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 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 lrargerich (license).

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Anais Nin

Why are you reading this blog?

Probably because you want to make a positive change in your life. Perhaps you want to improve your social skills, simplify how you work or change your attitude and how you think.

Now this is great. But it is seldom that easy. There may be obstacles outside of you. There are almost certainly obstacles inside of you.

In this article I’ll explore some of those common obstacles that can make change so hard and how to get around them.

You don’t want to change.

Maybe you think you want to change something. But is it really your wish? Or is it the wish of your parents, boss, partner, friends or society?

If you don’t really want to make the change deep down then it will be very hard to go the distance. Yes, you can begin but if there is no inner drive to do it then you will lose motivation easily and feel like giving up all the time after a while.

What to do about it: Sit down and really think about whose goals you are working towards. If they are not yours then think about what you can do to stop working on them and spend more time on your own consciously chosen goals instead.

If you still have to go on with may have started as someone else’s goal – perhaps your boss has told you to do something and you can’t just ditch that if you want to keep your job – then find your own reasons for working on that goal. Brainstorm and write them all down. Review that paper and make the goal into more of your goal and know why you are working towards it for you own sake.

Your environment is holding you back.

If you are for example trying to lose weight then it will be a lot harder if the people around you are eating junk food every day. If you are trying to think more positively then it will be a lot harder if you hang out with negative people all the time and watch the news and negative and fear-inducing TV-shows too much.

What to do about it: Change your environment in a ways that will support you. That’s doesn’t mean that you have to take drastic measures like never talking to some friend or family member again to cultivate a more positive attitude.

It may just mean that you cut down on seeing the most negative people/TV-shows etc. that much and replace that with more time with positive people and positive media consumption. By doing that the process will be so much easier.

If you are trying to lose weight then find people with similar goals that you can spend some time with each week. Even if it’s just via an online forum of some sort.

Carve out some time and a space for yourself with people and motivational and educational information – books, blogs, magazines etc – that will support you as you move towards your goal. Also, by involving more people and/or for example signing up for courses somewhere you will feel commitment to people you like and a bit of positive social pressure to actually go there when you are supposed to instead of slacking off on the sofa.

One common problem with the social environment is that you perhaps fear what people may think if you make change. Well, in my experience people are seldom as harsh as you think they will be. They are most often supportive or simply not that interested/neutral to you making changes.
People are most often focused on their own goals and challenges in life. Or what other people may think of them. You are not the center of the universe.

You feel like giving up after one or three failures.

When you are really young then you probably don’t build failure up to be this huge thing. You learn to walk, fall down and ding your head and get up again. The same goes for learning to ride your bike.

But through influence from school and society failure becomes this increasingly more frightening thing. Sure, as you get older the stakes become higher and you can lose more if you fail. But I do think people often exaggerate the effects failure will have simply because they feel frightened.

What to do about it: Most of the time the sky will not fall if you fail. People will not mock you. Life just goes on. But you have to do things to gain this understanding. You will not get it just by reading these words and all the other things by people who have said the same thing for centuries.

Your mind has to experience failure – or the possibility of it – over and over to make the fear of failure to lot smaller. That has at least been my experience.

You may however find motivation in that failure teaches you things books/blogs cannot. By changing your perspective to a more curious one and seeing failure more as a learning experience than something to fear it becomes easier to handle.

You don’t feel enough pain yet.

Why do people change? Oftentimes I think they have simply had enough. The pain of staying as you are becomes too big and you seriously start looking for a positive way forward.

What to do about it: Besides waiting until the problem becomes pretty much unbearable you can try to see your future self vividly in your mind.

Ask yourself: What will this lead to in 5 and 10 years? Where am I going?

Towards massive debt, a heart attack, serious illness and severe restrictions in your future? Do you want go to that place where it is very likely that you will wind up if you don’t make a change? Then see your future self where you have made the positive change. What positive and awesome things has it brought you in 5 years and in 10 years? See it all in your mind. And remind yourself of the positive and negative consequences by writing them down and reviewing them whenever you feel like quitting and going back to your old ways.

Vividly seeing the probably very real future consequences of not changing can be that nudge you need to get serious about improving something in your life.

You don’t know how to practically make the change.

This is a common obstacle. Fortunately, nowadays we have the Internet so it’s a lot easier to find practical solutions to the problems many people have faced before you.

What to do about it: Ask yourself what have other people before you or around you have done to improve their situation?

