or two and see how it affects your view of yourself and your life. You may be surprised.

If you found this article helpful, please give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon and share it on Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by *Zara (license).

“When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone.”
George O’Neil

“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility.”
Albert Einstein

“Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own”
Bruce Lee

Who will save you and finally solve your problems?

Tony Robbins?
Eckhart Tolle?
Oprah?

Nope. The one that will save you is the guy/girl in the mirror.

You have to become your own guru.

What does that mean?

Well, to me it means that you have to consciously decide to become the highest authority in your own life. That you have to take full responsibility for your own life instead of trying to put it on Tony Robbins and blame him when things don’t work out quite the way you wanted them to.

It means that you don’t have to hang on to one guru like s/he is a life preserver but that you can be your own guru that mixes and matches what works for you. That you practically experiment, keep what works for you and discard the rest.

Remember to still take leaps of faith

Here is a tricky part. To be your own guru doesn’t mean that you dismiss all the useful and great advice from other people or books and blogs. I think it is easy to fall into this trap. You let your ego run wild and feel like you are the smartest person around.

This leads to you not being as open as before. And so you may dismiss advice and opportunities that could help you to grow to the next level.

So as you are your own guru you also have to be open to the fact that you don’t know everything. And it is helpful to understand that on one really does. Because then you understand that a guru is in the end just a person. And so you can stop putting him way up there at unreachable heights and yourself way down here. This insight loosens up and lessens the inner boundaries that you have set for your own potential.

Now, to grow we must often take leaps of faith.

Sure, I thought that much of this personal development stuff was empty motivational nonsense or just scams a few years ago. I thought that Eckhart Tolle’s stuff – like the Power of Now and A New Earth – was a bit vague, new agey and weird. Still, I took leaps of faith and learning about this stuff and applying it has really help me out in life.

So don’t confuse being your own guru with knowing everything and dismissing anything you might feel resistance towards. It is actually the things we resist or fear on some level that will often help us to grow the most if we move towards them.

Find and decide what you and are your life is all about

In the end now one knows or understands exactly what you dream about and all the positive and negative experiences you have been through. No one can know you better than you know yourself.

No one can take responsibility for what will happen in the rest of your life but you. This is scarier than trying to push that responsibility on to someone else. But it also can also set you free.

Free to experiment with your own and other people’s thoughts and find what works best for you.
Free to find who you really are deep inside.
Free as you realize that yes, no one is coming to save you, but on the other hand you can create your own life and path through it.

People can help and support you. But in the end you have to take responsibility, become your own guru and decide what you and the rest of your life will be about.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Twitter and give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

If you have visited the blog in the last few days you may have noticed that it looks kinda the same but also different. That’s because I have updated it to the latest version of Wordpress and I am using a new Wordpress theme called Thesis.

I’d like to do a review with my impressions of the Thesis theme for all you fellow bloggers out there in the readership.

Easier , faster and safer blogging with Thesis

As you may know, the Thesis Theme was created by Chris Pearson (I’ve been a fan of his work for some time so this contributed to my decision to buy) and created/marketed by Brian Clark of Copyblogger fame. It is used by famous bloggers such as Matt Cutts at Google, Darren Rowse and SEO guru Michael Gray.

Now, here are my impressions of the Thesis theme:

• Beautiful typography and spaces. The new design structure looks quite similar to the old one. But with the new typography and right proportions of white space etc. it just feels more professional, beautiful and calming to look at.
• Flexible and easy to change and customize. There is a ton of options in the Wordpress panel that makes it easy to customize your theme without needing to go in and change a lot of code in your templates.
• SEO optimization. Thesis has a lot of built-in SEO functions and is designed to perform very well on Google etc. For me, it’s too early to know how Thesis will affect my search rankings. But I have already found that, for example, the ability to change the meta description for each individual post - and finally have a good description for the homepage - can be pretty useful.
• Less worry about breaking the site. You use separate files to customize your Thesis and to add new functions. I like this because then I don’t have to worry so much about breaking my blog since I’m never in the core files tinkering around. This was a problem with the old theme I used. It caused me to lose hours on boring work and made me slightly panicked from time to time as things fell apart. Paying for this theme just to have that problem out of my life for the next few years seems like a pretty good deal to me.
• Lifetime support and free upgrades. When you buy Thesis you get support via their helpful forum and also free upgrades of the theme for life.

To sum it up, Thesis is very helpful for someone like me that isn’t too good at the technical stuff and at customizing a lot of the code in a blog. This will save me time – and cause less worry about breaking the blog – and still leave me with a lot of design options over the coming years to easily change the look and functions of the blog however I want to.

