“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
Marcus Aurelius

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Marcel Proust

Circumstances can certainly make life unhappy. But a part – often a big part – of unhappiness comes from our own thinking, behavior and habits.

In this article I’d like to share 7 of the most destructive daily habits that can create quite a bit of unhappiness within and in your own little world.

But I’ll also share what has worked, what has helped me to minimize or overcome these habits in my life.

Bonus: Download a free step-by-step checklist that will show you how to overcome these 7 destructive habits (it’s easy to save as a PDF or print out for whenever you need it during your day or week).

1. Aiming for perfection.

Does life has to be perfect before you are happy?

Do you have to behave in a perfect way and get perfect results to be happy?

Then happiness will not be easy to find. Setting the bar for your performance at an inhuman level usually leads to low self-esteem and feeling like you are not good enough even though you may have had a lot of good or excellent results.

You and what you do is never enough good enough except maybe once in a while when feels like something goes just perfect.

How to overcome this habit:

Three things that helped me to kick the perfectionism habit and become more relaxed:

Go for good enough.

Aiming for perfection usually winds up in a project or something else never being finished. So go for good enough instead.

Don’t use it as an excuse to be lazy or to slack off.

But simply realize that there is something called good enough and when you are there then you are finished with whatever you are doing.

Have a deadline.

I set deadlines every time that start with a new premium guide. Because about a year ago, when I was working on my second e-book, I realized that just working on it and releasing it when it was done would not work.

Because I could always find stuff to add to it. So I had to set a deadline.

Setting a deadline gave me a kick in the butt and it is generally good way to help you to let go of a need to polish things a bit too much.

Realize what it costs you when you buy into myths of perfection.

This was a very powerful reason for me to let go of perfectionism and one I tell myself still if I find thoughts of perfection pop up in my mind.

By watching too many movies, listening to too many songs and just taking in what the world is telling you it is very easy to be lulled into dreams of perfection. It sounds so good and wonderful and you want it.

But in real life it clashes with reality and tends to cause much suffering and stress within you and in the people around you.

It can harm or possibly lead you to end relationships, jobs, projects etc. just because your expectations are out of this world.

I find it very helpful to remind myself of this simple fact.

2. Living in a sea of negative voices.

No one is an island. Who we socialize with, what we read, watch and listen to has big effect on how we feel and think.

It becomes a lot harder to be happier if you let yourself be dragged down by negative voices.

Voices that tell you that life will in large part always be unhappy, dangerous and filled with fear, worry and limits. Voices that watch life from a negative perspective.

How to overcome this habit:

Replacing those negative voices with more positive influences is very powerful. It can be like a whole new world opening up.

So spend more time with positive people, inspiring music and books, movies and TV-shows that make you laugh and think about life in a new way.

You can start small. For example, try reading an uplifting blog post or book or listen to an audio book while eating your breakfast one morning this week instead of reading the paper or watching the morning news on TV.

3. Getting stuck in the past and future too much.

Spending much of your time in the past and reliving old painful memories, conflicts, missed opportunities and so on can hurt whole lot.

Spending much of your time in the future and imagining how things could go wrong at work, in your relationships and with your health can create self-doubt and build into horrifying nightmare scenarios and playing over and over in your head.

Not being here right now in life as it happens can lead to missing out on a lot of wonderful experiences.

No good if you want to be happier.

How to overcome this habit:

It is pretty much impossible to not think about the past or the future.

And it is of course important to plan for tomorrow and next year and to try to learn from your past.

But to dwell on those things rarely help.

So I try as best as I can to spend the rest of my time, the big part of my time each day, with living in the now.

Just being here right now and being fully focused on these words I am writing and later as I cook and eat my lunch and work out be fully focused on doing that.

Whatever I am doing I try to be there fully and not drift off into the future or past.

If I do drift off then I focus only on my breathing for a few minutes or I sit still and take in what is all around me right now with all my senses for a short while.

By doing either of those things I can realign myself with the present moment again.