Talk to people who have made the change you want to make (lose weight, quit smoking, improve the social life etc.). Or if you can’t find anyone, read the top rated books on Amazon.com on that topic or read blog articles.

But make sure that you take advice from someone who has actually been in your shoes and gone where you want to go. Find a way that suits you. It may not be the first method or system you try. So be patient. Keep moving forward towards the things you want most in your life.

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

Just before the summer I launched a course on simplifying the major parts of life called Simplicity. The news is that you can now get my Simplicity Course as a monthly membership course.

The six-module course is then split into four parts, and you get one new email each month with the download links for the written guides, the workbooks and the audio guides.

Here’s what you’ll learn each month:

Month #1: The Principles of Simplicity and Simple Productivity

The first month you get two modules focused on the basics of simplifying your life and on simplifying your work and effectiveness. And on lowering your stress levels and stop feeling overwhelmed.

A brief summary:

Module 1: The Six Principles of Simplicity

• What you should use your precious attention for in life.
• The three keys to making simplicity and improvement into a reality instead of just a dream.
• Principles that will always help you to find calmness and focus in today’s chaotic and complex world.

Module 2: Simple Productivity

• How to change your habits in the easiest way.
• Learn about the three habits that have helped me to triple my productivity and effectiveness in the past few years.
• Find out how you can overcome the common stumbling blocks in personal development and motivation and make your success guaranteed.
• How to handle email and other routine tasks in the simplest and quickest way you can.

You’ll get:

• The Six Principles of Simplicity Guide
• The Simple Productivity Guide
• The Simple Productivity Workbook

And these 6 audio guides:

• The Six Principles of Simplicity
• Habits and Rituals for Sustainable Change
• The 3 Habits of Simple and Relaxed Productivity
• The Simple Guide to Overcoming Procrastination
• On Motivation and Making Success Guaranteed
• The Awesome Morning Ritual (and Other Rituals)

Month #2: Simple Thinking

The second month is focused on the simple thinking and mindfulness. Some of the most important things you’ll learn are:

• How to simplify your thought habits and find calmness and inner peace in everyday life.
• The most effective ways to handle common thought complications such as worrying, pessimism, low self-esteem, a victim mentality and overthinking.
• Learn how to adopt what I believe is one of the most valuable and versatile habits one can have that will transform not just your thinking but your social life and relationships, your effectiveness and many other vital areas in life.

You’ll get:

• The Simple Thinking & Mindfulness Guide
• The Simple Thinking Workbook

Plus 5 audio guides:

• On Optimistic Thinking
• Slow Down into the Present Moment
• How to Stop Worrying So Much
• On Fear, Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem
• How to Stop Overthinking and Overcomplicating

Month #3: Simple Social Skills & Relationships

During the third month we focus on simplifying your relationships and simple ways to really improve your social skills.

Some the most important things in this module are:

• Find out how you can give more and deeper of the perhaps most important thing in any relationship. It’s a simple thing, but making real improvements here will totally change your social life.
• Learn how to make your relationships simpler and lighter and to overcome common stumbling blocks that make any relationship harder and more complicated than it needs to be.
• How I overcame shyness and social nervousness and how you can too to live a freer and richer social life.
• The essential keys to simpler social skills with anyone and powerful dating tips that I applied and that really changed my life.

You’ll get:

• The Simple Social Skills & Relationships Guide
• The Simple Social Skills and Relationships Workbook

And these 4 audio guides:

• On Value
• How to Improve Your Conversational Skills
• How to Reduce Social Nervousness and Shyness
• On Dating

Month #4: Simple Health and Simple Living

The last month of the course you get two modules of content: Simple Health & Fitness and Simple Living. Start with the one that feels most important to you at that time.

Here are some of the essential parts of these two final modules:

Module 5: Simple Health and Fitness

• Learn about three of the most important aspects of a happier, simpler and more energetic life.
• Identify energy leaks that drain you each and every day and make life so much heavier in subtle and not so subtle ways and learn how to plug these leaks.
• The easy way to establish a workout habit for life.
• Find out about the simple, no-nonsense steps that helped me lose 26 pounds.

Module 6: Simple Living

• Find out how you can change your relationship to things, stop making unnecessary purchases and reduce clutter in your life.
• The few, essential habits that will keep both your home and your workspace clutter-free every day.
• Discover how you can cut down on unnecessary costs, more consciously spend your money and simplify your financial life.

