Being sick, no matter the illness, is never fun. Instead it’s scary, or worrisome, or annoying, or painful. You likely also feel out of control, both of your body and over the Medical Billing that may be yet to come. Unfortunately, there’s no way to eliminate all those negative feelings, besides getting healthy. But this doesn’t mean you can’t be positive – or at least as positive as possible – as your illness runs its course. Not only can doing so make you feel better about yourself, but it can also help you get better in the first place. Here are a few approaches I’ve taken in the past when dealing with an illness:

Appreciate Those Who Care for You

Whether it’s a friend, a spouse, a family member, or a nurse, the person helping you through your illness cares about you, is there for you, and wants you to get well. For this, that person should be appreciated. You can also take it a step further, and consider all those people who care about you all the time, even when you’re healthy. While your illness may bring out their support and concern, it’s always there under the surface. Use your illness as a way to stop taking that for granted.

Contextualize Your Situation

No matter your illness, there’s a good chance it could be worse. There is someone out there in worse pain than you, with a worse prognosis than you, and receiving care that is inferior to yours. While this may seem like a morose way of staying positive, the ultimate aim is to focus on yourself. Think about what your body is doing right, how hard it’s working to fight the illness, and the ways in which things could be worse. If we don’t value our bodies enough when we’re healthy, we can still appreciate how they fight for us when we’re sick.

Try to Relax

When you’re sick, there’s a lot that is outside of your control. You can’t develop a new medication or go inside your body and battle an infection, and it’s easy to get regularly caught up in these uncontrollables. The best approach, for both your mind and your body, is to try to relax. Get rest, read a book, and don’t attempt to stress yourself back into good health. Trust your body and the medication to do its job, and work to tune out your mind as much as possible. It’s not always an easy task, but I’ve found that it’s worth it.

Whatever your approach, it’s important to stay as positive as possible when battling an illness. Being sick is difficult, but all of us are better off with some sanity and peace of mind. To those of you out there suffering from an illness: stay positive. And get better soon.

Read more in: Motivation.

There are many things in life that may seem out of reach now, but it must be realized that you never have to stop growing.  You must ask yourself what you want most in life.  Then set out to get it.

Appreciate Failure

It’s important that you understand and accept that you will fail many times when attempting to achieve any major goal.  It is the goals that are most difficult to attain that are most worth achieving.

Failure is merely a stepping stone on the path to great success.  However, it is up to you to decide whether you will take that next step beyond failure or go back to your humble beginnings.

Failure offers the opportunity to growth.  It brings with it wisdom.  It shows you a way that does not work and offers suggestions of ways that might.  Failure is a gift to the determined.  It is a gift that offers insight to a new world and a new reality.

Failure sheds light on a new area in your life that few would dare enter.  You must have courage to carry on in spite of initial failure, for subsequent efforts lie outside your comfort zone.

Stay Hungry For Success

While failure will discourage the average person, it offers new hope to those who are hungry for success.  This new hope lies in new-found wisdom.  Your failures are your greatest teaching tools.  They show you what you did right and what you did wrong.  By fixing some things that you didn’t do adequately enough to succeed, you will grow your power.

Your power is your ability to succeed.  With each failure, this power is tested.  The weak will turn around and yield to the power of failure.  The strong, on the other hand, will seize the opportunity to increase their power by adding to their knowledge and their character.

Build Strength in Character and Keep Growing

Carrying on with a mission after initial failure takes a strong character.  It takes someone with an inspired vision and an unyielding passion.  If you are going after your goal with a purpose, you will keep striving for the right path until you find it.

Remember, each incorrect path you take brings you one step closer to the correct path, as long as you don’t go down that same wrong path again.

Ultimate success in life is all a matter of allowing yourself to keep growing.  Keep adding to your wisdom.  Keep experimenting with new ideas.  Keep creating new visions.  Keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself to experience all that life has to offer.

Though your greatest goals may seem out of reach now, you have the ability to keep growing in order to reach them.

About the Author

Matt Maresca is a motivational entertainer and creator of My Life Motivation, a self improvement website dedicated to helping people discover their true passion to live life with a purpose. Matt’s focus is on beginning with building self esteem and self confidence to improve your life from within.

Read more in: Motivation, Personal Development.

Once a wise man asked another man: “Can you keep a secret?” The other man eagerly replied that he could: “Then observe!” said the wise man: “So can I”

Personal self control can make the difference between a life well lived with plans and dreams realized and a sense of regret and waste.

Research stretching back years showed that children as young as four who could exert self discipline by controlling an impulse to have a sweet now so that they could have two sweets later (1) were more likely to have successful happy lives as adults. Self discipline doesn’t just make us successful it makes us happy it seems.

But self discipline isn’t just about the lottery of genetically inherited luck; something we’re either born with or not. We can all learn to control even master our immediate wants and impulses. So how do you do this? How can you purposefully strengthen your self discipline?

Step one: Exercise your discipline muscle

Just think about the language we use to describe self discipline: We talk about it being “strong” or “weak” just like a muscle. And research (2) has found that just like a muscle the more you exercise your self control the stronger it gets.

But it gets better. Exercising will power in one place (such as making ourselves work on our cherished project for a set time every day) will start to strengthen self discipline in other areas such as being able to say no to that tempting social invitation when you’d previously promised your pal you’d sit and listen to their marital problems. . So exercising self discipline specifically can strengthen it generally. But alas self discipline behaves like a muscle in another way too…

Step two: Don’t overdo it!

Exercising all day every day, lifting weights for hours on end won’t make you stronger in fact overtraining will start to weaken and waste your muscles (3)

Likewise people who have a New Years’ Resolution frenzy deciding to exert massive amounts of self discipline all over the place all at once will likely end up feeling less able to exert self control. When we exercise a muscle we deplete it of stored natural sugars (glycogen) and eventually the muscle weakens which means we need to rest. It’s the same with self control. Amazingly when you exert self discipline you actually deplete glycogen stores in your body just as with physical exertion! (4) Its even been found that ensuring your blood sugar levels are stable helps strengthen self discipline. So decide where you want to focus your self control, don’t overdo it all at once and build it up slowly.

Step three Beware of perfectionism

Having to do everything absolutely perfectly may, paradoxically, over use your supplies of will power needlessly making you less fulfilled and effective. Remember exerting self discipline drains glucose levels from the body and the perfectionist feels they have to exert their will and attempt to control everything. Feeling compelled to control all kinds of things that you really don’t need to (such as what other people say or think) is a waste of will power where it could be reserved and focussed on where you really need it. Being to perfectionist can make us give up earlier and stop trying or bothering because of the thinking error that: “If it’s not exactly as I feel it should be then it’s not worth bothering with at all!”

So remind yourself that you are only human and that you can make mistakes and you’ll actually find greater levels of self discipline.

Step four: Strongly imagine the consequences of your actions

The children in the self discipline research who were able to forgo having a marshmallow treat immediately by waiting (and thereby getting two treats!) were able to do this because they used their imaginations constructively. This is a good example of how one of nature’s finest human tools, the imagination, is meant to be used (one way it is commonly misused is through needless worrying) When you need to exert discipline and lead your own impulses really imagine the positive consequences later of being strong now. I use hypnosis with my clients, a very powerful way to access the imagination to strengthen resolve in this way.

Step five: Remind yourself who you are

When we feel like being weak we become trapped in the present (sometimes “living in the moment” isn’t so great) But it’s been found (5) that when we feel like giving into temptation stating to ourselves or even out loud our core values can give us an injection of immediate self discipline. Doing this can snap us out of tunnel vision and illuminate the bigger picture which in turn weakens the impulse. So next time you feel magnetically drawn to those doughnuts you might tell yourself: “Health and the welfare of my body is important to me!” or if someone felt compelled to treat someone else badly they might state to themselves: “Being a decent human being is important to me!” Try it.
And finally I’m reminded of the words of the ancient Roman poet Horace “Rule your mind or it will rule you.”

About Author

Mark Tyrrell regularly exerts self discipline to ensure he produces his prodigious output of articles, downloads and training, including a recent download on self discipline.

References:

1. C. and Mischel, W. (1976). Effects of temptation-inhibiting and task-facilitating plans on self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33 (2), 209-217 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.33.2.209.
2. See: Gailliot, M.T., Mead, N.L., & Baumeister, R.F. (2008). Self-Regulation, In O.P. John, R.W. Robbins & L.A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (pp. 472-491). New York: The Guilford Press.
3. See: Doug McGuff’s excellent book ‘Body by science’ 2009
4. The mind-body response of exerting willpower literally fatigues us (Tice et al., 2007). It depletes physical power, as shown in one study that looked at the effects of mental self-control on physical stamina (Bray et al., 2008). In this study, trying to control one’s thoughts decreased muscular endurance, as measured by performance and EMG activity. The researchers who conducted this study called the effect ‘central fatigue’. This all provides another reason why it might be a good idea to exercise first thing.
5. According to research conducted by Schmeichel and Vohs in 2009.

Read more in: Mastering Habits, Motivation, Productivity.

Lorraine, thank you for giving me a chance to recall once again one of the most glorious periods of my life so far.

What’s the bravest thing you ever did that you’re most proud of?

The bravest thing I’ve done in my life was, undoubtedly, moving to Ireland.

I had a dream of moving to an English speaking country. It seemed like fun. The idea was different from anything I had done up to that point in my life, and so one day I set my mind on finding a job and moving to either Ireland or UK. I was 20.

It took me around half a year to send 600+ emails to various employment agencies. The very first phone interview made me realise just how much room for improvement I had with my English. The most disappointing thing was the bad quality of connection. On a few phone calls the connection was constantly dropping, and I couldn’t hear properly what I had been told. Having asked to repeat the same question a few times in a row, I usually gave the interviewer enough information to hang up. They must have thought I didn’t speak English at all.

