“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”

“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor and creator in many creative fields. He’s perhaps the most well-known painter from all of the 20:th century.

He also had some interesting things to say about life. Here are my 7 favourite tips from him.

1. You have to believe to be able to do.

“He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”

This is a great quote because it doesn’t just say that you should “believe in yourself!. It explains why you need to believe in yourself and your ability to do something to actually do it.

The funny thing is that it’s hard to see how much your beliefs control your performance and how you see your world when you are used at looking at things from just one perspective.

When you think you can do something instead of not your perception of that thing changes. And your perception of yourself too. Without those changed perspectives it will be hard to find the courage, motivation, enthusiasm and whatever else you may need. And then there are self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you think you’ll fail you are likely to hold you self back or even trip yourself up (sometimes unconsciously). If you on the other hand think you can do something your mind will start to find solutions and focus on fixing things instead of whining about them. From all of the stimuli around you things, solutions and opportunities will just start to pop up. Without that focus on the right thing, on your ability to do, your mind may not find the resources and solutions that are needed.

2. Push your limits.

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

Pushing yourself and stretching is necessary to grow. And the more you push yourself the quicker you can grow.

But it can be scary. My best tip so far: stay present as much as you can while doing something you cannot yet do.

This can greatly decrease possible negative feelings that are holding you back. And with those feelings out of your mind and body it becomes easier to focus, to feel positive feelings and actually perform well and learn to do whatever you have set your mind upon.

For tips on that check out 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment. My three favourites among that bunch are at the moment: focus on what’s right in front of you, pick up the vibe from present people (I listen to Eckhart Tolle cds very often) and focusing on your breathing.

3. Don’t wait for inspiration or the right moment.

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

Inspiration can show up on its own, waltzing in through a door or a window. But doing things that way makes work inconsistent – both in quality and quantity – and you spend a lot of time waiting.

I find that it’s better to follow Pablo’s suggestion and just start working. For the first minutes what you do may suck quite a bit and it’s hard going. But after a while inspiration seems to catch up with you. Things start to flow easier and your work is of a higher quality.

If you feel inspired one day that’s great. Use your inspiration. But don’t limit yourself to the moments where you feel inspired or you feel like the moment is just right to do something. Act instead. A lot of the time you can find inspiration along the way. Or accomplish whatever you want to do despite the moment not looking just as you would like it to.

4. Act.

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

I know. If you have been reading this blog for a while you may have noticed that taking action is included in a lot of the articles. But that’s because, as Picasso says, action is the foundation. Without taking action any information – no matter how useful – will be pretty useless. This is also the part of personal growth or just life that is often forgotten or perhaps avoided.

It’s scary. It can feel difficult to do it. Or you may not feel like it’s the right moment now. But developing a habit of taking more and more action can make a huge difference. Have a look at How to Take More Action for help to develop such a habit.

5. Ask the right questions.

“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”

It’s easy to ask yourself the wrong questions. To ask yourself questions that just will give you answers that confirm that you are incompetent, foolish, wrong and tell you that your future is limited. Questions that will sink you instead of help to lift you up.

So instead, ask yourself empowering questions.

When having a seemingly negative experience ask yourself: what is good about this? What can I learn from this? There is always something you can learn and have use for to create positive experiences later on.

When interacting with others ask yourself: How can I bring even more value (understanding, help, practical solutions, fun, excitement etc.) to this interaction?

In just about any situation you can always ask yourself: what’s great about this situation/experience? This is a quick way to shift your mood and thoughts into more positive, resourceful and empowered forms through gratitude.

There are of course many more empowering questions you can ask yourself. I think the main point is to reframe the questions you ask yourself into positive questions that open up – instead of closes – the door to opportunities and possibilities.

6. See the hidden beauty by not judging.

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.”

One of big advantages of becoming more present in your everyday life is that you decrease the amount of analyzing and labeling you do to the things/people in your surroundings. You don’t judge as much.