4. Comparing yourself and your life to others and their lives.

One very common and destructive daily habit is to constantly compare your life and yourself to other people and their lives.

You compare cars, houses, jobs, shoes, money, relationships, social popularity and so on.

And at the end of the day you pummel your self-esteem to the ground and you create a lot of negative feelings.

How to overcome this habit:

Replace that destructive habit with two other habits.

Compare yourself to yourself.

First, instead of comparing yourself to other people create the habit of comparing yourself to yourself.

See how much you have grown, what you have achieved and what progress you have made towards your goals. 

This habit has the benefit of creating gratitude, appreciation and kindness towards yourself as you observe how far you have come, the obstacles you have overcome and the good stuff you have done.

You feel good about yourself without having to think less of other people.

Be kind.

In my experience, the way you behave and think towards others seems to have a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself.

Judge and criticize people more and you tend to judge and criticize yourself more (often almost automatically).

Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself.

Focus on the positive things in yourself and in the people around you. Appreciate what is positive in yourself and others.

This way you become more OK with yourself and the people in your world instead of ranking them and yourself and creating differences in your mind.

And remember, you can’t win if you keep comparing. Just consciously realizing this can be helpful.

No matter what you do you can pretty much always find someone else in the world that has more than you or are better than you at something.

5. Focusing on the negative details in life.

Seeing the negative aspects of whichever situation you are in and dwelling on those details is a sure way to make yourself unhappy.

And to drag down the mood for everyone around you.

How to overcome this habit:

Overcoming this habit can be tricky. One thing that has worked for me is to kick the perfectionism habit.

You accept that things and situations will have their upsides and downsides rather than thinking that all details have to positive and excellent. You accept things as they are.

This way you can let go emotionally and mentally of what is negative instead of dwelling on it and making mountains out of molehills.

Another thing that works is simply to focus on being constructive. Instead of focusing on dwelling and whining about the negative detail.

You can do so by asking better questions. Questions like:

• How can I turn this negative thing into something helpful or positive?
• How can I solve this problem?

If I am faced with what I start thinking is a problem I may use a third solution, I may ask myself: who cares?

I most often then realize that this isn’t really a problem in the long run at all.

6. Limiting life because you believe the world revolves around you.

If you think that the world revolves around you and you hold yourself back because you are afraid what people may think or say if you do something that different or new then you are putting some big limits on your life.

How?

Well, you can become less open to trying new things and growing.

You can think that the criticism and negativity you encounter is about you or that it is your fault all the time (while it in reality could be about the other person having bad week or you thinking that you can read minds).

I have also found that my own shyness used to come from me thinking that people cared a great deal about what I was about to say or do.

How to overcome this habit:

Realize people don’t care too much about what you do.

They have their hands full with worrying about their own lives and what people may think of them instead.

Yes, 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.

Focus outward.

Instead of thinking about yourself and how people may perceive you all the time, focus outward on the people around you.

Listen to them and help them.

This will help you to raise your self-esteem and help you to reduce that self-centered focus.

7. Overcomplicating life.

Life can be pretty complicated. This can creates stress and unhappiness.

But much of this is often created by us.

Yes, the world may be becoming more complex but that doesn’t mean that we cannot create new habits that make your own lives a bit simpler.

How to overcome this habit:

Overcomplicating life can involve many habits but I’d like to suggest a few replacement habits to what have been a couple of my own most overcomplicating habits.

Splitting your focus and having your attention all over the place in everyday life.

I replaced that complicating habit with just doing one thing at a time during my day, having a small to-do list with 2-3 very important items and writing down my most important goal on white board that I see each day.

Having too much stuff.

I replaced that habit with regularly asking myself: have I used this in the past year? If not then I will give that thing away or throw it away.

Creating relationship problems of any kind in your mind.

Reading minds is hard. So, instead ask questions and communicate.

This will help you to minimize unnecessary conflicts, misunderstandings, negativity and waste or time and energy.

Getting lost in the in-box.

