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“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.”
Eckhart Tolle

One of my biggest problems used to be that I thought too much. I overthought any little problem until it became a bigger and scarier thing in my mind. I overthought positive things until they didn’t seem to be that positive anymore. I overanalyzed and deconstructed things until the happiness that comes from just being in a moment and enjoying it fell apart.

This locked me into analysis paralysis. Little action was taken. Opportunities were rarely used. Life stood still and felt confining. And when I took action I tended to overanalyze things. That lead to more nervousness, second-guessing and me performing worse when I was doing whatever I was doing.

Based on the emails I get I’m not alone in this. One of the most common questions I get is about how to not think so much. In this article I will explore 5 solutions and habits that work for me.

1. Set up simple, unhurried days.

Crazy and overwhelming days are nothing one can avoid entirely. At least not if you want to live a full life.

But you can set up your day to make it more likely that you will be able to stay reasonably calm on the inside and outside. And this will make it easier to keep your thinking simple and focused too.

A good start.

I have mentioned this about a thousand times by now but the start you give your day often sets the tone for the whole day. Start your day with a few simple habits like a good breakfast, maybe a bit of exercise and then get started with your most important task of the day. Or if that feels too hard, no worries, instead start with an easy task to get the day rolling.

Single-tasking + regular breaks.

If you just work and work your whole day then your body and mind will become overwhelmed. Thoughts will start running wild and often down negative paths as stress rises in your body and mind. To prevent this and to do focused work without tearing yourself down schedule regular breaks.

I do this by setting my kitchen timer for 45 minutes. During those 45 minutes I do focused, single-tasking work. When the bell rings I drop everything and take a 15-20 minute break. Then I return for another 45 minutes of work.

Minimize your input.

Too much information, too many times of  ”just taking a few minutes” on Facebook, Twitter and in the email inbox add more and more input and thought clutter into your mind during a day. The clutter and extra input shoots your thoughts off in more ways and gets your mind extra active. To keep your thinking simple, simplify and reduce the input.

One of the reasons why I wait with checking my social media accounts and email inbox to the end of my work hours is because then it is easier to focus on the most important things during the earlier part of the day. Instead of getting lost in tangents, daydreaming, worries, overthinking and so on.

2. Set limits for thinking.

I sometimes think there is some kind of wish when overthinking that thinking will somehow replace action. A wish that if you just think enough you can find some easy way out or get what you want without having to actually do something.

Without taking action you’ll most likely not get what you want. Thinking is however seldom as scary or uncertain as taking the leap into the unknown and taking action.

Getting the day off to a good and action-oriented start, as described above, is one thing that have helped me to become more of a person of action. Setting deadlines for decisions work well too. For small decisions like if I should get started with next important task of the day, go do the dishes or work out I give myself 30 seconds or less to make a decision.

For somewhat larger decisions that would have taken me days or weeks to (over)think through in the past I may set a deadline for 30 minutes or for the end of this work day.

Now, of course for some important things you need to take more time. But in many cases you can make good decisions more quickly and get started with moving towards your destination. And through that build a new and helpful habit.

3. Be here and now.

By being here and now you don’t obsess about the past or create worries or overthink things that are or might be coming up in the future. Of course, it is good to plan for the future and to learn from the past but that seems to happen pretty naturally and in a more balanced way when I focus on spending most of my time in the present moment.

The first section in this article with a simple and unhurried day where I single-task and keep thought clutter down makes it a lot easier to stay with the present moment instead of drifiting away on thought clouds. But if I do drift away, then I usually sit down for a minute or two and use all my senses to take in what is happening around during these seconds. The sounds, the sensations, what I see and what I hear.

That usually brings me back to now again.

4. Be finished with your day.

Taking breaks every hour during your work hours is important. Putting a stop to your work day and doing other things is just as important to keep the overthinking, stress and overwhelm away. So if you are in school or work from home with your own business set a stop time for your work day. Mine is at 7 o clock in the evening. If you go to a regular job do not bring the job home.

Make a firm decision to spend your evenings with other things than thinking about your work. Fill that time with other activities that recharge and relax you.

When you catch yourself with floating back into work thoughts or school thoughts, remind yourself of the consequences of doing so. Such as increasing stress levels, missing the other important parts of your life like friends and family, reinforcing negative habits like overthinking and the risk of having a burnout.

5. Be conscious of your challenge.

Find ways to remind yourself to stay aware of how you are thinking.

• A written reminder. A written reminder posted somewhere where you cannot avoid seeing it every day with words like: “Keep things extremely simple” or “Am I overcomplicating this?” can work wonders.
• A silent vibration on your cell phone. An alarm with just a silent vibration on your cell phone a couple of times a day can remind you to snap out of overthinking or the past or future and help you to build positive thought habits.

