Personal Development

Get Organized. Stay Motivated. Enjoy Life.

Motivation

Recover From Personal Development Failure

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As strange as it sounds, many people feel like they’ve failed in their personal development. They feel the need to recover from it in order to successfully move on. Since I personally don’t believe you can fail with your personal development, I thought an article explaining my point of view on such matters might actually help.

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!

Don’t Be Afraid To Be The First

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It is incredible, how many things never get their chance to be done simply because we’re afraid to be the first ones to even try. We fear rejection and lack of acceptance, we fear a possible failure, and we generally would rather scrap a great idea than be courageous and adventurous enough to be the first. Well, it doesn’t have to be this way.

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.

Don’t Be Afraid To Speak Up At Meetings

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Have you ever had one of the really long meetings when you're either bored to death or tired so much that you stop following the speaker and sometimes even try falling asleep? Well, here's a little trick to stay focused and alert: speak up! It may and probably will require some confidence to express your opinion or ask a question – and that's exactly what I'll be concentrating on in this post.

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.

Discover Your True Self

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Discovering your true self is a crucial stage in your personal development

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

I personally don’t think it’s very important to know how many layers your personality has. As long as you’re conscious about having SOME layers, you’re fine. This means there is still hope that you can try and lift these layers, slowly and carefully peel them off and see (and maybe even show, if you’re adventurous enough) your true self.

You see, your true self is always right about everything. But our personality layers make us hide this truth, disguise it and then explain why we did it in such a way that we can live with it.

For instance, if you’re at work and you’ve got some task on your to-do list which you hate even thinking about, you’ll definitely try reasoning with yourself and explaining why it is very important that today you’re busy doing something quite different. Anything, in fact, except this one task you hate thinking about. It takes some training to finally find the courage to accept and explain things the way they really are. To absolutely agree with your true self and to accept what your course of actions should be.

We all have layers of personality for various reasons. Not all the layers serve the only purpose of making you look better in someone else’s eyes. Sometimes you need these layers to feel (to appear) less vulnerable to others. Quite often people add negative layers simply to hide how really weak or fragile they are. But it’s important to stay conscious about having few sides to your personality, and even more important to learn how to skip some of these layers and avoid their demonstration. You will make a great progress in your self-growth as soon as you master dealing with your personality layers. You don’t want to be hiding them. Instead, you should probably make it one of your personal development goals to ensure you take a closer look at every side of this personality of yours, and to analyze how much of a benefit it is to maintain or cultivate it, and to decide what parts of your personality are better for you to show and to hide.

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:

  • Listen to your heart
    You still get these moments in your life where you face some difficult situation and you even when you see the next logical step to the resolution, there is some resistance which makes you stop and think more before taking the action. I’m talking about the moments where your true self suggests you should do something, yet you know you can’t do just that due to some reasons imposed by the environment or the situation you’re in. A good example of this is any difficult argument with your better half or a true friend, especially when somewhere deep inside you know and you feel you’re not right.

    How many times did you have to force yourself into such an argument and you couldn’t let yourself get out of this simply because you were thinking that if you give in, this would show you’re a weak person? There are many other reasons of the same kind, and if you actually take some time and go through them after the argument, many of them would make no sense whatsoever. They seemed to be important to you at the time of an argument, but they’re suddenly not anymore. This is exactly the situation I’m talking about.

    When your heart tells you to stop arguing because what your opponent feels is much more important to you that what this person thinks, trust your feelings and stop. You’ll be amazed how many times such an act of yours will be greatly appreciated by the person you were arguing with.

  • Focus on giving value
    No matter what you’re working on, focus on giving value, and not on what impression you’re going to make. There are many prejudiced people around – no matter what you do, they will not change their opinion about you. As long as they have the slightest suspicion you’re doing something for you, and not for them, they’re not going to change their point of view.But what if you could just forget about the impression? Forget about people who might find your questions or actions silly. Focus on the value you’re going to give my taking some actions. Focus on the people who will benefit from your actions, and how exactly they’re going to appreciate the value.

    This is true for many aspects of our life. If you forget about yourself, and concentrate on giving value to others, you’re bound to improve their attitude. People like getting value, and they appreciate it even if they don’t openly tell you.