Still, this must have been one of the most exciting times for me. I worked like crazy during daytime, spent all my evenings and usually some of my nights studying Unix and all the topics relevant to the positions I was applying for, and greatly enjoyed this major boost in expanding my knowledge.

I played with wording the highlights of my career, and spent time talking myself through my own CV. My best friend Vitalik helped me create it. Although it was relatively easy for us to compose it, we never thought it could be so hard to read it out loud or answer relevant questions. Having found my jobs through friends and people who already knew my strongest areas, I never needed to go through a formal interviewing process even in Russian, let alone in English over a phone.

The funny thing was my salary. Kyrgyzstan isn’t one of the richest countries in the world, and I was quite young, so my salary at the time was a rather decent $100 a month. A month! This meant that every time someone asked me about my annual salary and I gave them a solid figure of $1200, they thought I had no basic knowledge of English and couldn’t answer even simple questions properly. Having clarified a few times that it was the correct figure for my annual, not monthly, pay, and never hearing back from interviewers, I had finally learned my lesson: from that moment on, my official salary was reported to anyone as a reasonable $25k.

I loved talking to new people and challenging myself to new interviews. Some of the questions were new, so I had to learn new things to be able to answer them next time around. Other Unix-related topics proved to be in an urgent need of being refreshed in my mind, which I did too. My rusty English got substantially better over that period – it felt great to see improvements in almost every area of my personal development.

By the end of my 6-month-long job hunting season, I had got 2 major companies interested in me. I flew to Dublin to see one of them, and was immediately charmed by the friendliness of Irish people and the amazing work environment of my future company – Sun Microsystems. I spent 2 days in Dublin and flew back home with a certainty to sign the contract.

It was believed that my work permit and relevant visa would take at least half a year, and so my life back in Kyrgyzstan settled down for a while – the major battle was won, and I could relax a bit. I was in the middle of young but strong relationship with my future wife, and I was really happy.

When all the employment papers came back just a few weeks later, leaving me only two months to wrap up and fly over to Dublin, it was a shock to everyone, myself included.

The best thing which happened to me within the space of those two months was the fact that I got married. We were hoping for a truly magnificent ceremony mid-summer, but with no time left we settled on having a humble family ceremony. I can’t think of anything else I could have done to become even happier in my last weeks home.

On March 8th, 2001 I have flown to Ireland and that’s how it all started. It was the first time in my life I had really lived alone, and I guess I never realized what it meant. It was only upon my arrival to Dublin that I felt alone and even a bit scared. On top of everything, I couldn’t understand much of what I had been told – apparently my English (which I had been rather proud of) was a bit rustier than I thought ;)

It took me more than a year to get into the zone of comfortable speaking the language, and I still learn something new everyday. It took me more than 3 years to understand what being a good team player means.

I owe everything in my professional growth to Damien Farnham, he was the one who recognized my potential from the day one, and literally spent years working with me and patiently pointing me in the right directions. I had to learn everything from scratch, because cultural differences meant I could apply very little of my previous experience. Once again, these were the thrilling times of tremendous self-growth. These were challenging times too, and many times I felt like giving everything up and flying back home.

Now, when I look back at all these years, I clearly see every lesson my life had for me. I could not have skipped these lessons even if I left. They had to be gone through and learned the hard way. They made me the man I am.

What gave you courage to be brave then, that continues to give you courage today?

Men are rather competitive in their nature. I didn’t have much courage when I started towards my dream of moving abroad. The thing is, I saw no need for any courage: it was a great challenge for me, and I was willing to try my best to reach the goal. I didn’t know it would be so hard to start afresh in a different country. I only envisioned positive sides of living abroad, and naturally this was only half of the story.

Sometimes I wonder if I would ever go the whole way though, had I known how much it would take for us to settle in Ireland. It wasn’t terribly hard, but there were challenges we never thought of – personally and professionally, both myself and my wife had to go through a major rework of ourselves. We’ve grown so much that sometimes we smile thinking of how different we were in our first years here. The only reason we pulled through was being together. Being there for each other when each of us needed it most.

What gives me courage today? I think there’s still not much courage in my life. It’s an ever-growing interest in life and my competitiveness which push me forward. I enjoy living in Ireland, and now that we have our lovely daughter with us it’s really not about me or my courage anymore. It’s about doing whatever necessary to make this little girl the happiest one on the planet.

When I drive home and pick Liza up from her creche, she always smiles and runs to me as quickly as she can. And every time she hugs me I’m close to tears because I miss her so much during my day. No matter how hard my days are, seeing the sincere smile of a loving daughter gives me all the strength I need to achieve new goals and overcome any obstacles on my way.

I think I have grown a lot personally over the past few years, and with every year I recognize love more and more as being the most important reason for everything in my life. Love. To love and to be loved. That’s my courage and motivation. That’s my reason and my way to live and to be happy.

Read more in: Motivation.

How often do you hear people calling someone amazing? How often does someone inspire you to the extent that you perform beyond your normal capabilities in whatever you choose to work on? This post will help you learn how to become such an incredible person.

The fitness practices of mine – my diet, cardio sessions and weight lifting, have been such a phenomenal success with people around me that I would like to share a few general tips which you can use to become an inspiration to others in almost anything you do.

Being constantly complimented on your noticeable improvement may just be the motivation you will need to become an outstanding achiever and reach the goals you never thought to be so easily attainable.

So here’s a set-up: you’ve got an area of your life which you plan on improving, and you’ve decided to not only succeed, but become someone incredible – impress others with your achievements and inspire them to follow you and improve their lives in a similar fashion.

Want to know the steps to success? Here are just a few. Use them as guidelines to get started, and as you progress, I’m sure you will discover many more ways of achieving great results and inspiring people.

1. Find something you absolutely love doing

I believe that you can really succeed only in something you love doing. Although it is possible to achieve certain results even with activities you don’t like at all, these activities cannot make you an amazing achiever.

You’ve got to be passionate about your intentions, you need to know exactly why you’re doing something and also be excited about it.

When I got started with my fitness program, I was thrilled. To me, getting fit is as exciting a self-improvement project as it gets. I’ve always dreamed of being fit enough to try my luck with all kinds of sports, and although I never let my slightly excess weight be a real stopper, it still was a determining factor in many of my plans.

Every time I go to gym, I’m happy to get another chance to push myself to the limit, work really hard to get one step closer to my ideals of fitness and stamina. That’s what makes every gym session interesting, and this is the motivation I need to exercise every day.

2. Set Goals

You’ve got to set goals and keep track of them. Setting great goals is like finalizing your decision to become an amazing person. Unless you agree on how exactly you’re going to change, there’s a very slim chance that you will make positive progress.

Make it your second nature to not only love what you’re doing, but also be absolutely sure why you’re doing this and how far you will go.

When I had decided on getting into shape and staying fit for the rest of my life, this meant setting a number of goals:

* losing weight (15kg is my initial goal, I will set my next goal once I reach this one)
* improving my cardio (to be able to run flat out for 10 minutes at 16km/h)
* educating myself (reading a number of books on diets and detoxification)
* improving the healthiness of my lifestyle (changing my diet and eating habits, introducing more physical training)

I’m tracking these goals almost daily – making sure I’m making progress and staying aligned with an overall decision on becoming as fit as I’ve always dreamed to be.

3. Think Big

There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious! Don’t be afraid to set yourself a goal which is bigger than average and therefore harder to reach. Plan to push yourself as high as you can think of, and never settle for anything mediocre in your plans.

Remember: mediocre plans and goals will get you mediocre results. A truly amazing person you’re about to become can’t afford an average plan. Think big and try your best to stick to your plans, and you will be surprised how much you can accomplish.

Don’t be disappointed if you can’t follow your big plans to the letter – it is the nature of any success to put you through many failures before letting you reap the reward. Even if something hasn’t worked perfectly, you still will make much more progress aiming high compared to an average planning approach. If you shoot for the moon, you’ll at least land on a star!

One thing to understand though is that thinking big isn’t about setting unrealistic goals and refusing to do any analysis or risk management. Not at all! But thinking big ensures that you if you plan for some result, you aim higher to achieve more.

If I lost 5kg, it would still be a good result and many people would be very pleased with such progress. Still, I have decided to aim much higher and go for 20kg (44lbs) weight loss. This is a much more exciting goal, and the closer I get to it, the more proud I am because it shows once again how most of my thinking big gets results with due focus and effort put in.

It doesn’t mean I will neglect any risks on my way to the goal though. If I at any stage see that further weight loss would harm my health, I will stop and switch into the weight maintenance mode.

4. Be persistent

For all those achievers who can’t wait to become truly inspiring individuals, I’d like to confirm it: yes, there will be times when your efforts pay off. But depending on the nature of your planned achievements, noticeable results may take a while to appear.

That’s why it is very important to be persistent and keep pushing hard until you’re successful. The old rule of self-improvement works like this: first, you have to commit your time and put your efforts into something, then you get the desired results out of it.

Every working day of the week I try and make my way to our gym. There are days where I can’t do it due to other commitments like business meetings, but apart from them very little can hold me back. If I’m healthy enough to be at work, I’m pushing myself to go and have a workout.

I constantly change my routine, I attend 2 weekly fitness programs, and I have been doing this for so long that I miss gym if I skip it for whatever reason.

A year and a half since I joined our gym at work, I’ve gone through such a transformation that I rarely have a week without discussing my progress with people around me.

They don’t always realize how much effort had been put into getting fit, and therefore my results seem incredible. I always take my time to share my experience and learn new ideas from others, and this helps us all enjoy the benefits of being persistent. After a few months, you become much more patient and therefore relaxed about your results.

In your own time, you will recognize that practice makes perfect. You will prove to yourself and others that only regular efforts and positive attitude can help you achieve results that really last.

5. Embrace your followers

Perhaps one of the most pleasant sides of becoming an inspiration to others: recognizing your followers!

You will be surprised to see how many people are impressed with your improvements, and if there’s one thing you can do to really establish yourself as an achiever worth following it is this: embrace your followers, talk to them and explain your reasons and achievements. Offer your help and work with them to help them follow your steps and achieve similar results.

