“If my dreams can happen to me, your dreams can happen to you. Champions are not made on the track or field; champions are made by the things you accomplish and the way you use your abilities in everyday life situations.”
Bob Beamon

The Summer Olympics are here and in full gear. This time I have probably watched it more than ever and enjoyed a lot of great entertainment in the athletics, triathlon, swimming, gymnastics, wrestling and sailing competitions.

For me it is not just exciting, educating and suspenseful to watch the competitions. It’s also very inspiring to see how much work people have put in, the fantastic things they achieve during the Olympics and the joy that people get out of it all no matter if they watch or compete.

So today I would like to share some of the most inspiring thoughts I have found from current and past Olympic champions.

1. Don’t make things harder, bigger or more complicated than they can be.

“All I’ve done is run fast. I don’t see why people should make much fuss about that.”
Fanny Blankers-Koen, sprint, long jump, high jump and more

One thing I try to keep in mind is to not make a too big a deal out of things.

Many movies or life-stories of successful people tell us stories of the underdog that struggles and struggles until he or she finds the success that he or she was dreaming of. Things often take time. Perhaps longer than one would hope for. And keeping yourself in underdog position can be motivating to keep soldiering on.

It can also be a way to make things a lot harder for yourself than they need to be. Every bit of progress and action becomes a big struggle. Approaching things like you’re in some kind of battle may look cool on the movie screens. It may not be the most pleasant way to go about things.

Your attitude towards things does to a large degree determine how you experience them. And how or if you take action. Now, things can be difficult. But making things harder than they need to be, to identify with an image of someone who makes progress inch by painstaking inch can make you feel important since your struggle is so epic. It’s a bit unnecessary though.

If things are hard or difficult then it is most likely you who are creating much of that in your own head. So be good to yourself. Let that kind of thinking go and replace it with a lighter and a less serious attitude. You’ll thank yourself later.

2. Climb out of the sea of negative voices.

“When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening any more.”
Florence Griffith Joyner, sprinter

It’s easy to let other people’s negative opinions slip into your mind. But remember, they are just opinions. Not fact. Even though the opinion may come from someone your look up to and respect. When faced with this problem ask yourself a few questions:

Have they actually tried this or do they know something about this? Or are they just sharing their own pessimism?

Or trying to keep everything as it always has been as change and the unknown can be scary?

You may often realize that people are just voicing there own problems and identity. Rather than giving your accurate and experienced advice.

Listen to what others have to say. If what they’re saying makes sense, take it into account. But hold your own opinion in the highest regard. Make own decisions instead bouncing around like a pinball while reacting to what others tell you.

3. Don’t let hero worship get in your way and hold you back.

“It took me time to realize that the men who won Olympic gold medals in the decathlon are just men, just like me.”
Dan O’Brien, decathlete

Sure, you may not be able to swim like Michael Phelps. But to put people you admire up on pedestals is to make things unnecessarily hard on yourself. Because everyone is human, no matter what that have accomplished. If you don’t think that you can do anything similar then it will be very hard for you to do so.

You won’t feel worthy to do so. You’ll feel that this or that person is so very different from you. And so you’ll hinder or self-sabotage to keep yourself in line with your own expectations and self-image. Understanding that everyone is human can open you up to your own potential.

And realizing that everyone fails and make mistakes can remove other mental blocks in your mind too. When you feel like everyone is human you feel more connected to people. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

4. Be careful with inflating your ego or identifying too strongly with your success.

“I’m the same kind of guy before all this happened.”
Michael Phelps, swimmer

If you let the success go to your head then it can, for one, make you an arrogant jerk. It can also make you more emotionally reactive as you inflate your ego and strongly identify with your achievements.

This will feel awesome at first. But soon you may start to doubt that you are still as good as your last achievement and as awesome as everyone said you were. And so you become more reactive to criticism or having a bad day. This affects the steadiness of your focus, thoughts and emotions. And so your inner life becomes more of a rollercoaster. All of this can not only affect your relationships with other people but also your performance.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have a high level of confidence in yourself and your abilities. It just means that you should be careful with getting completely wrapped up in your past achievements and letting you ego inflate to a harmful size.

