Note: This is a guest post by Liz Massey of Creative Liberty.

“I’d love to do it, but I can’t fit another thing into my schedule.” How many times have you heard that-including out of your own mouth?

And mostly this oft-repeated phrase is a true statement: Surveys show that most Americans feel starved for time to do the things that matter to them. All around the world, “crazy busy” is a code phrase for doing what it takes to be successful.

But in addition to possibly bringing success, a packed schedule brings stress. Under such conditions, making a to-do list, instead of being a tool to help us achieve more, becomes yet another way to beat ourselves up, because we’re too busy to get to the things that we want to add to the list.

If all of this describes your situation a little too well, I’d like to suggest you make another list before you start in on your to-do list: a “to-don’t” list.

Where a to-do list is expansive, inclusive and encompassing, a to-don’t list is contractive, narrowing and boundary-defining. At the heart of the to-don’t list is the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule.

Simply put, the 80/20 rule tells us that 80 percent of our success comes from 20 percent of our actions. Making a to-do list is about discovering the actions that comprise that magic 20 percent and focusing on them. The to-don’t list is about naming the other 80 percent of our actions for what they are – not crucial in a cosmic sense – and finding ways to resolve our entanglements with them.

A couple of caveats are in order here:

• A to-don’t list is not an excuse to remove things you don’t like to do, but need to get done, from your plan of action.
• It is also not an excuse to ignore family or friends to make room for behavior that is unhealthy or compulsive.
• And it is not a way to avoid necessary confrontations or conflict (i.e. friction which eventually results in a better situation).

A to-don’t list is simply a list of actions which you are currently doing which are not high priorities at this time, and which you are willing to forego doing, at least for the immediate future.

When you make a to-do list, for new every item you add, be prepared to move at least one other item (and more likely two or three) to the to-don’t list.

Some potential to-don’ts can be massaged, with the time, manner or frequency of the item manipulated in some way to free up time or energy.

However, it’s truly surprising how many things turn out to be optional, and can drop off our to-do list without incident.

If you’re able to develop and implement a “to-don’t” list, you can reap the following seven benefits.

1. You can take advantage of a new opportunity when it arises.

No more worrying about whether this is the “right time” to pursue an attractive new option. Adding to your to-don’ts can help make now the right time.

2. You can cope more easily with sudden challenges and changing circumstances.

This is a less sunny restatement of benefit number 1, but it is perhaps even more important. How many people do you know have changed their lives dramatically – including how they spend their time – when faced with a crisis? Knowing that you can clarify your wants and needs if you’re buffeted by a difficult situation may make it easier to imagine surviving it.

3. You can become clear on what your priorities are.

Many people juggle actions that reflect their true priorities along with a host of social niceties, imagined favors and other actions that have merit, but just do not count as “essential” in their heart of hearts. The to-don’t list helps you make distinctions between actions that flow from deeply held values and actions taken primarily to please others, protect your reputation, etc.

4. You can do more with less.

Evangelists of the 80/20 principle promote this point as one of the greatest advantages to their mindset. With energy and time freed up to concentrate on the to-dos, focus provides the leverage to turn what doesn’t seem like “enough” into sufficient, even abundant resources.

5. You can say no more confidently.

Few people like to be told no, and fewer still seem to enjoy saying it to someone else. By drafting a to-don’t list, you can be more confident that the items you are saying no to truly can wait, or can be done by someone else other than you.

6. You can generate options to resolve conflicts more easily.

You may be able to generate counter-suggestions to a request after drafting the to-don’t list, and create a mutually satisfying result, even if you can’t provide what was originally expected.

7. Your to-do list will become more useful.

And that’s the intent of the to-don’t list – to support a to-do list that leads to meaningful, satisfying actions.

If you only have three things on your to-do list, but they’re the three right things for you to do today, and you do them, it’s far more productive than if you have a long list that never gets accomplished. And that’s what a to-don’t list can help you do: create a to-do list that’s about to-doing, not to-shoulding or to-wishing.

