“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”
Arnold Bennett

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Anais Nin

Why are you reading this blog?

Probably because you want to make a positive change in your life. Perhaps you want to improve your social skills, simplify how you work or change your attitude and how you think.

Now this is great. But it is seldom that easy. There may be obstacles outside of you. There are almost certainly obstacles inside of you.

In this article I’ll explore some of those common obstacles that can make change so hard and how to get around them.

You don’t want to change.

Maybe you think you want to change something. But is it really your wish? Or is it the wish of your parents, boss, partner, friends or society?

If you don’t really want to make the change deep down then it will be very hard to go the distance. Yes, you can begin but if there is no inner drive to do it then you will lose motivation easily and feel like giving up all the time after a while.

What to do about it: Sit down and really think about whose goals you are working towards. If they are not yours then think about what you can do to stop working on them and spend more time on your own consciously chosen goals instead.

If you still have to go on with may have started as someone else’s goal – perhaps your boss has told you to do something and you can’t just ditch that if you want to keep your job – then find your own reasons for working on that goal. Brainstorm and write them all down. Review that paper and make the goal into more of your goal and know why you are working towards it for you own sake.

Your environment is holding you back.

If you are for example trying to lose weight then it will be a lot harder if the people around you are eating junk food every day. If you are trying to think more positively then it will be a lot harder if you hang out with negative people all the time and watch the news and negative and fear-inducing TV-shows too much.

What to do about it: Change your environment in a ways that will support you. That’s doesn’t mean that you have to take drastic measures like never talking to some friend or family member again to cultivate a more positive attitude.

It may just mean that you cut down on seeing the most negative people/TV-shows etc. that much and replace that with more time with positive people and positive media consumption. By doing that the process will be so much easier.

If you are trying to lose weight then find people with similar goals that you can spend some time with each week. Even if it’s just via an online forum of some sort.

Carve out some time and a space for yourself with people and motivational and educational information – books, blogs, magazines etc – that will support you as you move towards your goal. Also, by involving more people and/or for example signing up for courses somewhere you will feel commitment to people you like and a bit of positive social pressure to actually go there when you are supposed to instead of slacking off on the sofa.

One common problem with the social environment is that you perhaps fear what people may think if you make change. Well, in my experience people are seldom as harsh as you think they will be. They are most often supportive or simply not that interested/neutral to you making changes.
People are most often focused on their own goals and challenges in life. Or what other people may think of them. You are not the center of the universe.

You feel like giving up after one or three failures.

When you are really young then you probably don’t build failure up to be this huge thing. You learn to walk, fall down and ding your head and get up again. The same goes for learning to ride your bike.

But through influence from school and society failure becomes this increasingly more frightening thing. Sure, as you get older the stakes become higher and you can lose more if you fail. But I do think people often exaggerate the effects failure will have simply because they feel frightened.

What to do about it: Most of the time the sky will not fall if you fail. People will not mock you. Life just goes on. But you have to do things to gain this understanding. You will not get it just by reading these words and all the other things by people who have said the same thing for centuries.

Your mind has to experience failure – or the possibility of it – over and over to make the fear of failure to lot smaller. That has at least been my experience.

You may however find motivation in that failure teaches you things books/blogs cannot. By changing your perspective to a more curious one and seeing failure more as a learning experience than something to fear it becomes easier to handle.

You don’t feel enough pain yet.

Why do people change? Oftentimes I think they have simply had enough. The pain of staying as you are becomes too big and you seriously start looking for a positive way forward.

What to do about it: Besides waiting until the problem becomes pretty much unbearable you can try to see your future self vividly in your mind.

Ask yourself: What will this lead to in 5 and 10 years? Where am I going?

Towards massive debt, a heart attack, serious illness and severe restrictions in your future? Do you want go to that place where it is very likely that you will wind up if you don’t make a change? Then see your future self where you have made the positive change. What positive and awesome things has it brought you in 5 years and in 10 years? See it all in your mind. And remind yourself of the positive and negative consequences by writing them down and reviewing them whenever you feel like quitting and going back to your old ways.

Vividly seeing the probably very real future consequences of not changing can be that nudge you need to get serious about improving something in your life.

You don’t know how to practically make the change.

This is a common obstacle. Fortunately, nowadays we have the Internet so it’s a lot easier to find practical solutions to the problems many people have faced before you.

What to do about it: Ask yourself what have other people before you or around you have done to improve their situation?

Talk to people who have made the change you want to make (lose weight, quit smoking, improve the social life etc.). Or if you can’t find anyone, read the top rated books on Amazon.com on that topic or read blog articles.

But make sure that you take advice from someone who has actually been in your shoes and gone where you want to go. Find a way that suits you. It may not be the first method or system you try. So be patient. Keep moving forward towards the things you want most in your life.

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task”
William James

“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.”
David Allen

Simply getting started and taking action instead sitting around and discussing things or theorizing about them is one of the most common things that are stopping people from improving their lives.

But to keep going until something is finished can also be a big issue (it has certainly been so at times for me at least).

I have however found a couple of good solutions that help me. Today I would like to share 3 of them.

But first, just be careful with what tasks you aim to get done. Don’t think you have to finish everything you started. If a book sucks, read something else. Using this as an excuse to quit something that feels hard or unfamiliar is not a good idea. But there is no law that says that everything has to be completed.

Go for good enough.

One pretty big issue for me in the past was that I wanted to polish everything until it was “perfect”. The problem is just that such thinking often leads to many things not ever being finished.

So you have to find a balance for yourself where you do good work and don’t slack off but at the same time don’t get lost in trying to improve and polish something too much.

I have found that balance through experience.

It is also very important to be aware that nothing will ever be perfect. Striving for perfection can be pretty dangerous. Because you will never feel like you are good enough.

You have set the bar at an inhuman level. And so your self esteem stays low even though your results may be very good.

So just focus on gradually being more consistent instead trying to be perfect.

Realize that good enough is good enough. And that goes both for your work and for you.

Set a deadline.

Last year I set a deadline for when my second e-book should be finished. I had 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. Sure, I still missed it by a few days but finally I did the last part of the work and was done with it.

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

Use limits and rituals to keep your focus during the home stretch.

The last part of a project or a task can often feel pretty hard and it is easy to get lost in procrastination. By setting limits for how often you check email each day, how much time you spend on social networks and forums, how much time you take to make small everyday decisions you can over a month or two develop these things into habits that run automatically most of the time.

I limit my own checking of email, Facebook, blog statistics etc. to one ritual at the end of my workday where I just string all the checking together into one 20-30 minute session. This allows me to get the creative parts and the most important tasks of the day done early in the day when I am rested and focused and it prevents me from getting lost in everything else.

By incorporating limits like these into your lifestyle you are less likely to get distracted during the last part of the work and you can keep your eye on what’s important.

“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.

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“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.

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