Most people have a fear that sharing their knowledge will take something away from them, make their own achievements seem less impressive to others. But the effect of helping others is only positive: people will respect you for the knowledge you possess, and will admire you for being able to share it.

That’s it for today. This list is by no means complete, and I’m sure many of you will have better ideas on becoming an inspiration to others. Please make sure to share them with others by leaving a comment! Thanks for your advice in advance, and good luck with becoming an inspiration!

Read more in: Motivation.

This must be one of the most popular reasons causing people to feel frustrated. Many of us don’t seem to have enough hours in the day to cope with important tasks, and this leaves the illusion of us not having any time to relax and enjoy life neither.

It doesn’t have to be this way though, and you can find time for everything you want.

As with any other aspect of your happiness, there are quite a few common mistakes and wrong suppositions, which I will list here for you to work on. Not all of them may be true for your situation, but acting on any of them is bound to make you feel much happier about your productivity and time management skills.

One thing you want to understand about being productive and managing your time successfully is this: it is always your choice how productive you will be.

Time is a limited resource, and managing it means having to make decisions and compromise. There are no magic tricks or secrets to having all the time you want for doing something. The art of being productive is about knowing how badly you want to do something, and finding ways to accommodate it by prioritizing other things you have on your plate.

Being happy with your time is about maintaining the balance. We all know the basic principles of being productive, but if you are 100% efficient, you are left with no time for joy. So staying happy means striking a balance between getting things done and taking time for yourself and your family.

Only through finding the right balance and getting better and maintaining it can you be truly happy.

Too many things to do every day? Do your planning!

Consider planning exactly how you’re going to spend your time. Do it in the evening, and outline as much of the plan for the next day as you can. The point of this exercise is in seeing what you will need to have done the following day.

Just adding this bit of clarity to your situation will make a huge difference. Make such a plan every evening, and it will help you make easier decisions when you’re working through the list the following day.

Will this make you absolutely happy? No. Will your list look scary on some days? Probably, yes. But you have to make planning part of your day, because knowing exactly where you are is always better than guessing. Even if your list is massive, you can use it as a progress indicator as you go through tasks and tick them off. You may not get through the whole list on a particular day, but you’ll see and know exactly how much you’ve done. And this will make you proud and help you relax.

Everything is important and urgent. Prioritize!

I know, there are days when things seem exactly like this – very important and absolutely urgent. You start one thing, then drop it unfinished and start another one, and eventually end up working late ours and still not feeling like you made any difference at all as you go home.

Is there a way out of this? Sure there is. Prioritize!

Make a to-do list and pick the most important things for you to do on a given day. It can be hard to justify taking time for such an exercise when there seem to be far more important things to work on, but this is the only way you can break free – so just trust me and do it.

Take 15 minutes of your time, write every single task down, and decide which 3 of these are the most important for today. Don’t think about urgency for the moment, just consider which 3 tasks will make your day if you complete them. These are the tasks for you to work on.

Leave the rest aside, and start working through the 3 most important tasks, one by one. No interruptions, no multitasking – focus on each task and stay at it until it’s completed.

Once you’ve completed the 3 most important tasks, you will feel much better and may even find yourself doing a few more things on the same day just to reinforce this positive feeling.

Learn to enjoy this feeling of having accomplished your daily goals! As you make prioritizing your daily routine, you will get better and better at goal setting. No matter how busy you seem to be, always take time to plan and pick the 3 tasks which make all the difference. Do not do anything else until you finish them.

Goal setting: be ahead of the time

To make your life even easier, prioritize your tasks every evening. Whenever you plan your following day’s work, identify the most important tasks, filter out things which will not matter to you if they’re not completed at all, and factor in how urgent everything (anything) is going to be.

Does it get any better? It does! Once you master this, you can start planning a whole week ahead and bring it your awareness to a whole new level: most things, when planned properly, never even get to become urgent!

If you understand how important the task is and have a clear picture of other things you need to accomplish on the same day or week, you can prioritize and block the time for each task. This means lower priority tasks will be pushed to some other day, leaving you plenty of time to complete the things which are really important.

Identify time wasters and reclaim your time

Try identifying what’s eating most of your time. Remember: we all have the same 24 hours available to sleep, plan, work, relax and be happy. If you don’t have enough time, that can’t be helped by getting more time somewhere. 24 hours is all you get, sorry.

Instead of looking for more time, find ways of reclaiming the time you already use doing other things! Take notes of how you spend hours at work and at home, and you will quickly see what can be reclaimed back.

Most people can easily free up 3 to 5 hours a day this way! That’s like an extra day and a half each time for you to do something that you will really enjoy or something that’s really important.

You already know the typical time wasters: watching TV, browsing websites, checking and replying to your emails, chatting on a phone or using an instant messenger.

If you pay attention, you will see that most of these things are non-essential to your success. They’re rarely work-related, and can be so counter-productive that in certain companies such activities are prohibited completely.

You are the master of your time

What’s important for you to realize if you want to be happy is this: you are the master of your time. You can free up a lot of it by giving up or limiting counter-productive activities, but unless you have a good reason for doing so, it will not make you happy. In fact, that’s a quite common problem for many people new to time management: they read an article or two, decide to give something up and end up feeling miserable because they don’t use the reclaimed time. They clearly see the things they had to give up, but don’t see any positive gain from the spare time.

So if you want to be happy, start with finding your own reasons for doing or not doing something with your time. If you can’t think of a better way to spend your evening than watching a TV – perhaps you’ve yet to see a bigger picture. Until you have a good idea of what to do with your spare time once you have it, there is no point in even trying to free it up.

The only way to be happy about your productivity and time is this: have immediate and long-term goals. Identify and review them regularly, and have your daily activities properly aligned.

If a particular task consumes a sizeable chunk of your time, and you can’t align it with any of your daily or long-term goals – you’ve got a potential time-wasting candidate to get rid of.

Stay conscious about everything you do. Acknowledge your progress and your time spend towards reaching your goals – that’s the time best spent. Fight activities which don’t bring you any closer to your goals – but only if you are prepared to sacrifice them for a quicker attainment of a certain goal. If you don’t have a goal worth sacrificing some activity – then don’t fight it, keep doing what you do until a worthy goal arrives. You’ll know when it does.

Read more in: Motivation, Productivity.

I’m really excited to confirm that the wait is over, and Personal Development Forums are open to everyone!

Please have a look around and be sure to register to join and start new conversations!

A good place to start will probably be the Introductions section – this is where you can introduce yourself and your blog to the rest of our community. And if you have been waiting for a chance to suggest a new feature for this website – there’s never been a better time! Just visit the Ideas & Suggestions section or start any conversation you like in General discussions.

I hope to see you all there, and strongly believe we will benefit in many ways by bringing our communicating to this new level.

Thanks for your help and support, and welcome!

Read more in: Motivation, Personal Development, Productivity.

The benefit of this is that our readers get a fresh voice for the day, and we get to build a work flow, which may later allow for quick substitutions in time of need.

I’m personally planning to be away a few weeks this summer, so I’m starting to build a guest blogging team now; when the time comes Alex Shalman . com – Practical Personal Development will be in good hands.

Since Gleb has a passion to learn more about people, he asked me to write about what motivates me most, so I’m here to cater to that. I hope that I don’t disappoint him with what I reveal, since it isn’t exactly a secret formula, but its practical and it serves me well nevertheless.

What Motivates Me

In the process of discovering my true self, I decided that I would stay as congruent as I possibly could with what I believe to be my intentions. When I find myself being truly passionate about a goal, I revert back to being a little kid – I have only a single train of thought and I have all the energy and vitality in the world to get me there.

Simply put: truly knowing where you want to be is a prerequisite to being motivated to get there. Honestly, you could sit there and write ambitious goals all day, but without any real passion for milking a poisonous snake, or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro like John Goddard, you won’t see yourself at the finish line.

Big Why!

One of my best friends says that “If one has a big enough why, he can accomplish anything.” This statement really resonates with my paradigm of achievement. Having a big why allows you a different fixation while performing tasks that would otherwise seem boring or hard. You can literally zone out from the means and concentrate on the end.

For example, two janitors go in to work to complete the same exact job. One janitor is grumpy, because he knows he’s going to have to get his hands dirty and clean a lot of toilets that day. The other janitor is whistling away happily, because he knows this job will keep his children fed and the health insurance will keep them safe. Is your why big enough?

Make it Manageable

My key component to staying motivated is breaking things up into manageable junks. I do this for absolutely everything. When I shovel a driveway, I break it up into quadrants. When I run on treadmill, I keep track of the fraction of time that I’ve run – five minutes passes and I think, I only have to do that 5 more times, easy!

When I’m in front of the computer I break my to-do list into next action steps – write an article for Gleb, clear out google reader, read 20 pages of this book, reply to my e-mails, etc. This keeps my mind from going idle or getting bored, because I know I have that next fun thing to do!

Summary

• Know what your goals truly are
• See yourself at the finish line
• Have a big WHY
• Keep your goals in front of you, in manageable chunks

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this post and found it as educational as I intended it to be.

If you’d like to hear me from me, I’ll be at AlexShalman.com (or feed) until Gleb has me back again. Speaking of Gleb, he got me curious about how other people keep motivated. If you have a “secret-formula” or unorthodox technique that you use, please join in on the discussion and post it in the comments section.

Read more in: Motivation.

As you probably remember from the first part of Creative Habit Naming mini-series which was posted last November, I’ve discovered a very effective technique for mastering your habits: creative habit naming.

The idea is pretty simple: when you’re working out a particular habit, every little helps to stay motivated and interested enough. When it comes to mastering habits, creative habit naming is a very effective way of making your life easier.

I’ve also identified three main directions in creative habit naming: motivation, progress tracking and positive affirmations. Previous two parts of this mini-series have covered topics on motivation and progress tracking, and today I’m going to talk about the third direction I have identified – positive affirmations.