So is Thesis worth the 87 dollars I paid? Yes, to me it is. I look at this from a longer time perspective. 87 dollars for a more professional looking blog and two, three or more years of support, upgrades and easy ways to customize the look and functions of my blog is certainly worth it to me.

Clicking here to get your own copy of the Thesis Theme

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Note: This is a guest post by Vlad Dolezal of An Amazing Mind.

While explaining stress management to an audience, the lecturer raised a glass of water and asked ‘How heavy is this glass of water?’  Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter.  It depends on how long you try to hold it.  If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem.  If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm.  If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance.  In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”

He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management.  If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on.”

“As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.”

“So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down.  Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow.  Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.”

Here are 5 simple ways to increase your peace of mind:

1. Do your most daunting task first thing in the morning

It’s tempting to start your day with easy tasks. Don’t. Pushing a daunting task back is like holding a glass of water in an outstretched arm. At first nothing happens, but if you do it for hours or even days, you will soon feel the stress. Do the most annoying task first thing in the morning, and enjoy increased productivity and peace of mind for the rest of the day.

2. Let go of things you don’t control

You make plans to go outside with friends. But at the last minute, it starts raining. What’s your reaction?

Some people upset and angry, and find the nearest person and start complaining to them. “It’s not FAIR that it’s raining. This _always_ happens to me!…”

That’s not going to accomplish anything - the rain won’t stop just because you throw a tantrum. *The rain doesn’t care.* So make the best of the situation. What I do in such situation is go for a quick walk in the park (because rain has its own awesomeness), or just lie in bed reading a good Terry Pratchett book, listening to the rain beating on my window.

Make the most of what you do control, and don’t worry about what you don’t.

3. Don’t worry about what others are thinking

I used to be very self-conscious about my dancing. I would rarely go out with my friends, and even if I did, I wouldn’t dance, instead just standing awkwardly by the side, because I was worried of what others would think.

Then, one day in high school, I decided that enough was enough. So the next time I went out with my friends, I just went to the dance floor, and danced like nobody was watching. And the funny thing was - nobody cared. In fact, people only liked me MORE, because I was having fun.

Don’t worry about what others are thinking of you - most likely they’re too busy wondering what others are thinking of them.

4. List 3 things you love about your situation right now

I first shared this technique with the Positivity Blog readers in my post The Plague of Happiness Ever After (it’s got a dragon and everything in it, read it!)

Just list 3 simple things about any part of your life that you love. Like “3 simple things I love about the room I’m in right now”, or “3 simple things I love about this week”, or anything else.
This is a great technique if you’re ever bored while stuck in traffic, or waiting in the grocery store checkout lane. You can immediately transform boredom into happiness and peace of mind!

5. Walk to a window, look outside, and take a single deep breath

I got this technique from the Zen master Mary Jaksch. Just walk to a window, look outside, and then take a single deep breath, focusing only on that breath and nothing else in the whole world. This technique sounds extremely simple, but you won’t believe how much it can instantaneously increase your peace of mind.

And because this is the last tip, you can try it immediately when you finish reading this blog post. Just walk to a window, look outside, and take a single deep breath, focusing on the air going in and out of your lungs, and nothing else.

Check out Vlad’s blog to get even more happiness in the now! It’s got psychology, personal growth, and a crapton of attitude!

Image by kwerfeldein (license).

If you like this article, please share it on Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by notsogoodphotography (license).

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.“
George Bernard Shaw

One of the biggest mistakes I believe people make when trying to improve their lives is one of the simplest. They just don‘t take action based what they learn from blogs or books.

And that‘s no good at all.

If you aren’t already taking action and doing so consistently you really need to start now. Here are five powerful reasons why.

1. No one is coming.

This may sound a bit harsh. But the sooner you realize that no one else will do this for you the quicker you will improve your life.

Personal responsibility is essential to improve and control your own life. Without that what you want will stay a dream or a sporadic activity/dabbling that leads to pretty much nothing in the long term.

You can blame your problems and lack of success on anyone you like and waste your time and energy. You can get help from family, friends, books or blogs. But your life is your responsibility and it’s up to you to create in the way you choose to.

2. Apply the knowledge or it is pretty worthless a lot of the time.

Yeah, reading this blog, other blogs or books can make you feel good. You are learning about all of this awesome and useful information so it kinda feels like you are making progress and improving your life.

Now, reading positive and helpful material can help motivate you in a world where you may be surrounded by more negative inputs like the news or people around you. Nothing wrong with that. I personally find it to be a good habit to spend a bit of time with a good personal development book rather than an extra half hour a day watching the news.