By being conscious of your challenge it will over time become easier and easier to stick a simpler way of thinking.

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“Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.”

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Back in 2009 I wrote an article with some great quotes from Mark Twain – lecturer, satirist, humorist and author of classic books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – and it became a favorite for me and many readers.

A sequel to Mark Twain’s Top 9 Tips for Living a Kick-Ass Life has been in my ideas folder for some time. But today I have completed it.

I hope you’ll find the result, these 7 essential tips from Mark Twain inspiring and helpful.

1. The secret of getting ahead…

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”

This is a very good tip and one of the best ones I have ever discovered and used to handle procrastination.

When you start to look too far into the future any task or project can seem close to impossible. And so you shut down because you become overwhelmed or fearful (of success or failure) and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead.

So instead, break that task into small and practical steps.

Then just focus on taking the first step today. That is all you need to focus on, nothing else. By taking the first step you change your mental state from resistant to “hey, I’m doing this, cool”. You put yourself in state where you become more positive and open, a state where you may not be enthusiastic about taking the next step after this first one but you are at least accepting it.

And so you can take the next step. And the next one after that.

Until you have arrived at your destination and completion.

2. Less talking, more doing

“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often”

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

It’s often easy to talk but developing the habit of being a person of action is quite a bit harder.

Being in the habit of breaking down your task into smaller pieces is one of the most effective things you can do to take more consistent action. Two other habits that work very well for me are to:

• Start your day with a good morning routine. This is probably the most important factor for how much action I take during a day and how the day turns out in general. A good start often leads to a good day. A bad or indecisive start often leads to a pretty mediocre day.
  So create a morning routine with a good breakfast, perhaps a short work out or a short meditation and other things you find gets you off to a great start. Then add doing the most important task of your day at the end of that morning routine.
  Or if you, like me, may feel low in energy, unmotivated or have extra inner resistance to taking action on some mornings then start small and do something easy and simple.
• Take one small action right away to get the ball rolling. What is one thing you can do to pretty much make sure that something will get stuck on your I’ll-do-that-when-I-have-the-time list for a long time? Read about something and get excited about it. And then do nothing about it or tell yourself that you will take action tomorrow.
  Instead, take one small action today, as soon after you have read about whatever you are excited about. Make a plan, book an appointment, do something concrete.

3. Be courageous in the face of fear

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”

Being courageous can be difficult but if you want to live the life you want to live then sometimes you have look into the face of fear and get going/keep going anyway.

And although it is rarely easy to be courageous I have found a few ways to make it easier.

• Ask yourself: what is the worst that could happen? 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.
• 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.
• 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 it, you try to push it away. I have found that in many cases it is actually better to just accept that fear is here right now (although it can be hard to sometimes convince your brain that this is a good option).
  By doing so 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 – or at least becomes smaller – and you feel more open and centered.

4. A good compliment is a wonderful thing

“I can live for two months on a good compliment.”

Compliments are awesome. But make sure you 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.

5. Keep positive company

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

I have mentioned this many times. But it bears repeating.

Spend more time with positive people, books, music, movies and websites. Spend your time in an environment that lifts you up. And spend less time or no time with the negative sources out there. Make a conscious choice and start to shape your environment instead of just going along and reading, listening to, watching what people in general or people around you may be in the habit of consuming.

6. Focus on what is truly important for YOU

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

Like with your environment it is important to make a conscious choice to focus on what is most important in YOUR life. And not on the things that various companies may tell you are the most important things.

Like I mentioned little more than a week ago, a note with the 4 most important things in your life smartly placed where you will see it every day – in your workspace etc. – helps you to keep your mind consistently on your top priorities.

And if you want a couple of practical tips that will help you to declutter your ad/information intake then:

• Ask yourself: is this useful? If for instance a TV-show or magazine isn’t bringing me anything useful – fun, fascination, useful tips etc. – then why am I spending my time on it? It’s kinda easy to just fall into a habit of doing stuff or consuming things without really having much of a reason for doing so.
• Find out what you really like to do. That will probably be more interesting that surfing the internet or TV-channels randomly. And so these less exciting things just tend to fall away from your life as you find – or spend more time with – things that you really like to do, like for instance a new hobby.
• Shut off the sound during commercials. And talk to the person beside you on the couch. Or read a couple of pages. Or record the TV-show or movie. Then skip through the commercials.

7. When emotions are exploding… wait.

“Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.”

