It’s really good to be back, too – browsing net while on holidays wasn’t on top of my list, and so I missed reading your blogs and comments. I plan to resume regular posting this Monday, and will take the time until then to catch up with all the news and developments. Talk to you soon!

Read more in: Personal.

Today, at last, the PageRank is back, and it’s a healthy PR=5!

I’m really excited about this change, and I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to EVERYONE for visiting my pages, reading the Personal Development Ideas RSS feed and sharing the articles by linking back!

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Looking at website logs, I can see that there’s still quite a number of feed readers which access this website through its old name, greyspk.com.

While it’s okay to use that domain name for the moment, it will probably go away sooner or later, and that’s why it’s time for you to update your RSS readers links and start using new, permanent Personal Development Ideas feed link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/PersonalDevelopmentIdeas

If you prefer reading this blog from your browser, then please update your links to http://www.personaldevelopment.ie

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Yes, it seems unbelievable, but yesterday marked a birthday of this blog! It’s been registered on Jan 21st, and the first post was made on Jan 25th. Jan 26th 2006 marked the day when this blog saw its very first visitor.

The first article of mine, strangely enough, wasn’t about introducing myself or somehow marking the day. Instead, it was a rather serious topic: Never Leave A Question Unanswered.

You probably remember my Six Months In Review, and every word of it still holds true: I’ve made many friends through this blog, and appreciate all the advices you’ve given me over time.

100+ articles on personal development, and I still can’t wait to get an hour or two to express my newly acquired experiences and skills or describe recent discoveries! I have a great feeling about 2007 – I will make it an even bigger personal success.

I would like to thank each and every one who comes back to my pages regularly or simply finds my articles through friends or search engines.

The readership of Personal Development Ideas slowly grows, and I’ve recently broken a number of 250 RSS feed readers. In addition to them, roughly the same number of visitors read pages from their browser. That’s 500 chances for me to share what I’ve learned so far and to get help in learning more! That’s a great source of inspiration for me, and I thank you all for your support.

This past year had been a time of wonderful discoveries for me. I’ve composed a Personal Development Ideas: Top 10 list, and it seems to be quite popular among my readers. Some of my findings may seem too trivial, but nothing beats a personally acquired experience, and so I hope that my ideas will help you see what to try for your own self-growth and sparkle even more ideas for you to work on.

That said, I’m off to enjoy a weekend. See you next week!

Read more in: Personal, Personal Development.

First of all, I’m really busy at work. I’ve approached the implementation phase of a big project – something I’ve been working on for the past half a year. I’ll be working on this project till the end of this month, and it requires my full attention and involves working some weekends, so I doubt I’ll be posting frequently during this period. I plan to post at least 2 new articles a week though, so I’m not going to disappear. :)

Secondly, I’m in the middle of yet another transformation – this time I’m going to try and do (practically) nothing computer-based during my evenings (that’s the usual time for my writing), and instead concentrate on getting to bed earlier in order to wake up even earlier than usual. I’m doing this for many reasons, but here are the main ones:

• More family time. I really need this, and find it incredibly pleasant and rewarding to spend even 5 minutes with our lovely daughter. Last week she had learned to call me “papa”, so you can imagine how excited I am! :)
• Rest from computers. I’m so busy at work that I constantly skip lunches and occasionally work late. This will stop, but only after I’m finished with my project. And so, I really don’t want to hurt my eyes by working at home through my evenings and nights. I need some rest.
• Gym. I’ve started going to my local gym in the evenings, which presses me for even more time. I like the timing – swimming and other activities give me the energy boost I need for the rest of my evening, and so I intend to keep this habit.
• Reading. It all looks like a perfect opportunity to concentrate more on my reading. I’ve got a few books on personal development which I want to read, and increasing my daily reading time is bound to help the situation

Thirdly, I’m currently planning the next year of Personal Development Ideas project. This website will be 1 year old in just a few months, and I’m willing to spend time and work harder now to have something really big and exciting for you by that time. As I said previously, do let me know if you have any wishes or ideas regarding this project! Your opinion is really important for me, and so if you feel like I should be focusing on a certain direction which I haven’t covered so far, please let me know.

Now, the good thing is that none of the above is going to keep me from making progress in technical rework of this project.