  • Maintain your integrity
    There are many situations when doing something conflicts with your inner feelings or thoughts. Get into the habit of analyzing such situations.Quite often we conflict with our principles for the sake of looking good or making some progress. That’s why it is very important to always make sure you know if such a sacrifice is really necessary. If it’s something not important, you should never conflict with yourself, because in many situations you’re acting in a certain way simply because of the situation you’re in. What happens then is that the situation will change, while you will be left on your own with your thoughts and conflicts.

    Maintain your integrity – many problems are not worth the self-conflicts you’re getting into.

  • Respect your goals and values
    This is probably the most important aspect of staying in peace with yourself. If you don’t respect what’s important for you in long term, you’re putting yourself under a risk of becoming a slave to other situations and people who will manipulate you.Yes, it’s always good for you to give value to others, but you should avoid doing it at your own goals and values expense. If you know that helping someone else make things worse from your own goals and values point of view, take some time and reconsider.

    In many cases, the little value you’re going to force yourself give to someone else will not be worth the personal goals of yours which you may not meet as the result.

That’s it for now. These are the principles I live by, and they really help me feel better about myself. Thanks to my better knowledge of my own personality, it’s easier for me to achieve my personal development goals and to progress with my self-growth. Now that you know these principles, please consider applying this knowledge in your personal growth and telling me what your principles are. I’m always interested to learn, so if you have time to post a comment or even simply share a useful link – please do so. Thanks!

Update from 05/06/2006: Welcome, dear StumbleUpon visitors! I’m really glad someone thought this entry was worthy of your attention, and I hope you like it here!

Why Being Impatient Is Good For Your Success

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Why am I so impatient all the time?It’s just incredible how quickly I expect a result after I start working on something. It doesn’t matter what I’m dealing with – a 5 minute job or a 6-month project. I always want something to happen as quickly as possible, and even when it does in fact happen much sooner than it should have, I would still feel that I really wanted it to happen even sooner ;) It may sound to you like a perfect way to be constantly irritated or disappointed, but trust me I’m very far away from anything like this. In fact, being so impatient makes me happier and more productive!

The most important thing about anything that happens to you is to know as much as possible about the reasons behind it. If I’m impatient, I want to know why. Mostly it’s explained by my character – I’m just an impatient type of a person. I hate waiting for something to happen, especially if it’s anything to do with my personal performance. In other words, if there’s even a remote chance of something happening sooner just by having me put more effort into it, I’ll definitely try my best to finish it off as quickly as I can.

But simply settling for something being the nature of myself isn’t in my nature :) So I’ll always question myself even further into really deep understanding of my being impatient in every particular case. And below I’d like to give you a few examples of how I do this and how this helps me feel much better about the situation, keeps me motivated and even boosts my confidence.

So it’s just a little secret I’d like to share. Trust your senses! Just because I know myself fairly well, I always try listening to my senses. So if I’m impatient, I know that this is a sign. And in my case, it’s probably a positive one. The first I do when I grow impatient is I try to interpret the sense depending on the given situation. It’s really cool actually, just relying on this sense. It’s like one of them sure indicators which are always telling you the truth – so if you learn to feel comfortable with such an indicator, you’ll be glad when you seen one – you’ll just know you’re about to learn a valuable piece of information with little or no effort.
So what does being impatient suggest to me?

– a progress. When I’ve been doing something for a considerable amount of time, and I feel my impatience grow, this usually means I’m making some progress and somewhere deep inside I already feel the final goal is rather close. I’m growing impatient because my mind knows how much I’ve spent working on the subject and suggests it’s about time we finish it off. This progress type of impatience is a very positive sign for me.
– a sense of right direction. I usually grow impatient when I’m fairly confident about the step I’ve just taken, but it takes some time for the result of this step to follow. So when I’ve done something and I feel impatient, I know this is because I’m on the right track. Or at least I think I’m on the right track. This is a very positive sign as well, because it reinforces my confidence. It confirms that what we’ve done so far is a correct thing to do and invites me to continue in a similar way till the goal is successfully achieved.

– a sense of a completed stage of the process. When I’m impatient about something, this suggests that I’ve done what I could for the moment, and I’ve just completed a certain stage in the process I’m working on. The actual reason I’m growing impatient is because I’ve done all the work, and it’s now time to wait for the results. So again it’s a good sign.

