Image by mugley (license).

At the heart of what I like to call relaxed productivity there some destructive things you want to avoid.

One of them is the grey zone. It is a twilight zone of the mind.

The grey zone is basically when you are thinking and worrying about work when you are at home. Or when you are thinking about your home life and challenges there when you are at work.

Not a very uncommon habit. But why do you want to avoid it?

Three powerful reasons why I try to stay away from it as best as I can are:

• You become less effective. When you are stuck in thinking about your home life or your private life in some way or form at work then you are not fully focused. You are distracted and that impacts how well you can do you your work.
• You become less motivated and energetic. Being stuck in the grey zone sucks a lot of extra emotional and mental energy. It adds a lot of stress. And all of this often causes you to feel fatigued and your motivation to do something well or to explore new opportunities tends to sink like a rock.
• You might wind up with relationship troubles. One the most important things in any kind of relationship is to truly be there when you are there. To not still be at work in your mind when you are having dinner with your partner, playing a game with your child or hanging out with friends. Being somewhere else is one of those things that do not only annoy the people you are with but also can erode relationships.

Now, how do you go about replacing this habit with something better?

I recommend keeping the reasons above in mind as much as you can during your day. Being conscious about how this habit can damage your life is a good first step towards smarter habits.

A few more things that work well for me are:

1. Take a break every hour.

If you are never free from work for example, if you are never switching things up then your mind will naturally think about work, work, work all day long.

So to break the habit of being in the grey zone it is essential to first fully focus on work. And then to fully focus on relaxing and rejuvenating your mind and body. By focusing 100% on both work and rest each day it becomes easier to fully switch between these modes.

So I usually work for about 45 minutes. Then I take a 15 minute break and I do something totally different. I may take a short walk, eat a small snack, watch half an episode of the Simpsons or just lie down on the couch and read a book.

One thing that has worked well for me is to use a kitchen timer – or the timer on your cell phone – to make sure your work period or your rest period does not become too long.

2. No work after 7 o’clock in the evening.

When you work from home it is easy to start working too much or whenever you feel like it. This can however add stress, get you stuck in the grey zone or just make you spin in circles and get very little of importance done.

So I have set a limit and I do no work after 7 o’clock in the evening. This allows me to wind down after a day of work so that I can sleep well and spend my time with friends or my girlfriend and truly be there with them.

3. No work on weekends.

This is another way of dividing up your work zone and your relaxation or home zone. To be able to fully focus during the weeks and do your best you need slightly longer periods of rest and rejuvenation. Let your weekend be that time.

So if you can, shut off your cell phone.

I work online quite a bit during the weekdays, so during the weekends I often take at least one day when I do not go online at all. And during almost all weekends nowadays I do not check email or do other regular checks online. This certainly makes it easier to not think about work on weekends.

4. Have other important things to do.

By not working after a specific time in your day, by not working on weekends you will have more time when you are truly there with your family and friends. This will also, for example, help you to not feel guilty about not spending enough quality time with them and give you more time and energy to do awesome stuff together and to work on challenges or issues you and the other person(s) might be having.

And so by doing things this way you are also less likely to get stuck in the grey zone at work and think about something that is happening in your family or with a friend.

By setting the limits described above it becomes easier to do the mental switch between fully focused work, fully focused family/friend time and fully focused rest time.

By having important stuff in your life besides work like a hobby, a sport, the people around you and various adventures you can have together it also becomes easier to not get stuck in thinking about what you need to do tomorrow or on Monday at work.

Instead you can fully be where you are right now and recharge yourself. And that makes a big difference in the quality of your life both in the long- and short-term.

If you found this article helpful, then please share it with someone else by using the buttons below. Thank you! =)

Note: The special launch week offer is now over.

Did you ever have an opportunity that you didn’t go for because you didn’t feel like you could do it?

Do you sometimes feel like you cannot ask for what you truly want or say no because you fear being rejected?

Do you feel like no matter how good you do things at work or in school you are still not good enough or happy on the inside?

Do you feel like you are not someone who could have or deserve success in the most important areas in life such as love, friendship, career, finances or your health?

Do you feel like you have not lived up to your potential yet and are quite often discouraged by what you have accomplished in life so far?

And do you think you’d have more success in life if you were happier on the inside?

Well, being in such a place is not uncommon. I used to be in that place. And many are there today in various degrees.

That is why my new course, the 12-week course simply called the Self-Esteem Course is all about understanding and raising your own self-esteem. So that you can be happier and more successful in your life.

How I have built my own self-esteem and you can too

Being in a place of low self-esteem is not a good but an all too common place to be in the world today.

It can feel terribly restricting. You don’t go for what you really want most of the time. And it feels like life never seems to really start for you or truly grow compared to the people you see around you.

But this is not something that is set in stone. Low self-esteem is an issue and a challenge but it is something that can be improved greatly upon so that you can feel great about yourself and live your life to its full potential too.

I think my story with self-esteem is a pretty common one. I didn’t have atrociously bad self-esteem but I was down on myself quite a lot and didn’t feel like I deserved very much in life. So I held myself back from the success in wanted. I held myself back from trying to live up to my potential.

Over the past years things have changed for me. And in this course I want to share what I have learned, what has actually worked and still works to keep my self-esteem up even through rough parts of my days and weeks.

In the Self-Esteem Course you will each week for 12 weeks get a part of the puzzle of high self-esteem.

• Exercises for understanding. I will share the powerful exercises that helped me to understand myself better and to make steady improvements in how view myself and the world.
• Strategies so that you don’t get dragged down in everyday life. I’ll share the ways I have learned to handle those common situations, habits and pitfalls that can drag your self-esteem down on a daily basis.
• The habits of high self-esteem. I’ll share the habits I have cultivated that allow me to feel a lot better about myself and feel the inner freedom to explore life as I want to.