This might sound strange but in the moments when you are present the ordinary world becomes more interesting and wonderful. Colors can seem brighter. Your see more aliveness in trees, nature and in people. You see the wonder of all your man-made gadgets and stuff. Things that most often seem common, routine and boring become fascinating and something you can appreciate.

It’s like you are observing your world with more clarity and curiousness. Like a little kid again, discovering things while they still feel fresh. Before they have just become walking, talking and growing labels with years of associations and thoughts attached.

This is a bit like the first tip in this article. Before you actually use it – if you just think about it in your mind – it may not make that much sense. I highly recommend reading/listening to Eckhart Tolle to gain a deeper understanding of being present. He and Oprah are doing free 90 minute talks about his book A New Earth right now. Check out the book and those webcasts.

7. It’s not too late.

“Youth has no age.

Don’t let social conditioning tell you what you can or cannot do just because you are of one age or another. Age is most of the time just in your head anyway. Take tip #1 into consideration and choose for yourself what you can do. And use tip # 6 and ask yourself the right questions instead of ones that limit you.

And, remember, the present moment s all there ever is anyway. So don’t get caught up in the past too much. Most of the time you really don’t have to act consistently with what you have done before. If you do, then that’s your choice. And you can decide to do something different too. Right now.

It is really only too late to change if you look at your life as a time-line. If you learn to become more present, if you learn to live more in the now, much of that thinking just falls away. You realize that you can consciously choose and do pretty much whatever you like in the present moment and built a future with new possibilities.

I am 28 now. I don’t think about the past or regret things much these days.

But sometimes I wish that I had known some of things I have learned over the last few years a bit earlier.

That perhaps there had been a self-improvement class in school. And in some ways there probably was.

Because some of these 16 things in this article a teacher probably spoke about in class. But I forgot about them or didn’t pay attention.

Some of it would probably not have stuck in my mind anyway. Or just been too far outside my reality at the time for me to accept and use.

But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a good idea.

Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.

So here are 16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just would like to have known about earlier).

Bonus: Download the free 21 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School Guide (including 5 bonus tips and strategies that are not in this post).

1. The 80/20 rule.

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.

And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

2. Parkinson’s Law.

You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it.

For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem.

This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway.

Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things.

This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

3. Batching.

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety.

One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row.

You will be able to do them quicker because there is less start-up time compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back.

The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.

If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities, a bigger audience for what you create etc.) you have to increase the value you give.

Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done.

You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.

A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply to stop being lazy and be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling.

This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

6. Mistakes and failures are good.

When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from – for example – school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.

This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something.

I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?

Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much.

They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.

And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.

When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. 

And eventually you learn how to ride a bike.

If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way – instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do -you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

7. Don’t beat yourself up.

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit.

It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

8. Assume rapport.

Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport.

This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

This works surprisingly well.

9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about.

What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.

So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.

Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go.

Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”.

And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

10. Your attitude changes your reality.

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality.

When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

When you change your attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space.

Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism.

But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time.

And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analyzing such a concept in your mind – you’ll be surprised.

11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.

Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do.

But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practiced gratitude more.

It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

12. Don’t compare yourself to others.

The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”).

But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself.

It always becomes a roller coaster of emotions.

A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown.

It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.

13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen.

They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can stop worrying more and more.

14. Don’t take things too seriously.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.

Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering.

So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.

15. Write everything down.

If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down.

This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want.

16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.

In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow.

Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.

Whenever you have a negative experience ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation?

One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very positive experiences.

Here’s the next step…

Now, you may think to yourself:

“This is really helpful information. But what’s the easiest way to put this into practice and actually make a real change in my life?”.

Well, I’ve got something special for you…

A free guide that includes all the habits and strategies in this article… plus 5 additional bonus tips.
Download it now by entering your email below.

 

Note: This is a guest post by Andrew Rondeau.

Remember the times you have been a member of an audience. It could be on a course, at a team meeting or on a night out. Which ones do you remember? The really great ones and, maybe the really bad ones.