The most interesting to play with are self-imaging and success acknowledgement affirmations, so I’m going to talk a little about both.

Self-imaging

Just think of what your new habit will improve in you, how exactly it will change your image, and this will help you come up with a suitable self-imaging title. The total body workout class I attend every Thursday, for instance, helps me much more when I think of it as of my “perfect abs class”. It motivates me much more this way, and keeps me focused in a specific way – so I do every exercise the best way I can just because I always remind myself that every (relatively) little effort brings me closer to having the perfect abs I want to eventually have.

Using similar approach, you can probably think of many other names for your habits which will help your self-image: your bulking-up session (in bodybuilding), your feather-lite jogging (makes you feel lighter and therefore better when you run), your sunshine smiles routine (it does help you to smile more openly), your pretty woman walk (the really confident way pretty women act when they know they’re beautiful) and so on.

Success acknowledgement

It never harms to take time and acknowledge how far you’ve already gotten with your goals. So working on new habits, it will pay tenfold if you come up with a creative success acknowledgement title.

Here are a few examples for you to work on:

• being a guru in your field – you can use any industry or subject name with this, like: blogging guru, or motivation guru, or UNIX guru. I admit, it’s best when others call you this, but working on habits towards becoming a guru will benefit you in many ways even if you’re the only one (so far) thinking this way.
• employee of the month – you can call yourself that every morning when planning your working day ahead and thinking of all the things you need to get done.
• professional approach – the more professional you think you are, the more professional you will ultimately act. To be considered a professional in your field, you obviously need to possess the necessary knowledge, but being able to show your skills off and offer help in a friendly way is a whole art on its own, and this is where you will greatly benefit from a simple yet interestingly named habit.
• self-made millionaire – this habit name presumes that you’re already a success, a person well on its way towards wealth and independence.
• best friend – you can’t obviosuly become one by simply starting habit like this, but you and your friends will benefit if you make reviewing your contacts and relationships a daily habit aimed to help you identify what else you can possibly do to make your friends feel better

That’s it! I hope you’ve learned yet another approach for making your habits into successful tools of self-improvement, and I wish you every luck with making everyday positive changes!

Related Articles:

• Creative Habit Naming - Part 2
• Creative Habit Naming - Part 1
• Take Control of Your Habits
• The Power Of Habit Put To The Test

Read more in: Mastering Habits, Motivation, Personal Development.

Barry Walsh from People Development Co has contacted me recently regarding his CLARITY Workshop.

While normally this kind of news is a definite candidate for the Personal Development Radar, the next workshop is going to be held in Burren on February 9th-11th, and so I’ve decided to post the announcement today.

Before letting Barry speak for himself, I’d like to thank him for contacting me. I’m really excited about starting new relationships with like-minded people here in Ireland. It gives me a certain pride to announce Barry’s work and to help him promote his workshop.

Exclusive offer for readers of this blog: after quickly discussing this event, we have secured a 10% discount for any reader of my blog attending the upcoming workshop. Please mention Personal Development Ideas when signing up.

Here is what Barry says about himself and his projects:

I specialise in the area of leadership at work and in life. I belive in BALANCE. I have a workshop in the Burren in February called CLARITY which helps to achieve balance. I developed the process for myself (initially) that led to a clear vision for my future, as well as a meaningful purpose with values, and roles that I would live that would deliver success in my professional and personal life.

For me and for those who have already completed this workshop it has delivered incredible clarity and balance to our lives. Many people have reported improvements in confidence, energy, productivity, better relationships at work and at home, and most of all increased happines but to name a few.

My website is mainly work orientated but does include what I offer in the personal development area including a brochure for the CLARITY Workshop (here is a direct download link for the brochure itself).

You can also get a feel for who I am by visiting my blog and reading my thoughts.

You may also be interested in looking at these short films to inspire you. You can sign up to receive them yourself.

I wish I could go to this workshop myself, but I’ve already got other plans for that weekend, and so I’ll have to skip on this one. If anyone makes it to this event, please come back and share your impressions with us!

Thanks again for letting us know, Barry, and good luck with the workshop!

Read more in: Motivation, Personal Development.

I’ve always been a believer that failures make you stronger. I take them as a natural part of my life, and also a crucial part of my personal and professional development. It’s a part of the game you can’t play without. You have virtually no chance to be successful in anything without failing at some stage along your way.

At the same time, the more I talk to people, the more I realize how lucky I am to have such a natural positive look on failures. Most people don’t have it, and it’s rather hard for them to even accept my point of view, let alone to learn the approach and start using it in their lives. So I think that we all can only welcome posts like Brian’s, cause they give us additional understanding of what happens when we fail, and gives us the motivation we need to keep trying until we succeed.

Most failures are rarely irreversible. If you fail once, you’re likely to get another chance to try again later, and its your willingness to give it another go that determines your chances for a success. If you feel too depressed about failing and never find the courage to try again, you may never notice how much you’ve benefited and grown from your failure:

…you will experience pain after you hit failure, but if you rest and feed yourself with more information, knowledge, experience, and ideas, the next time you go at it again, you’ll realize you are stronger than before because of it. It’s that time from the moment you fail to the next time you tackle your goal that makes you stronger than before, provided that you intend to go at it again. If you don’t, you’ll never realize that you were stronger than before and you’ll never start hitting that favorable cycle.

In one of my earlier posts, Quick Recovery, I’ve already given you my advice on failures:

Accept it – everyone fails, and not always it’s due to the personal qualities and features. Quite often there is absolutely nothing you could do. There is nothing anybody could do. So all you do in such situations is to accept this and think one step forward – what needs to be done next to make up for the opportunity you’ve just lost.

I notice now that so far I’ve only spoken of failures as something that happens everyday, perhaps because I’m so used to the idea. But Brian talks about your first failure, which is always the most painful one. That’s an excellent angle, and I’ll definitely write on this topic someday myself.

Your first failure will hurt. Big time. It’ll likely happen during the beginning of your journey, at that long stretch of plateau before you go to the next level. However the moment you experience that failure, the MOMENT you experience that failure, you are stronger than before. It’s only when you go to tackle your goal again that you truly begin to realize it.

You should definitely go and read the whole post yourself, I’m sure you’ll find it useful: Different Way of Looking At Failure.

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• It Takes Ten Failures To Succeed Once
• How To Become Successful Through Failures
• Quick Recovery

Read more in: Motivation.

It’s a very interesting and motivational read for anyone who feels how fear of failure keeps them from trying new things and ideas. Scott was never afraid to try his best in any area of his life, no matter how remote from his talent or knowledge it was. The post is called In Over My Head, and it’s a wonderful story of his life so far, aimed to teach us once more: don’t be afraid to fail, cause every time you do – you get one step closer to your success.

In fact, he gives you a formula he had worked out himself over the past years:

… I must confess that I fail miserably about ten times for every one success. (That’s an accurate estimate. I’ve literally kept score.) But interestingly, the failures always involved activities that seemed entirely feasible. I was completely qualified for all of the things that failed. Ironically, I couldn’t even “keep my day job.”

and at the same time, he teaches us to never fear of trying something new:

I mention these stories because over the course of my life, every time I try something different or unlikely, someone says the equivalent of “don’t quit your day job.” When I venture into areas clearly outside of my expertise, I hear “You’re in way over your head.” You’ve probably seen some of those comments in this blog.

Somehow I have to square that seemingly good advice with the fact that I’ve so often been successful against long odds, especially when I’m in way over my head. In fact, that’s when I do my best work. I gave you several examples, but trust me when I say there are plenty more.

Truly, an amazing man and a great story. Go on, read the full story here!

Read more in: Motivation.

Indeed they are! Our life holds many discoveries and adventures, yet they only come to those who believe in them and never stop searching for more.

I like the positive determination of this idea: it is entirely up to you to decide how successful you will be one day, and there are always limitless opportunities waiting for you.

Does anyone know any more successful affirmations? Please share, every little helps!

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• How To Become Successful Through Failures
• The Key to Mastering Positive Questions
• How To Stay Motivated
• Positive Questions

Read more in: Motivation, Personal Development.

I would like to talk about two meanings I personally have for this saying in a personal development context.

Productivity

Feeling comfortable about doing something is definitely one of the key factors shaping up the success of each task of yours. Of course, other factors include having enough knowledge to do the task, being in a right mood and physically capable of producing the necessary result and being motivated enough to get started, but if you start analyzing each of these factors, you can really see how most of them can be easily brought under the definition of being comfortable.

Make yourself comfortable – in productivity it means being in the right place at the right time, having enough time and enough motivation, being sure in the positive outcome and having knowledge to back your ambitions up.

If you feel comfortable about doing something, your productivity will only benefit. If you are comfortable with the challenge, you may not even have enough knowledge to tackle it just yet, but feeling comfortable will support you and motivate you when you most need it.

As you can see, with productivity, making yourself comfortable is an essential step. Without feeling comfortable, you will not be able to reach your productivity potential.

Personal development

Another meaning for making yourself comfortable I have is less obvious. In personal development, one of the major areas of your focus is a constant improvement. Many things you can learn and improve by reading additional materials in books or magazines, asking someone for a good friendly advice, or simply getting out there and interacting with all the people you meet on your way.

But it is also widely known, than in many cases the self-growth isn’t about some knowledge or skill which you can obtain by using a direct approach, but rather a pearl of wisdom you may only acquire by doing or not doing other things.

For example, take something work-related. Let’s say, a project management. Yes, there are many wonderful books on the topic, which teach you useful techniques and planning strategies, but any seasoned project manager will tell you that you can read all the books you want and still not be a good project manager, unless and until you start managing some real projects.

This is a perfect example of what I’m trying to say – your project management skills will grow not from reading books and attending lectures on this subject, but by managing things – starting with single tasks and progressing onto bigger projects.