You’ll get:

• The Simple Health & Fitness Guide
• The Simple Health Workbook
• The Simple Living Guide
• The Simple Living Workbook

You will also get 6 audio guides:

• Simple Health
• Simple Fitness
• How I Lost 26 Pounds
• What Do You Really Need?
• Simple Money Tips
• How to Keep Your Home and Workspace Clutter-free

How to sign up for the Simplicity Monthly Membership Course right now and start simplifying your life today

If you want to sign up for this monthly course for just 13.97 dollars per month and get your first email containing the download links for first two modules in just a few minutes then follow the simple instructions below. You can cancel your membership at any time during the course and no more payments will then be drawn from your credit card or PayPal account.

1. Click the add to cart button below.
2. You will be taken to a Paypal page where you sign up and pay for your first month of the subscription with your credit card or with money on your PayPal account.
3. After you have paid please just wait for a few seconds and you will be taken to a page where you sign up for the private Simplicity email list. Follow the instructions on that page and enter your email address and click the Submit button.
4. After a few minutes you will get a confirmation email in your email inbox (be sure to check your spamfolder too). Click the link in that email to confirm your subscription. A few minutes after that you will get the first email in this course containing all the download links for the first month’s guides, workbook and audio files.

P.S: If you have any questions, please send me an email via my contact page. And you can of course still get the whole course immediately today if you like. Click here to learn more about that and about the Simplicity Course.

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

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

So what can you do? How can you get a handle on this habit?

In this article I’ll share what I have done. I’ll start with two habits that I use to replace that destructive habit. Then I’ll move on to a few more general tips that have also helped me.

Compare yourself to yourself.

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

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

You can make this habit stick by for instance taking a few minutes each day or just each Sunday (or any day that fits you) to use a journal to write down how you have grown, how much closer you are to your goals now, what you have overcome and learned and so on.

By doing so your thinking will over time shift and your thought patterns will automatically become more focused on comparing you to you rather than to other people.

Be kind.

In my experience, the way you behave and think towards others seems to have a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself.

Judge and criticize people more and you tend to judge and criticize yourself more (often almost automatically). Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself.

So focus your mind on helping people and being kind.

Focus on the positive things in yourself and in the people around you. Appreciate what is positive in yourself and others. This way you become more OK with yourself and the people in your world instead of ranking them and yourself and creating differences in your mind.

You are OK and so are they.

Now, a few more tips that can be helpful to move away from that comparison trap:

• Just realize that you can’t win. Just consciously realizing this is helpful. No matter what you do you can pretty much always find someone else in the world that has more than you or are better than you at something. Yes, you may feel good for a while when you get a nicer car than your neighbour. But a week or two later you’ll see someone from the next block with an even finer car than yours.
• Give up both sides of comparing. If you can’t stop doing the negative comparisons then stop doing the comparisons that make you feel good too. Give them both up, at least for a while. If you’re in the habit of comparing to feel better about yourself then it’s hard to just stop at that and to not also start comparing in way that make you feel worse and inferior too. So you may need to step out of that whole comparing habit because the two sides are often connected. Give up the upside to be able to move away from the downside.

And that is basically how I do it, that is how I keep those negative comparisons to a minimum in my life.

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

Image by Sanna R (license).

“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein

I love simplifying my life. It makes me more effective and life less stressful. It makes me calmer and happier.

But where do you start? Or continue if you are already on your way?

In this article I’ll share 21 small habits that help me to live a simpler life. I hope you’ll find something helpful here and that you get started with one of these suggestions today and continue doing it until your new habit sticks (that usually happens after about 30 days).