5. Put your work into a longer perspective.

“What I can tell them is the way you become an Olympic champion is to start working now. I tell them why it’s always worth it to put the time and effort into something you want to be good at.”
Rafer Johnson, decathlete

How do you become really, really good at something? The biggest part is the amount of work you put in. Sure, you can work smart too and save energy and effort. But the people that really fulfill their potential seem to put in years and years of hard work that most people just aren’t willing to put in. Why?

Well, I’d say:

Because of the support from other people.
Because they know that they need the challenge and can’t stay in their comfort zone and just take it easy.
But mostly I think it’s because of the love of what they do.

So focus on doing what you love – or like a whole lot – to get really good at something.

6. Take a risk.

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
Muhammad Ali, boxer

To get what you really want you will pretty much always have to take risks. Of course, that can be scary.

So how can you overcome this, take a leap and take the risk? I don’t have some simple and easy solution. But I do have a couple of tips.

• Really, really want it. When you really want it simply becomes easier to push through the inner resistance you feel. You are so motivated to achieve whatever it is you want that the risk may be scary but smaller than your desire.
• Ask yourself: what’s the worst that could happen? It is common to build big, negative fantasies in your heads of what may happen if you do something. Huge scary monsters. But probably 90 percent of what you fear never comes into reality. If you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

Every time you take the leap and take a risk – even if things might not go your way that time – you can build confidence in yourself. By getting more experiences where you took action instead of sitting on your hands it will over time becomes easier to start moving in the direction you desire and take a chance.

7. Focus only on what you are doing right now.

“I’m trying to do the best I can. I’m not concerned with tomorrow, but with what goes on today.”
Mark Spitz

When you are actually doing the best that you can out on the court, in the pool, behind the computer or wherever you do what you do in then detach from the outcome. Just focus on what’s in front of you. Not on what you missed in the past. Not on the all possible future outcomes of your performance right now.

Then things will become easier. You’ll create less inner anxiety and pressure for yourself. And you will perform better because you are just focusing on what’s right in front of you and you are not weighing yourself down with a lot of self-created negativity and doubts.

8. Don’t let the initial impression get you down.

“Don’t be afraid if things seem difficult in the beginning. That’s only the initial impression. The important thing is not to retreat; you have to master yourself.”
Olga Korbut, gymnast

Since society often tells us to look for quick fixes or instant gratification it’s easy to make the mistake of giving up too soon. After you have tried something maybe just once or twice. Or after you have failed or put in a pretty bad or mediocre performance perhaps 1-5 times. That’s a pretty “normal” thing to do.

But what could have happened if you just kept going after that? And for each time you did it you learned more and more about what works?

I think people often make a mistake of giving up too early. Your mind probably has a reasonable time-frame for success. This might not correspond to a realistic time-frame though.

It’s useful to take a break from common and often advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give you a complete plan but a clearer view of what is needed to achieve what you want.

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
Aristotle

What other people think and say about you and what you do can hold you back in life. If you care too much about their opinions.

You may not take some action that you want to take because you fear being judged by someone or people in general.

You may not make improvements or changes in your life because you know, based on previous experiences, how some people could react if you did that.

Caring about what other people think about what you do in a healthy way can help you to gain valuable feedback and keep you grounded. But caring too much about what people may say or think if you do something can keep you in the same old rut, unable to move forward and to live the life you truly want to live.

So how can you overcome this common issue and find more inner freedom to do what you want? Well, people will always have thoughts and opinions about things. But you can learn how to care about what they say and think in a more helpful way.

In this article I’ll share 5 tips that have helped me to make that shift.

1. First, people don’t think about you and what you do that much really.

Holding yourself back in life because of what other people may think or say does, in my experience, to a large part come from a belief that people care a great deal about what you are about to say or do. Perhaps you are afraid that people will laugh or analyze what you said or did for the rest of the week or year.