This means that I will keep working on the following things this month:

• New website design. There is a lot of room for improvement as you can see, from both design and usability point of view. As always, I’m working with my visitors experiences in mind, and will do what I can to make it easier for you to find and access all the information.
• New structure for categories/feeds. There are too many categories at the moment, an so I hope to combine them into 3-5 bigger ones, which will all come equipped with their own feeds, so if some of you are interested in articles on motivation, you will get a chance to read only relevant posts of mine.
• PDF digest of all the articles so far. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve quietly finsihed going through all my older articles, making their content easier to skim through by splitting paragraphs and putting lists in. Next stage of this rework is to compile all the content into a PDF which will be easy to print and read.
• Personal Development Sites Search – it has proved to be rather popular, and I would love to expand this section of the site. I will re-work this section to include a list of all the sites we currently search, and probably make submission of your own site a little easier.

Almost done! The only thing left is to remind you that I am hosting this week’s Personal Development carnival, and you still have time to submit your article for it. To thank everyone for their participation and recognize the effort they put into writing articles, I will go through the list of submissions and will add every single site submitted to the Personal Development Sites Search.

Read more in: Personal, Personal Development.

This last year had been quite a ride! I enjoyed it a lot, and can definitely say that the years to come are going to be even more interesting and exciting.

What made this particular year of my life stand out? I think, it’s been so great because our little family has grown in a most miraculous way – it’s hard to believe that for the past 8 months we’ve been parents to a little wonder called Elizabeth. I’ve read the birthday wishes card from my wife today, which was signed with their both names, and I suddenly realized that soon enough our little girl will be drawing me cards herself, and it’s amazing how quickly time flies when you’re happy.

I’m also very happy today because we have managed to bring both our mothers to Ireland this year. Firstly, my mother-in-law had spent 3 months with us earlier this year, she came over for the whole summer to help us take care of Elizabeth. And now, my mother came over early September to stay with us till December, and I’m really happy to have her here for my birthday.

There were also a few more changes I’ve been a proud part of:

• I’ve changed jobs, finally getting back into my strongest area – Unix systems administration. It’s been quite an effort, as I was looking at 25% increase to my salary, which I have finally secured
• We have moved from Dublin city center to a much nicer area called Cabinteely – it is one of its suburbs with lovely fresh air, and the seashore is very close. Our apartment is much bigger too – we had to plan for our little princess to have a room of her own, and also decided to finally establish our home office which we share with my wife
• We have finally bought a car. Living in the heart of Dublin, with our apartment being in the same building with one of the biggest shopping centers in the city, we really had no reason to get a car. My commute to work was impossible by car, and it took only 10 minutes by bus. Now that we’re in a less congested area and with my company offices located outside of city center, it makes perfect sense and gives me a pleasure to drive.
• I got interested in personal development (who wouldn’t?! it’s personal – meaning you are the one who gets most of the benefit from your efforts), and started this blog. It’s been one of the most exciting and rewarding projects of my life so far – I’ve learned a lot, had obtained some great habits and improved skills, and most importantly – I’ve got to talk to some very interesting people from all around the world, both learning and sharing personal development wisdom.

It’s been a great year. Twenty seven might seem like much to many, but it will seem like the very beginning of an exciting and happy life to many more. I’m happy to be alive, I’m happy to have my family, and I’m happy to learn and teach something new every day.

Part of this happiness came from Personal Development Ideas project, and with this in mind, I THANK YOU for your interest and patience, your time and help, your support and advice.

Have a nice day! I know I will! :)

Read more in: Personal, Personal Development.

Surely, I would prefer a question on personal development, but since I haven’t told you much about any aspect of my life, you may as well ask just about anything. I love being asked for help or advice, because every question, even the simplest one, is a challenge within itself, which makes me think and look for answers.

I don’t have a separate section of this website for questions and answers, but I’m slowly building its future content up – I’ve already got some really nice questions and advices emailed to me and I will definitely share them with you soon enough.

For now though, let’s just use this post to ask me anything or give me a friendly advice.

As always, I thank you in advance! Your attention and participation had been very motivating for me so far!

Read more in: Personal, Personal Development.