Liz Massey is an editor, writer and creativity coach based in Phoenix, who blogs about creativity-related topics at Creative Liberty. You can read another article of hers, about falling in love with your creative projects, by clicking here.

“The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”

As you probably know Ernest Hemingway was a writer, journalist and Nobel Prize Winner. Some of his most famous stories include “The Old Man and The Sea” and “The Sun Also Rises”.

He also participated in both World Wars and worked as a correspondent during for instance the Spanish Civil War.

Now, here are 9 of my favourite words of wisdom from Ernest Hemingway.

1. Listen.

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”

Learning to really listen to someone rather just waiting for our turn to talk can be a difficult skill to develop. Often we may have much on our mind that we want to say and so listening falls by the wayside.

How can you become a better listener? Here are three tips:

• Forget about yourself. Focus your attention outward instead of inward in a conversation. Place the mental focus on the person you are talking and listening to instead of yourself. Placing the focus outside of yourself makes you less self-centred and your need to hog the spotlight decreases.
• Stay present. This will help you to decrease the bad habit of thinking about the future and what you should say next while trying to listen. If you are present and really there while listening then that will also come through in your body language, which gives the person talking a vibe and feeling that you are really listening to what s/he has to say.
• Be open. Keep your mind open to the possibility that whatever the person is about to say will actually be interesting. If you have already made up your mind that he or she will say something boring then it will be hard to pay attention.

Also, if you really listen then that alone will often provide you naturally with a better and more genuine answer than the clever response thought up while trying to listen simultaneously.

2. Take the first step.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

The thing is if two people or more are waiting for someone else to take the first step then that step may never be taken. Or you may at least have to wait for a very long time.

If you after some time realize that, like in this example, you couldn’t trust the person then at least you have learned that.

By not taking the first step you’ll perhaps never know. So instead of waiting around and trying to figure things out just take first steps of different kinds in interactions. Be proactive.

3. Keep your eyes on where you are going.

“Never mistake motion for action.”

It’s very easy to get lost in busy work. You may spend much time in your in-box or filing and organizing things. But at the end of the day or week, what have you accomplished?

Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean that you are moving in the direction you really want to go.

To do that you have to do the things that you know are really important and in alignment with your goals. And not getting lost in busy work.

So, improve your effectiveness and productivity.

But, more importantly, never lose your view of your big picture. And take the action and do the things you need to do to get yourself where you want to go.

4. Just do.

“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”

How do you get things done? You take action and do them.

You may need to do some planning, but don’t get lost in that stage or in over thinking things. Planning or thinking won’t get you any results in real-life if you don’t take action too.

So take action and just try something.

Maybe you’ll succeed. Maybe you’ll fail, but if you do then failure can always teach you a bunch of things.

The worst thing is not failure, it’s to just sit on your hands and do nothing.

Developing a “just do it” habit – where you learn to do what you know you want to do despite how you feel or what your thoughts are telling you at the moment – can be difficult.

But it’s rewarding not only because you’ll get actual results and – sooner or later – success. It also builds real confidence in yourself, in your capabilities and in your own personal power to achieve what you want in life.

5. Do. Fail. Learn. Do.

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

So you have to keep your eyes on where you are going and do the right things to get yourself there. However, you will not always get what you want on your first try.

No worries though, if you have the right attitude.

What attitude is that?

The attitude of the much younger you.

The kid who learned to walk and ride a bike. A younger you that doesn’t put so much value into a failure. But instead just gets up after falling down, learns a lesson or two from what happened and then tries again.

And again.

By cultivating that way of thinking about failure – instead of the more usual, more grown up one where you may think that the world will come to an end just because you failed – you can over time achieve some pretty awesome things.

6. Find strength through your tough times.

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

This is a really interesting point.