I spend less time and energy on my email in-box by just checking it once a day and writing shorter emails (if possible not more than 5 sentences.)

So that I can spend more time on helping my newsletter subscribers, on improving my blog and on other things that are a win/win for you and me.

Getting lost in stress and overwhelm.

When stressed, lost in a problem or the past or future in your mind then, as I mentioned above, breathe with your belly for two minutes and just focus on the air going in and out.

This will calm your body down and bring your mind back into the present moment again. Then you can start focusing on doing what is most important for you again.

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 with these destructive habits in my own life?”

Well, I’ve got something special for you…

A free step-by-step checklist that includes all the steps in this article… save it or print it out so you have it for your daily life and for the next time when one of these 7 habits starts to drag you down.
Download it now by entering your email below.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely…”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To me one of the most interesting things about improving life and growing is to make the regular day even better. Reaching your goals, having really special or awesome days and learning to handle bad times and slumps are of course important but many days in life are spent in-between that.

And one of the most common problems today, maybe more than ever, is that the regular day gets dragged down from maybe a good morning into a day of stress, overwhelm and being busy but barely moving forward.

So today as I sat down to write I wanted to write about some of the best things in this area that I have learned in past few years. Things I do today, a regular Wednesday, that I almost never used to do half a decade ago to live a more relaxing and focused life.

The short to-do list.

I used to seldom get much done in a week when I was in college. Then I used somewhat overloaded to-do lists for a while. That landed me in too much stress and I procrastinated away many days. Today I aim at getting two or three of the most important things done each day.

One thing at a time.

I find that if I try to multi-task I usually get stressed and unfocused. So I try to single-task pretty much everything I do during a day as best I can.

Avoid the gray zone.

What is the gray zone? That is when you are for example bringing your work home or when you bring your stress from home to work. Sometimes this might be unavoidable but making a habit of either of these things can really ramp up the stress and make things even worse.

I avoid the gray zone as best I can by having some pretty firm rules on when I am at work or when I am not working. I work from home so rules like these are essential for me. So I:

• Do no work after 7 o clock in the evenings.
• Do not do work on weekends.
• Take breaks pretty much every hour.

Having these firm rules helps me to not get lost in the gray zone, to stay in the present moment and to not create stress about work when I am not working.

Be where you are.

This is related to the last pointer. When you work then work. When you are with a friend, family member or partner fully be with them (not with someone else or at work in your mind).

Being fully where you are and mindfully focusing on what you are doing right here right now is one of best things I have ever learned.

Just being where you are fully and being fully focused on that moment brings out so much detail and joy and inner peace. It makes the moments of life more enjoyable.

Single-tasking is one way to tap into being mindful for me. Another tip I often use is to focus fully on just what is in front of me and around me right now for a few minutes. I take in the world around me with all my senses just for a short while to connect with the present moment and to get out of my own head (by that I mean to not keep thinking about some past or future scenario). And I sometimes take a couple of dozen belly breaths and focus on just my breathing to reconnect with the now.

Shape the environment.

I have found that I do my best work best if I work in a cone of silence. That means that I shut of the cell phone, the instant messenger, I sit by myself and I very rarely go online. Try that or a variation of it that fits you and your situation and see if that helps you to reduce your daily stress.

Be early.

I am pretty punctual. Not really because I am a stickler for these things. But because I want to avoid the stressful traveling. I want to spend my traveling time relaxing. So I make sure that I give myself time to prepare if I am going out to eat or to a party. I make sure that I am maybe 5 or 10 minutes early to a meeting. It’s a very simple thing to reduce stress in your mind and body.

If it doesn’t get done then that’s OK.

I’d like to get my two or three most important things from my to-do list done each day. But life is life. And sometimes it interferes. Such is reality.

And then someone might get annoyed or angry. But the skies won’t fall and in the long run it won’t matter much at all. So don’t beat yourself up and create a lot of stress within. Life is too short for such things.

There is a day tomorrow too and you can get that one thing done then instead.

