I write a lot about self-love and the best-seller among the courses I have created is all about that and self-esteem.

But I rarely write about romantic love (although many of the relationship tips on the site work for any kind of relationship). So today I have decided to share something that could help you if you are out of ideas for what to do for Valentine’s Day next week.

Here are 5 ideas you can use as inspiration for Valentine’s Day (and any other day of the year too).

1. Create a hidden message.

This one I picked up from the Simpsons. Underline or circle letters in whatever he or she is reading (a book, a magazine etc.). Create a hidden love message for him or her to find, letter by letter.

2. Sweet and surprising notes.

I and my girlfriend leave small and sweet notes in boots, tea-containers, underneath the pillow, in books we are reading and other places around the home. It’s a very simple and small thing but it always makes the both of us smile big when we discover one of those notes.

3. Give an unexpected experience.

Maybe a surprise adventure like a dinner at a restaurant where the two of you haven’t been before.

Or if you do that quite regularly then try a museum, a musical, ice-skating, a picnic, a show of some kind, an amusement park or some other unexpected experience.

4. Give something he or she genuinely likes.

Show love in the way your partner prefers to be loved. If he really likes flowers then get that. If she is not much of a fan of flowers get her a book or video game or something even more practical if that is what she really wants.

Or give an experience that is unexpected. Or give something familiar if your partner prefers that.

You don’t have to go cliché. Know what your partner likes and how he or she thinks instead.

5. Don’t just focus on Valentine’s Day.

Make showing your love a habit. Use the tips above whenever you feel like it. Surprise the special someone in your life in a small or big way on a regular Tuesday or Wednesday.

Loving gestures and words delivered in surprising ways will not only inject more sparks in your relationship and be fun. It will also be win/win in a more important way by creating a loving environment.

In this environment your words and actions help his or her self-esteem to grow and blossom. And since people tend to want to give what they get you will get the same thing back. And so the two of you can build a more and more loving, supportive and self-esteem enhancing environment.

This will make your lives and relationship more stable, less filled with making mountains out of molehills and happier.

And that is more valuable than any Valentine’s Gift could ever be.

As the New Year is toasted in and we move in to 2013 you may have a New Year’s resolution or two that you want to make real this year.

But as we know, many resolutions don’t become more that hopeful wishes or a few weeks of effort put in during January.

How can you make it much more likely that the changes you want become habits that stick this year?

This article will explore five of the most helpful guidelines for not just wishing for a change but to make it something real in your life that you can reflect upon during the next New Year’s Eve and celebrate.

One change at a time.

I mentioned this in my last article just before the New Year but it well worth mentioning again. Maybe the most common mistake people make out of enthusiasm and overeagerness is to try to change too many things at once.

It usually becomes too much a few weeks down the line and so new goals and habits are left by the side of the road as one falls back into the old routine once again.

Be enthusiastic. But be smart too. Only focus on one habit or small change per month. Do it until it becomes the “new normal” in your life. Then add another habit or small change.

It might feel like things are going to slow, but in 12 months you may be able to add up to 12 new habits to your life if you do it in this focused and smart way.

Small step leads growth over time.

To avoid procrastination and inner resistance make things easy on yourself. Take small steps outside of your comfort zone.

Start by running for just 5 minutes. Then a week or two later, add 5 more minutes of running.

Or start working for just 5 minutes on something you have feared or been nervous about doing. Then you can go back to your regular stuff. And then come back and do 5 more minutes of work on that one thing later on that day or the day after that.

Small steps add up quickly. It is far better to have traveled quite a distance over a year by taking small steps than to feel overwhelmed by taking a first big step and procrastinating on it for 6 months or 12. It is far better than to take that big step once or twice but not being able to keep it up each week because it simply becomes too much for you.

A reminder right in front of your eyes.

It is easy to let the new habit or change slip through the cracks as everyday life interferes and before you know it a week or two has passed by without you having put in much or any work on this new part of your life.

The easiest way to remember your current habit, goal or thing you are focusing on is to write it down and to place that note where it is in front of your eyes every day.

Write it down on paper. Place that note in your workspace where you cannot avoid seeing it. Make copy of the note and put one on your beside table too so it is one of the first things you see as you wake up to a new day.

Get an accountability buddy.

It becomes a lot easier to stick with a new habit or change until it becomes a normal part of your life – and after that too – if you have someone there for support and accountability.

He or she can check up on your so that you get the exercise you made a commitment to. Or so you stay active in your dating life. Or so you don’t eat too much unhealthy food. And you in turn do the same for him or her and so you both stay on the right track.

Your accountability buddy could be a friend, a family member, someone at work or in a local club or someone you get to know online via a forum or website.