Because it’s really easy to let yourself fall into a frame of mind where you think that no-one has had it worse than you and that this and this happened and that’s why you are like you are. And of course, some people have had a much worse time than others.

But I think it’s easy to let yourself fall into a kind of victim thinking where you let your troubles in the past act as reasons why you can’t do something now. But one must remember: that is the past.

And people’s problems are rarely as unique as we may think. Everyone has had bad stuff happen to them. People may not talk about it and you may assume that it’s just you that has have these bad experiences.

But as Hemingway says, everyone has been broken in a kind of way throughout their life. It’s kinda unavoidable.

But the question is what you do now.

Do you let those old things hold you back and allow them help the ego to build an even stronger victim identity?

Or can you let them go and live in the present – as the person you are now rather than who you were – with plans for the future?

Everyone has to handle such a thing in their own way. But it is up to just one person to decide on how handle it. And that’s you.

7. Don’t get hung up on the small things in life.

“The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.”

When you start to take life more seriously you may realize that you can let a whole lot of things just go.

You don’t have the patience, time or energy to worry about the small and petty things anymore. You don’t get wrapped up in things that are totally unimportant.

You start simplifying your life because you realize that your time isn’t unlimited. You remove a lot of the less important things to have more time and energy for the really exciting and important stuff.

Have a look at what’s really important in your life. If you are unsure about if it’s really important, try asking yourself:

Will this matter 5 years from now?

Then simplify, simplify, simplify. You may be surprised at how much kinda unimportant important stuff that there is in your mind and life.

You may also feel lighter after having done some decluttering because you are no longer bogged down by boatloads of stuff that you have now realized is pretty irrelevant.

8. Don’t let your imagination hold you back.

“Cowardice … is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.”

Your imagination can really play tricks on you. By thinking about something over and over you and your imagination can come up the most elaborate and horrifying ways things can go wrong.

But if/when you finally take action and do what you wanted to do it may be a little anticlimactic.

Even if you fail and things don’t work out the way you hoped for you may think to yourself:

Is this it?!

There are no monsters under your bed. And the monsters and disaster scenarios you construct in your mind rarely come into life.

Now, some situations may actually be quite scary and create a lot of pressure within.

The best way that I have found to deal with those situations is to reconnect with the present. When you are present you are just focused on what is happening right now. As Hemingway says, you are suspending the functioning of your imagination because your mind is no longer lost in possible future scenarios.

Check out Eckhart Tolle’s books The Power of Now and A New Earth plus this article of mine for tips on how develop the habit of being able to step into the now. It can allow you to find a stillness and peace within despite calamity outside of you.

9. Don’t judge.

“The writer’s job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.”

I think this is not just a great piece of advice for writers but for anyone really. Seeking to understand rather than judging is hard but is something that can help you and the people around you a great deal.

And this also goes back to the first tip, the one about listening. To be a good listener you must have the intent to understand the other person rather than judging him/her.

Instead of going into interactions or just life with a bunch of judgments that you apply on everything and everyone try acceptance. This is not easy if you are used to making judgments about everything.

And the thing is, by making a judgment you can often strengthen you ego. You get a small ego boost and you feel good for a while. But just like with caffeine this wears off pretty quickly and you soon need to judge again to feel good.

Accepting may not feel so appealing or “normal” but I have found that when I just accept things I feel a relief and stillness inside. You just feel good. I’m still working on this though.

Accepting someone’s opinion doesn’t mean that you surrender and let them “win”. Nor does it mean that you need to just sit back and cannot take any action.

You can accept and still take action to change something if that is what you’d like to do. Accepting just means that you let that person think and feels as s/he likes without judging it. When you just accept and let your judgments rest it’s easier to really understand each other and connect.

Note: This is a guest post by Vlad Dolezal of An Amazing Mind.