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

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Leonardo Da Vinci

Do you sometimes feel stuck and unable to take action?

I do.

To get what you want out of life you can’t sit around wishing for it to happen. And wishing that someone else will do it for you don’t work too good either.

In this article I’d like to share 4 simple habits that help me when I get stuck in inaction and that have worked very well for me to go from a lazy guy who spent too much time on the sofa watching TV to becoming a focused and effective person of action.

Start your day in the right way.

How I start my day has probably become the most important factor for how much action I take during the day and how the day turns out in general. A good start often leads to a good day. A bad or indecisive start often leads to a pretty mediocre day.

So create a morning routine with breakfast, perhaps a short work out or a short meditation and other things you find gets you off to a great start.

Then add doing the most important task of your day at the end of that morning routine. That usually works well for me to build a productive day where I take quite a bit of important action.

On some mornings I may feel low in energy, unmotivated or have extra inner resistance to taking action. Then I start small instead of starting with the most important task.

I do maybe some decluttering or clean up a bit. I may do a deal with myself to just work for 5 minutes on a relatively easy task. Or if that feels like too much I make a deal with myself for 2 minutes of work. The most important thing is that I get started and get moving. If I do that then I will continue to keep moving forward.

Break down it down into small steps.

Work can become overwhelming and filled with negative feelings when you look at a big project or task.

You want to escape. You procrastinate. Then you become stressed because there is a deadline somewhere down the road and you are giving yourself less and less time to complete this thing as you procrastinate.

A big help here is to form the habit of breaking down big things into small, manageable steps that you can have done pretty quickly today and that will not give you anxiety or pump you full of negative emotions.

So break down a task into small, practical steps that there is an end to. If you have to read a book then break that task down into reading for 30 minutes. After you have read for 30 minutes check this off of your to-do list or just tell yourself that this task is done.

In my experience, it is very important to feel that you have finished tasks at the end of your day and to not have them hanging over you as you go home, spend the evening trying to relax and as you go to bed. Your mind wants to know that a step is finished – even if it is a small step like reading for 30 minutes – to be able to relax fully and to not create vague stress inside of you.

So break it down into small steps. Look at and focus on just that first step single-mindedly until it is done. Then continue to the next step and focus on just that. Do that and you’ll waste less extra energy on worrying and on your work.

Celebrate what you did today.

This is something I am still working on and something I can do more of. But it makes a big difference when I do it. You have to appreciate your good work to feel even better about your life and yourself.

So take two minutes out at the end of the day to think about what you can appreciate about what you did today. Or write down a couple of self-appreciative things in your journal. Have a tasty treat or a bigger celebration. Tell someone how nice something turned out or how proud you are over something important you did today.

Reward yourself for the things you did right today to strengthen your action taking habit. And remember to be kind to yourself for the things you may have missed or not gotten done. No point in trying to beat yourself up. No point in trying to be perfect. See what you can learn from it and perhaps try another solution tomorrow instead and see if that works better.

Take one small action right away to get the ball rolling.

What is one thing you can do to pretty much make sure that something will get stuck your I’ll-do-that-when-I-have-the-time list for a long time?

Read about something and get excited about it. And then do nothing about or tell yourself that you will take action tomorrow.

Instead, take one small action today, as soon after you have read about whatever you are excited about. Call up your friend and make arrangements to meet this Sunday night at seven to start working out, trying yoga or eating at the new restaurant.

If there is an exercise you can do in whatever you read about and it looks promising then do it today. If that feels hard make a deal with yourself to only work on it for 5 minutes.

If you want to travel somewhere in particular then don’t stop at a vague dream. Take a few minutes and look up prices online and then look at your budget and see how much you need to save or earn extra to be able to take that trip.

That’s it for today. Now get that ball rolling.

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

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
Mae West

I have blogged for almost 5 years now. Over that time I have shared many awesome and timeless quotes on life.

Today I would like to share 15 of my own favorites, the ones I return to time and time again myself.