But a much more realistic scenario is that they have their hands full with worrying about their own lives and what people may think of them instead. This might make you feel less important in your own head. But it also sets you free a bit more if you’d like that.

Yes, in your head you may be the most important person in the world. But don’t project that onto other people. Because in their world the most important person is probably themselves or their kids.

2. Take praise and criticism evenly.

My mindset for praise – that I try to stick to as much as I can – is that it’s cool and I appreciate it. It’s great to get praise, but I seldom get overly excited about it and jump and down shouting enthusiastically.

A great upside of this mindset is that when you receive the opposite – negative criticism – you can often observe it calmly without too much wild, negative emotions blocking the way. This allows you to appreciate that piece of criticism too (if there is something to learn from it).

Going about things this way can help you to not care too much about what other people think.

3. Care more about what you think about yourself.

If you care too much about what people think of you then that craving need can make you feel quite needy and you start to define yourself based on what they may think of you.

So replace that somewhat desperate need with something healthier, something you have more power over. Something that will give you more inner stability and lets your life not become a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions controlled by other people’s opinions.

Start caring more about what you think about yourself and start raising your own self-esteem.

Two ways of doing that are:

The daily self-appreciation journal.

It is easy to get lost in basing your self-esteem on just what you accomplish, on what you get done in a day or week. Or on what other people may think about you and tell you about yourself. But basing your self-esteem on just that makes it pretty unstable.

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

You can do that by taking out a pen and notepad (or use a word processor on your computer or cell phone) every evening for a week. There you write down 5 things you appreciate about yourself. But make sure that you do not only write down accomplishments.

Also write down good stuff related to your core-self esteem. By that I mean things that always there no matter how you perform at work or in school. It could be things/traits like your sense of humor, your kindness, your honesty, wisdom, creativity and so on.

Be kind and understanding towards others (and yourself).

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

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

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

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

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

Plus, by being kinder towards others you are more likely to get that kindness back from them too.

4. Remember, not all things that they may say or think is really about you.

If someone is pretty much always negative about what other people do or he or she often makes personal attacks and let the destructive words flow then, when such things are aimed at you, remember that it isn’t always about you.

Such words or negative habits can be a way for that person to release pent up anger, frustration or jealousy about something in his or her own life. Or a way to reinforce that his or her viewpoint or belief is the right one. Or he or she may have habit of getting others involved emotionally – baiting them – to build a negative spiral, an argument or fight to get attention. It’s about him or her. Not about something you did or want to do.

It can have a calming effect to remember this. And to remember that the other person is still human and might be having a bad day, month, marriage or job.

5. Listen to the supportive and level-headed people.

I wouldn’t recommend to stop caring about what people may say altogether. Listening to what they have to say can provide you with valuable feedback and help you to keep yourself grounded so that your life and relationships do not spin out of control or break down.

But try to choose who you listen to. Listening to your relative that is always angry about everything or a friend that always sees the pessimistic side of things may not help you so much.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
Maria Robinson

“A year from now you may wish you had started today.”
Karen Lamb

I didn’t really try to improve my life very much until I was 25. Before that I mostly just moved along in the same old rut.

Since then (I’m 32 now) I have tripled my effectiveness, lost more than 30 pounds, adopted a more optimistic view of my life and raised my own self-esteem greatly.

I have learned to simplify my life and to inject a lot more happiness into my days and years.

Why am telling you this?

Well, the point here is not to brag. My point is that you are not stuck permanently in the life you have now. Even if it may feel that way.

It may sometimes feel like you should have started to change your life earlier, when you were a kid or in your teens or early twenties.

Or that you should have been born into those right circumstances right away as you came to this earth. It may feel like it is too late now.

You may look to your past and tell yourself: “if only had done this or that then things would have been different and better now”. That may be true but you cannot really change the past unless you got a time-machine.

And reliving the past in your mind does not change today and this week and month. It just has you hooked on mental reruns that keep you in your regretfilled rut.

It isn’t too late for you to improve something in your life that you really want to change. No matter what age you are at.