Many of the strategies, tips and exercises in this course are things I have never even mentioned on my blog or newsletter before.

Helping yourself through life’s ups and downs and towards your dreams

Having a healthy sense of self-esteem is much like building and maintaining your personal physical fitness. It is not something you do once and it is fixed for the rest of your life.

But in this course I’ll give you the tools to build it up and then you can run with it and keep it up week after week and month after month, through life’s ups and downs and on the winding path towards your own small, big and awesome dreams and goals.

Because that is what a healthy sense of self-esteem is about. That you feel and think that you are worthy of good things, happiness and love. In your relationships and socially, at work or in school, with your health, finances and other important things in life.

It is about you feeling good about yourself even when you encounter criticism, failure or if your work is not done in a perfect manner or if you are not achieving things all the time. It’s about being good to yourself just like you would be good to your best friend.

The most important positive changes that this course will help you make are how to:

• Deep down feel like you truly trust yourself to be able to handle life and making the important decisions and that you deserve to have and to get more good and awesome things in your life.
• Uncover and reclaim your inner core of unchanging self-esteem.
• Discover your factual strengths and weaknesses and a more balanced and nuanced perspective towards yourself and your world.
• Talk back to your own inner critic, stop it before it can damage you and your life even more and then replace it with healthier habits.
• Finally lay off and overcome your own most self-critical and most self-esteem damaging thought habits.
• Handle mistakes and failure in a way that preserves your self-esteem levels and allows you to learn from what happened.
• Respond to criticism in a more understanding and levelheaded way.
• Stop comparing yourself and your life to other people and their lives.
• Replace your perfectionism with more helpful and healthy habits.
• Cultivate more compassion and understanding for yourself and for other people.
• Find your most important dreams and set up goals and effective strategies that will help you reach those dreams and fulfill your untapped inner potential.
• Stay on course while you work towards what you want and to not self-sabotage when you get it.
• Simply stop feeling lousy or negatively about yourself and start feeling good about yourself and happier on the inside.

60 Day 100%, No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee

I am so confident that this course will help you that it comes with a 60 day money back guarantee. So it’s a risk-free deal for you.

If you aren’t satisfied that The Self-Esteem Course is helping you improve your life or you don’t like the material for some reason then just let me know via email and I’ll refund you in full with no questions asked.

Here’s What You’ll Get if You Sign Up for the Self-Esteem Course Today

I have kept things very simple for this course. And you have two options when it comes to how you want the course delivered. Either you can get it in small, weekly parts via email. Or you can download the whole course today (if you want this option, scroll down a bit).

If you choose the “one-small-part-each-week” option then you will each week get a short guide with just a couple of clear action steps at the end of the guide to take that week. I have added this weekly option to lessen the chance that you get overwhelmed, stuck in analysis paralysis or start procrastinating.

I want as many as possible not only to read the information but also to take small actions each week to build their self-esteem and be able to better maintain it.

So, with this option you will each week get a new email containing a written guide in PDF format with strategies, practical tips and clear action-steps to take.

And, as I wrote a couple of paragraphs up, many of the things in this course are things I have never even mentioned on my blog or in my newsletter before.

You will also receive these two bonuses each week:

• The Weekly Worksheet. One worksheet per week in PDF format containing in many cases absolutely essential exercises to help you to better understand yourself, your own self-esteem and how to improve it.
• The Weekly Audio Session. That week’s written guide as an audio session in mp3 format.

That’s 12 extra worksheets & 12 audio sessions in mp3 format.

Get the Self-Esteem Course – Weekly Email Edition Now

There is a time for a real change. A time for inner freedom and self-happiness so that you can live the life you really want. A time to grow, to start feeling good about yourself and to explore what you want deep down instead of holding yourself back.

If you like, that time can be now. Today. So let’s get started.

Today you can get the Self-Esteem Course for just $37.

Here are the simple steps to get your spot in the weekly course:

1. Click the button below and then after you have reached and clicked the “Pay Now” button in the Paypal payment process and purchased your membership you will automatically be added to the membership email list.
2. Go to your inbox. First you’ll get a confirmation email where the subject line start with [S-E] and in that email you need to click a link to confirm your membership.
3. Then, a couple of minutes later, you will get an email with your download links for the first guide, worksheet and audio session of this course.

You’ll get a new email every 7 days with that week’s download links for the full 12-week duration of the course.

NOTE! Be sure to put in the email address you want the course delivered to into the PayPal purchase form because it is at this email address you will receive your weekly guides and worksheets.

Or Download the Whole Self-Esteem Course Instantly Today

You don’t have to subscribe to the email option and get the course in small weekly parts though. You also have the option to get the whole Self-Esteem Course right now. You will then gain instant access to all the 12 weekly guides, the 12 worksheets and the 12 audio guides in just a few minutes.

Click the button below to get your copy of the whole Self-Esteem Course for just 37 dollars today.

P.S: I spent many years to get to where I am today. I don’t want you to have to spend that much time struggling to find your way out of low self-esteem, squandered potential, often feeling down about yourself and your life or beating yourself up on a weekly basis like I did. Instead, get a fresh start today. Start growing and building your own self-esteem and life towards new, unexplored heights and horizons.

And remember, you have a 60 day, no questions asked money back guarantee so you can check out the Self-Esteem Course with no risk for you.

Image by ·Insomnia· (license).

“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”
Unknown

Your self-esteem is one of the most important things in life. It is one of those things that will make a huge difference for you if you work on it.