“Every morning, I look in the mirror and say to myself: “This is your day. Don’t let ANYONE take it from you!”
David Deida

Imagine two people take a ride in a balloon. One of them is terrified of heights. The other isn’t. The one who isn’t will enjoy the magnificent view, feel the warm wind on his face and simply love the ride. The person terrified of heights will probably squat on the floor, thinking “Omigod! Omigod! This thing is gonna crash and burn! We’re all gonna die! Aaaaaaaaa!!!”

Objectively, they went through exactly the same experience. Yet one person had the time of their life, while the other would be better off having their chest hair depilated (and trust me, that HURTS). The difference was in their VIEW of the reality.

Your view of the world is crucially important for your well-being. Yet many people let others decide their reality for them. Be it friends, relatives, TV, or the newspaper. Who decides YOUR reality?

Reasons for choosing your own reality

I’m an optimist. And I mean I’m REALLY optimistic, right at the end of the spectrum. If I got hit by a car this afternoon and lost both legs, I’d think something like: “Yes! I finally get to find out what it’s like to be disabled! Plus, when biographies are written about me years later, they’ll say ‘He managed to overcome life’s challenges…'”.

I’m not trying to convince you to be an optimist. I’m just giving you the option to CHOOSE your reality. If you consciously decide NOT to be an optimist, that’s fine.

Without further ado, here are three reasons to be optimistic:

1. Optimism lets you achieve more.

Imagine you wanted to start a blog. And you were a pessimist. Your thoughts would be “It’s not going to work anyway, nobody will read my blog, why even try.” And voila, you’d never even start a blog.

Being an optimist, on the other hand, I started my blog. I stuck with it for the two months when I had basically zero readership. Then, one day, I wrote a blog post that I felt was my best so far (Why Linux doesn’t spread – The Curse of being free). So I submitted the post to several social news sites, it hit the Slashdot front page, and the rest is history.

As an optimist, you’ll see beyond obstacles that others consider impossible to overcome. They will think you’re crazy. But oh, they will be SO wrong. They laughed at the Wright brothers. They laughed at you. But you’ll show them, you’ll *show them all*! AAAhahahahaaaa…

Thomas A. Edison was interviewed by a newspaper after 800 unsuccessful tries to make a working light bulb.

“How does it feel to have failed 800 times?” the reporter asked.

And Edison’s answer?

“I haven’t failed 800 times. I haven’t failed once. What I have done, is I have succeeded in proving that those 800 ways won’t work. Once I eliminate all the ways that won’t work, I will find the one way that will.”

Several years later, after thousands more “successful proofs” he managed to find a way that works, and thus illuminated the world.

2. As an optimist, you’ll have better relations with other people.

Positive, optimistic people are fun to be around. I’m sure you’ve experienced that yourself.

By becoming an optimist, you will become such a person. People will enjoy being around you. Also, by the law of attraction, you will attract more similar people into your life.

Imagine you have a crazy idea for how to spend your holiday. Would you like your friends to be like “Yeah man! Awesome! Go for it!”, or “Nonsense. That will never work. What the hell were you thinking? Come on, let’s go grab a beer and complain about how miserable we are.”

3. Optimism makes you happier.

This is the most commonly cited reason… and the most important one too. But I haven’t put it first. Because if you say this reason to pessimists, they will say: “What the hell are you talking about?”

If you want to help others, you need to speak their language. That’s why I put achievement and success as the first reason. That’s a universal theme that everyone will understand.

How to become an optimist

Now you know the main reasons for being an optimist. So how do you go about it? Below are the best ways to become an optimist.

1. Exercise.

As you go through your day, tension builds up in your muscles. The tension needs to be released. Exercise releases that tension. It also releases endorphins, the body’s natural opiates, into your bloodstream. This leaves you relaxed and happy for hours afterwards.

If you’re not much into exercising, check out my 5 Simple ways to increase your happiness. In there I share a simple way to exercise that takes just 10-20 minutes and requires only a watch.