But I believe that many people fool themselves into thinking that reading in some way will replace action. That reading will take care of your problems in some magical way. I used to think so. It´s at the same time a pleasurable and frustrating headspace to be in. You tend to read a lot and think that the next thing will be the magic pill that will finally solve your problem.

3. You understand by doing.

There are no real magic pills of course. That idea is created by immaturity in person who still thinks to him/herself: “Mommy, it want it now!”.

When you read a lot you think that you understand things. But you never really understand anything until your experience it. Yes, knowledge can help you to avoid pitfalls and improve quicker. But it can’t relate how it feels to experience something. And it can’t relate how you experience something since we are all a bit different from each other.

When you start doing things you might also discover that things are often a bit more messy in real life than in books where it may seem like you only have to follow a clean ten step method to get the results you want. But that’s part of the fun of living life rather than just thinking and reading about it.

4. You raise your self-esteem.

One of the hardest things to do in life is to do the right thing. What you think is the right thing. Not what you friends, family, teachers, boss and society thinks is the right thing.

What is the right thing? That’s up to you to decide. Often you have a little voice in your head that tells what the right thing is. Or a gut feeling.

It might tell you to get up from the couch, stop eating those snacks and go to the gym instead. Sometimes you will put your exercise clothes on and go. Sometimes you will not.

Creating a habit where you take action every day and do the right thing is not just important to get the results you want. To me it’s very important to raise self-esteem and keep it up.

If I do the right things today I feel really good about myself. If I don’t then I don’t feel good about myself.

A common question that I get is: “How can I raise my self-esteem?”. The answer is not an easy answer of course (otherwise people wouldn’t have so much self-esteem problems in the world today). I believe that taking action and doing the right thing consistently  (your self-esteem not something you can just “fix” by doing one thing one time) is a big part of the answer. Because when you do the right and (often) hard thing instead of being lazy or wuzzing out your esteem of yourself goes up.

5. Time will pass no matter what you do.

“A year from now you may wish you had started today.”
Karen Lamb.

Your life is not endless. Your time is one the most important things in your life. Don’t waste a huge chunk of it. Start taking action towards what you really want out of life today.

If you like this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by pasotraspaso (license).

“Our thoughts create our reality – where we put our focus is the direction we tend to go.”
Peter McWilliams

“Loving people live in loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.”
Wayne Dyer

What are you focusing on today?

Are you dwelling endlessly on the negative or irrelevant details in work or people or are you appreciating the positive aspects and what you have in life?

Are you focusing on your most important tasks or goals or are you filling up your time by doing the usual busywork or stuff that might be easier mentally and emotionally to get done?

Are you focused at all? Or are you interrupting your focus by checking your Facebook or inbox a dozen times today or splitting it as you try to get three things done at once?

Are you using your focus in the best way you know?

It is tempting to think of life and the improvement of it as something your do over a long time by for example achieving big goals sometime in the future. But creating a happier life for yourself is about today too.

What you keep your focus on most of the time tends to expand in your life. Stuff like misery. Or stress. Or gratefulness. Or openness. And what you keep your focus on most of the time tends to become your mental habits. And your habits have a huge influence on the actions you take – or don’t take – and how your life develops.

How to better make use of your focus.

Now, it’s easy to say that you should make better use of your focus and keep it steady and on the useful things in your daily life. But how do you do it (besides by having goals you really, really, really want to achieve)? A few of my favourite tips:

Exercise.

Maybe not the most surprising or exciting answer in the world. But since I started to exercise more – by for example using body weight circuits for cardio training - of the last few months I have noticed two aspects. Things feel lighter. And I have more energy to use. By lighter I don’t mean that I am more powerful when I try to lift weights. I mean that life tends to feel lighter to handle. The things and tasks that felt heavy to handle before become lighter and easier to manage.

I find that I naturally feel more energetic and positive without having to do anything mentally. It’s kinda automatic. And I just have more energy to use through out the day. I don’t get bogged down in negative or irrelevant stuff later on in the day- when fatigue used to set in – as easily anymore.

This won’t make a difference today but if you just start getting in better shape by exercising you will probably notice these effects within a few weeks.

Ask yourself helpful questions.

Be alert. Ask yourself questions throughout the day. Questions like the ones that begun this article. Or a questions like:

What’s awesome about this situation?

Is this useful?

Will this matter 5 years from now?