As you raise your self-esteem you will for instance:

• Feel more deserving and trusting in yourself. This will allow you to more fully explore your own potential and start going for your dreams and happiness. Instead of holding yourself back in life because you do not think you deserve good things or because of fear of failure, rejection etc.
• Live as you want. Not just when it comes to your goals and dreams. But also in the way that you will be better at standing up for yourself, asking for what you really want, saying no and to not feel pressured by shoulds or perfectionism.
• Stop feeling lousy about yourself and start feeling that you are OK and good. Sure, life still has its ups and downs with better self-esteem but those ups and downs also become easier to handle. And if you become more understanding, accepting and loving of yourself then just about any day in life will become better and happier than it used to be.

Those are a couple of reasons why I have created my brand new course, the Self-Esteem Course. It will launch on Tuesday as the headline mentions. At 13.00 EST (that’s 18.00 GMT) to be more specific and during the first week of the launch you can get it at 30% off.

But that is not the only thing about self-esteem that I wanted to share today. I also wanted to share three simple ways that you can start using today to start raising or to better maintain your own self-esteem.

1. The daily self-appreciation journal.

It is easy to get lost in basing your self-esteem on just what you accomplish, on what you get done in a day or week. But basing your self-esteem on just that makes it pretty unstable.

One way help yourself out with that and with appreciating what is good and awesome about you is to use a self-appreciation journal.

You can do that by taking out a pen and notepad (or use a word processor on your computer or cell phone) every evening for a week. There you write down 5 things you appreciate about yourself. But make sure that you do not only write down accomplishments. Also write down good stuff related to your core-self esteem. By that I mean things that always there no matter how you perform at work or in school. It could be things/traits like your sense of humor, your kindness, your honesty, wisdom, creativity and so on.

If you like, continue to make this kind of journaling a habit of yours after the first week is up.

2. The stop word or stop-phrase.

We all have an inner critic. The critic can spur you on to get things done and to behave in way that gains acceptance from the people around you. But it can also drag you and your self-esteem down.

The inner critic whispers or shouts thoughts in your mind. It could be thoughts like:

• You are lazy and sloppy too, now get to work.
• No one really likes you for who you are.
• You always fail in relationships.
• You aren’t good at your job at all and someone will figure that out and throw you out.
• You are worse or uglier than someone else.

Now, the inner critic can as I mentioned help you to be productive and so on. But there are alternatives that are better. If you want to become more effective then it will for example be healthier and more productive to remind yourself of your major reasons for doing what you do each day. You could write down the most important reasons why you are focusing on this project, on these classes in school and so on and put that note where you will see it every day.

But, as you start going on that other, healthier path, you also have to stop the critic so it does not start to drag you down. You have to talk back to it.

You can do so by simply creating a stop word or stop-phrase that you say or shout in your mind whenever your critic pipes up with a distorted and self-esteem hurting thought.

Simply say: Stop!

Or use something else. I like these two phrases:

• No, no, no, we are not going there!
• No, that is just stupid.

They have worked well for me to get the inner critic to shut up. Try these ones out or create one that feels good and works for you.

Then use it to not get dragged down by your own inner critic when it may get triggered by for example criticism or a mistake in everyday life. And as you use the word or phrase and it becomes a habit and as you find healthier paths towards what you want your critic will pop up up less and less.

3. Be kind and understanding towards others (and yourself).

By being kinder towards and more understanding of others if becomes easier to do the same to yourself. One simple way to focus on being more understanding and kind when you feel the need to judge someone is to use helpful questions. One I find to be really effective is:

What parts of this person can I see in myself? How is he or she like me?

This one helps me to shift my perspective from what is different and what I feel the need to judge to what we have in common instead. This tears down the mental barriers between us and I can feel closer to and more understanding of this person.

Try it out whenever you feel the need to judge someone, no matter if it is someone close to you or someone you don’t even know.

By doing so it becomes more natural to extend and use this more understanding and kind frame of mind when you view yourself too. And by behaving in this way towards others you will feel better about yourself and in that way raise your self-esteem too.

If you found this article helpful, then please share it with someone else by using the buttons below. Thank you! =)

Image by mark sebastian (license).

This is also an easy and simple way to expand your comfort zone and to keep your curiousness up.

By changing your perception of yourself from someone who sticks to the old and comfortable all the time to someone who likes to mix small and big things up it feels more natural to mix things up in any other area of life too. You break out of your comfort zone regularly and so the inner resistance and fear that things will not go well becomes a lot smaller in everyday life.

Plus, it keeps you from getting stuck in the same old rut. It allows you to discover a ton of new exciting things. It could sometimes be the start of something bigger in a way you cannot see right now. And it’s just plain fun. I hope you’ll find some inspiration in this list.