Over the past 5+ years I have received thousands of emails from readers of all ages – between 14 and 72 – that have told me about how they have changed their life in a positive way.

I understand that you may not be able to change your life in any way you want right now.

There are real limits in most people’s lives and personal development isn’t magic that can fix just about anything quickly and easily.

But you can do what you can with what you have where you are right now. Start there.

Make a small change if that is what is possible. From that small change and success you will gain confidence and you can build upon that to make more and perhaps even bigger changes.

4 steps that will make it easier for you to get started

1. Think about what you really want to change.

Maybe you already know it. It could be your social life, your confidence, your health or money situation. Or take a few days to think about it.

Take time to focus on this because if you really want something then it becomes a whole lot easier to keep going.

Or let your curiousness guide you. Ask yourself: what would I like to explore in life now?

Find one or a few areas to improve or habits you would like to incorporate into your life. Write them down.

2. Choose one thing or habit to focus on for now.

If you have found several things or habits you would like to focus on then choose to focus on just one at a time. Spreading yourself too thin pretty much always leads to failure because life tends to get in the way.

If you have a regular life then you’ll probably won’t have the time and energy to change three things at once even though you really hope and think you can.

If you like, choose a theme for a year and focus just on that. I have chosen themes in the past like health and social skills.

Then put most of your efforts for 365 days into creating new habits and routines in just that one area.

3. Take small steps.

This is very important. The feeling that something is too big or scary or difficult is one of the most common things to hold people back from taking action at all.

On the other hand, people also tend to overestimate their own willpower.

The plan sounds so good in your head but when you execute it then you can’t really take as much action or move as fast as you thought.

Focusing on just one thing at a time and doing it in small steps may feel kind of like something a child would do.

I have thought that was the case – like so many other people have  in the past – and then fallen flat on my nose after a few days or weeks of trying to change too many things too quickly.

Instead, ask yourself: what is one small step I can take to move forward in this situation?

I use that question pretty much every day in some way and it has been immensely helpful over the last couple of years.

4. Ask yourself: What is one small step I can take right now to get 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 and practical step towards what you want.

”The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert Einstein

Your thoughts and mind are truly powerful. A change or a positive habit when it comes to your thinking can make a world of difference.

But on the other hand, getting stuck in the same old thought habit can be that one thing that cripples you, paralyses you, causes much suffering and gets you stuck instead of getting you to move forward towards a happier and more positive life.

In this article I’ll explore 7 common destructive thought habits that I have had to struggle quite bit with in the past and what I have done to overcome or at least minimize them. I hope you’ll find something helpful in this article.

1. You see things in black and white.

Instead of seeing life as it is, somewhat messy with a lot of exceptions to different rules, you see things in black and white. You are right and someone else is wrong. This way is good and that way is bad. Things are either this way or that way and there no exceptions or gray areas.

This makes it harder to make sense out of things, to take action in the right way and can be a way of thinking that makes you more and more inflexible as time passes. You get stuck and you can become terribly critical and unfair towards yourself and other people. You put barriers in your mind and life and this creates a lot more unhappiness and suffering than necessary.

What to do about it:

• Try to understand the other side. It’s easy to stick to your point of view. But you can gain powerful insights about the other person and yourself too by trying to understand their point of view. This also tends to decrease harshness and negativity and can make it easier to reach an understanding where both parties feel more satisfied with the solution.
• Be aware. Like with any habit in this article, just being aware and paying attention during your normal day can help you to discover and reduce these thought patterns by stopping that thread of thought and then changing what you focus on.
• Find the exception. If thoughts pop up telling you that you suck in school or that your partner never helps out at home then say stop before those thoughts become a big black cloud of anger. Pause for a second or two. Then ask yourself: what is the exception to this thought? Find one exception or more to that black and white thought you are feeding.
  You may for example realize that your partner cooks a lot of the food at home or do many of the repairs. Or that you are pretty good at writing and geography but have some improvements to make when it comes to math.