2. See the positive aspect of every situation.

I propose you try this. For seven days straight (starting tomorrow), see the positive side of every situation. Just like Edison and his “successful proofs”.

If you want to make sure you don’t forget, I suggest a variaton of a method I got from Tim Ferriss. Wear a rubber band around your wrist. Every time you forget to think positively about a situation, simply switch the band to your other wrist. The proper way would be to take off the band only after you’ve gone for 7 days straight without switching wrists. But you can simply try it for 7 days.

3. Think positive thoughts.

In one experiment, the researches took 3 clinically depressed people. A psychologist then took over, making some changes in their daily routine to get them thinking positively (one of the changes was daily exercising). At the end of 30-day experiment, the subjects had been transformed into some of the happiest people you’ve ever seen.

One of the things the psychologist did was to have them place colored stickers around their house and workplace. Then, whenever they saw one, they had to think of something that made them feel happy. Try doing the same thing (possibly using something else instead of colored stickers).

This exercise will literally hardwire your brain to think happily and positively. By reinforcing the neural pathways of positive thought, you will make it easier to think positively in the future. You will achieve more and be happier.

4. Hang out with positive people.

When you spend time with people, their characteristics start to rub off on you. You might start using some of the same gestures, or think some of the same thoughts. You can’t help it. It’s a natural process to help us bond together. The good news is, you can use this to your advantage.

David Deangelo, from Double Your Dating, said he had been researching the topic of women and dating for two years without much success. Then he started to hang out with the “naturals” – guys who were naturally successful with women. That’s when he really started to “get it”. Today, he is the most successful author of programs that help men improve their dating skills.

You can use the same effect. By spending time around positive, optimistic people, you will naturally become more like them. You might take on some of their gestures, or patterns of thought. Learning from real-life examples is the fastest way, so use it.

If you want to make friends with optimistic people, just go and talk to them. They’re open to making new friends.

Vlad Dolezal writes a blog about psychology, self-improvement and Linux. For more fun, step-by-step ways to improve your life, subscribe to his RSS feed. Or check out this article for practical tips to immediately improve your body language. Really, do it.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

When we were kids failure had a different meaning than it has today.

When you learned to ride your bike you fell over. Over and over again. Maybe you scraped your knee, cried a little. And then you got up again. And started pedaling. Soon you were riding the bike like you had done it all your life.

It would be nice if we could all keep this way to thinking about failure as we grow older. Some probably do. Some don’t. Why?

A few reasons that I can come up with from my personal experiences are:

Being too hard on oneself.

If people fail they may be way to hard on themselves. A failure is rarely the end of the world, but it is easy to fall into to the trap of thinking that is. So learn to lighten up more and give yourself a break.

School and society grades us and makes failure something bad.

When we learn to ride the bike or walk we don”t think about failure being something bad. We just keep moving after we fall down. But later, in school people start telling us that failure is something bad, that it and taking risks are things to avoid. We are told such thing and we are graded. And so throughout the years, with the help of school and what other people around us tell us, we develop a fear of failure.

The ego helps to develop a victim identity.

As we attach more importance and weight to a failure it can become an important part of our identity. We may fail a couple of times and it devastates us. And so we may view ourselves as “failures”. And the ego likes identify itself with things. Sometimes success. Sometimes failure. And even though you are just a person who failed on a few occasions your ego – a little voice in your head – tells you that you are a failure. And then it goes on throughout the years telling you things to reinforce and make that identity more powerful. And since people tend to treat you as you view yourself, they may reinforce this pattern. So don”t take your thoughts too seriously. Books by someone like Eckhart Tolle may help you do that.

It”s not “normal”. If you want to fit in perfectly, then seeing failure as something bad is a better bet than seeing it as something that can be quite positive and beneficial.