Take another example: a skill of dealing with stressful situations. Again, reading books on this subject will be of some help, as you will probably be more conscious of your feelings next time you’re stressed about something. But this will only be part of the learning curve. If you start getting stressed about everything on purpose, such a direct approach will not make you a master in dealing with stress.

Why? Because you cannot obtain this experience directly. Instead, you have to make sure you use opportunities which come your way to minimize the stress for both yourself and people around you, and to make note of every personal success of yours in this matter.

Only by seeing yourself handling stressful situations progressively easier and more successful, will you finally obtain a feeling of being comfortable enough dealing with any kind of stress.

Personal development is about making yourself comfortable

Making yourself comfortable in personal development is a constant reminder for me.

It’s a guiding star, which shows me how I should improve myself in each of the areas of interest. And the reason I told you earlier that the meaning of making yourself comfortable in personal development is not very obvious is this: your personal development is about making yourself comfortable, not staying comfortable.

As soon as you’ve made yourself comfortable in anything, it is a sign to move on. It is a definite confirmation that you’ve raised above the previously arranged goals, and that you have to set new ones, where you will feel unsure and uncomfortable at start, and concentrate on making yourself comfortable yet again, thus improving the necessary aspects of your personality.

Does this make sense to you? Making yourself comfortable means taking one small step after another, moving towards a clearly defined goal. The more you work on this goal, the more comfortable you’re going to feel. But the idea of personal development is to always remember that there is no end to your self-growth.

If you were not sure about doing something, and you had concentrated on making yourself comfortable, you would eventually end up with greatly improved skills, newly obtained experience and wisdom, and an urge to find the next step in the same direction, which you’re not comfortable with.

The success formula

That’s it for today. The only thing left is to give you this simple “Make Yourself Comfortable” success formula.

1. Concentrate on this step towards your next goal
2. Work towards it till it feels natural and comfortable
3. Repeat the same process starting with step 1.

Of course, it is stating something obvious, but like any fundamental knowledge in any science, it is no revelation – it is just a summarizing interpretation of the experience and knowledge you already have.

Read more in: Motivation.

Obviously, this failure makes me feel sad, but only a little – luckily, I’m conscious enough about the scale of this failure, and I intentionally choose not to feel miserable and depressed about this, but instead learn a few more valuable lessons and proclaim this day yet another successful failure in my life.

Successful failure? Is there such a thing?!

In case you’re asking yourself the same question, let me assure you right away: of course there is! The truth is, you should treat most of your failures as successes! I do, anyway.

I remember the first time I’ve made a comment about successful failures. It happened earlier this year, and I had just arrived to work. With a visible smile on my face, I announced to my immediate colleague that I had just successfully failed my driving test the other day. He looked both surprised and confused by the controversial terminology and my inadequate positiveness about the whole thing. We then laughed a bit and agreed that I’d probably have a better luck next time around.

I happen to believe that each failure teaches us invaluable lessons, and also – inevitably so – brings us closer to the success. I therefore consider all my failures to be a great source of useful lessons to be learned and applied next time I’m in a similar situation.

Failure to achieve your goal does not have to be depressive. You just have to look for the right signs, and you’ll see for yourself how positive it really is. Well, obviously not as positive as the successful outcome of the situation, but much more useful and positive than you might initially think.

Any failure is a measure of a progress. If you can say you’ve failed in something, this usually means you’ve actually tried some things out and worked rather hard to do your best. And so, your efforts were not futile, albeit not enough to make you absolutely successful this time. It doesn’t mean you didn’t make any progress though!

The more you fail, the less options to fail are left

You see, when you’re working consistently on reaching some goal, and you decide to give it a shot one day and you don’t quite make it, you’re still learning so much in a progress that it brings you one step closer to be truly successful one day.

Apply yourself, make sure you learn from your mistakes – and you’ve got yourself one of the best recipes for success in the long term. Do this consistently, use some planning in addition to it, and you’ll be doing better than 90% of all the people around you!

Once you have a rough idea of how many things could go wrong in achieving something, and you start marking each possible option off by trying it, failing and learning the lessons associated with each failure, you’ll realize that every single failure brings you closer to the top.

Why fail miserably, when you can fail successfully?

Let’s just be honest here. Any kind of failure is tough. And the harder you tried, the bitter it will feel to lose. But it is really important to stop yourself from self-punishment and self-destruction, and instead make an effort and learn all the useful information you possibly can in the view of the outcome you’re left with.

Take me for example: preparing for the driving test, I’ve taken numerous driving lessons over the past few month. I’ve studied the necessary theory, and have become quite confident by consistently making small improvements in my driving technique.

Was it enough? No. What does it tell me? I should probably raise my standards and try harder next time. But how does it make me feel? Immediately, it feels really sad. It is depressing to look back at all this time and money spent to improve my driving to only realize I wasn’t good enough.

So now that I know I’ve failed, where does it leave me? I’ve got two options: fail miserably, or fail successfully. They’re not quite the opposites, but they hopefully show you the difference your point of view can make.

Having failed in anything, a person is naturally depressed. What many of us don’t understand (not for another few days, or sometimes even months of self-punishment) is that there is nothing we can gain from self-tormenting talks and blaming ourselves for not being good, strong or smart enough to accomplish something. All this will do is simply make you feel even worse.

Instead, why not make an effort and learn something useful? Extract some positive and valuable lessons from your situation?

You’ve tried your best and you still failed. Does it mean you won’t be much better next time? Of course it doesn’t. Does it mean you will be absolutely successful? There’s not way to tell. You’ll have to try again to find out.

But what it means for certain is this: you’ve learned one more of your weaknesses, and you’ve got a strong and positive signal that it’s really important for you to improve and get rid of this weakness.

That’s what you should concentrate on! That where all you energy should go instead of being wasted for blaming yourself.

You may not be able to get rid of such a weakness in an overnight, but stay positive and be realistic! Focus on the area for an improvement, and make it your daily routine to improve it by at least a tiny bit. Constantly doing so, you will reach your personal best.

The lesson I want you to learn from today is this: if you fail in anything, fail successfully. There’s no point in doing it any other way.

Related Articles:

• Focus On What You Want To Improve
• Quick Recovery

Read more in: Motivation.

The key to mastering positive questions is this:

When faced with a difficult situation, learn to start your questioning with this simple question: What positive questions can I ask myself about this?

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• Asking Questions The Smart Way
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Read more in: Motivation, Personal Development, Problem Solving.

Apparently, it’s very hard to find where exactly this article is originally from. I’ve just read it in the Journey With Me blog.

Update: thanks to Marcus, I’ve learned that Rick and Dick Hoyt have their own website – Team Hoyt.

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.

Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;’’ Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.’’

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,’’ Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.’’

“Tell him a joke,’’ Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!’’ And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.’’

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker’’ who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,’’ Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.’’

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,’’ he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!’’

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,’’ Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?’’

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,’’ he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling’’ he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

“No question about it,’’ Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.’’

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,’’ one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.’’

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,’’ Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.’’

Here’s the video… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4B-r8KJhlE

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Read more in: Motivation.

On my way back home in the afternoon, I stopped by a local shopping centre to buy something. While making my way to the shop, I noticed a man playing an old accordion. He seemed to be in his late 50s, and there was something really tired about his look. Yet he was smiling and playing passionately something very light and pleasing. Beside him there was a box for his accordion, opened for people to throw coins into.

The music seemed very familiar. One of the tunes I’ve recognized for sure – it was a rather popular Russian romance – Ochi Chernye (Dark Eyes). I stopped to listen for a short while, but felt guilty for not dropping him a coin (I simply had no change on me) and left pretty soon.

I’ve gotten back to the car, still thinking about the man. What I actually thought was that if I was a better person, I would’ve stayed longer and got some change from the shop, and gave him a coin or two, and maybe bought him a coffee and had a friendly chat.

Do you know this feeling when deep down inside you know you’d love to do something, but you’re so unsure of how it would look to others and how you would be judged, that you start looking for any excuse to bail out? That was the feeling I was experiencing at the time.

I was coming up with one reason after another along these lines: I have no time. I need to go. It would look stupid to buy a complete stranger a coffee. He would not appreciate it anyway, he probably sees hundreds of people just like me – passing him by and never giving him a coin. The bottom line: coming back will make no difference, nothing will change.

I started the engine, and headed for the exit. I kept reassuring myself of various valid and absolutely urgent reasons to leave immediately, but instead something different happened: in the very last moment, I’ve turned and took the last parking space right next to the exit. I shut the engine down.

From that moment on, I knew – the decision was made.

It’s been a good few months of me trying to raise my awareness of everything and anything that happens to me, in order to improve myself. I absolutely hate giving in to minute weaknesses, and always try really hard to force myself and make a conscious decision about some acts and thoughts I particularly dislike. With the time, I’ve developed this external view of myself, as if I’m looking from aside, and this helps me see where I behave absolutely irrational, and I actively try to stop myself from acting like this.

The decision had been made.

It’s incredible, how hard it is to be nice to some stranger. You suddenly have all the reasons in the world to believe it will not make any difference, but trust me it will. It is hard to stop rushing somewhere and smile to someone you don’t even know, but you should try it sometime. Not smile as you’re walking, but actually stop to talk. Stop to ask how life is treating a person, and be genuinely interested.

You know what I did? I came back, and I got my coffee, and stood next to the man listening to his music. I dropped him a coin. I sat at a table of a nearby cafe, and enjoyed another 10 minutes of him playing. And when he made a pause, I walked up to him, and asked if he would like to enjoy a cup of coffee with me. He asked for an espresso, and as soon as I bought it, we sat at the table and started talking.

We talked for about half an hour. He told me about his younger years and his career of a professional musician. Apparently, he had travelled the whole Europe in his early days – he was so good that many famous people invited him for a friendly visit. He knew many great composers and artists personally, and had a house full of photos and music contests trophies back in Romania.