1. Eat the unusual thing. Instead of choosing the meatbased dish at lunch try the vegetarian alternative. Or try the fish if you usually go for the beef.
2. Smile towards everyone. Instead of just going along with your day in your normal social way try smiling more. Smile more towards your co-workers, the lady at the checkout at the supermarket, the people closest to you and smile to yourself when you encounter a mirror. See what happens.
3. Cook something new. Each week me and my girlfriend try cooking a new recipe from our cookbooks. It is most often a tasty experiment and helps us to find, sometimes unexpected, new favorites. It has also certainly made me a better cook in the last year or so.
4. Mix up your music. I mix things up by trying new music every month. I have a look at the best music on sites like Pitchfork.com and Metacritic.com. Then I load a few of those albums on Spotify and listen.
5. Work in complete silence and stillness. Shut the door to your office, shut off your music, unplug the internet and just focus on doing the most important thing you can do today while enjoying the silence.
6. Read something that your friends wouldn’t guess that you are reading. I’m reading Jared Diamond’s history book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.”. Definitely not my usual cup of tea. But I’m loving it. And it helps me to think in new directions and gives me new ideas on a daily basis.
7. Do all your shopping for the week. Instead of doing grocery shopping when you feel like it or need to, sit down down and plan what you will eat and need for a whole week. Go and get all of that at the store. Now you don’t have to go back there for a week and you’ll probably have a bunch of extra free time and less stress to enjoy this week.
8. Have a day of kindness. Instead of having the usual bursts of irony, sarcasm etc. during your day try to go for a day where you are just being kind and friendly to everyone including yourself.
9. Enjoy it all. All fluctuations during your normal day is a part of life and as life it is a gift in some way or another. So recently I have started to have days when I just tell myself: “enjoy it all”. Then I try to enjoy my day no matter if the inbox is overfull, if I’m hungry and starting to get cranky. The things I usually don’t like so much I tell myself to enjoy as a part of life. And so my day actually becomes more enjoyable because much of how we see life is about how we choose to think about it.
10. Watch something odd. If you usually watch thrillers then try a romantic comedy. If you most often get stuck with documentaries try an animated movie form Japan (I recommend anything by Hayao Miyazaki). If you love Family Guy, try the Wire. Expand what you watch to get new ideas and impressions.
11. Listen to the sound of the world. Leave your portable music player/radio at home. Just listen to sounds of the city, nature and people as you move about during your day.
12. Take a day off from the Internet. I have started to take Internet-free days on either Saturdays or Sundays (or both) over the last month or so. It’s a wonderful change of pace and feels like I’m on a small, healthy and extra relaxing vacation. Plus, it makes it more fun to get back to work on Monday.
13. Exercise in a new way. Recently we got a Nintendo Wii. So now I jump around once or a couple of times a week and exercise with my EA Active 2.0 game. It’s more fun and the workouts are harder than I expected. And feels like an excellent home workout option as the long and hard Swedish winter is just around the corner.
14. Take a news black out. Instead of reading the paper or watching the news as usual try to go without that for a day. See how it affects you and how much you miss the news.
15. Hide a note for a loved one. Try hiding a sweet note of affection for a partner, family member or a friend in his or her cookie jar, tea or coffee container, book on the nightstand, hat, shoes or somewhere else where they look each day. Make him or her happy in an unexpected and odd way.
16. Take a different route. To work or to school. To your gym or home. See something new even when you are in transport mode.
17. Walk or take the bicycle to work. Instead of taking the car or riding the bus as usual. Get some exercise and fresh air before it is time to start working and before it’s time to go home.
18. Let it go just for today. If you often get into arguments or have trouble letting issues go and replay them over and over in your mind then just for today let it all go. Tomorrow you can take up your old habits just where you left them . But for today, instead of getting into an argument just let it go and walk away. If you replay something in your mind, let it go for today. If that old memory pops up today too, let it go instead of dwelling.
19. Go out. If you usually stay in during the weekdays, then call up a few friends and head down to the pub for a few hours even if it’s just a Wednesday. Or call up someone you haven’t met in ages and go for a cup of tea or coffee. Or pop down to the movie theater and catch a movie. If you usually do those things though, consider just staying in with PJs on and taking it easy.
20. Sit in a new place. If you have favorite chair or part of the sofa where you always sit then try another chair and/or place to sit today. It can give you a new perspective at work or at home and I have found that it can even give you some new, fresh thoughts and perspectives on life.
21. Throw out the things you haven’t used in 1 year. Go through one part of your home (a closet, a drawer in your desk or bedroom cabinet) and see what you have there. Ask yourself if you have used each item in there in the past year. If not, give the item(s) away to charity or a friend or simply throw it out.

If you found this article helpful, then please share it with someone else by using the buttons below. Thank you! =)

Image by Camdiluv (license).

This month the Positivity Blog is 5 years old.

It feels strange to write that. The years I’ve spent writing here seem to have zipped by so fast. And it feels strange to be where I am today with this site.

Back in the fall of 2006 I started this site mostly just for fun and to share my own thoughts on personal development. And I thought that maybe with some luck I could get a couple of hundred people to regularly read what I had written. Perhaps I could even help some of those people out while finding more clarity in my own life and while growing as a person.

Well, things went a bit better than that. Some of my articles took off pretty quickly on social media sites like Digg. And from there things started to really move.

Today the site has over 10000 visitors a day and over 45000 subscribers. That’s just crazy. Just imagining that thousands of people sit by their computers, cell phones, iPads and read my posts boggles my mind. It’s just amazing to me.

And I really want to thank you for helping me to get here. I want to thank you for all the support, for all the comments and insights you have added to my articles, for the clarifying and helpful criticism, for sending along something you found useful on the site to a friend, for picking up one of my premium guides and for all the emails.

I don’t know how many emails I have gotten so far. But it is a lot and I really love how heartfelt and genuine the emails are. So many of you have been so kind to offer to help me out for free with all kinds of things, to invite me to tea if am ever in your town, to share your story and how you have found some help on the site and just wanted to say thanks.

All of those things mean so much so me. So again, thank you!

A birthday offer for the next 48 hours

As a small thanks and a fun thing for this anniversary I’ve decided to offer a 30% discount on all my premium guides for the next 48 hours.

The offer is available until 10.00 a.m PST (that’s 17.00 GMT) Friday the 30:th of September. This is a special thing I’m doing because of this anniversary and I have no plans for the future to offer any special prices on these products.

You can get any of the products with one of the major credit cards or money in your Paypal account.

The Power of Positivity

This was the first premium guide I wrote with chapters on all kinds of topics like self-confidence, motivation, mindfulness, social skills, self-esteem, losing weight, becoming a person of action and more. This package also includes two audio guides and a workbook.