So here are 15 of the most important thoughts on how to live a kick-ass life. I hope you’ll find something helpful in this article.

1. Woody Allen on showing up.

“Eighty percent of success is showing up”

One of the biggest and simplest things you can do to ensure more success in your life – whether it is in your social life, your career or with your health – is simply to show up more. If you want to improve your health then one of the most important and effective things you can do is just to show up at the gym every time you should be there.

The weather might be bad, you might not feel like going and you find yourself having all these other things you just must do. If you still go, if you show up at the gym when motivation is low you will improve a whole lot faster than if you just stayed at home relaxing on the sofa.

I think this applies to most areas of life. If you write or paint more, every day perhaps, you will improve quickly. If you get out more you can meet more new friends. If you go on more dates your chances of meeting someone special increases. In a way success is quite a bit about numbers. The really successful people have often tried and failed a lot more than the average person.

2. Nike on taking action.

“Just do it!”

Quite a while back I sat around and thought about Nike’s old catchphrase that seems to pop up from time to time. I thought: “Well, that’s easy to say, but it’s not so easy to just do”. So I concluded that it was just another catchphrase that people throw out because well, they have to say something.

Now I can see that there is actually some really useful advice in that catchphrase. So what changed? Well, I guess I figured out that you can’t really sit and think yourself out of something. And I figured out that I was thinking way too much. And that I identified closely with what I thought and felt.

This tip is connected to the previous one. People often have a hard time with showing up consistently. Why? Because of inner resistance and bad habits (such as overthinking things). Sometimes you can motivate yourself out of such a negative headspace by, for example, reviewing why you want to show up (improve your health, earn more money etc).

Sometimes that won’t work though. And it’s those times that can send people spiralling into negative spirals going downwards or positive spirals going upwards. Because some people will stay at home when they encounter the resistance. And some will just go and do what they want to do anyway, despite that their mind and emotions might be saying “no, no, no!”

Don’t trust your thoughts or feelings too much or take them too seriously. You may want change in your life. But your mind may want homeostasis (everything to remain stable). And so there is a conflict. And so there is an inner resistance to change.

You don’t want to get stuck in overthinking things or thinking that your thoughts or emotions are in complete control of what you do. You want to stop listening to what they are saying – or screaming – and go and do whatever it is that you deep down want to do.

3. Anaïs Nin on what we see.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

This was one of the biggest revelations I had when I first got into personal development.

I realized that the world was perhaps not fixed in some pattern. I realized that I was mistaking my view of the world with the world itself.

Because the world can be viewed from many different points. And it does change according to who is watching it.

An optimistic person will for example notice the opportunities, things to be grateful for and that even though things may be hard or bad right now they will change once again. The pessimist will likely stay stuck in inaction, think that his or her world will not change and look down on the optimist as some gullible and naïve fool and that way find a way to feel superior and good about himself/herself.

I have tried both ways in my life. I highly recommend going the optimistic route.

This quote is also interesting because it helps you realize that what you see in your world can also say things about you.

If you find a lot of hostility and standoffishness towards you in your world then perhaps you are more like that than you would like to think too?
If something about people irritates you then perhaps it is because that quality is something you yourself have and it is something you do not like about yourself?

Think about your world and what it can tell you about yourself. Think about yourself and how you may be interpreting the world in ways that do not serve you very well.

4. Confucious on the simplicity of life.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

The mind loves to think. So it thinks and thinks about things. Making them more and more complex than they ever really were. And so you bog yourself down with too many thoughts and perhaps a lack of action due to things just seeming too complicated and hard.

Don’t get lost in details and unimportant things. Realize what is most important in your life and discard what you don’t need.

Then spend more time and energy on the important things in your life. And stop thinking so much and instead take action to gain a better understanding of life and of yourself.

5. Winnie the Pooh on appreciating the little things.

“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon”

Daily happiness is to a large part about appreciating the small things. If you just allow yourself to be happy when accomplishing a big goal or when having some great luck then you are making life harder than it needs to be.