It’s easy to make bad decisions when you are full of negative emotions. And it is very easy to become riled up, angry or defensive when you, for instance, receive some criticism or when someone is attacking you verbally. This is not a good position to be in to fire away a reply if you don’t want to wind up making the situation worse.

And to lash back at this person or to not be the better person here can really hurt your self-esteem. It might feel good for a while to do so but it is a dirty high that comes with a hangover of feeling worse about yourself and subtle or not so subtle self-destructiveness.

But how do you control the impulse to attack, overreact or make a hasty decision?

• Remind yourself of the potential consequences. I don’t want to hurt myself, my self-esteem or make bad decisions with negative consequences. By repeatedly reminding myself of these potential consequences thoughts about those consequences will also often pop up automatically when I receive criticism or when I am angry.
• Count to at least 10 and take a few belly breaths. Then respond. This simple way of calming yourself down and regaining some perspective can save you a lot of trouble and help you avoid saying something you can’t take back. It’s a good approach to avoid creating unnecessary problems and to cool down just a bit and to feel more balanced before you reply or take action.
• Accept how you feel. If you have a little more time than under a minute then take a look at tip #3 again and try to accept how you feel to lessen the big emotions more quickly.
• If possible, wait until tomorrow or at least later today. By then the most negative feelings will most likely have lost their steam and you can see things with more clarity and cool. And take action in a better and smarter way.

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“Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.”
Jim Rohn

Keeping your attention on what is most important in your life is one of the most essential ingredients if you want to be able to:

• Stick with your goals.
• Achieve what you want to achieve each day.
• Appreciate what you have in your life.
• Clearly see how you can use your time here in the best way.

Like with most things, this is something that is of course easier said than done. It’s easy to get distracted way too much and to feel overwhelmed, stressed out and spread out too thin.

But with some limits, with some barriers that keep much of the daily clutter out you can become sharp and focused once again. So let’s get started with that by establishing or reminding yourself of a few very helpful habits.

Write down your top 4 priorities. Post them where you see them every day.

To keep your attention in the right place it is essential to remind yourself every day of what is truly most important.

So what is most important for you this year? An important project at work? Your family? Improving your social life? Your blog, photography, soccer or debt?

Think about it and reduce what is important in your life to the top 4 most important priorities. Write those four things down and post them in your workspace or on your bathroom mirror or on your fridge.

Work in a no-distractions zone.

When you work then do not work in a place filled with unnecessary distractions. Instead take a few minutes and make a plan.

Ask yourself: what are the 3 most common distractions that keep me from doing my work in a focused way?

Figure out how you can prevent those things from distracting you. A few suggestions to help you limit your distractions are:

• Shut the door to your office.
• Shut down email, instant messaging programs and put your cell phone in silent mode for an hour or more at a time.
• If your place of work is busy and noisy use headphones with music or just noise canceling headphones without anything playing in them.

Having trouble sticking with it in that zone and to not start procrastinating or distracting yourself? Try using a timer – on your cell phone or use an egg-timer – and set it for 45 minutes. Then put in a drawer or somewhere where you can’t see it. During those 45 minutes dive in and immerse yourself in the no-distraction zone and your work until the clock rings.

This one works very well for me because I know that I do not have to stay focused and un-distracted forever. I just have to make an effort for 45 minutes and then I can do something else. If 45 minutes is too much at first then try a shorter time-limit.

Work with you have and use what you can from this list to make work much more distraction free.

Limit your input.

Reduce the number of blogs, newsletters, magazines, book clubs, podcasts, twitterers etc. you are subscribed too. Just keep the ones you are really getting something out of.

Limit your time in your favorite places online.

Many of us have favorite places where we get stuck online. It might be Facebook, Twitter, your favorite forum or just checking the paper many times each day. A couple of things that have helped me to not get too distracted by such places is to:

• Remove them from any favorites list in the browser. Easy availability makes it easy to go there when you want to escape. So make it a little harder to get there. I have noticed that if I have to type in the address to that site then I usually forget about it a lot more and I don’t jump in there whenever I am bored or feel like procrastinating. Instead, I tend to forget about the site for a day or several days. It is out of sight and out of mind.
• Use it in short bursts. After you have spent time working in your no-distractions zone you can relax or reward yourself with 5 or 10 minutes on your favorite website. If you can’t seem to be able to keep that time-limit then use the egg-timer or the timer on your cell phone to keep yourself in check.

Take a media- and internet-free day (or weekend).

I usually take at least one day during my weekend off from using the internet, reading the paper, checking my email and so on. That break helps me to better focus my attention on the most important things, to set clear limits between the workhours and the homehours and it helps me to relax and recharge myself so that I am more focused during the upcoming week.

Let the helpful sources influence you.