Click here to get the Power of Positivity for just $11.90 (regular price is $16.97)

Or learn more about this guide here

The Art of Relaxed Productivity

My second guide was all about becoming a more focused person and getting more of the most important things done with less stress. This one is available in two editions, the basic one with a couple of audio guides and other bonuses and a complete edition with a few more audio guides and bonuses and most importantly a 12 week step-by-step road map to doubling your productivity.

Click here to get the basic edition for $11.90 (regular price is $17)

Click here to get the complete edition for $18.90 (regular price is $27)

Or learn more about this guide here

The Simplicity Course

My latest premium product is a course in simplifying your life. This one is quite in-depth and split into six modules covering the basics of simplifying your life and simple productivity & effectiveness, simple thinking, simple relationships & social skills, simple health & fitness and simplifying your life (this last one covers finances, decluttering, reducing the stuff in your life etc.).

The course also includes 5 workbooks and 21 audio guides. The discount for Simplicity is available if you get the whole course right away, not for the monthly subscription option.

Click here to get the whole Simplicity course for just $42 (is usually sells for $59.97).

Or learn more about the course here

Now I’m off to go out into the sunshine and enjoy the last days of summer that still lingers here in Sweden. I hope you will have an awesome day too!

Image by tony’s pics (license).

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
Jim Rohn

Changing a habit is something very powerful that you can do for yourself and for others.

But it’s often not an easy thing to do. It becomes even harder to change when you make what I believe are some common mistakes. I have at least made them quite a few times.

So I hope you’ll find something helpful in this article. Something that will make it at least a bit easier to change your habits and to making a lasting change in your life.

Trying to change too many habits at once.

This is perhaps the most common mistake. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the enthusiasm and the hope that you will give your life a total overhaul. Nothing wrong with that.

But in my experience you won’t be able to keep it up until your new habits are established and stable. Sure, you can live on your enthusiasm for a week or two. But sooner or later life interferes or the stress of doing it all at once causes too much inner and outer resistance and you give up.

Changing a habit is a lot of mental effort. You have resistance from within as your mind tries to drag you back to the comfort it has known for so long (no matter if that familiar place isn’t that healthy for you). You may face resistance from the outside as people question your change.

Changing just one habit at a time may seem pretty boring. But do you want the excitement of the thought that you are completely changing your life but then have little to no results later on? Or do you want a real change in your life?

My advice would be to go for the one habit you want the most right now and just focus on that one. And to let go of listening to the voice of the inner child that tells you “I want it all right now!”.

Thinking it will go smoothly and quickly each time.

When I tried to add a habit of working out each week I think I failed about four times before it really stuck.

A common piece of knowledge is that you should do something for 21 days and it will stick as a new habit. For me it has taken longer than that. It has been messier.

It does seem to matter how much effort it takes to incorporate the new habit. And how much discomfort it causes you. Some habits I have slipped into quite easily within just a few weeks.

But allowing for at least 60 days or up to 90 days to work on your new habit – with a few periods of slumps or failure during that period – before it sticks doesn’t seem unrealistic to me.

Not finding the right way for you.

When I wanted to lose weight and increase my energy I knew I needed to do more cardio. I tried running. I tried the elliptical bicycle in the gym. None of them was much fun at all. I really didn’t like them.

I didn’t really get the cardio habit to stick until I started using the bodyweight circuits in the beginning of 2009. I liked them because they were quick and intensive and I could them anywhere as long as there was a floor. That combination really helped me to stick with the program.

So experiment. Find the solution that fits you, the solution that you can carry on with in the long-term and reap the benefits from.

Missing the comfort of the old habit and slipping back into that.

The mind doesn’t like when you step out of your comfort zone to change your habits. You feel discomfort. You feel some kind of pain perhaps. Your body is giving you signals that something is not as it has been for a long while. The body tells you that what you are doing doesn’t feel “safe” and familiar.

It’s easy to miss that old familiarity enough to slip back into your old behaviour.

So what do you do?

You have to be aware that this is probably how a change in habits will work. Your mind will offer resistance. There were probably also some benefits that you got from your old habit. You have to accept that you are giving up those benefits for the even better benefits of your new habit.

When you are feeling like going back to your old ways remind yourself that the mind can play tricks on you and reminds yourself of all the new and good things you will get out of your new habit.

Aiming for perfection instead of improvement.

Take it easy on yourself. If you slip back into your old behaviour even though you reminded yourself of the new benefits then don’t beat yourself up. It’s not a big deal. Everyone slips from time to time. Just get back on the horse the next day again. But learn what you can so you don’t fall into the same hole or do the same mistake again.

If you are working on for instance a habit of being present during your daily life understand that such a habit is gradual. It would be nice if you could flick it like a light switch.

With simple, physical habits like decluttering for 5 minutes each day you may be able to do this 95 percent or even 100 percent of the time. With being present or being positive in all situations you build it up gradually. You will most likely not be able to do it 100 percent of the time. And that’s OK.

Striving for perfection for such big changes is just you setting the bar at an inhuman level and it will not help you.

Getting lost in a vacuum.

If you just stop doing something, like for instance eating junk food and sweets you create a vacuum. It is possible to just stop. But I have found that it becomes easier to change if you replace your old habit with a new and more positive one. You fill out the space you created and so you are less likely to get sucked back into the old habit.

If you want to stop checking social media and the internet for many hours each evening then replace that habit and space with reading more books or joining a club, sport or an evening class.

When I got into better shape I filled my cupboards and fridge with vegetables, fruits, nuts and healthy stuff. I had no candy or cookies at home. Because I knew that I would inevitably snack on them. I replaced one snacking habit with a healthier one instead of stopping completely.