Why?

It may be because you remember the presenters / speakers being dynamic, engaging, and inspirational. Alternatively, if they were bad the complete opposite. Didn’t those engaging presenters who made everything simple and entertaining, with seemingly little effort, jump into your mind first? What was it that made them excellent presenters? How come they are making the presentations so engaging and fun? What are they doing that’s different?

Tap Into Our Imagination

In my experience, the use of stories makes the difference between a really great speaker and a bad one. Stories bring things to life. They tap into our imagination to see and do things differently. They touch our emotions and help us understand. The best stories make us think: what would I have done in that situation? How could I do that? What would it be like here if we could achieve that? If they can do it, then why can’t I?

All you need are some stories and the courage to tell them.

Bring your team meetings and workshops to life through telling stories. Coach people with stories to inspire them to find an answer.

Most of the best stories in life contain the same simple ingredients: good characters, a difficult problem or challenge, attempts to beat that problem and a powerful conclusion.

Identify the message you want to communicate and look for stories that you can tell which visualise your message and bring it to life.

4 Techniques to Improve Your Storytelling

1. Theatrical.

Get people’s attention and then hold their attention by varying your voice and you use silence effectively. Sometimes you will be talking very softly and then “PAY ATTENTION because I’m about to say something VERY IMPORTANT”. If you talk in a monotone, it will be hard for people to pay attention.

And until you have their rapt attention, you’re not about to change their views on anything significant. So you need not their background attention, but part of their mind where they’re sitting on the edge of their seats and hanging on your every word. Until you have that kind of attention, you’re really wasting your breath.

2. Negative stories.

The kind of story that will get the attention of the audience is a negative story, a story that is unexpected and relevant to the listener. Studies have shown that we pay much more attention to things that are negative. So you can use this for attention by dwelling on the negative.

You can, for instance, tell a story about the audience’s problems if you know what their problems are and the things that they are currently worried about. Say, “Let me tell you about your problems. Those problems are worse than you think they are! Let me tell you how bad they really are! And if fact, they’re going to get worse. Let me tell how really bad they’re going to become!”

Now they are listening because you’re telling them a story about something that’s relevant to them. It’s unexpected, it’s relevant, and it’s negative. And so that’s a story that’s negative and it gets attention.

3. Positive stories.

To stimulate the audience’s desire for change, another crucial step is you tell a story that’s positive in tone, particularly one that’s a true story that’s about something that’s happened, where the change has already happened. And it’s the positive tone of the story that can stimulate desire for positive change.

4. Reinforce the future.

Once you’ve got people wanting something to change, then reinforce that with stories about the future, about what the change will bring and how it will be implemented and why it will work. These are fairly neutral stories; they are neither negative nor positive.

Understand the difference.

And so it is understanding the different role of stories, negative stories to get attention, positive stories to stimulate desire, and these neutral future stories that reinforce the reasons for undertaking this change.

Andrew Rondeau writes about ways to eliminate the loneliness and fear of being a manager.

“A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.”
Victor Hugo

“Do not offer a compliment and ask a favor at the same time. A compliment that is charged for is not valuable.”
Mark Twain

Compliments.

Some are sincere. Some are quite the opposite.

Some like to get them. Some feel a little uneasy and self-conscious about them.

And from time to time I think to myself that there is too few of them. They are underused and underrated and are often forgotten among gossip, negative self-talk and complaints about the boss, the job, the weather and milk prices.

Negative observations about reality are plentiful. Positive observations are much fewer.

So, here are 5 compelling reasons why it’s a good choice to use more genuine compliments in your day to day life. And a bit further down, three tips on how to give them.

Now, here are three tips for sharpening your compliment giving skills.

The compliment has to be genuine.

Otherwise you are just trying to take something from the one you are complimenting. And that will not work so well. Your insincerity will often shine through.

A compliment delivered with positive words but with a body language and voice tonality – the two most important parts of interpersonal communication – that aren’t saying the same thing may often not go over so well. And the rule that you get what you give still applies.