2. You look for problems even when there are none.

This is a weird one. In the past I have found myself looking for problems even when there are none really. I think in part comes from snapping back into your old mindset. I used to be much more negative and see problems everywhere for many years. So the mind is conditioned to operate that way and so used to it. So on some days you sit around and suddenly realize while thinking that you are looking for a problem in a situation or area of your life where there are none.

What to do about it: One thing that really helped me was to have this written down on my white board on my wall to remind me each day: “There is no problem”.

Nowadays, if I am faced with what I start thinking is a problem I ask myself: who cares? I most often then realize that this isn’t really a problem in the long run at all.

I also think this can come from thinking a bit too much about personal development and working on that. You become so accustomed to looking for solutions that your mind wants to find problems that it can solve. This personal development stuff is awesome. But read about and think about it in moderation and not all the time.

3. You are addicted to your comfort zone.

If you are always thinking about how to feel and be really, really safe then making a positive change will be impossible. The unknown and change is uncomfortable and scary to the mind because it tends to want your existence to be stable and continue to be as it has been so far.

What to do about it:

• Do it in small steps. What holds us back in our zone of comfort is often a fear or that facing that fear head on might be overwhelming. Doing things in small steps allows you to stretch your comfort zone and slowly making it less uncomfortable and frightening.
• Focus on the positive past. Realize it can be fun to get out of your comfort zone despite what your mind and feelings might be telling you before you get started. Think back to the previous times when you have broken out of your comfort zone. Focus on the positive memories, when you got out there, when you took a chance. And you will probably remember that it wasn’t so bad, it was actually fun and exciting and something new to you.

4. You think that what you feel now is just how it is.

One habit I used to have was that I used to think what you feel right now is kinda permanent. That it is how you really feel about things and will feel in the near future too. However, it is really hard to predict how you will feel just an hour or 15 minutes from now. The mind fools you as you identify with the emotions you are feeling right now. This can really hold you back.

What to do about it:

• Use and strengthen your discipline muscle. You may for example not feel like going to the gym today. Your mind might say “It’s ok, you don’t need that anyway, you were there three days ago”. And so you lie back on the couch. But you can also say to yourself “No, today is workout day and I will go even though I don’t feel like it/don’t think I need to right now”. And so you go. And after you have been there for maybe 15 minutes you start to enjoy it and you’re glad you went.
• Just be aware that your mind doesn’t always want what you know is the right thing to do. The mind often tries to get us to choose the easiest option in our daily lives. It makes it seem like what you feel now is reality. Even though emotional states are fleeting and you can change them around in just a few minutes or hours by going to that gym.

5. You think you already know how things work.

If you think that you already know something then your mind will not be open to actually learning it. Whatever someone is telling you, your mind will sort through based on what you think you know. You’ll only hear and learn what you what you want to hear and learn.

What to do about it: Whenever you want to learn anything it may be a good tip to disregard as much as possible of what you think you know. Keep your mind as open as you can. In my experience this makes it easier to pick things up and not disregard important stuff.

Of course, the ego often wants to jump in to meddle and strengthen itself by making you think that you already know whatever you’re about to learn. Be a bit careful with trusting that somewhat arrogant inner voice.

6. You get stuck in envy and it poisons your life.

Envy can be like a tiny devil on your shoulder that whisper words into your ear, gnashes on your soul and makes life into something that is often filled with suffering and much negativity. Or the envy can just be something that irritates and distracts you from time to time.