This man had spent his last 9 years in Ireland. He came with his big family, but couldn’t find a proper job due to various reasons. Playing accordion is his only way of bringing money into the family, and so he plays almost every day. I’ve seen him a number of times playing in the city centre, his music was always great and his smile was always a sincere and cheerful one.

We talked like some good old friends. His English wasn’t perfect, but I’ve demonstrated the ability to understand many Romanian words, and so we had a complete understanding talking on various topics.

In just half an hour I’ve learned a lot about his past, his travels and his family. He told me about 3 sons and how he taught them to play various instruments and it’s like a small family orchestra now – they are welcome guests at any party because of this. I told him about our little daughter, and we talked about eternal things like life passing by too quick to notice and children growing up in no time at all.

When the coffee was finished, I stood up and asked for his name. Severin. It sounds like a last name in Russian, but that’s his name. I gave him my name, and we shook hands.

We smiled, and in a moment I was gone.

The last thing I remembered was his box for coins, with the most sincere words I’ve ever seen written on it: NO MUSIC – NO LIFE. THANK YOU.

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When your first child is born, you learn to see this world differently. You start noticing some things you thought never existed, you learn to appreciate even the smallest joys, and you wonder about so many things it feels as if you’re growing up all over again. There as so many discoveries to be made, it’s simply amazing!

But one feeling simply overwhelms you with joy: falling in love with your child.

Children Make You Notice

It’s incredible, how many things you start noticing with the birth of your child! From the day one, you are flooded with powerful impressions of every little thing around you which you may have never paid attention to.I remember the day when our little Elizabeth was born. And I think I will remember it for the rest of my life, because the miracle of her birth left me in astonishment. I also had shocked me to see the pain my wife had gone through bringing a new life into this world. I suddenly felt that I love her more than ever, and I was happy to be beside her to comfort her and to hold her hand.

I never thought so many tiny things would matter. I’ve paid attention to every medical observation and comment the staff made. I’ve read through the progress journal as they have been updating it. I have learned to notice even a small change in a baby’s heartbeat just by the sound of it. All of this was very new to me, yet I eagerly learned and processed new information and stayed alert for the whole 8 hours we had spent in the delivery.

From another hand, once the baby is born, you immediately start noticing any possible sources of danger or disappointment. You notice the temperature of the water when preparing a bath for the baby. You notice if it’s too warm or too cold outside, trying to guess how it would make your child feel. You notice things you pack when you’re going away for a weekend, making sure your baby is fully equipped. You do the same even if you’re going for a 15-minutes walk, because anything could happen: your baby may get thirsty, hungry, sleepy, warm, cold or anything else – and you need to be prepared for this.

What you also notice is love. Every morning I walk to our daughter’s room just to kiss her and say hello. She’s well awake most of the time, and now that she’s mastered hugging last week, she hugs me and returns my kisses. When I take her out of her cot and bring her down to our bedroom, I usually put her beside Jane so that she could wake her mother herself. These 5 minutes my girls have together are the best start of any day for both – they smile and laugh, cuddle, hug and kiss each other.

And in the evening, the first thing we do after we get back home, is to kiss our little girl with she sits in her grandmother hands. And then we rush into the bathroom to wash our hands and hug our girl ourselves. You notice love. And you realise suddenly there’s much more of it around you.

Children Make You Appreciate

I can’t say I was completely disrespectful to mothers before. I always suspected it was hard enough to carry a baby for 9 months and then to give a birth. But I never thought it was as hard as it really is! So this made me appreciate the sacrifice every woman makes in order to give a birth.Today, our little girl makes us very happy, and we appreciate every moment spent together. She’s a very keen learner, she grows quickly and she’s happy to play most of the time.

Before Elizabeth was born, we were not sure how it all will eventually work out. But she had won the central place in our family so easily and so quickly, that we can’t even imagine our lives without her being with us. She’s most loved and adored for us, and seeing her unconditional love and happiness makes us appreciate our lives even more.

There’s obviously a different side of how children make you appreciate things: by taking away opportunities! For instance, you appreciate a quiet and romantic dinner together with your better half much more when you have to plan for it few months beforehand! The same goes for any night out or late visit to your friends, because unless you have someone to mind the child, one of you won’t be able to go.

You start appreciating clean tables. You learn to cherish the quiet moments when you don’t hear any squeaky toys. You admire the time when you can be on your own, because you’re not the master of your time anymore… There is a million of tiny things and details you very quickly learn to appreciate! :)

Children Make You Wonder

Oh yes, they certainly do! In the past, we wondered if we were too young to be parents. Then, we wondered whether it was going to be a boy or a girl. Now, we wonder if her eyes are going to stay as wonderfully blue as they are right now. Now, we wonder how soon she’s going to start walking. Now, we wonder what is going to be the first word she’ll say.Children make you wonder about all kinds of things: from guessing what is it that made them cry to finding out what is the latest t-shirt fashion for their age.

You always wonder, how your baby knows you’ve just entered the room. You wonder, whether your little angel realises how big you love is. You wonder, how you baby always can take away any problems of your day with just one smile. You wonder, how you could ever live on your own, without this little wonder which smiles and kisses you back, asks you for a bottle of milk and makes you cry with tears of happiness.

Yes, there are many ways of how children can change you. But if there is love between parents and their children, most of these changes are only for the better. You learn new ways of being happy, and some of them are so simple you’d never believe until you try and see for yourself.

Our little girl has been such an inspiration to us in the past half a year, that I only hope we’ll be able to give her all the love and attention she may need. It’s an exciting feeling we’re going through right now: it’s like falling in love again – falling in love with our little angel.

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Time flies!
Yes, I must admit it like everyone else: time flies!

It feels as if it was only yesterday that I’ve made a decision to document my personal development discoveries and achievements here in this blog, and yet here I am: some 50 articles and half a year later! Unbelievable!

As you remember, we’ve been blessed with the birth of our lovely daughter Elizabeth, and this tiny girl has brought such a happiness to our family that we can only be thankful. We absolutely adore her, and she seems to kind of like us too ;) She’s a wonderful baby and a great support and motivation to us. There is absolutely nothing our little girl cannot help us with by just smiling with her incredibly sincere smile.

I also would like to thank my wife for being so understanding and supportive during this time. We’ve been together long enough to built a wonderful relationship and she always supports me in every way possible, which helps a lot.

Half a year of happy blogging

I think 6 months is a long enough period of time to confirm the seriousness of my intentions, and it makes me feel incredibly grateful and proud that some of my articles were not only thoroughly read, but were also found useful by some of you.

I’m enjoying blogging about personal development so much that it feels unnatural if more than a couple of days passes without me posting a new article here.

I’ve made a promise to myself to only write on topics I feel really passionate about, and to my own surprise I not only got increasingly interested in the topics originally chosen, but I found many more fascinating ideas and experiences to write about! It is not very often that you find a subject you can talk about for hours, and the more you learn about it, the more it attracts you.

It seems incredible to me now how many techniques from personal development I’ve naturally used before without even knowing how far from being ideal they were!

Personal development pays out

I’ve seen numerous improvements lately – everywhere in my life. It’s like I’m leaving a wonderful dream – I enjoy self-growth so much that I find new ways of doing things every day and it simply fascinates me.

I’ve also found some great friends through this blog. There is no doubt that I will make friends with many more of my visitors, but even now I can say I’m happy.

Starting the blog, struggling through the fears of not being accepted or understood, and finding the courage to speak up wasn’t easy, but it was all absolutely worth it. I’ve found out more about my purpose in life in this half a year than I did in the past 25 years!

The joy of providing value

I’ve now realised that little compares to the joy of providing a value. Honestly, I’m absolutely conscious about my writing being far from perfect, and perhaps some of my topics are not the most important things to talk about… But I like being in a position to share my thoughts and make some positive difference for others. And I feel so passionate about it that I’m absolutely sure: I will get better!

I’m growing. I’m going to read books and write even more. I’ll follow your insightful advices and will find even better topics to discuss.

And if it one day it all makes a real difference for just one person in the whole wide world, I’m going to be more than happy! That’s the kind of attitude I got from maintaining this blog. And I’d like to thank each and everyone of you for making this difference for me.

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Personal development is a process, not an event

Before I talk about anything else, let me make a statement: personal development is a life-long process, not an event. Thus, you can’t miss it and never get another chance to experience it – a chance to improve something about yourself is always around.

Once started with personal development, you will feel the urge and need to develop yourself mentally, emotionally and spiritually on a constant basis.

After you see the first results of self-improvement, you will not be able to drop it – you will get hooked up and will use every opportunity to improve something else about yourself.

There is no such thing as failure

I like this quote by Anthony Robbins a lot. In full, it goes like this:

“There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.“

Even more so with personal development: you can’t, and you won’t fail, if you have the right attitude.

If you already read books or listen to audio materials on personal development, chances are that you’ve isolated a few areas of yourself which need improvement. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, but it clearly shows your dedication to pushing the bar even higher for yourself.

Well, here’s some good news for you: becoming aware of your weaknesses or areas to be improved, is a huge advantage on its own. To you this means, that even if you had only agreed that some things about yourself could be improved, but had no chance or no courage to actually do something about them, you already have made positive progress!

Remember it: you cannot fail with your personal development!

There is no harm in trying

As with anything else, it is very important that you actually try doing something in order to improve yourself. What I’m saying is this: if you are not sure whether some actions on your personal development plan will work or not, do them anyway! Anything you do, no matter how insignificant it might seem, will make a positive difference in the end. You may not see any immediate results, but you will improve eventually.

Sometimes, you have to try something only to get experience. This gained experience will help you make better decisions and take proper actions trying some other parts of your personal development.

Don’t know about you, but to me it’s always better to try my best at something and not get the perfect result from the first attempt, than to never even try it.

Having not reached the goal, I will learn as much as I can from the mistakes made, and will definitely approach the same problem at a later time, just to test it again and see if I can cope with it using new experience. I never give up easily, just because I believe that you can achieve anything if you try your best. And it simply takes way too many attempts for me to be absolutely sure that I’ve tried everything I could to achieve my goal.