Making the new habit vague instead of specific.

When you create a replacement for your old habit or just a new habit don’t make the new habit vague. That usually leads to procrastination, trying get out of doing the new habit or taking shortcuts. Make it specific and something concrete to make it easier to know when you are done for today with the habit and to increase the likelihood of sticking with the program until your new behavior becomes a real habit.

So make it real and specific by telling yourself that you will: go running for 15 minutes three times a week. Don’t get lost in vague dreams that you will: get more exercise.

If you found this article helpful, then please share it with someone else by using the buttons below. Thank you! =)

Image by Ben Fredericson (xjrlokix) (license).

What is holding you back from trying new things and improving your life in big or small ways in your daily life?

When you boil it down it is most often not about anything outside of you. Or that is at least not the biggest reason why you feel paralyzed. It’s the fear that gets to you.

It holds you back from trying something new for lunch, a new place for the evening out or a new hobby because you feel somewhat afraid that you’ll have a bad experience. So you stick to your usual routine.

It holds you back from asking someone for a date or number because you don’t want to risk being rejected or looking like a fool in front of people. So you don’t take the next step.

You stay where you are and new directions in your life remain unexplored.

This is of course very human. But fear doesn’t have to stop you from exploring life.

Now, let me share what I do to minimize my fear and to be able to move from feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed into taking action and moving forward.

1. What is the worst that could happen?

I like this very practical exercise as step number one.

So ask yourself this question. Really think about. Don’t just think about it for a few seconds. Sit down with a pen and piece of paper, your laptop or cellphone. Write it all out and think about what the realistic worst-case scenario would be.

Then write down a plan for how you can come back from such a scenario.
This step brings clarity, defuses fuzzy fears and helps you realize that you can most often bounce back pretty quickly even if the worst-case scenario somehow becomes reality.

If that only works to a degree move on to the next step…

2. Share your fear with someone.

By sharing your fear you can relieve inner pressure. By just keeping it on the inside it’s easy to build it up into this massive nightmare and extremely dangerous thing.

By sharing and by getting some input from a levelheaded friend or family member he or she can help you to alleviate the fear and inner pressure. And you can gain a much healthier perspective on things again.

If you don’t have someone to share it with or if that only works partly too then move on to…

3. Accept the fear.

It is a natural impulse to try to deny the fear when shows up in your life. Perhaps you try to not think about, you try to push it away. Or you tell yourself that you need to focus like a laser beam on the positive.

I have found that in many cases it is actually better to just accept that fear – or whatever is left of it after having worked through step #1 and #2 – is here right now (although it can be hard to sometimes convince your brain that this is a good option as it wants to deny or reject what is).

By accepting that you feel this way you stop feeding more energy into the fear and you stop making it strong. After a few minutes of fully taking in this uncomfortable feeling and accepting it then it starts to lose steam. It just seems to float away and you feel more open and relieved feelings bubbling up within.

4. Tap into curiosity and focus on the upsides.

By now, most of those fearful feelings are often pretty small and they tend come and go. You have processed much of that inner tension and resistance.

So you are now at a good point to start focusing on why you want to move towards what you have feared and to open your mind to what you can find out there.

Take out the pen and paper and ask yourself:

• What is the opportunity in this situation?
• What are the potential upsides I want and can have by taking these actions?
• What are the potential upsides in one year if I start moving on this path? And in five years?
• And how will life be in five years if I continue on the path I am now?

The answer when it comes to what you eat for lunch or if you want to have a new hobby may simply be that life becomes more fun, healthy, fulfilling and filled with newness and more surprises.

The answer when it comes to taking action to make a date happen, to get a new job or to take another direction in college could be that your life changes completely.

5. Take a small step forward. Take it slowly if you like.

You don’t have to go all in at once in many cases. Think about how you can move in small steps and slowly towards what you want. Just dip your toes in at first if that feels more comfortable. The most important thing is that you start moving and that you take action, not how fast or how much action you take at first.

If you for example want to start your own business work on that in the evening while still working at your day job or staying in school. Don’t let thinking like “I have to go all in and take huge risks” hold you back.

Or if you want to try something new today just tell yourself that:

Just for today I will try [insert something you want to try]!

You just have to do it today. Not ever again after today. You are not signing up for some huge commitment.

Tomorrow you may continue on that new path. Or you may not.

By not making this into a huge thing you have do but instead just a small step, that you can take and get done as slowly as you like, it becomes so much easier to do what is most important at first: to put yourself in motion.

Then, along the way, you can take bigger leaps if you like and speed things up. You will learn through successes and failures (and realize that you won’t die if things don’t go your way all the time). You will quit some things and continue doing other things.

But first, make it easy on yourself to take the first step.

If you thought this article was useful, please share it with someone on Stumbleupon, Facebook and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

Image by: notsogoodphotography (license).

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

Lately I have been very busy with working hard on the final part of my new course, Simplicity.

When you are busy like that at school or at work or just in life in general it’s very easy to from time to time fall into a couple of negative headspaces – such as victim thinking, feeling overwhelmed or just plain pessimistic – that make life and work more difficult.

In this post I’ll share how I usually to get myself out of such destructive inner places.

1. Releasing the stress.

Working out – I use free weight + body weight exercises – is my number one way to release stress and inner tension. If feel whiny or pessimistic then I put in maybe just 25 minutes of free weights as soon as I can (I have them at home so that makes is easier to get going with it).

That one step will most often work to feel stronger and better emotionally once again.

If that only works a bit I move one to…

2. Shift to a healthier perspective.

I usually do this one as the second step. But sometimes I use it as the first step and then I move on to or skip the exercise.