What you surround yourself with will be a big influence on you. Negative voices, people and media will drag you down and can easily redirect your attention on to the negative aspects of life.

Positive people, music, books, movies, quotes and surroundings etc. will on the other hand help you not just to keep your focus on what is most important and what is positive in life. They will also help you to broaden your horizons and let you discover things and aspects of life you may not have found or paid much attention to before.

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“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”
Brian Tracy

It’s a brand new year and I am guessing that many have their New Year’s resolution enthusiastically in mind. But how can you make the resolution something that sticks rather than something that gets abandoned in a month or so?

Well, first, focus on just developing one habit or making one change at a time. And make sure that it is a change YOU want in your life and that you have your own reasons for making it. Trying to make a change because of what other people want rarely lasts and this is in the end your life to live.

With those two basic guidelines in mind, here are a handful of tips that have been most helpful for me to make positive and lasting changes in my life.

Do it 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. Or it becomes too uncomfortable and difficult to make a big leap and make a big change all at once and so in February that gym card gathers dust in your wallet.

Taking small steps is a solution to those problem. It allows you to stretch your comfort zone and slowly make 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.
• Exercise. Run for just five minutes three times a week for the first week. Then during week two run for 10 minutes three times. Add 5 minutes of running at a time to slowly and more easily get comfortable with this new change.

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.

Set the goal but focus on the daily process.

I for instance use this when I write and when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up and doing my workout/writing X number of times per week. The results – I become stronger and the website/my products grow – come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take action when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”.

Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

Let other people help you out.

This is so important. Do not try to do it all alone. If you’re about to quit smoking ask others who have overcome the addiction what their best tips are. Do some research online and offline. This can save you pain, frustration and it can help you to keep going.

If you like you can also tell people your goals – face to face, via email, on Facebook or your blog etc. – to get accountability and motivation to take action. And/or you can find someone – an accountability buddy – who wants to make the same change that you want and that can make things easier.

Or you can just get an accountability budy that has a New Year’s resolution of any kind. And then the two of you can check up on each other each week to make sure you are taking the practical steps forward and to encourage each other when you stumble.

Find a way that fits you.

Different things fit different people. It did for example take me quite some time of trying different ways to do cardio exercise before I finally found body weight exercises. And it did take me a while to find productivity habits that makes me very consistent and the same time kept stress down to a minimum.

Experiment and find what works for you and what fits your personality. This will make it a lot easier to stick to your positive change and develop a relaxed consistency.

Find ways to overcome the things that cause you to relapse into old behavior.

Stress may cause you to feel like smoking again. If so, find a few relaxation techniques that can help you. Worry may lead you to eating too much to feel better. If that is an issue that pops up for you then learn to reduce your worries in life. If you get stuck in inaction learn how to up your enthusiasm and motivation quickly or to just take action anyway.

Find ways to turn bad days or moments into something positive once again.

Use laziness to your advantage.

I’m kinda lazy. But I use that to my advantage by for example not having any sweets or cookies in my cupboards. I only have healthy stuff there. Since I may feel the craving for something sweet or a snack from time to time but I am too lazy to go to the store I wind up eating what I have at home. A simple habit that has helped me to improve my health.

I also know that I am too lazy to go to the gym or go out running three times a week. So I workout at home. This has helped me to have very good consistency.

Such small, invisible barriers can have a great impact on your daily life in the long run. Remove them or use them or to your advantage.

Use daily reminders in your environment.

I have written about this many, many times since it have found it very helpful for staying on track and making a change stick.

Simply write down your goal/new habit on paper and put it where you can’t avoid seeing it every day. Your fridge, bathroom mirror and workspace are such places.

Don’t beat yourself up when you slip.

You will most likely have a few bad days and fall flat on your face even if you follow the tips above. The important thing here is to not be too hard on yourself and keep on beating yourself up for a week. That could certainly lead to giving up altogether. Plus, it’s kinda pointless.

Instead, learn what you can from the experience so you don’t have to repeat it too many times. Then get back on the horse again the next day. And keep going.

Take one small step today to get the ball rolling.

Don’t get stuck in planning. Or thinking that you will get started tomorrow or next week. Get the ball rolling instead. Do that today by just taking one small, practical step towards what you want.

P.S: A big thank you to everyone who participated in the short survey before the holidays! I got a ton of great ideas for articles, newsletters and premium guides to create in 2012.

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The year is coming to an end. Just two days to go. But before we head into 2012 I want to share four questions that you can use so that you don’t lose your way next year.

Have a happy, awesome and meaningful New Year!

Is this useful?