What you feel when you deliver the compliment will come through. So make sure that there is a genuine feeling behind the words.

Cultivate a habit of appreciation.

This will let you discover all the genuinely nice things about people. With this filter closed it will be harder to see the positive things in people and to give compliments that are actually totally genuine.

Try to appreciate the things around you – your home, friends, family, co-workers, computer, weather, food etc. – a few minutes a day to build this habit.

Compliment on something the other person feels is important to him/her.

It may be – at least in some cases – a good practice to not compliment on something that the other person doesn’t have much control over. Or something that he or she has been complimented on a thousand times before. Looks and other more superficial stuff are examples of such things.

A compliment that is kinda expected will not be that powerful. And even though your compliment is genuine it may just be lumped together with all those other similar and not so genuine compliments the person has received.

Instead, observe what makes this person tick. What are his/her passions, qualities, interests and proudest achievements? What can you genuinely appreciate about those things?

And finally, remember, pretty much no matter what the response is you can still feel good about giving a compliment. As Seneca says in tip # 5: how the other person responds – what s/he says or feels – isn’t your responsibility.

“Life, if well lived, is long enough.”

“I don’t consider myself bald, I’m just taller than my hair.” 
 
About 2000 years ago a lived a man named Lucius Annaeus Seneca. He was a man of many talents. He was a philosopher, statesman, dramatist, humorist and tutor/advisor for the famous emperor Nero. Together with Nero and others he ruled Rome during the first nine years of the emperor’s reign.

Only a few years later his influence over Nero and Rome came to an end. Nero suspected Seneca to be involved in failed attempt to assassinate the emperor. He ordered his former friend to take his own life. Which Seneca did.

But during his years on earth Seneca said some very useful things about life.

Here are 10 of my favourite fundamentals from Seneca on how to find happiness.

1. Happiness is optional.
 
“A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.”

What you think about most of the time you become. If you see the world and yourself through a lens smudged by negativity then you’ll find much misery. If you look outwards and inwards through lens brightened by positivity you’ll find much to be happy and appreciative about.

So being happy or miserable is seldom so much about the external circumstances at the moment. It’s more about how you look at them, yourself and your world.

Now, thinking about things with a positive attitude is easier said than done. But you can shift a negative attitude into a more positive one. It will probably not happen like flicking on a light switch, but gradually you can spend more time with a positive attitude than a negative one.

2. You don’t have to create anger and other negative feelings.

“A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.”

Sometimes it is of course necessary to bring up and resolve a conflict. Often though, conflicts or quarrels are just a waste of time and good way to create negativity within and in your environment. Perhaps someone wants to be right. Or release pent up emotions created elsewhere.

Avoid taking such bait by others or giving in to temporary negativity in yourself. Just let it go.

3. Grow and deepen.

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”

Each day, month and year we can learn more about how to live in better way. Getting to know yourself and the world around you is simply an awesome way to find more depth in yourself and to handle and manage your life and happiness better and better.

How can you learn to live?

Learn from others. There is a vast selection of books, cds and dvds from all ages on what people have found out throughout their own lives. Make it a habit of exploring such material  and talking to people around you about what they have learned about life.

Learn from yourself. What you learn from others can have a bad habit of not sticking so well. But if you are open to what you can learn from your own mistakes and successes then there is much to be found there. And lessons to revise over and over again as you discover new things and that your old assumptions may not have been as correct or useful as you believed.

4. Will more solve your problems?

“For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.”

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

“What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.”

Society is to a large degree built on getting more.

Of course, to a degree this is very useful. But it may not be the thing that will solve all your problems.

You may not find your answer or happiness in more. It may just alter your troubles and problems. And/or give you more of them. What is already there inside of you perhaps gets highlighted and magnified when you get more. Instead of getting whatever you want when finally making all that money your wanted you may find that greed, jealousy and selfishness within you and in your world increases.