If I’m hung up on a smaller or medium sized detail or feel overwhelmed by something then I ask myself a question like:

Will this matter 5 years from now? This usually let’s me see that it doesn’t. Or that it is a very small deal in the long run.

If I fall into victim thinking I ask myself:

Does someone have it worse on the planet? Of course. So I should probably just chill out and snap out of the somewhat ridiculous, childish “poor, poor me” thoughts.

If I get irritated or angry at someone else then I ask myself:

How would I think and feel it if I were in his or her shoes? Putting myself in the other person’s shoes helps me to gain a more levelheaded mood and better perspective to solve a situation practically or to let it go. Instead of building a molehill into Mount Everest in my head.

If that doesn’t bring me fully around I move one to…

3. Focusing fully on rest.

I take a time out. I watch some fun comedies like the Simposons, the Office or Community and just laugh some time away. Or I lie down on the couch to read some fun or thrilling mystery novel.

And I do nothing more for maybe a half a hour or an hour. This is very important. I basically single-task and just focus on such relaxing – and for me fully absorbing – activities to 100%. This usually works wonders and lets me get back into the work with a relaxed and optimistic mindset again.

So find the activities that you get fully absorbed in – some sport, a walk, swimming perhaps or playing a video game – and take a fully focused break when needed.

Bonus tip: I remember to keep things extremely simple.

This one works when I get overwhelmed for example but is also one of my best tools to keep out of negative headspaces in the first place by focusing on what is helpful and nipping destructive thoughts patterns in the bud.

At the very top of a whiteboard on my wall I have written down: “Keep things extremely simple” (I also have this phrase as a desktop wallpaper on my laptop).

And whenever I feel I am making a thing bigger or more complicated than it is or I simply become confused or negative in some way I can look at the wall to help guide my thoughts back into a constructive and calm place.

If you thought this article was useful, please share it with someone on Stumbleupon, Facebook and Twitter. Thank you very much! =)

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”

Even if you are not an American – like me – you’ve probably still heard of Abraham Lincoln. He was the president who introduced and worked on measures to free the slaves and led the country through the Civil War. A war that had just ended when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre.

But what can Abraham Lincoln help us with today? Well, here are 10 powerful and timeless fundamentals. I hope you’ll find something helpful.

1. See the positive in people.

“If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.”

“The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.”

What you focus on you will find. In a situation, in a person. There is always plenty of good things and plenty of bad things to discover.

So you need to keep your focus steadily on what you want to find. Don’t let it waver just because you are in a “negative” situation or someone just said/did something “negative”. If your focus gets scattered, try to get it back into a more useful place as quickly as you can.

You can develop whatever view of the world and people that you like. You can go looking for the negative in people and feel a short burst of good emotions as find something negative about a person and feel like you are “right”.

Or you can develop a habit of looking for the positive. A habit where you can expect people to treat you in a positive way.

Because we do to a large extent teach people how we want to be treated. If we expect other people to help us and treat us well then they are more likely to do so than if we are negative and expect to be treated poorly.

This may sound a bit weird, but how we expect to be treated can have a big effect on how the world sees us.

2. Be honest.

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”

This is a pretty practical thing. Being honest will for several reasons work better in the long run. Of course, you don’t have to go out of your way to be honest and hurt people though. You can just as well choose to be silent if you like. Here are just a few practical reasons to minimize or just stop lying altogether.

• Your words aren’t everything. Words are only a pretty small part of communication. The rest are body language and your voice tonality. And it’s through those channels that the real you will shine through. People will in some way sense that something is wrong, that you aren’t being honest and authentic if those other ways you communicate aren’t in alignment with your words. So lying is just a short term solution. Sooner or later people will pick up on it.
• Poor self-image and stress. Cultivating a self-image as someone who lies will make you feel worse about yourself. You’ll feel like a fake and your self-esteem plummets. And if you on the other hand are honest you don’t have to feel like someone that is trapped or on the high-wire all the time.
• People really appreciate authentic communication. What separates people is to a large extent the walls that they build up between themselves. When you put aside personas and lies you can build real connections between you and other people. If you remove these walls of insulation then the people or you are interacting with are likely to reciprocate. And so your relationships can improve and are less likely to be damaged by miscommunication.

3. Unite.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Ego excludes and divides. The ego loves to make someone “the other” to strengthen its own power. It want’s to feel “more” than someone else. More clever. Prettier. Cooler. Wiser. Or more like a victim.

And by making the other even more wrong in your mind the ego grows stronger. However, the ego boosts of good feelings are just temporary. You have to reinforce them continually, just like a caffeine habit.

Consciousness and intelligence includes and accepts. You don’t have to be seduced by your ego’s wish to make people other than you. You can look at the positive in them and at the things you agree about. And be accepting.

When your thoughts are buzzing around in your head and telling you to exclude or divide in some way then you most often are listening to your ego. It may tell you that paragraphs just above this one are cheesy and stupid. You may not want to take such thoughts too seriously. You don’t have to.

The most useful advice I’ve found so far to get a handle on the need to divide is to not identify so much with my thoughts or feelings. That doesn’t mean that I stop thinking or feeling. It just means that I realize – and remember in my everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through me. And that I am the consciousness observing them.

When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out.

When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts.

4. Create a friend where there is none.

“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

This is similar to tip #1 and # 3. But slightly different, seen from a slightly different perspective. It is a helpful and a bit unusual way of looking at people who you might perceive as different or other than yourself.

Turning an enemy or someone we don’t like into a friend is difficult because first impressions can be powerful. Our concept of a person can remain intact if we don’t push further and question and explore. But if you get to know someone better you can often find out quite a few positive and interesting things about them. People are often more intriguing than your first impression of them.