This is a good way to for example weed out thought habits that may not be so useful. Your mind may for instance fool you into believing that it’s the right thing to go around being angry at someone because, well, you’re right. Or that it’s right to dwell on a problem because you had such bad luck or was singled out.

Both thought patterns are quite seductive because they can fool you into believing that you are doing the “right” or “normal” thing. But are dwelling on such thoughts useful to you? Probably not. That will just create suffering in your life, waste your time and do little to solve a practical situation. By asking if something is useful you can stop yourself while heading down a negative path and turn around towards the light again.

What is the most important thing I can do right now?

If you are lost in what to do next in your day, week or life, ask yourself this question. The answer might not always be what you want to hear because the most important thing is often one of the harder things you want to do too. But it can help you to check your priorities and stop you from getting lost in busy work and instead start tackling the really big stuff.

Am I keeping things extremely simple?

It’s very easy to start to overcomplicating things to, for example, find excuses for not doing something or simply because is a regular thought habit of yours.

Overcomplicating things can bring anything to halt. Or make it much harder to get something done.

So I like to ask myself this question a lot. By questioning how I am going about things or how I am planning to go about things with a project or a situation I can declutter my plans and thoughts. And this makes the process of working towards and reaching my goal a whole lot simpler.

I may not always find an extremely simple solution or path towards what I want. But I can pretty much always make things simpler and easier by asking myself this question.

Is there anyone on the planet having it worse than me right now?

When I am stuck on focusing on the negatives, when I feel like a victim and like things are going against me I ask myself this question.

The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you of a somewhat childish “poor, poor me…” attitude pretty quickly. I understand that I have much to be grateful for in my life.

This question changes my perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one. It helps me to lighten up about my situation. After I have changed my perspective I usually ask another question like:

What is the hidden opportunity within this situation?

That follow-up question is very helpful to keep your focus on how to solve a problem or get something good out a current situation. Rather than asking yourself “why?” over and over and thereby focusing on the negatives and making yourself feel worse and worse.

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The holidays are upon us.

A time of needed relaxation and more time with the people closest to us.

A time of stress and worries. A time of not all the joy you may have hoped for or been promised by upbeat advertising and movies.

It can be a time of mixed feelings.

So in this guide I would like to share a handful of powerful and timeless tips that can help you to make these holidays a more joyful and peaceful time.

Slow down.

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”
Lily Tomlin

First, slow down. Even if it may feel silly and if you have to force it a bit. Slow down your body, move and walk slowly.

Breathe slower and more deeply with your belly (and focus on doing just that for two minutes and see what happens).

Slow down your eating (this will not only help you to relax, it will also help you to not eat too much during the holidays since it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that you are full.)

Slow it all down and pay attention to what you are doing. Be here now and focus on doing just one thing at a time. By slowing down, by being here now, by not having your focus split between many things you, your body and your mind start to relax.

Appreciate the little things instead of focusing on perfection.

“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.”
Winnie the Pooh

Daily happiness is to a large part about appreciating the small things. If you just allow yourself to be happy when accomplishing a big goal or when everything lines up just perfectly for moment then you are making life harder than it needs to be.

Instead, focus on appreciating things that you may take for granted.

Take two minutes and find things in your life you can appreciate now. If you want a few suggestions, here are a few of the things that I like to appreciate around the holidays:

• All the tasty food.
• My health.
• My family and friends.
• This blog and the opportunity to explore and write about what I want.
• You, the reader.
• Myself and the fine things about me.

The funny thing is that if you just start appreciating something you can very quickly start jumping around with your attention and appreciate just about anything around you.

You may start with the food you are eating right now. Then move your attention to the phone and appreciate that you can contact anyone and be contacted by anyone you would like. You might then move your attention outside, through the window and see the wonderful wintery sunshine and then the kids having fun in the snow. And so on.

Give a bit of joy to someone else.

“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

This may sound like an empty cliché but it surely works. One of the best ways to become happier is simply to make others happier.

When you make someone else happy you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you like, you can appreciate what you did by thinking something like: Wow, I really made him/her happy!

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or like paying it forward to someone else. And so the two (or more) of you keep building an upward spiral of for example positivity, of helping out, of cheering up and of lending a listening ear and support.

Focus on what is most valuable.

“You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
Eric Hoffer

“Joy is not in things; it is in us.”
Benjamin Franklin

Instead of focusing on a lot of things focus on what is most important and valuable to you.

If you still have Christmas gifts to buy then instead of giving away a lot of expensive stuff it may be better to give one thing that the person you are giving it to will truly appreciate.

Or maybe you could skip giving a physical thing altogether. And instead give away an experience that will become a special day and cherished memory for him or her or for the two of you.

However you choose to go about things over the holidays make it your choices as best you can and not a bunch of shoulds that mostly make you feel deflated.