And he or she doesn’t even have to have the same exact goal as you. The important thing is that you stay accountable to each other and support, motivate and gently nudge each other back on the right track during the tough times.

Don’t beat yourself up when you slip.

You will most likely have a few bad days and stumble even if you follow the tips above. The important thing here is to not take that stumble too seriously. To not be too hard on yourself when it happens and to not keep on beating yourself up for a week.

Beating yourself up really doesn’t help because it lowers your self-esteem and makes doing whatever you want to do harder and less fun after each time you have slipped and beaten yourself up. And that could certainly lead to giving up altogether after a while.

So avoid being your own worst enemy.

Instead, after you have stumbled ask yourself what your best friend would tell you in this situation and be such a good friend to yourself too.

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

Image by Atli Harðarson (license).

At the end of the year I sit down and I take a look at my year.

I do it because it helps me to see the good things I did and that happened during the year. I do it because it helps me to find what did not go so well, to find what is important to focus on improving next year, to see in what ways I want to grow and to locate the habits I want to replace or add to my life.

And I do it because it is usually fun, very interesting and gives me an inspiring start to the next year.

First insights

So what I do is I sit down on my chair. I open an empty Word-document on my computer.

I like to keep things simple so I write down these two questions:

What went well?
What did not go so well?

I simply ask myself these questions one at a time and see what first insights pop up in my mind.

This year some examples were:

• It was a good year for my business. The number of readers of the newsletter and the blog went up quite a bit and so did the income from my business.
• It was a mediocre year for my fitness. I maintained my strength and aerobic capacity through exercise. But I didn’t grow in this area and I put in little time for most of the year. I didn’t really step things up until the end of the year when I started to lift heavier free weights and got back to doing at least 3 workouts per week.

Break it down

After my first insights I apply the two questions to some important areas in my life such as:

• Health and fitness.
• Relationships.
• The business.
• My personal growth during the year (habits added or neglected, improvements made, new areas of life explored etc).

Find and use categories that make sense in your life.

You may want to break things down even further and go over smaller sections of for example your relationships for like the ones you have with a partner, with friends and with co-workers. I usually do that in some areas.

The most common mistake I made with my insights

All of this gives me key insights about my life right now. So how does one use these insights?

Well, don’t do what I used to do and many people do: try to improve everything or many things at once next year.

Instead, look at the insights you got. Ask yourself: what are the most important ones for me? What are the ones that are most important for me to work on and will give me the biggest positive effect during next year?

Then just work on one habit or small area at a time. You have 12 months next year and if you take it in small steps you are far more likely to create changes that stick than if you try to cram everything into January. That just leads to overwhelm and habits not sticking.

I will, for example, spend January with getting back to journaling for at least 5 minutes one day per week. Journaling was something I used to do but it fell by the wayside.

I want to get back into it in small steps in 2013. Journaling will help me to focus on the essential. It will help me to review more closely how each week has gone both in my business and personally and it will help me to adapt more quickly and get more of the truly most important things done during next year.

Get the ball rolling today

If you have the time, then sit down for just 5 minutes today and get started with your end of the year review.

You don’t have to get it all done today. But by taking that first step right away you make it a lot more likely that you will follow through and complete this exercise. Or you’ll at least gain a few key insights about your life and how you want to grow during next year.

Happy New Year and I’ll see you in 2013!

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish Proverb

One of the most common and subtly – or not so subtly – destructive habits people get wrapped up in must be worrying.

It has certainly been one of my biggest issues.

I get a lot of emails from people feeling that they worry too much about work or their loved ones and they create create elaborate and negative scenarios in their minds. And it sucks so much energy from them.

In the past few years I have become pretty good at handling worry quickly when it pops up. And to keep it far from my mind most of the time.

And I’d like to share my most effective tips with all of you that may have this draining habit in your life. I truly hope you’ll find something that helps in this article.

Stay in the present moment and today.

Worries come from imagining how things will go terribly wrong sometime in the future. They become bigger as you spend time building elaborate scenarios in your mind. And can become even bigger as you replay that one bad event from your past over and over in your mind and fear that it will be your reality in the future this time too.

When you spend too much of your energy and time imagining the future or reliving the past then that often leads to a lot of worries.

So an important key to drastically less worries is to not spend more time than necessary there and to spend most of your time in the present moment and on this current day.

Two of the most powerful tips I use to do that are:

• Just take care of today. When you start your day or when worries start to cloud your mind then sit down for a minute. Breathe. Then narrow your focus greatly. Don’t look forward because then you’ll see all the things you have to do to, for example, reach a goal. Instead, focus on just taking care of today. Nothing more. Tomorrow will come in time. And then you will take care of that today too.
• Tell yourself: now I am… As I do something I simply tell myself this in my mind: Now I am X. For example, if I am brushing my teeth, then I tell myself: Now I am brushing my teeth. If am writing then I tell myself: Now I am writing. It is easy to drift away to the future or past. This phrase keeps me grounded in the present moment and in today.