One very good thing such an approach gives me is certainty: I’m much more sure about my ability to get through many problems I face, simply because I know I’ll keep trying no matter what.

From the other hand, deciding to not even try something has very negative impact. It will not only discourage you from many other things, seemingly independent from what you’re giving up on, but it will also haunt you for many days (weeks and sometimes even years) to come. As time will pass, you will feel more and more confident about facing the original challenge, and you will also start getting really irritated with yourself for not trying your best back when you had the opportunity. You’ll be lucky if it’s not too late to do it, but quite often the chance is gone.

You should know: with personal development it’s never too late to start, but I advise you make the decision to improve yourself once and forever, and then fearlessly try anything that might help you improve.

Find ways to motivate yourself

Personal development is a constant process. It is very easy to get started, but it is impossible to finish. You’ll be constantly improving yourself throughout your life, so you might as well learn how to get and stay motivated about your self-growth.

Think about it this way: millions of people go through their lives without any questioning. They spend year after year, not even hoping to improve anything. Some people are genuinely happy, of course, but the majority is simply too weak and too lazy – and so, due to one reason or another, most of them never find the courage, time or motivation to get started with their personal development.

Compared to them, you’ve already made a giant leap forward: you’ve made a decision to improve. You’ve made a commitment, and you have taken the first few steps. Why stop now, that you’ve gone this far?

One very simple way of staying motivated about your personal development is to make a small improvement every day. You don’t have to make a big change or transform completely, but as long as you consciously improve something really small about yourself on a regular basis, you’re on the right track and you’ve got all the reasons to feel good about it.

Personal development opens limitless opportunities to you, because it’s a process of bringing your enjoyment of life and your self-growth to such highs which in the past were never thought possible. You not only can, but you most definitely will outgrow yourself: that’s the whole idea of personal development. Isn’t it motivating enough, to spend every day of your life changing and growing better?

Goal setting: do you know your goals?

Quite often, the disappointment comes from wrongly chosen goals. Failing in something most often means not failing to make progress, but failing to get the result you wished for. So it is very important to be able to understand where your frustration comes from in order to react.

Because your personal development is a process and not an event, you have to be conscious about a few things.

For instance, You’re not going to reach a point in your life when you’ll be 100% finished with your personal development. Just accept it, and never make it your goal. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing the right things, growing personally more and more, and still not being able to enjoy the results, because you’ll be waiting for some final state of mind which you simply can’t reach.

This is probably one of the cases when it is very appropriate to suggest: enjoy the process! Personal development is about constant self-growth and improvement, and as you grow, you’ll be setting higher and higher goals in your development, and therefore achieving more and more.

Well, hopefully you now get the picture and understand that there is really no way you could possibly fail with your personal development. Some results might take longer to show, but you will get there eventually.

Learn to enjoy your self-improvement, and always remember: one of the signs of being successful in personal development is genuinely enjoying the process of it!

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Why is being first so damn hard?

Why do we fear so much being first in doing something? Simply because it comes down to another very powerful fear of ours – the fear of the unknown.

We usually don’t like it when there’s something unknown about what we do or what we’re going to do. Facing the unknown means to us leaving the comfort zone, and we don’t generally like doing that, do we?! ;)

We also realise deep down inside, that being first in anything implies much more attention paid to you. And we usually don’t like this kind of attention, simply because we expect nothing positive out of it. What’s one of the first questions you ask yourself planning something really adventurous for the first time? That’s right! What’s the worst that could happen! No wonder you’re afraid to act! You’re asking the question before anything happens, and you’re already implying that something bad will happen.

Being first and feeling comfortable

People who make discoveries and set new records are just like everybody else – they’re not superhuman and they are not even necessarily talented The only unique feature about them is that they’re not afraid to be themselves! They are willing to do what it takes to reach their goals. And being the first ones is not only acceptable for them, but they welcome such an opportunity.

Why? Because they create positive and powerful beliefs related to their plans. They understand that everybody fails at some point, but they also realise that failures are nothing but an invaluable experience gained the fastest way possible. They have an ultimate vision of their goal, and if it’s going to take them a few failures to get there – it’s absolutely fine.

Setting the right beliefs is very important!

Making the impossible possible

Have you ever noticed the magic which happens every time someone achieves the unachievable? Making impossible things possible is one of the greatest joys you can have on this planet, because not only it gives you the victorious feeling, but it also empowers many others push a little bit harder and achieve the same!

Look at the modern technology, for example. The discoveries made today on a daily basis were believed to be impossible just a few years ago. Yet, as soon as a discovery is made, hundreds of other companies and research institutions immediately accept it and start using.

With sports, the magic of a breakthrough is even more obvious: it is widely believed that human body’s capabilities are well known and maxed out by modern athletes, yet old records are broken and new ones are set every Olympic game! Isn’t it amazing? Things nobody could do just a few years ago, are now possible and practiced by many athletes simply because now they know that it can be done!

Just think about it: virtually anything we do every day was believed or proclaimed to be impossible sometime in the past! Yet here we are, making progress every day and act on things without even questioning the possibility of so many things we make happen daily.

Don’t be afraid to be the first

You can’t overestimate the power of being able to set the right beliefs in order to be the first to do something. If you master the skill of setting positive beliefs and making powerful associations to the success of being the first, you’ll be unstoppable in anything you do.

Below I’d like to give you a list of common beliefs you can change to make any breakthrough possible. They have helped me, and they will help you. Spend few minutes a day working on setting positive beliefs and getting rid of the negative ones, and you’ll be thrilled with the immediate results!

1. If something had never been done before, it’s not possible at all
   WRONG! All this means is that nobody cared enough or tried hard enough to make it happen. All the most influential breakthroughs and discoveries were made this way: everyone believed something was not possible, and then one courageous person questioned the whole world and proposed an alternative theory. All it takes to make something possible is to shift your beliefs and expectations. If everyone believes you to fail, it still doesn’t mean you will!
   Trust your feelings, and have the faith and courage to be the first!
2. If I don’t make something happen, someone else will
   WRONG! You are a unique human being. This means that every minute your mind has many thoughts running through it such a way that it may never occur to anybody else on this planet. Hey, some thoughts may never occur again even to yourself! That’s why it’s important to take notes of your ideas, after all!Don’t wait for somebody else to make a breakthrough. You can’t afford to miss your chance!

   Be adventurous enough to question everything else around you, and only by doing that will you make a success of being the first one to achieve something!

3. Leaving your comfort zone is dangerous
   It sure feels like this, doesn’t it! But that’s not entirely true.Won’t you feel much proud of yourself if you do something different today, leave your comfort zone and do something outrageously unusual, and even make a success out of it?

   The danger of leaving your comfort zone is rarely a physical one. Mostly you just don’t want to change your behaviour patterns and sacrifice the comfort for the sake of a questionable success.

   But just think of this: only leaving your comfort zone makes you grow. Only by challenging yourself constantly you can progress and achieve better results. Only by thinking differently and looking at situations from a new angle you can make a breakthrough discovery.

   So go on and do this! Be adventurous, have the courage to challenge yourself and achieve the unachievable!

4. What if I make a mistake? It’s going to be a disaster!
   While this is definitely an option, it’s up to you to make your project a success. Also, stop thinking it’s going to be a bigger problem simply because you’re the first one to try! Understand this: being the first to do something does not make the task harder to accomplish in any way but mentally. It is all about your approach, your expectations and your motivation, and nothing else.If it’s physically hard for you to do something no one had done before, please be assured that it’s going to be just as for to do the same for anyone who will follow you. The only advantage they’ll have is that they will know that it’s possible, because they will see you do it first.

   Stop expecting the worst. Concentrate and apply yourself, try your best and forget about how you will look if you fail. Focus on the goal, and think instead about how you will look and feel when you succeed. Be positive! Doing something for the first time ever doesn’t have to be negative.

Have all the motivation you need to be the first

Here are just a few of the highly motivational reasons for you to become first in doing something:

1. Once you are number one in anything, you will remember this feeling forever.
   This is one of the most powerful motivators you can ever hope to find: become a winner and remember how good it feels. Plan a goal big enough, and you’ll get all the attention and admiration you ever dreamed of as soon as you achieve it!
2. Once you have accomplished something impossible, everyone else will follow you.
   People will do this simply because now they know it can be done. And you are the one that made it happen! How cool is that?! ;)
   It’s incredible how many people still need reasons and proofs that some goals can be achieved, some things can be accomplished and some new records can be set.
   Don’t wait for them, be the first one and get the joy from making something possible and real for everybody else!
3. Enjoy constant growth by leading others and challenging yourself on a constant basis. It’s a never-ending game, really. Once you realise how powerful the joy of setting an example for others is, you’ll want to set new records and reach new goals even more. You’ll want to do something even more adventurous, and get even more please by seeing others following you.Enjoy the feeling of growing stronger and better everyday, simply by leaving your comfort zone and gaining new skills and experiences.
4. Being first is both challenging and fun!
   Whenever I see a possibility of being the first one to write/say/do something valuable, I always welcome such an opportunity and challenge myself to do my best and achieve the goal.I love challenge, and I hate people trying to discourage me without giving any reasons. I absolutely disagree with blindly following rules and limitations simply because others think I should. When I think of doing something adventurous and someone walks up to me and says: “Hey, forget it. I’ve tried it already and it doesn’t work”, I always ask for reasons and explanations. If something is “simply doesn’t work”, to me this sounds like “someone didn’t really try” ;)With technical problems, it could also mean that someone had used up all the immediate potential and it was easier for a person to give up than to continue the search for a solution. Again, I love such problems because it will make me feel much better when I solve them and help others by doing so. Challenge yourself to be the first one to do something! The joy of being the first (and for a short period of time – the only!) one to have coped with the challenge is definitely worth it.