Too little of being in the now. Children tend to be more present than adults. They do what they want without having their mind scattered on all kinds of other stuff. Of course, you can”t just run around in the grass with your arms stretched out imagining that you”re an aeroplane half the day. You have responsibilities and such things. But you can still incorporate being present more of the time into your everyday life and thereby improving your concentration and performance and decrease the amount of time you spend over thinking your challenges. And perhaps, once in a while, you can still run around playing aeroplane. :)

I think Beckett has it kinda right when he says: no matter. People make failure into a large matter, perhaps even into a part of their identity. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should give up your common sense and risk all your savings on some wonky business deal.

Now, what is good about failure?

1. You learn.

Instead of seeing failure as something horrible you can start to view it more as a learning experience. When standing in the middle of a failure, you can ask yourself questions like:

What”s awesome about this situation?
What can I learn from this situation?

There is always one lesson or many more in what you may see as a failure.

2. You gain experiences you could not get any other way.

Ideally, you probably want to learn from other people”s mistakes and failures. That”s not always easy to do though. Sometimes you just have to fail on your own to learn a lesson and to gain an experience no one can relate to you in mere words.

3. You become stronger.

Every time you fail you become more accustomed to it. You realize more and more that it”s not the end of the world. Failing may in fact become a bit anticlimactic – just like when successfully reaching a goal – after you have spent much time building a grandiose image of it in your head.

You get desensitized. You can handle things that would have been very hard to handle a few years back. Failing can also a have an exhilarating component because even though you failed you at least took a chance. You didn’t just sit on you hands doing nothing. And that took quite a bit of courage and determination.

4. Your chances of succeeding increases.

Every time you fail you can learn and increase your inner strength. So every failure can make you more and more likely to succeed. And there is probably no other way to the success you dream of without a whole bunch of failures along the way.

“Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are all capable of greater things than we realize.”

“Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.”

Norman Vincent Peale was a minister and the author of the famous book The Power of Positive Thinking. That book and other works from Peale went on to sell tens of millions of copies. During the depression he, JC Penney and Thomas Watson – of IBM fame – spent time on philantrophy. Peale also had his own radio show for over half a decade.

Here are some of my favourite tips from Peale.

1. Focus on today.

“Don’t take tomorrow to bed with you.”

Focusing on this day today and on tomorrow when it arrives can save you a lot of stress and improve your focus and performance. Of course, you may need to plan for tomorrow. But thinking about it compulsively will just shatter your focus and ensure that you won’t be able to concentrate on what’s in front of you today.

You can – over time – build a habit of spending more time in the present and less time in imagined future scenarios or old memories. You may do this through things like focusing on your breathing or on your inner body.

2. Don’t walk around with the world on your shoulders.

“Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don’t take yourself so seriously.”

I won’t spend much time on this point because I mentioned it just a few days ago and have written about many times before. It’s important though and can really change how you see the world and your life. It makes most things lighter.

3. You may be surprised if you just step up and face your obstacles.

“Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have.”

“The “how” thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile “ifs” but goes right to work on the creative “how.”

It’s very easy to spend your time thinking and imagining all the horrible things that may happen if you stand up and face your obstacles and troubles in life. But if you actually do that those negative images seldom come into life. They are just huge monsters that you build in your mind. Just like you did when you were a kid and imagined monsters in the closet or under your bed.

When you actually stand up and face your obstacles you may find that the experience isn’t as bad as you imagined. Sometimes it’s actually a bit anti-climatic. You think to yourself: “What?! Is this it?”.

So, after having done some thinking, research and planning on how you can accomplish something just stop thinking. Don’t fall into the trap of overthinking and monster-building. Just go and do what you need to do instead.

4. Understand to overcome.

“Understanding can overcome any situation, however mysterious or insurmountable it may appear to be.”

Talk to people, do some research – in books, online, etc. – and the mist of anxiety and fear often vanishes. A situation may seem scary because it’s not understood and undefined and so your mind projects your worst fears upon that scary looking mist. It can seem like just about anything may jump out of it and attack you. So understanding can be useful. Overthinking, as mentioned in the previous point, not so much.