Here are the links I really liked this week:

1. Scott H Young has a great article called The Confidence Myth, where he explains why self-confidence isn’t crucial to your success:

The confidence myth is simply that self-confidence is an incredibly critical ingredient to success. That is, the belief in your own success, is necessary to harness and in some cases outweighs other attributes such as skill, experience or talent. So much self-help has been spun about the necessity of confidence, that I think it is finally time to put it to rest. You don’t want or need self-confidence.

While I don’t wholly share his opinion, I really like the article because Scott goes into great details explaining various ways of (re)gaining your confidence.

2. Brian Kim reveals The Secret to Creating Lasting Change, explaining how you can change anything by forming a positive self image:

Your self image dictates your every action and is pretty much responsible for everything in your life right now. It is essentially how you view yourself mentally, which then manifests itself on the outside. Your every action is based on that self image.

3. Matt explains How To Keep Your Relationship Healthy With Your Wife:

Women need to be loved through thick and thin.
Women need to be surprised and pampered.
Your wife needs to feel secure.
You wife may just want to have fun.
Help your wife with the household chores.

Read more in: Personal.

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.

Related Articles:

• The Joy of Being a Father
• Am I being impatient?
• Master Your Smiles!
• Finding Motivation in Parenting

Read more in: Motivation, Parenting, Personal, Personal Development.

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.

Related Articles:

• Knowing Where You Want To Be
• Finding Motivation in Parenting
• Making a difference

Read more in: Motivation, Personal, Personal Development.

I usually add 2-3 blogs a week to my RSS aggregator, and while this gives me enough information, I’m still not getting enough knowledge on personal development.

I do read books, but sometimes it’s much easier to learn a useful lesson from a friend who had obtained the skill by trial and error.

So today I’d like to ask all of you readers of my blog to please take 1 minute of your precious time and share the most useful few links to blogs or websites you have found useful and interesting.

If you feel comfortable to leave a comment, please do so! Otherwise, there is always a Contact Me page.

Thanks a lot in advance everyone, and have a good weekend!

Read more in: Personal.

I woke up too early, and therefore was the first one to hear when Elizabeth woke up 20 minutes later. I went to her room, and she already was smiling when I entered the room – in the morning, when it’s so quiet in our apartment, she hears your steps and smiles in an anticipation of seeing you and being taken out of her cot for a morning hug.

It’s such a strange and pleasant feeling of hugging her for the first time in the day! She’s still very sleepy, but she recognizes you and smiles back, and hugs you back when you hold her.

I was given a chance to feed her from a bottle. Not that I had never done this before, but this time it was different because she was both sleepy and hungry, and also because previously I was only given a chance to feed her for a while and then hand her back to her mother. This time around, Jane was still asleep and we didn’t want to wake her up.

So I’ve had 15 minutes of feeding our child, and watching her smile as she was eating. I didn’t expect the feeding to be any different from the previous experiences of mine, but it turned into something completely different, something really emotional and unique.

It was really quiet and it felt like there were only two of us in the whole world. I hugged her tightly as she ate, and she hugged me. We were looking into each other’s eyes and it felt like there was some kind of morning magic in the air. We both were grateful for having each other this morning, and we both were happy.

As she was emptying the bottle, she was waking up, growing more alert and smiling even more. Sometimes she would stop for a few moments just to look around and make sure it was still okay for her to eat more. I could hear her breathe and swallow her milk, and felt how she was getting more and more relaxed with every sip of it. Finally, she finished her bottle and just lay there in my hands, still smiling but quickly falling asleep again. I’ve enjoyed a few minutes of listening to her breathing and feeling her heart beat, and then I put her back into her cot.

I couldn’t explain how or why, but I felt closer to my little girl than ever.

Related Articles:

• Finding Motivation in Parenting

Read more in: Parenting, Personal.