What to do about it:

• Focus on yourself when it comes to comparing. Comparing what you have to what others have is a good way to make yourself miserable. It feeds your ego when you buy a nicer car or get a better job than someone else. You feel great for a while.
  But this mindset and the focus on comparing always winds up in you noticing someone that has more than you. That someone has an even better job or car than you. And so you don’t feel so good anymore. The thing is that there is always someone with better or more than you. So you can never “win”. You just feel good for a while and then you don’t.
  A more useful way to compare is to just compare yourself to yourself. Look at how you have grown and what you have achieved. Appreciate what you have done and what you have. See how far you have come and what you are planning to do.
  This will make you make you more positive and emotionally stable since you are no longer comparing and feeling envious of what the other guy have that you haven’t.
• Be grateful for what you got. Besides comparing yourself to yourself it can be helpful to add a regular gratitude exercise to your life to minimize the envy. So take just two minutes out of your day to focus on being grateful for all the things you got. Make a list of them in your head or write them down in journal at the beginning or end of the day.
• Get a life. If you find yourself sitting around too much and not having enough to do then it’s very easy to feel stuck and to get stuck in thought loops and go into a downward spiral. Simply by filling your life with more fun activities and people and the things you want out of life you won’t have time or a reason to be envious.
  Other benefits of getting a life are that you become a lot more relaxed and less prone to overreacting about the little things. So spend less time analyzing life and more time living and exploring it in whatever way you’d like.

7. You overthink.

I used to be a chronic overthinker. This makes taking action very hard, you analyze small things until they become big and scary in your head and in general overthinking things most often leads to a negative view of those things.

I have however successfully reduced or almost eliminated overthinking in my life. It did take time, but on the other hand you are in the company of your mind each day so you might as well start working on a better relationship between the both of you.

What to do about it: How did I do it? The most important thing was probably that I focused a big part of a year in my personal development on reading/listening to books by Eckhart Tolle like Stillness Speaks, A New Earth and The Sun Will Also Die and establishing a habit of being in the present moment.

I listened to those books over and over on my mp3 player while out walking, while riding the bus and so on. This had two big benefits: I was very focused on his advice and it popped up in my head during the day which made it easier to stay aware of though patterns and Tolle became a sort positive influence in my weekly life. Just like a friend can influence you with his/her positive, negative or ambitious attitude and vibe.

Practice being present and it becomes a lot easier to minimize overthinking and to use thinking as a tool rather than letting thoughts control you.

One effective way to realign yourself with the present moment and to let go of overthought thoughts that just run around in circles in your mind is to breathe. To just sit down for 2 minutes, close your eyes if you want and take relatively deep belly breaths. Focus 100% of your attention on the air going in and out of you during these 2 minutes. This calms the mind and body and gets you back into living in the moments that are unfolding right here, right now.

Set short deadlines for decisions. Another very helpful thing is to start using short deadlines. Instead of thinking about something for days, tell yourself that you have – for example – 30 minutes to think. Then you will make a decision.

I also use even shorter deadlines for smaller, daily decisions. I don’t sit around thinking about decisions like if I should exercise, make a phone call, try some new food or anything where I may feel a bit of resistance from within. Instead as soon as I think about it I make a decision to do it within maybe 10-30 seconds and I start moving.

I have found this to be a good way to become more decisive instead of falling into the paralyzing trap of overthinking.

“A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”
James Dent

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
John Lubbock

Summer is here.

Many people around the world and readers of this blog will start their vacations soon. And although the longer vacation that many get from their job or school once a year is dreamed of as time to recharge and relax it can become a time of overwhelm and shoulds instead

So how can you prevent that and find a good balance between doing fun stuff and catching up on things you want to do and just relaxing?

Here are a few tips to help you out.

Let go of what you “have to do”.

If you are feeling totally stressed out and wrapped up in everything you “have to do” during this vacation then here is a good question:

Will this matter in 5 years? Or even 5 months?

This is of course not an excuse for you to not do anything. But a reminder that the small things we get wrapped up in when we feel stressed are often not that important when you view them from a wider perspective.

In the end you can choose what you want to do and not do. There are of course consequences to everything that we do and that is something one must keep in mind. But I think it is very important to feel like you are in control of your own life to be able to stay centered and minimize stress and pressure.

It’s important to be able to say no and to choose what you want to do instead of always living in reaction and feeling controlled by outside forces all the time.

You may for example feel like you have all these things you “just have to do before the summer is over”. If such thoughts are stressing you out, then choose to say no to at least some of those things. Make a list of the priorities or things you feel you need to do and eliminate or minimize 2-3 of the least important or meaningful ones.