– a perfect moment for planning of the process.This is where, having realised and considered all the good signs above, you look one step further to evaluate the rest of the plan of actions. Do you really have to wait for the result right now? Is there anything in your plan that you can do right now? Is there anything that can be changed in your plan so that you don’t have to wait for the result right now, but instead you’ll have the option of coming back to these results later? Basically, this would be a good moment for some prioritizing done to the rest of your plan. Maybe you haven’t realised how far in your plan you actually are, and that you’re only few steps away from a major turning point. Then it might be more beneficial for you to stop being impatient and dive into one of the future steps of the project and later come back for your results.

Improve!

People being unique creatures and all, there’s a pretty good chance your signs of being impatient will be different from mine. That’s why it’s important to analyze a number of situations when you’ve felt impatient and try to remember the actual meanings of this sense.

Remember, you’ll perform much better when you’re prepared for the result. So when you feel impatient next time, just take 2 minutes to think about your reasons for the impatience. Try and use the positive approach, but don’t be surprised if your impatience has some negative signs for you – it’s an equally possible opportunity.

But the bottom line is that no matter what kind of sign it is – a positive or a negative one, it’s still going to help you because it will be a valuable piece of information. Take your time to do the basic analysis at first, and soon enough you’ll learn to quickly recognize the patters and signs of your impatience, and all what’s left for you then is to follow the indications.

What would be really interesting is to know if your signs are very different from the ones I have. So if you do decide to master the goodness of being impatient, please take extra few minutes to come back and leave a comment here. After all, if you have learned something useful from this article, then I’m sure there is something I can learn from your impatience too!

There Is A First Time For Everything

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I’ve recently become a father for the first time in my life. We’re a proud family with a wonderful babygirl now, and it would take much more than one post to express the happiness our little girl brought to us a month ago.

Still, this exciting change in our lives has made the famous saying so obvious once again: there is a first time for everything.

We’ve been waiting for our baby to be born so much that the joy of planning our future as a family of three had practically blocked off any worries. Everything happened in a very natural way, and there wasn’t much of stress at any stage of the whole 9 months. We’ve decided to have our first child, and one bright and sunny day she had blessed us with her birth. There was no panic, there was no fear – but there were happiness and impatient curiosity. And it’s only now, a month later, that I’ve realised how lucky we were not to worry about anything, or should I say, not to worry so much about the baby. We’ve been doing other things while we were expecting our baby, and firstly they kept us occupied, and secondly they helped us feel somewhat progressing as we could do something about so many things while we couldn’t do anything at all and had to simply be patient with our baby. We’ve been really lucky at this.

When was the last time you’ve done something for the first time in your life?

I remember, there was a TV ad which asked you the same question. In this ad, some lucky woman was learning how to fly a helicopter and she was just trying to land on the helipad of a magnificent Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai. I remember, back then I instantly felt envious – it’s a stunning hotel with an amazing scenery and flying a helicopter is something I certainly wouldn’t mind learning myself at some stage. Rest assured, the images from this ad have secured some place in my mind along with the lines, and that’s how I started questioning myself the same question.

So when was the last time you’ve done something for the first time? And what feelings do you remember associated with such an event?

Quite often we feel almost forced into doing something, and this is when doing anything for the first time feels really painful. It’s very easy to see any challenge from the scariest of its sides, and then you have only two choices: overcome your fears and go through the challenge anyway, or give up and live with the feeling of being not maybe a loser, but definitely someone weak. We generally don’t like being or feeling weak, so if you’ve given up on anything challenge in the past, you know exactly the feelings and thoughts that then haunt you for a good few years if not for the rest of your life. As time goes by, you feel more and more stupid, thinking and playing the situation back in your mind, confronting the same circumstances and talking yourself into being quite capable of doing such a thing, but somehow not being confident enough when you had to be.

You can’t change past. So try and get it right the first time.

There’s rarely anything you can do about things in the past – so it’s an art of letting things go that you have to study if you’re still being haunted by such thoughts, as for me, I always like pushing myself this extra bit harder, to see if the challenge is really something I can’t overcome. I easily get excited about new challenges, but I try my best not to rush things or do anything stupid. Still, there’s always this positive doubt I give every challenge – is it really so worthy that I can’t manage? I always doubt it and always try my best to cope with the situation. And guess what? I mostly succeed! :)

One day that changed the world around me

I remember, back when I was 8 years younger, we went on a holiday with my family. We’ve had two wonderful weeks away on a beach with my mother and sister, and although there were many things and events which made that particular summer an unforgettable one, there was one experience I’d like to share.