I must confess, I’m absolutely shocked how the mother nature makes a child develop only the most essential skills! Have a look at the list of some new essential skills Elizabeth has just mastered:

• holding her milk bottle with her own hands
  It pleases everyone to see that she’s quite capable of holding her bottle herself. This probably gives her more control over the situation, as she definitely smiles more when she’s holding her bottle.
• pulling the soother out and pushing it back into her mouth
  How cool is that?! Frankly, this was a surprise. We didn’t notice when it happened the first time, so when we finally saw her doing it, she looked so confident and determined that we all laughed. It looked as if she knew how to do it all time along, and simply didn’t feel like pulling the soother out before.So, if there’s anything important she has to say, or simply if she doesn’t enjoy the soother anymore, she simply pulls it out and throws it away. She also looks very funny when she suddenly misses the soother and tries pushing it back into her mouth.
• pulling someone else’s hair
  Oh yes, this skill is definitely a must have for any child. We simply didn’t expect Elizabeth to master it so quickly and so early :) Now we have to be really careful approaching her, cause she waves her tiny hands randomly trying to catch your hair, and when she does, there isn’t much you can do but ask for someone else’s help to rescue.Elizabeth clearly enjoys pulling hair very much: she smiles and giggles, and naturally expects you smile in return. Maybe it is time to finally get a kitten we’ve been thinking about for the past few months? When playing together, it will hopefully keep them both mutually interested and somewhat occupied when the girl catches the kitten and tries expressing her love by gently pulling hair out of the poor thing.

Overall, we’re still incredibly happy watching our little girl grow and become a person. I guess, parenting is really one of the most rewarding periods in your life at this early age. You see your baby grow and learn something new every day, and the more time passes, the more conscious and pleasant relationship you establish with your child.

Elizabeth has plenty of enthusiasm, lots of curiosity, and is very determined in her achievements. I wonder what skill she’s going to develop next? Can’t wait to see her learn something new! I guess that’s what parenting is about ;)

Related Articles:

• The Joy of Being a Father
• Am I being impatient?
• Master Your Smiles!

Read more in: Parenting, Personal.

1. Quick And Effective Reading
   I think it’s about this series gets its own index page. For those of you following the series, it will make it easier to navigate the articles. And for visitors completely new to my blog, this page will provide short description on each of the articles to make sure you’re never lost looking for certain asnwers in my articles.So, here it is: Quick And Effective Reading series.
   Enjoy! And yes, if you have some suggestions on making this series even better, be sure to let me know! Thanks!
2. Articles count for archives
   Since I’m already showing how many articles there are in each of the categories of my blog, I thought it would only help to have similar counters shown for monthly archives.
3. Full RSS feeds
   Although having only article excerpts shown in RSS potentially makes more readers open the browser and visit the relevant article page, I really don’t want to make this decision for you anymore. Do whatever suits you best – be it reading the blog through RSS, visiting its pages or subscribing to the e-mail newsletter (yes, I’m planning to start offering one very soon).

Read more in: Personal.

Read more in: Personal.

Our little daughter is 4 months old

And this means to us that her regular naps and feeds are on a more relaxed and flexible schedule now. We’re still on a full alert, so she wakes her mother up and gets her milk whenever she’s hungry, but this doesn’t have to happen every 3 hours now. It’s been a while since we’ve progressed to a practically full night’s sleep – from midnight to 5am, and this week we have relaxed even further by pushing 5am feeding to a later time, up to 6am.

Most of this had been happening without my participation. Since my presence was not required for the breast-feeding, I was usually fast asleep during the night’s feeding or early morning’s. So when I was getting up around 6am, the girl would usually be up as well, and after swapping smiles and kisses I would leave her to go and enjoy my shower.

I was in for a suprise

When I woke up at 5am and heard the baby was already awake, I went into her room to find out that she was so full of energy and so happy to see me that she was practically pulsating with joy. Elizabeth now knows how to laugh and her excitement of seeing one of us approaching her cot is incredible. It was a surprise for me to find her in such an alert state so early in the day. What I never realised is that usually she’d be well fed and therefore rather peaceful and sleepy by my 6am awakening. So I naturally thought that’s a norm for her early hours. Boy, was I wrong! :) She’s amazingly active and happy!

I didn’t have any particular plan for the extra morning hour I got today, and so I took Elizabeth out of her cot and we had a wonderful 45 minutes or so of talking to my mother-in-law and showing her our early photos and videos of the baby. Somehow Elizabeth feels so comfortable in my hands! She’s prepared to even stay quiet if you hold her, she would be like an angel sitting on your hands and smiling at you.