1. Breathe. When stressed, lost in a problem or the past or future in your mind breathe with your belly for two minutes and just focus on the air going in and out. This will calm your body down and bring your mind back into the present moment again.
2. Do one thing at a time. You’ll get better results and feel better and less stressed while doing those things.
3. Write it all down. Use your mind for better things than remembering what to do. And the mind is often like a leaky bucket. So write down all your great ideas, insights, and thoughts before they go missing somewhere and add what you need to do to a to-do list.
4. Do all your food shopping once a week. You’ll save time, energy and possibly money.
5. Stop doing what you don’t like doing anymore. Life changes and so do you. If you you don’t like doing something anymore then stop doing that (even if it may take some time before you can do so by for example switching jobs).
6. Stop trying to please everyone. There will always be people who you don’t get along with or that do not like you for some reason.
7. Stop trying to do things perfectly. Go for good enough instead and when you are there you are done. Get things all the way to done this way and then move on to the next thing.
8. Pack your bag before you go to bed. Then you don’t have get stressed out by that in morning and you are less likely to forget something.
9. Throw out the things you haven’t used in 1 year. Go through what you have and ask yourself if you have used it in the past year. If not, give it away to charity or a friend or simply throw it out.
10. Ask yourself simplifying questions every day. Questions like “What is the most important thing I can do right now?”.
11. 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. This also helps you with your inner stillness as the outer environment affects how you feel on the inside.
12. Cook more food than you’ll eat. I usually make two or three servings of what I am about to eat. This cuts down on time that you spend on cooking and you’ll have to do less washing up in general. Plus, it’s good to have portions of food to bring to work to save some money.
13. Write shorter emails. I tend to write emails containing only a few sentences, usually between one and five. If you focus on keeping it short and focused then you’ll probably discover that this is a good solution in most cases.
14. Ask instead of guessing. Reading minds is hard. So, instead ask questions and communicate. This will help you to minimize unnecessary conflicts, misunderstandings, negativity and waste or time and energy.
15. Use a minimalistic workspace. My work space is just a laptop on a small black desk made out of wood. I use a comfy chair and there is room for my glass of water beside the computer. That’s it. There are no distractions here. Just me, the computer and the water.
16. Check everything just once a day. I check my email inboxes, blog statistics, my online earnings, Twitter and Facebook just once a day. I combine all that checking into one small daily ritual at the end of my work day so I don’t slip and go checking it more during the day and waste my energy and attention.
17. Choose small daily acts of kindness. Instead of small acts of judgment and criticism towards the people around you.
18. Don’t make mountains out of molehills. Before you you start thinking too much about something and building it up something big in your head, ask yourself “am I making a mountain out of a molehill here? And if you get lost victim thinking in some way then ask yourself “does anyone on the planet have it worse than me right now?”.
19. Spend 15 minutes each Sunday to plan the next week. Write down your plans for the week, organize your prioritized to-do list and get ready for the week before you are in the middle of it all. This will help you to find more clarity, get more of the most important things done next week and minimize stress.
20. Cancel subscriptions for things you rarely get around to watching or reading anyway.
21. Spend more time with people that help you to keep things simple. And spend less time with people that drag you down into overcomplicating everything and creating unnecessary drama.

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

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

In this article I’ll share three habits that have helped me to make it easier to step out the comfort zone.

Develop a habit of mixing things up.

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

• Try new music. I mix things up by trying new music every month. I have a look at the best music on sites like Pitchfork and Metacritic. Then I load a few of those albums on Spotify and listen.
• Try new food. Each week we try cooking a new recipe from our cook books. It is most often a tasty experiment and helps us to find, sometimes unexpected, new favorites.

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

And 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.

Develop a habit of doing something in small steps.

What holds us back in our zone of comfort is often a fear that facing that fear head on all at once might be overwhelming. Taking small steps is a solution to that problem. It allows you to stretch your comfort zone and slowly making it less uncomfortable and frightening.

• Become more social. Let’s say you want to be less nervous and awkward in social situations. To solve that you can take small steps. Steps like first just saying hi to people. And being more involved in conversations at work or in school to exercise your conversation muscles. After a while those things will feel more comfortable. And so you can expand your comfort zone a little bit more.
• Become more effective. You can start with just working 1 hour a day fully focused on your most important tasks in cone of silence (this means to shut out and shut off all distractions like the internet, the phone, the door to your office etc. as best you can). And then go back to your normal routine. The next week you can add an hour and work two fully focused hours a day. Step by step you build a more powerful habit that may feel uncomfortable at first.
• Create something new. When I was going to start making my own products I was hesitant. I was just used to writing blog posts and putting together a whole book seemed like fun but was definitely outside of my comfort zone. So I took a small step and put together a smaller e-book at first that I give away for free to new newsletter subscribers.

By doing things this way you gradually desensitize yourself to social situations, to a new way of working or whatever you are uncomfortable with. You make it the new “normal” for you.

So, identify where you want to go or how you want to improve your life. Then make a plan with some smaller steps you can take to gradually lessen your discomfort.

Develop a habit of letting other people help you by keeping you accountable.

Being accountable to someone else is one of the most effective ways to push yourself out of comfort zones and stick with what you are doing until it becomes a new habit.

So find someone else who wants to improve in the same area as you. Or just someone who wants to improve something in his or her life and wants an accountability buddy. Then keep an eye on each other and support each other. Nudge each other in the right direction and let a bit of positive social pressure work in your favor.