Now, saying no can be a bit difficult but if you don’t then it’s easy to get lost in too many of other people’s plans and shoulds during the vacation. Here is one tip that can help you to say no:

Disarm and then state your need.

It becomes easier for people to accept your no if you disarm them first. You could for example do that by honestly saying that you are flattered or that you appreciate the kind offer or clever idea. Then you, for instance, add that you do not have the time right now for accepting and doing what they want.

Since some pushy people want to overcome your objections and convince you to do something even if you first say no with a valid reason you can try this: state how you feel as a reason for saying no. For example say that you do not feel that this offer is a good fit for your life right now. Or that you feel overwhelmed or tired after the long winter and spring and so you cannot do whatever they want.

The point of telling someone how you feel is not only to make them understand your side of the issue better but also that it is a lot harder to argue with how you feel rather than how you think. How you feel is your thing and no one can really come up with good counterarguments to that.

And remember, this is your life. And your vacation.

Sure, you may need to compromise a bit too but by letting go of shoulds, saying no to some things and yes to other things you can choose and you create a truly enjoyable and meaningful vacation.

Stop thinking that the world revolves around you.

One common way to make your life unnecessarily hard and difficult is to assume that the world revolves around you. It can make you feel like you are trapped in a cage built out of social pressure. Not pleasant at all.

But is everyone watching everything you do? Thinking about you a lot and discussing what you said or did? Probably not. It’s very seductive to think they do because it makes you feel important and it gives you validation and attention. But they are probably spending most of their time worrying about their own challenges in life and what other people think about them.

It’s not easy to let go of the belief that the world revolves around you. But there are huge benefits such as decreased shyness and increased openness towards people and trying new things.

So you give up or decrease the importance you put on validation from the outside. And by doing so you can release a lot of pressure and stress and increase your own inner centeredness and freedom to feel that you can do what you want in life.

And as you do so you stop raising your self-esteem and increasing positive feelings about yourself through the validation people may give you (or at least you cut down on it a lot).

Instead you now raise the self-esteem and increase the positive feelings by doing more of what you think are the right things to do in life and by caring more about what you think and feel about yourself and how you are living your life.

This can help you not only to have the vacation you deep down want and to chill out but also help you long after this summer is gone.

Spend your time online in a very focused way.

One change I usually do during the summer is to minimize the time I spend online. I cut it down to the bare essentials. Basically that means I update the blog and send out new newsletters. And I check my email/Twitter/Facebook maybe once every other day. Of course, you may not have the option or want to make exactly those changes.

But you may want to try to cut down on your online time a bit. Maybe just check all the things you check online once a day. I have found that it makes me a lot more relaxed, focused on the most important things and leaves me with more time to use for other things.

Set a low bar for happiness this summer.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: “Have a low bar for happiness today.”

When you tell yourself this and try to keep it in mind during the day you’ll appreciate things more. That is my experience at least.

It makes the sunny summer days feel more wonderful and I appreciate the small and big adventures even more. The food tastes better and I tend to enjoy the sensations of the day more mindfully. I take more pauses for a moment or two to take it all in and to appreciate the people in my life and the things I have instead of taking them for granted.

Take a few days and do nothing at all. Accept how you feel.

Maybe you try some of the tips above. And maybe they still can’t help you to shake that stress, inner pressure or whatever you are carrying around from the past few months of hard work. If so:

Take a few days or a week where you take it easy and do pretty much nothing. It can do wonders for your mind and body.

When stressful feelings or impulses pop up during those days, sit down for a moment or two and just pause. Be still.

Then tell yourself: “This is how I feel right now and I accept it”.

By accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into these issues or negative feelings. And then inner pressure, stress or other impulses that can sabotage your vacation just tend lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel. Oftentimes these things becomes so weak after while that they disappear. Or they at least become a lot less powerful.

And so you can release the inner pressure and the stress bit by bit. You can truly wind down for a few weeks and spend that time as you want to without the extra baggage.