A happy father I am

I must admit once again. I’m a one happy father! :) It’s a great joy watching the little one grow up on us so quickly, because every morning brings something new – a skill she masters, a face expression she mimics, a sound she learns to make… And it’s so exciting to watch her do all these things, that sometimes we drop everything else and just lie on our bed together – all three of us: Elizabeth, my wife and me. We put the baby between us, and lie there in the sunlight watching our little wonder move and smile and laugh and try oh-so-many-more little things we thought we’d never be so amazed with…

Related Articles:

• Am I being impatient?
• Master Your Smiles!
• Finding Motivation in Parenting

Read more in: Parenting, Personal.

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:

Related Articles:

• Don't Be Afraid To Show Your True Self
• Knowing Where You Want To Be

Read more in: Motivation, Personal, Personal Development.

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.

Related Articles:

• Performance or Balance: What's More Important?
• Having To-Do Lists Is Just Not Enough
• 5 Steps of My To-Do Lists Revolution

Read more in: Motivation, Personal, Personal Development, Productivity.

It was so much easier said than done though! What we had found out in just few days was that I’m absolutely incapable of keeping the little one busy for much longer than half-an-hour or so.

I’m totally in love with our little daughter, I absolutely adore her, but after we have:

• smiled at each other and even tried to laugh (she’s yet to master her laughs)
• played together and waved hands
• made few photos of her (luckily she’s not old enough yet to tell me she doesn’t like me taking photos. Or maybe she simply does like it)
• had a very intelligent conversation or two (she’s very talkative and it’s amazing how quickly she learns the intonation. She can go on for hours “talking” to us – so it’s a real pity she does not say any words just yet, we’re so eager to find out what it is she’s trying to say all the time)
• rocked the cradle (a desperate attempt on my part to kill some time and please the girl at the same time)
• played hide and seek (it’s almost as if she feels when one of us is in the room or not, she does not have to see you to know you’re somewhere around)
• drank some water
• spit the soother out few times and made it absolutely clear it was urgent and important for me to go and get the replacement one right away

… and, finally, started crying, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I got really irritated.Funny enough, it’s always an irritation with myself. Somehow I can never blame the little one for her crying. I always know there must be something else we can do to help her, and it’s annoying when various ideas pop up in your mind but none of them work. So I get irritated for being helpless, and just wish I knew better what to do.

I usually admit myself to be a coward and retire. I give up and run for help, so my wife comes along and comforts the little angel and in no time it’s all back to normal again. There’s nothing better for a child than a mother’s hug, I guess.

Read more in: Parenting, Personal.

I’d like to concentrate on our fears because this is one of the most powerful factors which affect your actions. Just think about how many things you would do differently if you had absolutely no worries and fears about them?

The Fear of Showing Your True Self

Absolutely all our actions are evaluated by ourselves before we take them. And such evaluation is done to make sure we understand as much as possible about what good and bad consequences a particular action might have. Some actions are so simple or physical, that they take only few seconds of judgment before we take them. They require virtually no risk assessment, and we’re fairly sure of the outcome. Other actions, however small they seem, will mean much more to us or to people around us, and so we take some extra care and time to make sure such actions are really what we think we want. And it is only when your evaluation is over and you feel confident about the decision you’ve made, you follow it – you either take the action or drop it.

Today I’d like to talk about one of the most common fears of all – the fear of showing your true self to the world.

Your image of yourself is just an expectation

In modern society, it’s all about having a positive and strong image of yourself. When you go to work, you want to look intelligent and confident. You want to make smart decisions and take appropriate actions. You want to be as good as you can possibly get. Every day, every minute and every moment.

With your friends, it’s a very similar story. You want to be witty and funny. You want to be popular among your friends and to be a good friend at the same time. You’d like to socialize in as relaxed manner as possible. You’d like to be able to make friends with anyone. You want to be a person everyone likes.

In your family, you probably want to be your best too. It’s about being the perfect husband and a loving father. An ideal wife or a super mom. You want to have a really nice family. You’d like to have a better understanding with your partner. You’d like to spend more time with your kids. You’d like to smile to your next door neighbours every morning and get a smile back.