If you cannot find an accountability buddy simply make the accountability public in some way. Post about your new goal or the habit you want to develop on Facebook, on your blog or tell family and friends. Or start a thread about your progress with getting into better shape on a fitness forum or on a forum related to what you want to achieve.

A few examples:

• At the gym. If you have decided to start going to the gym it might be easier to actually get going and keeping going there every week – even after the initial enthusiasm have dissipated – if you have a gym-partner.
• At the party. If you want to meet new people at a party then you and friend can nudge each other in the right direction. Keep each other’s mood up and go in with an open frame of mind and just have new conversations with people. Assuming rapport can be helpful if you want to do that.
• When you want to lose weight. The diet is, in my experience, the most important thing and often the most difficult thing to not cheat too much on when you are losing weight. It becomes easier to stick with the program and not go off the rails when you have a weights loss partner – someone with similar goals – or someone you can be accountable to. Someone who nudges you back on track when you are having a bad day and want to devour a lot junk food. Someone who will tell you that it is not your weekly cheat day quite yet.

Start with one of these habits. Use that one habit as much as you can for 30 days or more until it really becomes a ingrained habit in your life.

Image by gtall1 (license).

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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.

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“Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me, for every man is a mirror. We see only ourselves reflected in those around us. Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own. The whole world and its condition has its counter parts within us all. Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”
Kirsten Zambucka

Improving your attitude and living a more positive life overall can take a lot of time and effort. But a part of it can also be simple. You can spread positivity around you with small actions.

This will not only make you and other people feel better today. Over time you tend to get what you give. You will make it easier for yourself to live a more positive life in the long run too.

• Smile. Smiling puts you and the people around you into a more positive mood. It even works when you don’t feel much like smiling. Just try forcing a smile for 30 seconds if you are feeling a bit negative and see what happens.
• Give a genuine compliment. Compliments are awesome. But make it a genuine one. Make sure you really mean it or it may have the opposite effect as your insincerity shines through. Find something a bit unexpected – like great taste in old soul music rather than looks – and something that is important to the other person and make a positive, appreciative comment about that.
• Hugs. A hug is, just like smiling, a simple physical thing that can make anyone feel a little better. People love hugs.
• Encourage someone. There is much discouragement in the world. You may hear from people around you, you may receive much negativity from the TV and newspapers. Many will back down from doing something they want because of that atmosphere of discouragement. So instead, be an exception and encourage people to believe in themselves and what they want to do.
• Change the way you feel. Emotions are contagious. So to spread positivity, know how you can create and sustain a positive attitude and optimistic mood. Know how to pick yourself up out of slumps. Besides smiling, you can also appreciate life more, change your physiology, act as you would like to feel, ask better questions and recall positive memories to make a quick emotional shift. Read all about those things in this article.
• Help someone out in practical way. Maybe it’s not encouragement that is needed. Maybe it’s a practical solution. So lend someone a hand when they are moving. Or give them a ride in your car. Or if they need information, try to find a solution via Google or by asking the people you know.
• Just listen. Sometimes people don’t want any help. They just want to vent or for someone to listen as they figure out things. It may not seem like much but it can be an immense help for someone who needs it. So be there fully – don’t sit there thinking about something else – and listen.
• Put things into perspective. It’s easy to get wrapped up in a problem and to make a mountain out of a molehill. But you can help out by adding your perspective. The two of you can talk about it, perhaps laugh about it and even find the hidden opportunity within the problem that in one person’s head may have almost seemed like the sky was falling.
• Play positive music. Uplifting music is of course a great way to boost your own mood. You can do the same for people around you. Put on a really positive song when you are hanging out. Or send them an uplifting playlist for Spotify or a link to a video on Youtube.
• Perform a random act of kindness. Just holding up the door or pointing out the way for someone who seems lost can be a way to spread a little bit of positivity. It’s always nice when someone you don’t even know does something kind for you.
• Pay it forward. If a friend or stranger spreads a bit of positivity to you then in some way pay it forward. Spread the positivity on to another person and let an upward spiral of positivity grow and expand in your world.

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Today I would like to share three of my favorite tips for making it easier to establish a relationship with someone. Maybe in a new class. On a date. At work or in a job interview. Or at some party next weekend.

Assume rapport.

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

So, what is assuming rapport?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See yourself in other people.

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

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

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

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

Another idea is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet.

As I mentioned above, there is pretty much always a frame set in any interaction. It may make you and the others feel awkward or comfortable. But underlying such feelings is a frame of mind.

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

Practise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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