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

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

• My food.
• The weather.
• My health.
• Friends and family.
• This blog and the opportunity to write about what I want.
• You, the reader.
• Myself and the fine things about me.

The funny thing is that if you just start appreciating something you can very quickly start jumping around with your attention and appreciate just about anything around you. You may start with the food you are eating right now. Then move your attention to the phone and appreciate that you can contact anyone – and be contacted by anyone – you’d like. You might then move your attention outside, through the window and see the wonderful sunshine, then kids having fun with a football and then a really attractive person walking by. And so on.

Or you can take a couple of minutes each night and write down 5 things you are grateful for in a journal.

Doing any of these two exercises will over time make it easier to naturally in everyday situations be more appreciative and grateful for your life.

6. Audrey Hepburn on worrying what others are thinking about you.

“I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.”

One of the biggest part of thinking and doing what you really want is to stop caring so much about what other people think of you.

A lot of the actions you take – or do not take – may be because you need approval from other people. When we are young we get grades in school that tells us that we are “good”. This makes it very easy to create a life where you always go looking for the world to give you the next hit of approval. It may be from your family, boss, friends, co-workers and so on.

But this need creates neediness. And the stronger the need the stronger the neediness. And so other people will sense this. And approval may be withheld or used to manipulate you. Or they may just not like your neediness.

The people on the other hand that do not care that much about getting approval often do more of what they want deep inside. They may be considered courageous for instance. So the way they live their lives will gain appreciation and approval from the people around them. It’s a bit counter-intuitive.

7. Helen Keller on fear.

“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

You cannot sit on your hands and take it easy and hope to get things done. At least not the things you really want to get done (which often may be the things you fear doing).

Why do people sit on their hands and get comfortable in their ease and quiet though? Well, one big reason is because they think they are safe there. But the truth is what Keller says; safety is mostly a superstition. It is created in your mind to make you feel safe. But there is no safety out there really. It is all uncertain and unknown.

You may get laid off.
Someone may break up with you and leave.
Illness will probably strike.
Death will certainly strike in your surroundings and at some point come to visit you too.
Who knows what will happen an hour from now?

This superstition of safety is not just something negative. It’s also created by your mind so you can function in life. No point in going all paranoid about what could happen a minute from now day in and day out. But there is also not that much point in clinging to an illusion of safety. So you need to find balance where you don’t obsessed by the uncertainty but also recognize that it is there and live accordingly.

When you stop clinging to your safety life also becomes a whole lot more exciting and interesting. You are no longer as confined by an illusion and realize that you set your limits for what you can do and to a large extent create your own freedom in the world. You are no longer building walls to keep yourself safe as those walls wouldn’t protect you anyway. You can instead start your own daring adventure. Perhaps slowly at first, but still.

8. Winston Churchill on your troubles.

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened”

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 think back and remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more worry from your thoughts.

This makes it a lot easier to start doing more of what you really want in life. And to move through your day to day life with a lighter, happier and more optimistic attitude.

9. Wayne Dyer on what you teach people.

“Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.”

This is a very important point and something I think is perhaps often missed by people who want to improve their social lives and make it more positive. They may think “well, I have been so nice towards everyone for the last few months but it doesn’t seem to have changed their behaviour towards me much”.

This is the “nice guy/girl” problem. He or she is very nice but there is no assertiveness. There is no changed feeling within about how you feel you deserve to be treated. You may still be nice just to get approval from other people. You feel the craving need. And you then are less likely to get the approval.

We do to a large extent choose how we want to be treated. How you expect people to treat you can have a big effect on how you allow yourself to act and how people around you view and treat you. If you start creating a role for yourself where you always let people do what they want to you then you may create some pretty destructive and negative things.

• You may create an identity for yourself where you get used to always taking whatever anyone doles out. You create a kind of victim identity where you may look happy on the outside but don’t feel so good on the inside. But since you have gotten used to it after a while you may accept it and think that: this is just who I am.