All these images I’ve just brought up in your mind are expectations. Some of them are expectations of our own, others are the ones of people around you. And no matter whose expectations these are, they invariably put some pressure on your actions. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you know there are some expectations to be met. You know you have to try your best and look your best in order t o meet these expectations. If you don’t meet expectations, this brings frustrations. For some of us, being frustrated with yourself is the worst frustration ever. For others, it’s quite acceptable, as long as other people whose opinion we value are not frustrated.

The image of yourself you live by

These roles of a perfect professional, ideal husband or an incredible friend are something we use as a guidance. These are the images of ourselves we live by. But what happens quite often is that by following expectations and trying our best, we reach a point in our life where we feel like we’re pretending to be someone else. We get appreciation and admiration from people around us, and we think: “No, it can’t be true. That’s not me they’re talking about, that’s someone else”. And that’s how the fear is born.

From this moment on, you get more and more unhappy about your real self. You see everything as a game of pretending to be someone else – a much better person than you really are. You start judging your own thoughts and actions in a completely different light, and it’s very easy to get caught up in your false self-beliefs. Do you really like waking up at 6am just to make it to your workplace by 8am? Of course not! It’s this someone else you’re pretending to be…

Do you like dealing with all them problems you meet everyday? No! It’s the professional person you’re trying to be that makes you do it. And do you like sitting at late meetings? No, but you have to because otherwise people will understand who you really are. Who wants to see such a horrible image of you, the real you? The person who loves lazing all the mornings in the bed and driving a car above speed limits, the person who hates working and likes enjoying a glass of beer on a sunny beach? A person who finds some (if not all) the meetings too stupid and pointless to even attend, and who has a better idea of what needs to be done in most situations at work? Surely, you don’t want anyone to know that you’re that bad.

At this point, the fact that most of things suggesting how bad you really are never happen somehow doesn’t matter to you. This idea gets out of your focus, and all you concentrate on is that no matter how many good things you make happen on a daily basis, you’re still afraid to admit that some of them you would do differently or wouldn’t do at all if you weren’t pretending to be a better person.

Learn to accept how good you are

A similar kind of fear exists for every aspect of your life. It’s very hard to explain, but people automatically accept that anything bad they do or even think is their true self, but it takes much more effort to persuade them that something good they do or think is just as real part of their personality. And this disbalance in self-beliefs is so incredibly strong that even when we do some really good things and take right actions, instead of appreciating it and enjoying the moment, many of us manage to think something along these lines: “Well, it worked this time. So what? Everyone seems to be really impressed. Argh… If only they knew how scared I was to do it. If only they really knew that it happened due to a sheer luck – like, I didn’t know myself if it would work or not… And now everyone’s giving me looks and it seems the chance had saved the day, but somehow I’m not happy, but miserable to an even bigger extent…”

Do you recognize any of these thoughts? ;) I bet you do, that’s because you’ve had them more than once! And you felt almost guilty for doing the right thing! How twisted is that?!

Now, I urge you: don’t be afraid to show your true self! Cause it is you, not anyone else, who does all the good things for you. You’re not pretending to be someone else. You’re being yourself! Remember: you’re only as good as you really are. These expectations which force you into doing good deeds on a daily basis – they’re nothing more than your conscience. Quite often you have a situation which you know you can walk away from, and nobody will ever know you did. But something makes you take the action and make something good happen once again. Do you really believe it’s the result of pretending? Of course not! It’s the real you! It’s as real you as it gets!

Don’t be afraid to show your true self

If you felt scared when doing something people now admire you for, tell them about it. They will admire you even more. This will help them realize you’re as human as all of them, and it did take some courage for you to take the action. If you feel lazy in the mornings – that’s okay to live with. Most people are! It’s natural, and people like being natural. If you’re afraid there’s a misunderstanding gap growing between yourself and your partner – talk to him or her, don’t be afraid to seem vulnerable. Show that you really care, talk to her and try to work things out. It will help, believe me.

It really is okay to have some dark secrets. All people do. Some secrets are darker than others, and some things are meant to be kept to yourself only. But it doesn’t mean you have to feel guilty for them. And even if you do, it doesn’t mean you should also feel guilty for doing something good. Don’t think your true self is just something bad you’re constantly trying to hide. Admit it that you have a good side too. Don’t be afraid to follow your heart and act like you think you should, not like you think others would like you to.