Whenever you feel like you are heading down a path of irrelevant thoughts, distractions or a negative thought loop slow down. Be still. Reconnect with the present by taking a few dozen belly breaths and just focusing on your breath. Or use your senses to focus on what’s in front of you and around you. And stay there for a minute or two. That might be all you need.

If you need something more, try asking yourself a question like the ones above to snap yourself into a better headspace.

The more your use things like these, the more your gain control over what you are focusing on. It might not work splendidly the first time. You have to get used to it and your mind has to get used to it too. As inner resistance fades, as you become more skilled and as you gain more understanding of what you respond to the best it will be easier to keep your focus where you want it to be.

Journal.

Use a journal. Write down what you have been thinking. Where your mental dialogue has gone today. How much mental dialogue you have had and much time you have been in it. And how much time you have just been present and not focused on the past or future.

You might not remember everything you thought about. But this can give an idea of your overall tendencies, just like a food journal can keep things real and inform you about what you are actually eating in a day (rather than what you think you are eating).

Use a cone of silence.

As best you can, create a cone of silence around you as you work. That means unplugging stuff like your internet cable - this will make you focus and stop all that forum/email/Facebook stuff - and phone. Shut your door to decrease noise and interruptions. You can also unclutter your desk for example to create a cone that is even nicer and filled with less mental distractions. Yeah, you might not be able to do all those things where you work. But do the best you can.

Be careful. What you focus on – both in the long term and in your daily life – makes a world of difference.

Keeping your focus steady and on the right things can help you improve your effectiveness and lower your stress levels. But it’s also important on a large scale for all your todays and your overall life. And not just to help you make more money or getting in even better shape. For example, the Wayne Dyer quote at the start of this article is pretty accurate. Your focus is one of the most precious things you have.

If you like this article, please share it on Stumbleupon and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.

Image by Wolfgang Staudt (license).

“Let him that would move the world first move himself.”
Socrates

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Plato

“Nothing endures but change.”
Heraclitus

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
Pericles

Obviously, old greeks like Plato, Epictetus and Aristotle were really sharp. And what they talked about over 2000 years ago is just as relevant and useful today. Our outer circumstances may have changed dramatically over the last few thousands of years, but on the inside we seem to have stayed pretty much the same in many ways.

Here are just 7 of my favourite fundamentals from that place and time. I hope you will find them as helpful as I have.

1. If you are going your own way, prepare for reactions.

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
Epictetus

I believe this is very relevant to self-improvement. And something that is holding people back, no matter how much tips or knowledge they have about how to make their lives better. The fear of social rejection is strong in many people.

If you start changing then people may react in different ways. Some may be happy for you. Some may be indifferent. Some may be puzzled or react in negative and discouraging ways.

And that’s OK. Most likely they won’t react as negatively as you may imagine. Or they will probably at least go back to focusing on their own challenges pretty soon.

2. To get what you really dream about out of life, you have to wo/man up.

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
Aristotle

So to make some real changes you must accept that you may look foolish. You will need courage to actually apply what you have learned on this blog or through other sources. This is one common sticking point. The problem is not that you don’t have the correct tips or solutions. It’s simply that you avoid facing what you fear (even though you mind might still be telling you that the solution does not lie there but rather in gathering more information).

If this is something that you do often then you have to increase your courage. So, how can you do that?

You have to take action and face your fear.

Maybe not what you want to hear, but in my experience and from what I have learned from others this is probably the best way to build courage and self confidence.

You can make this - that may seem terrifying - a bit easier. Three of my own favourite tips for doing that are:

• Be curious. When you are stuck in fear you are closed up. You tend to create division in your world and mind. You create barriers between you and other things/people. When you shift to being curious your perceptions and the world just opens up. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear. How do you become more curious? One way is to remember how life has become more fun in the past thanks to your curiosity and to remember all the cool things it helped you to discover and experience.
• Be present. This will help you snap out of over thinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done. This is also probably the best tip I have found so far for taking more action in life since it puts you in a state where you feel little emotional resistance to the work you’ll do. One of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on your breathing for a minute or two.
• Realize that failure won’t kill you. It is when you face your fears that you discover the thing that billions of people throughout history have discovered before you. Failure won’t kill you. Nor will being wrong. The sky will not fall down. That’s just what people that haven’t faced their fear yet think. Failure is actually a great way to learn things about yourself and life. And to make yourself tougher and more courageous.

3. What they say might not really be about you.

“People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.”

“The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.”
~ Aesop

Criticism that may be valid should be taken seriously. But negativity directed towards you is pretty seldom about you. It’s more about someone else having a bad day, week or year and directing their negative energy at anyone passing by in their life.