You may have thought that when you finally arrived at that place your problems would just disappear. But the ego always wants more and is never satisfied.

So trying to fill yourself up with more – money, power, smartness, prettiness, a feeling of being more enlightened than others :) – and then finally becoming happy may become like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

5. Give without wanting something in return.

“He that does good to another does good also to himself.”

“It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.”

Shared joy is increased joy. And one of the best ways to become happier is simply to make others happier. When you do that positive feelings seem to be generated from within.

And when you make someone else happy you can also sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you.

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. And so the two – or more – of you keep building an upward spiral of positivity and happiness.

Seneca has a very good point here about how it is your responsibility to give and the receiver’s responsibility to be thankful. But just because s/he may not be thankful doesn’t mean that you can’t feel happiness or should stop giving.

I also think it’s important to try and give without wanting something in return (something that is not always easy though).

Why?

Because if you give something but your mind and body says that you are just doing it to get something in return then that will often shine through. People will see and feel it in your reactions and your general vibe. And so they are less likely to be thankful or reciprocate. Giving, at it’s finest and for maximum usefulness for all involved, has to be genuine.

6. Know what you are looking for.

“If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.”

If you don’t know what you are looking for you probably won’t wind up finding it. You’ll just drift along with different currents and winds.

So you need to know what you actually want. Then set a direction and keep your focus on that direction. Then it will not only be easier to reach your destination but also to use the focus system in your mind – your reticular activation system – to help you filter out information and opportunities that can help you along and that previously may have just blended into the background of your world.

7. Laugh 
  
 
“It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.”

“No one is laughable who laughs at himself.”

Taking things too seriously can make life a lot harder and painful than it needs to be. It may be a common or “normal” way to look at things. But you are always free to choose how to view, react and think about things.

Taking things and yourself less seriously can really help you to decrease conflicts, anger, sadness and anxiety. And laughing at the life and yourself releases tension and tends to make you less susceptible to the gray and dreary clouds of negativity that may plague others. Check out Lighten Up! for more on this.

8. Excess may not be the key.

“It is quality rather than quantity that matters.”

“It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.”

I guess this one ties in to # 4: to seek happiness in more.

An excess of things may often look wonderful when you imagine it. But when you actually get it and are taking it all in then it loses the magic you imagined. So quality and moderation may bring more joy than an excess.

The first five pieces of candy always taste better than the rest. And if you eat the whole bag of candy you often wind up feeling a bit nauseous and sick.

One awesome gadget or tool is often better than five OK ones. One great looking shirt or skirt often brings more joy than five OK looking ones.

9. Be in charge of yourself and do a great job.

“Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”

“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”

“Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.”

Just going along with whatever happens and just doing your job may not bring much happiness.

But taking control of your own life – instead of floating along – and doing a great job brings satisfaction and joy. Not just from the people around you but from within. When you feel like you are in charge of your own life and that you are doing your best there is an exhilaration and happiness that you create inside of yourself. Such a self-generated happiness makes sure that external circumstances – that always fluctuate – have less of an impact on how you feel.

10. Live in the present.

“There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.”

“True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.”

“There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.”

What is there?

Tomorrow isn’t here yet. Yesterday has passed. Now is the present moment. And all three of them are always the present moment when we are living in them.

So there is no real space where you and I can change or live in except the one you and me are in right now. And now. And now.

But still we insist to spend much time regretting yesterday. Or fearing tomorrow. That’s normal. But it’s isn’t so useful.

We can’t really do anything about the past. We can learn valuable lessons from it but after that it’s not so important.

And most of the things we fear will happen in the future never really show up. A negative attitude can do wonders to create monsters within the mind to occupy much of your time. So, planning your future is very useful but over thinking it is seldom helpful.

So much time is lost thinking compulsively, over and over again, about things we have little control over. And it can create a huge amount of suffering inside that is projected and acted out into the world.

And it distracts us – blurs our vision and shatters our focus – and keeps us from fully enjoying what is really the most important time.

Now.