5. Expect to get what you expect.

“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.”

“Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture… Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.”

“Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come. It will.”

What you focus your mind on you will see in reality. Your mind can only take in a small part of reality. And the attitude you take towards what you let in lets you see those things through different lenses.

Self-fulfilling prophecies can be very powerful. If you think that you will fail then you’ll find “proof” that you will fail in your reality. If you think you will succeed your focus system in your mind – your Reticular Activation System – will help you find the opportunities for success in your reality. What would remain “in the background” when you focused on the negative will suddenly pop out of the background when you focus on the positive or succeeding.

Now, it may be common or “normal” to focus on the negative (perhaps with a sprinkle of positivity now and again). But it is also all it is. You are free to choose what to focus on all the time. So think about what you focus on because that is what you will see. And what you see is what you will act upon. And your actions do to a large degree determine your results.

6. Find the upsides of the problem.

“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.”

“Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles, they toughen and make strong.”

Problems can provide insights and give lessons in how you can grow. So don’t be totally discouraged when running into a problem. Realize that there are usually one or more opportunities in what you perceive as a problem. Doing that regularly makes it easier to not take your problems overly seriously because you aren’t seeing them as totally negative experiences anymore.

So when facing a problem, ask yourself a question like: what’s awesome about this situation? Or ask yourself: what can I learn from this situation?

7. Check your phraseology.

“Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.”

“Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.”

There is a good amount of power in what words you use. If you use negative words you tend to feel more negative and find more negativity in your world. If you use positive and uplifting words you tend to feel those emotions. This may sound a bit corny or silly, but when you get into the habit of actually using more positively charged words you find that it affects your mood and outlook on things.

8. Don’t go too fast.

“To go fast, row slowly.”

It’s tempting to go fast. But if you go too fast your boat may tip over. You may stumble unnecessarily and make mistakes that you wouldn’t have done if you had just kept a slower pace. Or you may be tempted to grab on to the next big idea, the next “magic pill”, instead of steadily keep going on your current path. To actually get where you want to go a slower pace may be more useful and effective than a hurried and quick pace.

9. Develop the most useful habits of thinking.

“Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast.”

“Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.”

What you spend most of your time thinking about you tend to become. One problem may be that you don’t know what you think about most of the time. Just keeping careful notes for a few days can be useful to find out how you spend your time and thoughts.

To install more of a positive attitude or positive thinking into your mind you need to have patience. It may not be easy and you’ll probably fall back into old thought patterns a lot of the time. But I have discovered that over time – we’re talking about months here – you can slowly spend more and more of your week with, for instance, positive thoughts rather then negative ones. And after a while positive thoughts tend to become more and more automatic. Just like when playing tennis you don’t have to think so much about striking the ball after a while. It becomes an automatic reflex.

One helpful tip while installing new thought habits is to continually remind yourself about them by asking yourself questions that keeps you steadily on this new mental track. Or gets you back on track if you veer off it. You can use notes posted on your computer, fridge, and bathroom mirror to remind yourself to actually ask yourself the questions.

10. Learn not only from your mistakes.

“We’ve all heard that we have to learn from our mistakes, but I think it’s more important to learn from successes. If you learn only from your mistakes, you are inclined to learn only errors.”

“Check what you did right and don’t get lost in basking on your glory. It will make it easier to repeat whatever you did that created the success.”

I thought this was an interesting reminder. Our mistakes are interesting because they can often teach us something valuable if we just take a closer look at what happened. But, of course, the successes are really useful to analyze too.

It is here we can find perhaps a crucial detail or something that we did that we missed the other 10 times we tried. So, as Peale says, don’t get totally lost in basking in your glory. Or make the mistake of seeing your success as just having a bit of luck for once. Take a close look at what happened and what you did right. Preferably sooner than later as memories can quickly become a quite fuzzy. And write down what you come up with to prevent that the conclusions become fuzzy.