Take a break.

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”
Ovid

Working nonstop can sour your mood and stress anyone out. Slow down but also remember to take breaks. Take 20 minutes or half an hour to just rest.

Take a walk in the crisp and cold winter landscape. Escape via music, a book you got for Christmas or by watching classic holiday movies/TV.

Do something that snaps you out of the working, shopping and preparing mindset, even if it is just for while. That short change in scenery and change of mental headspace may be all you need to feel revitalized again.

Just accept how you feel right now.

“We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”
Carl Jung

Maybe you try some of the tips above. And they still cannot help you to shake that negativity, worries or stress you are carrying around. I would then suggest that you just accept that the feeling is there. Tell yourself: this is how I feel right now and I accept it.

This sounds counterintuitive and like you are giving up. However by accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into this conflict or problem. It then tends to lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel.

Sometimes the problem or conflict will then become so weak that it just moves out of your mind. At other times it may need you to take some action.

And by accepting what is you have now freed up energy and your attention so that your mind can become more open and constructive once again. And you can take focused action towards a solution.

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.

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Creating the habit of asking myself better questions on a daily basis is one of the most helpful things I have done for myself.

It is a very simple thing to do and after you have done so for a month or so the question tends to often pop up automatically when you need it. And over time this little thing can have a huge positive impact.

Today I’d like share 5 of my favorite questions that I use to simplify my life and to keep it simple. And at the end of this post I’ll share what I have spent most of my time with lately.

If I was just told that I had to go away for a conference tomorrow and it would last for a whole week then what would I spend today doing?

This is a wonderful question that quickly helps you get your priorities in check.

If you feel lost at the start of your week or day or get lost in busy work then stop. Then ask yourself this question to refocus on the absolutely most important.

Who cares?

A very simple but a very powerful question. Whenever you feel like delving into some nitpicking or some pettiness ask yourself this question. Or use it whenever you feel an overwhelming need to be right in some discussion.

Yes, nitpicking or having to be right can give you sort of high. You feel good. But it’s a dirty high. It never lasts for long. And you just create a lot of negativity in the long run outside of yourself and within yourself as your self-esteem goes down.

Asking yourself “who cares?” is a way to lighten up, to not take every little thing so seriously. It’s a way be more open and relaxed with yourself and the people around you. It’s simply a way to be cool about stuff.

Am I right here, right now?

This is one can be very helpful.

Both because it’s very easy to slip out of the present moment and back into negative and pointless thought loops about the past/future. And because it’s very beneficial to spend pretty as much of the time in your day as possible in the now. Why? A couple of important reasons:

• Improved social skills.
• Improved creativity.
• You appreciate your world more.
• Stress release.
• Less worry-warting and overthinking.
• Openness.

If I find I’m not in present moment I reconnect with it by for instance:

• Belly breathing. I take belly breaths and just focus my breathing for a minute.
• Keeping the focus on the current external surroundings for minute. For example right now, I can look out of my window and see the buss traveling up the hill next to my house. I see the plants in my window that probably need some water. I hear the humming of the computer-fan and the sound of the traffic going by. I feel that the floor is a bit cold. I use my senses to take in the world around me right now and to reconnect with the present moment.
• Taking action. Taking action and doing things – especially things you love doing – tends to put you in the present moment a lot of the time. It works pretty well for me at least.

Will this matter in 5 years?

This one can really puts things into perspective. It can make just about any difficulty that you are having right now seem a bit trivial and not as important and heavy as you had imagined the last few days, weeks and months. You may discover that you had expanded a problem and made it a lot more terrifying than it actually is. And you may discover that you can actually solve it more easily than you thought while you were in a somewhat panicked state of mind.

Can I let this go?

So much of our time is often spent not here but in the past. We relive old conflicts and arguments. We replay negative situations that may have happened last week or a really long time ago.

A terrible thing about this is how it is considered such a normal thing. People just do it day after day and in many cases year after year. It is a horrible waste of energy and the time you have here.

In some cases you may have to take action to resolve an old situation and get closure. You perhaps bring up the situation with the people involved to get them to understand and for you to better understand them too. And/or maybe you apologize or forgive.

But in many cases you can just let it go. Well, just letting it go is perhaps something of an oversimplification. But a few steps that have helped me to become better at letting go are these:

• Be ready to give up the benefits of not letting go. You may not want to let go because it makes you feel superior to someone else or because it makes you feel like a victim and so you receive attention and sympathy. To let go you have give up benefits like these.
• Accept it and then let go. I like acceptance. I like it because when you accept something instead of resisting it you stop feeding more energy into your problem and making it even bigger. A bit counterintuitive. This is also useful when it comes to letting go. If you first accept what you want to let go you aren’t so emotionally attached to it and still feeding it with your focus and energy. And so it becomes less powerful and easier to just drop. As long as you resist it then it will be hard to let it go.
• Let it go if it shows up again. In my experience it’s pretty common that what you let go shows up in your thoughts again. And that’s OK. Just let it go each time it shows up. After a while it stops showing up.