One day I got obsessed with the idea of platform diving. There was one springboard installed on the beach, just off an old pier, and lots of guys enjoyed diving off this 3m construction. I was 18 back then, so it certainly wasn’t the first time I saw a tower like this. I’ve been jumping off similar things before and it never was a problem. The fun was there, I loved the feeling of being weightless for a fraction of a second when you’d jump as high as you can and there’s this second before you fall down and crush into the water making thousands of splashes… I love water and I genuinely enjoyed it all…

But I never thought of diving off such a thing. It looked so easy to do when you watched it from aside, yet so exciting! I figured, if it was exciting to watch someone do it, it would be so much more fun to do it myself. But when I got to the top of this tower and made a few steps on the springboard, I felt sudden weakness in my legs. When I had reached the side of it and could stand there and watch the gentle waves of a blue water below, I realised there was no way I could dive off this thing.
And so I became obsessed with the idea. For a few days in a row, I would climb up to the top of this tower, would come to the very edge of the springboard, and would stare into the water for I don’t know how long. First there was just the fear. Almost a primal fear and a feeling of being really stupid for trying to talk myself into doing something as ridiculous as diving off such an incredible height just because so many others could do it and I myself could not. My fear didn’t bring anything constructive – it wasn’t helping at all to fear the dive, as I was looking for some ways to actually do it. There were few lower heights which I’ve successfully used to have a dive or two, and it wasn’t as scary, but every time I climbed the tower I would feel horrified and would have to regretfully climb back down.

It’s been like this for a few days. At some stage the fear had grown to be so strong that I almost believed I’d simply kill myself if I force myself into diving. And then one evening I’d realised it was almost the time we went back home, our two weeks were practically over. This was when I realised that unless I push harder and manage to make a dive off the tower, this fear and regret will stay with me for a whole long year at least, till we come back again to the same beach and the same tower. And this thought came as a shock to me. I wasn’t prepared for a whole year of regretting something which would only take 1 second to do.
And so, I did my best to enjoy the following day. I had laughed with my mother and sister, we had a wonderful lunch together, I had read a part of interesting book but left it unfinished. So I made my day the best it could be, and gradually prepared it all to peak at the evening dive I had decided to attempt.
In the evening, I headed to the tower myself, steadily climbed up to the very top, cast a final look at the beautiful scenery, and dove in.

It was a few seconds before I’d realised I was alive. It’s not that I expected to kill myself, but I think I was fairly surprised to be absolutely okay when I surfaced. I was shaking with the excitement, I barely made it out of the water, and only then I looked around and realised that the world around me would never be the same.

It truly was an epic moment for me. All the bright colours of the evening sky became even brighter. The sound of waves kissing the sand was richer and louder. The warm wind felt like it never did before. And the tower – it seemed small and casual, it held no fears for me at all.

This was all I needed back then. I was happy with myself, and my worries were gone – it was a holiday of a lifetime, and I got back to our city being a completely different person. This was the lesson I’ve learned once and for all – there is a first time for everything, but all your worries are nothing but the fear of something unknown.

Transforming impossible into something achievable

So often we look at something and tell ourselves: no, this is impossible. I can’t do it. Sometimes our challenges seem to be so scary we believe no one can cope with them. But all it takes to change our view of the challenge is someone to go through this challenge successfully. Just one person. Just once. And this is quite often enough for you to go on.

I’ve learned to push myself hard enough to go through most of the challenges on my way. If I look at the problem and it seems scary to me, I always try and see if it would seem to be as scary to others. If anybody can do it, so can I. And over the years of applying such approach, I’ve grown to sometimes be the first one to do something. There isn’t a fear here, instead I concentrate on the inspiration I could be. Firstly, an inspiration to myself, and secondly, to others. We, people, are so easily persuaded by a visual demonstration of something. Many things we won’t believe unless we see them ourselves, but when we do, there is this instant transformation of something impossible into being quite real and achievable.

So have no fear, no matter what. Look for constructive ways to tackle the problem, and never think of anything as being impossible unless it really is :) That is, unless there is a mortal danger, go out and try to reach the top, approach the problem from various directions, try different things at different times, but never give up.

There is a first time for everything. It is in your power to make this first time something really good to remember.