This ties back to fundamental #1. So much complaining and negativity that people put out into the world is about how they feel about themselves and their lives. The problem is just that we are often so focused on own lives that we take every negative thing said to us personally. But the world doesn’t revolve around me or you.

So remember those two quotes when someone’s directing negativity towards you.

And more importantly, remember those quotes when you feel the need to lash out towards someone. Ask yourself what the real problem in your life is. And what you can do about it.

Instead of just lashing out and feeding more negativity into your and someone else’s life.

One thing you can pretty sure of is that the more people try to boost their own value and temporary positive feelings by putting someone else down, the worse they feel about themselves and their lives. And that goes for you and me too of course.

4. Discard the things that aren’t helping you.

“The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.”
Antisthenes

Some of what you learn in life is simply social conditioning that is fed to you over and over as you grow up. And so you believe that it is true. But you have to realize that some of the things you have picked up may not serve you in the best way. But you may have simply grown so comfortable with those beliefs that you cling to them – no matter how negative they are – like a safety blanket.

Another thing is that was once true for you may not be anymore. As you improve yourself you have to let go of your past and your old self-image to be able to move forward fully. You have to accept that you have changed and then keep your focus steadily on your new areas of interest so you don’t slip back into your old - and so familiar and comfortable - self over and over again.

Also, if you have learned read a lot about personal development then you might have a lot of tips on different topics in your head. To simplify your life and thinking you might not need 25 ways to handle nervousness.

Articles with that many tips can be helpful but it’s important to try that stuff out for yourself and see what tips that work most effectively for you. And then simplify so you always know what action to take if you get nervous for example. Instead of having your mind so cluttered with information that you become paralyzed and take no action at all.

5. Your wishes may not be all that they are cracked up to be.

“We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.”
Aesop

Here is one of those beliefs that you may hold but may want to let go off to live a happier life.

We wish for something. A new car, a new job, a new relationship or perhaps a new pair of shoes. And perhaps you think: “if I only get this thing, then I’m home, then I’ll feel happy and good all around”.

And then you get it. And it’s awesome. But often for just a while. And then you may feel like maybe something went a bit wrong. Like it didn’t fulfil you or complete you like you thought it would.

Why? Well, after while when you get used to something, when it becomes normal, then the ego tends to want more once again.

Or maybe you can’t enjoy something for what it is because even though your environment changes, you are still the same. The same person with the same outlook on life. With the same self-imposed barriers for your own success and happiness and maybe self-sabotaging behaviour. And until you take a look at those things you may find yourself repeating the same patterns over and over. When you are the same, you often tend to get the same results over and over again.

Our wishes can also often come through accompanied by unexpected and not so pleasant side effects. Things may seem just perfect when you dream about them. In reality, it can become a little more complicated and messy.

Now, new things or people can be great. But if you think this one thing or person will fix all your problems or focus on the wrong aspects – what is not perfect, how can I get more etc. – instead of the positives and gratitude then you may find yourself always looking for the next thing and create quite a bit of unhappiness within.

6. Focus on building helpful habits.

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

Becoming really good at something or making real improvement in your life isn’t about short spurts now and then when you feel like it. It’s about habits and consistency.

There is ton of information on how to build habit, both online and in books. Here are just two tips that have been helpful for me to establish new habits in my life.

• The 30 day challenge. You have probably read about this old personal development concept from for example Steve Pavlina. Basically, you make a deal with yourself to do one thing for just 30 days (one example: exercise every day) and no more than that. But after those 30 days you may discover that your mind will have become so accustomed to this new behaviour that it will be easier to continue doing it than stop doing it.
• Just focus on the process. While doing something for those 30 days you focus on the process rather than the results. I for instance use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up – even the days when I don’t feel like it - and doing my workout. The results come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action and establish the new habit when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”. Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

7. Suffering is optional. And so is happiness.

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”

“I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?”

“It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.”
~ Epictetus

Suffering is optional. And so is happiness. What you choose to think about determines how you feel. It may seem “normal” and be common to go through a lot of mindmade suffering after the initial pain that ignited the suffering. And it’s easy to slip back into old thoroughly ingrained thought habits. But you don’t have to. You can learn to gain more control over your happiness and suffering.

One tip that I have found helpful for this is to learn to reconnect as much as possible with the present moment. Suffering is to a large extent created when your mind is thinking thoughts about either the past or a possible future. Scroll back up to fundamental # 2 for one good way to connect with the now.

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 away.

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Copyright 2006-2009 Henrik Edberg.