Coming very soon: The Self-Esteem Course

.
Over the last few months I have been working hard and I am now very happy to announce that my latest and what I believe may be my most helpful and important product so far is almost finished.

The Self-Esteem Course is a 12 week course in how to raise and maintain one of the most important things in life: your self-esteem.

And it will be launching in little over a week.

Why is self-esteem so important? Well, with a low sense of self-esteem you tend to simply not like yourself very much at all. You hold yourself back from exploring life and all your potential and dreams because you feel such things are for other people but not you. Or you stay in your unhappy place in life because you do not feel like you deserve more or could realistically go after what you really want.

It is not a good place to be in and no matter what tips or strategies you may learn for handling life better in a practical way – like with productivity or social skills – this shaky or very weak self-esteem foundation will hold you back and you’ll remain stuck even though “you know what you should do” to improve your life.

Over the past years I have improved my own self-esteem a lot and learned how to handle daily obstacles that could drag it down. What has worked, the best things I have found is what I’ll share in this course with practical action-steps to follow each week.

If this is something you’re interested in, be on the lookout next week for more information on the exact launch date and time and the special offer on the course that you can get during the launch week.

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

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“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

Not all days start off well. And sometimes you just wind up having a bad day.

But there are ways to turn it around.

Now, days can turn out bad in different ways. And have different solutions.

In this article I’d just like to share 5 general steps I often use to change my thoughts and emotions during a bad day. Going through these steps often allows me to change what is inside of me and so that allows me change the day for the better too.

1. Think.

The first step when I’m having an unmotivated, sad, tired day or one where I wind up in one negative situation or more is to use my mind.

How? Well, I start to see my day from a better and more helpful viewpoint by using questions.

So you can ask yourself questions like:

• Will this matter 5 years from now?
• Who cares?
• What can I learn from this situation?
• What is the opportunity in this situation?
• What is one small action, one small step I can take to start turning this day or situation around?

2. Use your body.

If I can’t think myself out of the situation, if that doesn’t change my thoughts then work with my body instead.

I work out with free weights for maybe 30 minutes. Then inner tensions lift from my body and mind. A pessimistic viewpoint tends to get replaced.

And I feel more powerful, energetic, positive and focused when I am done.

A much better headspace and bodyspace to be in to turn that day around.

3. Accept what is.

It is often a natural impulse to try to deny negative feelings or thoughts when they show up in your life. Perhaps you try to not think about it, perhaps you try to push that feeling away. Or you tell yourself that you need to focus like a laser beam on the positive by using the questions from step #1.

I have found that in many cases it is actually better to just accept that the negative feelings and th0ughts – or whatever are left of them after having worked through step #1 and #2 – are 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 and that these thoughts are floating in your mind you stop feeding more energy into them and you stop making them strong. After a few minutes of fully taking in this uncomfortable feeling and thoughts and accepting that they are here then they start to lose steam. They just seem to float away and you once again feel more open and are able to think more clearly.

4. Tap into gratitude.

This one can be helpful too. Perhaps not when you are having really bad day. Or not right away, if you feel shocked or totally overwhelmed emotionally.

But after a while, when you have calmed down a bit then it can be helpful to tap into a bit of gratitude.

Because your pain and sorrow can in retrospect be a gift.

Your sorrow expands the spectrum of human experience, understanding and emotions for you. You become more grateful because of your sorrow. The sorrow carves deeper. And the deeper it carves, the more joy you will also be able to contain. The sad times make the happy times even sweeter.

So the bad times can help us to enjoy and appreciate the good times even more. But I have also found that when I have a pessimistic mood or low energy or no motivation or all of them then that can help me to think in new ways about things. My lowest days often turn out to be some of my most creative days.

So the bad day may not feel good. But I also know that it often will bring me positive things based on how things have turned out in the past when I was in the same situation.

5. Just be with your day.

This last step is more of a reminder if you can’t seem to get the steps above to work. Because that happens too. But it can also be another way to tap into acceptance and to help yourself.

Now, this blog was never about life being perfect or positive or awesome all the time. That is just perfectionism rearing its ugly head. This blog is about replacing unhelpful habits with better ones. It is about raising the percentages of times where you can handle things in a better way both in your everyday life and when big things happen.