That’s all for today. The topic is so vast that I may have to revisit it at a later stage, but for now I’ve said enough. Let me know what you think. I’m keen to learn what you agree and disagree with, because only by talking to each other we learn and grow. I also hope I’ve brought a relief even though most of the things seemed trivial enough. But this is simply because, luckily for us, not everything has to complicated in our lives :)

Related Articles:

• Don't Be Afraid series
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Read more in: Motivation, Personal.

Smiling is always good - I just had to say it here. Smiling not only makes you feel physically better, but it quite often triggers some really happy thoughts you never thought you might have. When I see our little angel smiling at me, I feel such an energy boost that I’m ready to tackle almost anything!

For some of us, smiling is the most basic and common physiology thing. Take me, for instance: it’s as natural and as essential for me to smile and laugh as it is to breathe. Smiling helps me cope with my everyday tasks, and it also gives me the necessary support when there’s no one else around me.

But for others, it may take a little while to really get used to smiling. You can’t go wrong here – as soon as you bring the smile on your face, it will eventually take the shadow of any saddness or depression off your heart. It may not work the very first time you try it, but be persistent – it’s really worth it to master your smiles!

There’s always something to smile about! You may be having a hell of a day at work, but a quick peek at your loved ones’ photos is bound to bring a little smile on your face. And when it does, just think quickly – maybe it’s really the time to give them a phone call, hear the voices you love so much, and smile even more? I do this from time to time, simply because I know it will work for me. And it always does. It works magic!

One day I’ll write a list of best things you can improve about yourself to make your future personal growth easy and fun process. Not sure about all the rest items, but smiling is definitely going to be on this list. It is one of the strongest self-motivation techniques everyone of us has.

Read more in: Motivation, Parenting, Personal.

Personal development is personal

Personal development is no different from any other science in this regard, but you have a really good advantage – personal development is very personal in its nature, and this means you have a much better chance of succeeding simply by concentrating more on your own thoughts and feelings, instead of reading books and constantly seeking guidance from someone else.

I’ve recently started a 10-week course of intermediate swimming lessons, as I felt it was time to improve my technique and the opportunity came up. Yesterday, while enjoying my class, I suddently noticed that our personal development is in many ways similar to swimming lessons.

Learning the basics of self-growth

When you’re only learning to swim, you should, ideally, have an instructror spend a good few hours with you explaining the basics and making sure the water is not deep enough for you or that you at least can stay afloat, no matter how bad your moves are. Your instructor will make sure you’re put in an adequate swimming pool, and will closely watch your first few minutes in the water to both accomodate you and make sure you don’t drown before you get the idea.

You’re taught what to expect from a water and how to rely on your own body’s strength, then you’re explained what to do if you feel like you’re drowning – or what not to do in such a case. You’re shown how to properly breathe, and you’re guarded while you make your very first strokes in an attempt to cover the minimal distance. You’re greatly supported and encouraged afterwards and they say it’s only a matter of practice from that first moment on till you get really good at swimming.

Come think of it, the very same thing should ideally happen with our personal development. Wouldn’t it be great to have someone explain to you the basics and show the right way of implementing self-improvement techniques? It would also be of huge importance to have somebody support us in our first steps, guide us through conversations, explain what we should and shouldn’t say in particular situations, and give us a demonstration of how all them little pieces of our self-growth mosaic are wonderfully working together when combined correctly. And yes, we do want some encouragement and approval of our first steps! We want somebody else to step in and say: you’re doing allright, just keep it this way and you’ll grow real quick in no time.

But do we have it happening to us? Not usually, no.

Sometimes you just have to do it yourself

Unfortunately, not everything is ideal in this world. So it really is up to us to find a reliable and suitable source of information, to interact with our friends and colleagues, and see if their expectations and knowledge fit into our idea of our self-growth.

Again, it’s very similar to swimming lessons. It’s great when you are trained professionally from your very first swim, but at the same time it’s quite possible to grow into a major swimming success by simply talking to your best friends and having them teach you.

After all, that’s how we gain lots of useful knowledge in this life: by interaction. And usually this interaction happens in an absolutely natural way.