Of course, since the ego needs to tell you that you are right and someone else is wrong then it can be hard to change your opinion of someone. That opinion of him/her is tied up in your ego and fuels your sense of being “right”. Again, the key and the way out here is to not take your thoughts or emotions too seriously.

This can allow you to open your mind to a change in the relationship.

Now, how can you make him/her your friend? One suggestion would be to follow tip # 1 and start looking for the positive in the person. Then to take the first step and give some kind of value – like help for instance – to that person. And then to take more steps if s/he is not convinced that you want to change the relationship.

5. Believe in and go after your own success.

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

If you think you can succeed then you can. Your belief in your own ability to succeed is essential and does not only motivate you to keep going.

You may have heard that you  have to believe that you can achieve something to do it and that the how you will do it will then present itself along the way. Well, that is true in my experience. Whatever you focus on persistently you will find in your world. So be careful what you focus on. Remind yourself to keep your focus on what you want to make solutions and people who can help you “pop up” out of all those things and pieces of information that is the background noise of your world.

And don’t wait for too long. Procrastination may just leave you with the crumbs or sometimes nothing really. Taking action is awesome. But taking action with little delay will increase the probability of you actually getting what you want before the window of opportunity closes.

So develop a Just do it! habit. Learn to do some planning but then to take action quickly despite what excuses or other negative things your thoughts and emotions may put up in your way. Know that they may just want to protect you from uncertainty and risks. But also know that you are in charge of them and not the other way around.

6. Persist.

“Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”

Persistence might not exactly be the sexiest sounding quality. It might not sell a lot of products to people looking for the magic pill. But it is an immensely helpful quality to cultivate and put to use.

If you fail, what do you do? You dust yourself off and try again. If the success you are looking for won’t come that quickly – a pretty likely scenario – then you have to persist. Persistence may be one of the most useful qualities one can have. Not only because you will still be out there in a less competitive playing field as lot other people have given up and gone home. But also because developing patience and being persistent will enable you to get what you want. It may just take a little longer than had hoped for.

7. Sharpen your ax.

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.”

Instead of just starting to chop with a blunt blade for hours on end it’s a whole lot smarter to first sharpen the blade and then take on the physically harder task of bringing the tree down. This goes for everything.

If you are prepared then it will often be a whole lot easier to get something done. Sometimes it can be the thing that separates people that either keeps chopping until they can’t take it anymore and give up and the people who could get the job done.

So success is not just about doing hard work. It’s also about sharpening your ax at regular intervals and learning new and better ways to take down the trees in your life. And it’s about remembering what trees you want to take down rather than just any tree. However, you don’t want to get stuck in this stage and never take action. As with all things, you have to find a balance by experimenting.

Four suggestions for sharpening your ax are:

• Educate yourself. Do some research into the whatever you want to achieve. Look for the most common mistakes and smart things people do. Read books and online. Talk to people who have already been where you want to go.
• Do. Fail. Learn. Do. Knowledge from external sources is great. But to really understand you have to do things. And learn from your own failures and successes. And then do again with your new understanding in your mind.
• Manage your energy levels. You don’t just have increase your knowledge and understanding of things. You also have to have the physical energy to get things done when you find your opportunity. Otherwise you may just fall into a procrastinating pattern or back down. So workout. Eat enough. Sleep enough. Basic stuff of course. But if you do it consistently then you’ll increase you chances of succeeding when it’s time to start chopping down your trees. With a high energy level it will be easier to persist until you are done.
• Remind yourself where you are going. A lot of not so important busy work can dull your ax. You need to regularly review your plans and remind yourself of your goals and what you really want. If you don’t keep your eyes on where you want to go you might wind up somewhere completely different.

8. Take a responsibility for your own life.

“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”

“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

When we are kids people take care of us. They take responsibility. But to become an adult – and not just a kid in a grown up’s body – one has to take responsibility for oneself. There is no other way. Sure, letting someone else take the responsibility may be easier on you.

But without taking responsibility for yourself how can you be free?
How can you really live up you own potential and dreams?

It can be hard to break out of the comfort zone of having other people taking responsibility for us. But if you don’t then you will be trapped by other people’s standards, expectations and limitations. You have to set your own rules for your life. A bit scary. But also liberating.

9. Happiness is optional.

“Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

One big upside of taking responsibility for yourself is that it lets you decide where the standards and limits are set. When you take responsibility for what you do you will also feel that you deserve to do what you feel is right for you, in your life.

And our control and responsibility not only goes for what you do out in the world. But also for your thoughts and emotions. You are to a large extent in charge here too.

When you realise this then you realise that you don’t have to play along with your old patterns of thinking and feeling anymore. You don’t have to play along with is “normal” or common thinking. You don’t have to take your thoughts so seriously. You can choose to not feel insulted when someone says something. You can choose to not to be angry whilst stuck in traffic. You can choose to see the positive in people. And you can choose how happy you will be.

Pain is inevitable in life. But how you choose to process or think about things – and if you let them get stuck in your mind or not – is up to you. Suffering is therefore to a large extent optional. And so is happiness.

10. Live your life fully.

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

This one is just beautiful. And I don’t really have much to add. But it might be useful to remind yourself of this saying regularly. Maybe when you feel like you are veering off track. Or when heading into things like small-mindedness, laziness or complacency. Perhaps you want to write it down and put it in a highly visible place so you don’t forget about it.

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

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

Another morning. Another day begins.

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

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

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

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

–ODDS & ENDS–

One article I read this week and really liked is called Robert, they can’t eat you! These 16 rules for success and life from Bob Parsons – founder of Godaddy.com – are full of good advice and wisdom. I highly recommend checking it out.

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