• You may create a concept in the minds of the people around you that it’s OK to treat you this way. Either because you seem so positive despite what they are doing so they think it’s OK. Or just because you aren’t saying no and some people may take advantage of that.

Look, you can’t please everyone. I think both Eleanor Roosevelt and Buddha have mentioned something along the lines that whatever you do there will always be people who don’t like what you are doing. And that’s OK. That’s normal.

Going around trying to please everyone at your own expense isn’t healthy though. Or even a realistic thing to attempt. It eats away at you both mentally and physically.

So be nice. Be positive. But make sure you set your own standards, rules and limits too. And remember that you might as well do what you want because there will always be critics.

10. Kahlil Gibran on sorrow and joy.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

Your pain and sorrow is in retrospect often a gift. It makes you stronger. More empathic and understanding. It helps you out in some way and guides you. You can always look back it when you feel down and be happy that you aren’t in that place anymore.

And it’s often in the sorrow that we later on create our strengths. Many very fit people started on that path because they had hit a big low point health wise. And many great speakers or just very social people may have been being deathly shy at a young age. It’s to a large extent all that emotional leverage and all those painful emotions that at least initially give people a great motivation to change their lives in a radical way.

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

11. Mahatma Gandhi on being the change.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.”

If you change yourself you will change your world. If you change how you think then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. And so the world around you will change. Not only because you are now viewing your environment through new lenses of thoughts and emotions but also because the change within can allow you to take action in ways you wouldn’t have – or maybe even have thought about – while stuck in your old thought patterns.

And the problem with changing your outer world without changing yourself is that you will still be you when you reach that change you have strived for. You will still have your flaws, anger, negativity, self-sabotaging tendencies etc. intact.

And so in this new situation you will still not find what you hoped for since your mind is still seeping with that negative stuff. And if you get more without having some insight into and distance from your ego it may grow more powerful. Since your ego loves to divide things, to find enemies and to create separation it may start to try to create even more problems and conflicts in your life and world.

12. Ernest Hemingway on keeping your eyes on where you are going.

“Never mistake motion for action.”

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

Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean that you are moving in the direction you really want to go. To do that you have to do the things that you know are really important and in alignment with your goals. And not getting lost in busy work.

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

13. Samuel Beckett on failure.

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

This is an easy and relaxed attitude towards failure. An attitude that says that failure is as just about as normal as cooking your food or brushing your teeth. I remind myself of this one when I have failed or made a mistake. Or when the fear of failure pops up. It pulls out all the drama one might associate with failure. And makes it easier and less burdensome to take action.

14. Kristen Zambucka on reality and changing your world.

”Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me, for every man is a mirror. We see only ourselves reflected in those around us.
Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own.
The whole world and its condition has its counter parts within us all.
Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”

This is perhaps my favourite quote. I like it because it reminds me that even though there is big, big world out there with many possibilities and people in the end big change in your life comes down to you changing yourself.

As I mentioned above, it’s very easy to get stuck in thinking that your perspective, the lens through which you view reality is reality itself. But you can’t really see reality. You can only see it filtered through the lens. And the lens is you.

Changing, for example, a very negative attitude to a very positive one changes how you view yourself and your entire world. But it’s very hard to convince anyone of this. You just have to choose to try another perspective and just use it for a month or so. Even though homeostasis may want to draw you back to the comfortable stability of your old viewpoint. Which may cause you to rationalize that this positive attitude stuff is uncool or cheesy.

Truth is life will never be as in your dreams if you don’t change and correct yourself. No one is coming to save you. No book or personal development guru, not your parents, no knight/lady in white armour. Yes, people around you can of course be a big help.

But as an adult in this world it is time to grow up and save yourself. Not just because it is the right thing to do. But also because it is what actually works.

15. Mark Twain on following your heart.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

An awesome quote. And I really don’t have much to add to that one. Well, maybe to write it down and keep it as a daily reminder – on your fridge or bathroom door – of what you can actually do with your life.