Ask yourself: How many of the things you feared would happen in your life did actually happen?

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 start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

So whenever I am struck with worries, I ask myself this question and I remind myself of how little of the things that I have worried about over the years that have actually become real. I find that this most often calms me down.

Refocus your mind from the powerless worrying to how you can solve the situation.

To move out of worry I find it enormously helpful to just start moving and taking action to solve what I am concerned about.

And the simplest way to do so is to think for little while and to come up with one thing I can do to start solving this worry inducing situation. And then to start doing that in small steps to keep discomfort, fear and procrastination away until the situation is under control or not an issue anymore.

“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.”

Last week, at the age of 86, one of the most motivational people in the personal development world passed away.

Zig Ziglar served in the US Navy during World War II and after the war he worked as a salesman. Later on he started writing books and he held seminars and live events on how to become a better salesman and on motivation and self-improvement.

Today, as my own small tribute, I’d like to share five of my own favorite motivational lessons that I have learned from Zig Ziglar.

1. You have to keep the motivation up.

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”

So true for many things in life. It’s not like you can hit a light switch and then you are changed for life. The most meaningful and important things tend to need continued effort.

Now, if you want to start your day with getting your motivation up here are two quick tips:

• Spend 3 minutes with remembering your successes. If you lose your motivation or it is low in the morning then it is easy to get stuck in looking at your failures and so you get stuck in inaction. So instead, sit down for three minutes and just remember your successes. Let them wash over you and refuel your inspiration and motivation.
• Make a list of upsides. Take a few minutes to write down all the benefits you will get from achieving something, like for example getting into better shape or making more money. And be sure to include very personal reasons and benefits. Like being able to travel to your dream destination or spend more quality time with your son or daughter. Put that list somewhere where you will see it every day until you reach your dream.

2. Failure is not permanent.

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”

It is very easy to start thinking of mistakes or failures like permanent things. Like they are you and you are a failure or loser.

But these things are just like successes not permanent. Things go up and down.

So don’t identify with the failure. Take some time to accept that it happened but try to not beat yourself up about it or make it bigger than it is. You don’t have to be perfect. And no one who tries to go outside of his or her comfort zone can avoid failures, mistakes and low points.

And remember…

3. Learn what you can from your low points.

“If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.”

You only lose when you give up and go home or when don’t learn anything from a defeat.

If you keep going despite bumps in the road and temporary defeats then you are still on your way towards your dream and goal.

So don’t revisit the past too much. Instead, learn what you can from the defeat and keep moving forward.

Ask yourself:

• What can I learn from this?
• What do I need to do or not do to avoid winding up the same negative situation again?
• And what is the hidden opportunity within this situation? (there is often one if you just take a little time to look for it)

4. Look at your world and the people in it through an open and positive lens.

“The way you see people is the way you treat them.”

And the way you treat them they tend to treat you.

Now, you may not become best friends or get along splendidly with everyone.

But with a positive and open attitude towards the world and the people you meet and know you’ll feel more inclined to listen, get to know them better and to help out if you can. And over time things tend to even out. You get back what you give.

For more openness and positivity towards others try these two questions:

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

This one can help you to shift your perspective from what is different and what you feel the need to judge to what the two of you have in common instead. It tears down the mental barriers between the two you and you can feel closer to and more understanding and appreciative of this person.

5. Get the ball rolling today.

“If you wait until all the lights are “green” before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.”

You can wait for everything to be just perfect before you get started but that usually results in years passing you by before getting going. Or you may never get started.

Beginning something can of course be scary and uncomfortable as you step into the unknown.

But you can make it a lot easier to get started and to keep going. Here are three of my favorite tips for that (they are my favorites because they are so effective for me):

• Take one small step forward. Instead of focusing on everything you have to do to reach your goal just focus on taking one small and practical step today. Nothing more. But make it a small step that isn’t just about reading more about what you want. Make it step that matters and pulls you forward. Book an appointment or set up a meeting. Create a budget and see how much and what you can save each month to be able to go on that trip you dream about.
• Or take an even smaller step. If that first step feels too big and you start to procrastinate then come up with an even smaller step you can take. Then take that step.
• Just take care of today. Don’t look too far ahead or you may start to procrastinate. Or your mind may play tricks on you and you become worried or scared. To feel more comfortable while still making progress step by step go smaller and focus on just taking care of today. Nothing more. Tomorrow will come in time. And then you will take care of that today too.