But there are still natural valleys and peaks in life.

And a bad day will sometimes just be a bad day. And that is OK. That’s life.

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

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“I was thinking one day and I realized that if I just had somebody behind me all the way to motivate me I could make a big difference. Nobody came along like that so I just became that person for myself.”
Unknown

Staying motivated until you reach your goals and dreams isn’t always easy. There are often roadblocks, plateaus and valleys along the way where you can get into a slump. Or a rut. And feel like your motivation has flown away.

So today I would like to share 12 ways that I have used to find that motivation again. I hope you’ll find something helpful here.

1. Refocus on doing what YOU really, really like to do. When you really like doing something then the motivation to do it comes automatically (most of the time). And when you really want something then it simply becomes easier to push through any inner resistance you feel. So if you lose your motivation, ask yourself: Am I doing what I really want to do? If not and if possible, refocus and start working on that very important thing instead.
2. Make a list of upsides. Write down all the benefits you will get from achieving something, like for example getting into better shape or making more money. Save it and then pull that list out of the drawer whenever your motivation is lacking again and review it. Or put it somewhere where you will see it every day until you reach your dream. This is a powerful way to reconnect with your motivation and reasons for taking action.
3. Make a list of downsides. You can combine this with the list of upsides to give yourself even more motivation to start moving and get things done. Ask yourself: how will my life look in 5 years if I continue to stay on the same path as now? How will life likely become worse for me and maybe even for the people around me? Try to see the negative consequences as vividly as you can in your mind to kickstart your motivation to start going for that positive change again.
4. Spend 3 minutes with remembering your successes. If you lose your motivation then it is easy to get stuck in looking at your failures and so you get stuck in that slump. So instead, sit down for three minutes and just remember your successes. Let them wash over you and refuel your inspiration and motivation.
5. Go for a bigger goal. Set a big goal that inspires you even if it may seem a tad unrealistic at the moment. If you have too easily achievable goals then you may find that they don’t give you that motivational spark and drive. When you start to think a bit bigger then you get motivated and your mind starts looking for the solutions that will help you achieve that goal. Thinking too small can leave you with a “meh…” feeling or make you feel like you can do it later.
6. Remember how far you have come and compare yourself with yourself. Comparing what you have and your results to what other people have and have accomplished can really kill your motivation. There are always people ahead of you. So focus on you. On your results. And how you can and have improved your results. This is important because it’s a great motivator to see how much you have improved and how far you have come. Often you can be pleasantly surprised when you do such a review.
7. Reconnect with optimism. How you perceive what you are doing or are about to do makes a huge difference. The positive and constructive way of looking at things energizes and inspires you. It makes it easier to keep going even when you hit roadblocks. So ask yourself questions like: What is awesome about this situation? What can I learn from this and what is the opportunity in this situation? How can I or we solve this and what is the next small step that I or we can take to do so?
8. Work out. I like this one because even if you feel too frustrated and down to do ask yourself the right questions you can still drag yourself to the gym or wherever you go to exercise. And if you just do your pretty mindless repetitions then your body will do the rest. Endorphins, testosterone and other chemicals will be released. Inner tensions will loosen up and leave your body. Your negative emotional pattern will be broken. And new energy will be added to your body.
9. Talk about it. Sometimes you just need to let it out and talk to someone about your motivational low point. Letting it all out can release a lot of pent up emotion and let you get a new, more positive and healthy perspective on things. Often we build our own small or medium-sized problems into big scary monsters in our minds. Letting the monsters out into the light and letting others see them can make us realize that we were making a too big of a deal of it all. It allows us to lighten up a bit, to not take things too seriously and to start moving out of the self-created slump. So talk to a friend or family member. Or try an anonymous internet forum with likeminded people.
10. Remember to have fun. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the seriousness of a task and the stress and tension of completing it. So remember that you are allowed to have fun when you are working on it. There is no rule that says you have to be all serious about it all the time. When you can, create fun in a task. Compete with yourself to finish it even faster than you did the last time, whistle a nice tune while working or have fun and joke around with your co-workers and class mates.
11. Start moving and let the motivation catch up with you. Many times I have found it better to just do it and start working instead of trying to motivate myself to get going. At first what you do may suck quite a bit and it’s hard going. But after a while inspiration and motivation seems to catch up with you. Things start to flow easier and your work is of a higher quality.
12. Take a break. Yeah, sometimes you just need to take a break. Perhaps your time-plan for your goal or new habit is just too optimistic? Maybe you have worked harder than you can manage right now. Then take a break. A few hours or days of rest and recuperation can change how you feel in a remarkable way and recharge your batteries.

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