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

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Benjamin Franklin

What do you fear in your everyday life?

One common answer would probably be to be criticized. To stand there and hear those words streaming out of someone’s mouth and feel stupid or feel rejected or like you are getting smaller and smaller.

I get quite a bit of feedback from my readers. Most of it is positive and supportive.

But there are also sometimes criticism or harsh and nasty attacks. That part isn’t always so fun and can be hurtful. But it is a part of life if you want to live your life your way.

That being said, I have a few steps that I usually run through when I get an email that is critical or is attacking me.

This isn’t some magical protection from being hurt or feeling pain but it helps me to better handle criticism and sometimes to get something good out of it.

These steps work pretty well in real life too.

1. Don’t reply right away.

It is very easy to become riled up, angry or defensive when you receive some criticism. This is not a good position to be in to fire away a reply if you don’t want to wind up making the situation worse.

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

So this is about my own well-being to a high degree. And so I never reply back right away.

Instead I look closer at the email. If you receive criticism in real life try to at least take a couple of deep breaths to cool down just a bit and to feel more balanced before you reply.

2. Really listen to the criticism

Instead of attacking the other person for his or her words and building a hostile atmosphere try to calm it down. Try to remain level-headed, open and figure out how this message can help you.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Can I learn something from this piece of criticism?
• Maybe there is something here that I do not want to hear but that could help me to improve?

3. Remember: the criticism isn’t always about you.

Some criticism is certainly helpful. Some isn’t that helpful or just simply attacks. What can I do then?

Well, then I remember that criticism isn’t always about me. It would be nice if all criticism one gets comes from level-headed place.

But in reality people will have a bad day or week. Some will hate some part of their life. Some might not be all that well at this moment.

So they lash out at you to release pent up negative emotions. On your website or maybe in school or at work. It’s not fun. But it happens.

To lessen the sting of this criticism or these attacks I try to be understanding. I think that based on the message I got – often really angry or overly critical about some pretty minor thing – this person isn’t feeling too good right now and is overreacting or need to release some pent up emotions.

By being understanding of this it becomes easier to just let such messages go instead of feeling bad or becoming angry too.

4. Reply or let go.

If you reply then try one or a few follow up questions if you think that could help you.

And even when someone blurts out something not too constructive like “Your work/website/product isn’t very good” you might want to ask a few open-ended questions to get more constructive information.

Questions like:

• What part of it did you not like or did you not find helpful?
• How can I improve it?

When I reply to a critical email I try to keep my attitude positive and kind no matter what they have written.

I thank him or her for what he or she wrote. I may add a question or two to get more clarification.

Sometimes I get back a much more level-headed reply where they actually help me to improve what I am doing and although I may still feel a bit hurt it also feels good to be the better person in this situation and to create a constructive conversation.

If they won’t answer your questions then they are probably just lashing out. And so it is time to let go.

I really don’t reply to all emails though. Nasty attacks are for example most often just put in the junk mail folder. I have more interesting things to focus on.

5. Keep your daily balance.

This isn’t a step to handle one specific email, phone call or critical message.

But I have found that it becomes a whole lot easier to handle criticism if you stay balanced in your daily life. Those messages seem to not be as hurtful, they don’t affect me as much or sometimes just roll off my back like water on a duck when I:

Work in a relaxed way.

Extra stress makes you more susceptible to the negative messages and to overreacting to criticism.

Manage the 3 fundamentals.

That means to eat properly, to get enough sleep and to work out a couple of times a week. Keeping the balance of your physical fundamentals make you mentally stronger too.

Keep the self-esteem up.

Criticism can send you down a spiral of self-loathing and feeling lousy about yourself. So keeping your own self-esteem up is vital. A couple of basic things that help me to do that is to:

• Behave in way where I do the right thing (like being the better person when replying to a critical email) as best I can.
• To appreciate myself, my good traits and both small and bigger accomplishments.
• To forgive myself instead of beating myself up about stuff or holding myself to impossible standards.