For many of us, it’s also much easier to talk to a friend and not to a specialist, simply because such talking fits in perfectly in a casual kind of interaction, so that it doesn’t look like a weakness or a problem to neither side.

In contrast to this, when you seek professional help, quite often this requires you to get accustomed to the idea that you must be so bad or so lost in your problem that a professional advice really is the only way out. And as rare case as this may be, people do automatically find something negative in taking professional help on quite a number of topics. Personally, I think if there is any negative thinking at all, it’s just a different angle at which you look at the problem. And believe me, it is fairly easy to change this angle.

Learn to find the right way of approaching problems

Here’s an example how you can change the way you think of a particular problem you might have.

First of all, do the quick classification. Does this problem belong to your strong areas or is it one of your weaknesses? If it’s strong, it shouldn’t be so hard for you to come to a moment when you decide to seek help from somebody else.

For instance, if I know I’m good at some subject, yet I have this problem I’ve been trying to solve for some time and I still can’t, it is only a natural thing for me to go and ask someone else who’s supposedly good at this subject. It would be a casual talk, and we’d be talking like professionals – I will have some ideas I’ll share, and the person I’ll be talking to will probably give me some reasonable argumentation or just a hint of what I might be doing wrong to solve my problem.

With your weaknesses it’s even easier – if you know you’re bad at this subject, why struggle? Go on and search the web, or spend a few minutes at your local library, and if you still can’t figure the problem out, go and ask. Don’t torture yourself about it, ask maybe for a hint and try to solve the rest of the problem again. If you still can’t, go and ask for more. It’s that simple.

Don’t be afraid to learn things on your own

Back to coaching, it is important that you have someone to share the knowledge and guide you as you learn. But what’s wrong is to think that being coached is the only way of growing better. This narrow-minded approach is a quite common thing. We’re constantly being told how limited we are on our own. How, without proper books, it’s impossible to get an appropriate level of knowldge, and how without attending a school and a university it is impossible to get skilled enough to have a successfull career.

While mostly it’s true, you shouldn’t forget that these are only the minimal and the easiest ways to gain knowledge. And while it’s advised for you to attent an educational institution for your professional development, nothing stops you from gaining the same knowledge and even more from other sources!

You can always learn things on your own

Trust yourself, and try applying the common sense. Yes, it will probably take you longer to learn something yourself – like swimming for instance, but it’s quite achievable, and many people do it. Just make sure you try it when it’s safe – don’t rush yourself into deep waters hoping to learn to swim the extra quick way – for some of us this comes naturally, and for others it never does.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s never too late for you to try and learn something completely on your own. This holds true for anything: personal development, self-growth, goal setting – you name it. You may read lots of books and blogs, you may watch hundreds of video-courses and listen to motivational and self-growth audiotapes, but some things you will only learn after doing them yourself and learning by trial and error.

Overcome your fear by taking action

Not all the situations are predictable. You can’t plan everything, and sometimes you have to face a situation you really didn’t want to get into. And as scary and uncomfortable as it may be, you have to go through it.

Having no other choice, you will do some steps and you will learn some useful things as you go. Don’t be afraid and don’t feel doomed at any stage – always remember the following: the more uncomfortable some situation is for you, the more likely it is to teach you a very important lesson.

After all, all the awkwardness and unease, all the fear comes from our lack of awareness of the situation. So every time you feel unease about speaking to somebody about a particular thing, this probably means you have some homework to be done first. Once you read more on the subject, you will feel more confident and motivated to try and have the same talk again.

Practice makes perfect

And as you read books, talk to people and learn things, you’ll find it easier and easier to come back and relieve the same situations which at some point in your life seemed absolutely impossible for you to be in.

Don’t get me wrong – not everything has to be learned this hard way. I’ll tell you more: not every uneasy situation is going to be particularly informational and helpful.

But as far as your sefl-growth goes, this fact holds true. If you’re trying to obtain a new skill and you find it uneasy at first – you must be on the right track! Overcome the initial awkwardness, apply yourself harder and work through the number of similar situations – and soon you will realise you’re improving and growing.

Read more in: Motivation, Personal, Personal Development, Productivity.