I guess that’s it! I certainly enjoyed writing this one today, and I hope you’ll follow me in setting the right set of believes to achieve even better results in everything you do.

We live in exciting times! Every day there is a magic of something new and beautiful being created and brought into this world. Who makes all this magic happen, you wonder? YOU and me. Everybody.

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Having conducted a small research on such meetings, I've found out the following positive outcomes of speaking up:

Regain your interest in the subject

Some speakers have a real talent of giving such a monotonous speech that it makes even the most exciting subject sound unbearably boring. What usually happens then is that the audience falls into a pattern of gradual boredom. What this really means is that the more of monotonous speaking we hear, the more distant we become from the subject. The audience may genuinely try to stay focused, but will eventually fail to do so unless this pattern is somehow interrupted.

Skilled speakers know this and try their best to make their speeches interesting and dynamic. Even if they're facing a long paragraph which they know will sound boring, they interleave the theory with some examples or diagrams – just about any different kind of interaction helps.

Now, if you weren't particularly lucky with the skill of your speaker, you have to break the boredom pattern yourself. And you do this – you guessed right! – by speaking up. Ask a question or state your opinion, this will make a natural pause in the speaker's monologue, and thus will break the pattern audience is getting caught up in.

Just to motivate yourself more, think of yourself as of hero. Simply imagine there for a second, that you could be the last and only hope the whole audience might have! If you don't break the pattern, nobody else will. By asking an intelligent question, you will regain your interest in the subject and relieve everyone by helping them focus on the topic and get some useful answers from the speaker.

Stay alert by interacting

When you realise you can't follow the topic anymore, it becomes personal. No matter how the rest of the audience feels, you have to act. This means that you should be even more interested and motivated to speak up and become alert by doing so. Not only will you break the boredom pattern, but you will also express your opinion or ask a valuable question. After all, if you lost track of the discussion anyway, any question will be good because it will bring you back to the topic. And yes, if the meeting isn't boring at all, it is still okay to ask questions – so go on and ask one just for the fun of it. Learn something new and score some points with the speaker by expressing your interest in the subject.

Please be conscious about the fact that negative talks alert more than positive ones! Once you realise this, you can actually use it to your advantage.

Generally, people take negative opinions or news much more seriously than positive ones. So if you're starting a verbal attack on the speaker, you will become alert very quickly (think twice though, is it worth starting a fight with this person).

What's even more effective, is that if someone else (not necessarily the speaker) starts an attack on you. Now, that will make sure you become more alert that ever!

This negativity rule stretches further than just some negative talks. For instance, if you discuss a topic which worries you – be it one of your responsibilities, something you've forgotten to act on, or simply a very complex task coming up, this will alert you just as good. Trust me, talking about such things will never make you sleepy!

The best approach for speaking up

I believe it is best for you to do your homework and prepare a couple of questions before the meeting. This way, you know you'll have them to ask no matter how bored you get during the speech or how tired you feel to think about anything. Try and come up with general but useful questions, such ones that can be asked at almost any time during the meeting, sound reasonable and provide real value to yourself and others, when and if the answers are given. Write these questions down. If someone sees you with a list of questions, it will only add more to your positive look – you will be demonstrating not only your readiness, but also a certain commitment to the upcoming meeting, which is always a good thing.

If you don't have any questions prepared for the meeting, it's okay. But you have to make sure you use the first few minutes (maybe hours, depending on your ability to listen and the skill of the speaker) of your genuine interest in the subject to jot down few key notes and make up related questions. Again, people seeing you do this will only be impressed by how determined and organized you really are.

What I find most useful is making my point with 3-5 sentences, and then finishing off with asking one of the prepared questions. The overall impact of this is that you're providing audience with enough background to switch from the possible boredom pattern, and to make things even better, you also challenge their minds by asking an intelligent, thoughtful question. This approach is also likely to please the speaker too, as it will demonstrate your interest on the topic, and not a simple act of questioning the authority of the speaker.

What are your experiences with dull and long meetings? Feel free to share the knowledge, and I'll be happy to update this entry right away.

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Just think of this: how well do you know your true self? And what is it exactly that you know? How many personal facts or character features do you know? What do you think of your true self? Is this the ultimate pride you’re feeling, or maybe shame or even fear? Your self-growth and the success of personal development efforts are entirely dependent on how well you know yourself and how you feel about your personality.

I hope you will forgive me for starting my entry with questions yet again. It seems to me that I quite enjoy starting some of my personal development articles this way. Probably, because no matter how much further I progress in my self-growth, I always get to some next level of self-understanding only to ask the next round of questions. It seems impossible for me to reach a point where I’m going to run out of all the questions and just sit there not knowing what should be done next, feeling that the quest for personal growth is over. I’m always full of questions. I’m always keen on learning something new. And sometimes it’s not clear at all whether it’s my questioning that makes me learn more or it’s my learning which makes me question everything.

My true what?

Yes, you’ve read it correctly. Your true self! And if you think you don’t know what I’m talking about, think again. Your true self is how you feel yourself when nobody’s watching. It is where your deepest thoughts live. It is what you ultimately think of yourself, how you treat yourself and what you fear others might see inside you. It is your most native and real personality.

Strangely enough, up until some quite recent point, I honestly believed that your true self is something you’re always aiming for as a person. It is the much better you which lives in your dreams – a successful guy or a beautiful girl which you always wish you could become one day. I thought becoming your true self is only about improving or gaining something about yourself. Turns out, I was wrong.

Your worst fears

Have you ever done something you wish no one could ever find out about? Chances are, you have. Do you still remember what exactly it was, and why you didn’t (and maybe still don’t) want anyone to find out about it?

Quite often, we do something and then try and justify our behaviour using things, events and people we see around us. A little bit less common but still very popular is to go through this process the other way around – justifying our actions, and then actually making them.

We do something only to realise how stupid it was, and this is when you can easily hear the inner voice of yours. That’s your true self talking there right now. This is the voice which, depending on your character, will either encourage you to take even more actions or discourage yourself as much as possible. This is the inner voice which easily controls a great part of your self-esteem. And like it or not, your true self is absolutely right in most cases.

So what happens then? We hear ourselves thinking about some events and we hear quite reasonable explanations inside our heads on the subject. We get to hear all the truth on the topic, and nothing but the truth. And if we’ve just made a mistake, most likely this is the moment when we feel ashamed. We look at what we’ve just done again and again and we simply can’t comprehend how something so stupid could be so easily done.

What’s the next usual step you take? Honestly now? Most of us will try and cover the tracks. We’ll pretend we didn’t notice something, or we’ll make it look like we don’t feel so good and we can’t possibly be held responsible for whatever just happened. Sometimes we won’t even bother with inventing or showing anything, we’ll just try running and hiding away. And we succeed at this, too! So quite often after doing something, it is really only ourselves who know what really happened and have the power to explain or fix the things done. But we very rarely do.

Why? Because that’s the human nature. We always have this fear. The fear of showing our real self, the fear of being exposed, the fear of being rejected for what we really are. This is because on top of our true selves, we’ve always got some layers of our personality – and as we go through our lives, these layers just keep adding up unless we do something about them.

Layers of personality and your personal growth

Rediscover yourself

You can still probably remember the times where you could speak or act freely, without any fears regarding the impact your behaviour may have. Do you remember how good you felt back then? And can you spot what exactly have changed since then?

While I’m sure you have your reasons for changing over the past years, not all the changes you’ve gone through were really that necessary. And luckily for you, there is still time to revert some of these changes. And here are just a few steps which will help you rediscover yourself:

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A few days ago I’ve decided to continue my organizing process improvement, and that’s how I decided to find a software which would help me make such a progress. So from this week on, I think I’ll be posting quick reviews on the various software packages and websites I’ve tried using for various stages of my daily organizing, so hopefully my experience will help you see which things will suit you and which will definitely not.

Being a reader of LifeHack, it was fairly soon that I came across a brilliant list of gtd software on Listible, and that’s the list I’m using to find new ways to improve my productivity.

I’ve been using a 45-day trial version of MyLife Organized product for the past few days, and I’ll be definitely writing a review for this software shortly, but for now I just wanted to concentrate on the power of one of my habits put to the test.

3 months of improved organization made some irreversible changes to my lifestyle, and most noticeable ones are these:

• Improved productivity
  I’ve definitely improved my productivity – tracking all the things I have to do, be it any organizing system at all, helps you be conscious and fully aware of much more activity of yours. You can’t possibly keep all things in your mind, it’s just a waste of your precious thinking time, so by making a decision to write things down you effectively boost your productivity level up by simply making sure you’re staying focused
• Being confident and comfortable
  It’s very hard to explain the relaxed feeling of being confident about every little thing you should be doing at any moment of your day, and to also feel really comfortable at times when you’re not doing any of a listed task. Simply because you know you’ve accounted for everything, you stop worrying so much about things you’ve possibly forgotten to write down or do. You realize that it takes only few seconds to jot the note in your organizer, and you trust with a confidence that once your task is in organizer, you’ll inevitably come back to it and make sure the task is completed in a timely manner
• Less things to remember and worry about
  By making sure you take notes about every little thing which is likely to need your time and attention in future, you’re offloading the task of remembering this action. You write it down, and you forget about it until it’s time to look into your organizer again and process this action. Give it some time – few weeks at least, to work out this habit of writing everything down and then forgetting about it. This was one of the best advices I’ve got from reading the Getting Things Done book by David Allen.

So the last few days felt really weird because I didn’t feel the impact of my transformation at all. All I’ve changed in my process was the storage system. But since I already have the habit of trusting this system and never worrying about things once I know they’re in the storage system, I didn’t have to reinvent anything or get used to any new habits. It’s fascinating how easy it was for me to simply give up my 5-section A4 organizing tool and switch to using the software.

So that’s the power of my organizing habit put to the test. And although I don’t want to call it a successful test until it’s at least a few weeks time from now, I’m already fairly confident that the habit of having some storage system for my daily tasks is strong enough.

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