“For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else”
Winston Churchill

If you are reading this then there is good chance that you agree with me that optimism is pretty awesome. But it is not always easy to adopt a more optimistic attitude and there are roadblocks. So today I’d like to share a few of them that I have bumped into and how I have overcome them.

You are swimming in a sea of negativity.

If you are trying to change your attitude then it’s not very helpful to live in a world where forces try to drag you back to your old mindset each day. It makes it very hard to change.

What you allow into your mind will have a big effect on you. So be selective. If you’re hanging out with negative people all the time then that can really drag you down. It’s not easy to stay optimistic when pessimism is the default mode in your world.

Another part of this is getting hooked on the news and prophecies of the sky falling. The sky is probably not falling.

Consider spending less time with negative voices. Cut back on – or cut out – seeing negative people. Cut back on watching the news or even more spectacularly negative TV-shows. But don’t forget to replace that old stuff you cut out with something more positive instead. If you have a vacuum in your life then you are more likely to revert back to your old habits.

You can for instance replace reading the newspaper in the morning with listening to personal development CDs, watching something fun or just having a good conversation with someone that positive, funny or enthusiastic.

You get stuck in thinking that you have to be an optimist 100 percent of the time.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when you adopt a optimistic attitude then it’s just on. Like when you flick a light switch. And that would be nice and simple, wouldn’t it?

But in my experience you improve gradually with a few bigger leaps from time to time. For example, today I stay constructive and optimistic for about 80 percent of the time. Five years ago or so, I was probably positive for about 30 percent of the time.

So I have made big improvements in this area. But it has taken years and lots of exploring and work to have a more consistently optimistic attitude. And the work continues. Mental fitness is like physical fitness. If you let things slide then you get out of shape and then you can’t do the things you used to do.

I think it is 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.

Even though you may be optimistic 90 percent of the time you still feel deep inside like you aren’t OK. No matter what you do. You have set the bar at an inhuman level. And so your self esteem stays low and your optimism sinks even though your results may be very good.

So I think it’s better to just focus on gradually being more consistent instead trying to be perfect.

You get stuck because of the benefits of your current attitude.

At some point you have to make up your mind. Will you go for the benefits of adopting more optimistic attitude? Or will you stay with benefits of a negative attitude?

Because there are benefits to both of them. It’s not like a negative attitude is something that is just stupid and something people do without any reason. A negative attitude can for example give you this:

• Attention and validation. You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out.
• No risks. When you are negative you can find explanations for why nothing will work. And so you don’t have to take action and have to risk for example rejection or failure.
• A feeling of being smarter and right. A common attitude of very negative people seems to be – and it was in my case – that you think you are smarter than other people. They do, fumble and fail. While you can judge and analyse life and them from a safe distance. It’s not hard to feel smarter than most people when you are always on the sidelines. But it’s not clever. In the end it’s just sad.

So there are a few benefits and quite a bit of pleasurable feelings to be drawn from a negative attitude. But I have found that a optimistic attitude – although it may sometimes be harder to keep up – is more helpful and just makes life a lot more exciting and fresh.

To be able to have a more consistently optimistic attitude you have to let go of the negative attitude and those benefits or you’ll get stuck at a certain level.

You miss the physical part of the picture.

One good way to become a more optimistic person is to ask questions that empower you instead of making you feel like a victim. If you are in negative situation you can for instance ask yourself: what is the hidden opportunity in this situation?

So one part of an optimistic attitude is about learning to think in more helpful way.

But it’s not just about your thoughts.

I have found that one of the best ways to turn around a negative mood or just to remain positive and strong is to work out. After you are done it sometimes feels like you are a different person. Doubt and worries just seem to fall away or at least become a lot smaller.

This nice thing about this is that it works kinda automatically.

Because sometimes you just can’t pump up your own enthusiasm or motivation. Or see things from an optimistic perspective. When working out you don’t have to think or push through such inner resistance. You go and you work out. And most of the time it works like pushing a stress and tension release button in yourself.

Being in pretty good shape and working out a couple of times a week is to me one of the most fundamental and effective things you can do to improve your attitude and life.

You may discover that if you improve this area of your life then some of the tips for how to think in a more optimistic way become a bit superfluous.

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“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
Spanish Proverb

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

Not all tasks of the day are inspiring, fun or exciting. Some just feel dull or boring. But you still have to wash those dishes and take care of those monotone, routine tasks at work or in school.

So what can you do to not get lost in procrastination? How can you get going with those tasks you don’t feel much like doing and get to done?

In this article I’ll share how I do it, how I get some motivation and find more pleasure in what may seem to be a boring task.

• Think of why you are doing the task and how good it will feel when it is done. Instead of focusing your mind on how boring a task may feel focus your thoughts on why you are doing this and how good it will feel when you are done with it. If needed, sit down for a few minutes, close your eyes and see in your mind and feel how good it will be when you are there, when you are done with the task. Then go to work with that motivation and those positive feelings in your body.
• Do it mindfully. When you sort papers, do the laundry or do the dishes be fully there. Focus 100% on just the fork with all your senses – how it feels, looks and smells – as you are scrubbing it and nothing else. Don’t get lost in daydreams. If you are just there I have found that even such a simple and mundane task becomes more enjoyable and something that can bring inner calm rather than distress.
• Don’t think too much. Get going instead. The more you think about the boring task the more boring it seems in your mind. And so it becomes harder and harder to get started and to get to done. So try to think very little about it. Just make a decision to start doing the task, get up and go do it right away.
• Make a deal with yourself and set a timer for 10 minutes. It is often in easier to do tasks like these in small bursts. So make a deal with yourself to make a dent in this task. Make a deal to just spend 10 minutes on your inbox, mundane reading or cleaning the house. Set a kitchen timer and say to yourself that you only have to do this work for 10 minutes. When the timer rings you can continue doing it if you feel like it (this often happens to me because getting started is the hard part). Or you can stop and go do something more interesting instead.
• Create a pleasurable distraction. If possible, try to listen to the radio, your favorite songs, an audio book or watch a movie or TV-episode while doing your boring task. You don’t always have to do just one thing at a time in silence. I often listen to music or watch an episode of the Simpsons while doing the dishes or other routine work at home.
• Reward yourself. When you are done with your task then reward yourself. Take a walk in the sun, move on to a more fun or creative task at work or in school or have a tasty treat. This habit can make it easier to get started and to keep going each day. Because you know that you can look forward to not just being done and the long-term payoff from that but also your immediate reward right after you are finished.

What is your tip for getting the boring tasks done?

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/circo_de_invierno/ / CC BY 2.0

[hana-code-insert name=’social w twitt face’ /]“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish Proverb

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
E. Joseph Cossman

”People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.”
George Bernard Shaw

You are going about your regular day in your usual fashion. Then a thought or a feeling strikes you. It multiplies and start circling around and around in your head. Becoming louder and louder as it saps your strength and makes you feel weaker.

Worries can really put a wet blanket over your life and suck the excitement and fun right out of it.

So strategies are needed. Strategies to redirect our thoughts and feelings away from the worries and to make them fade away and let us regain inner peace or at least make those worries manageable.

In this article I’ll share how I do that in my own life. Some of these things may work very well for you. Some may work less well. So i recommend going through these steps and trying them out and see what works best for you.

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

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

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

2. Ask yourself: Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

It’s very easy to fall into the habit of making mountains out of molehills. You think and think about a small problem until it becomes something that you believe may ruin your life.

So why do we do it? Why don’t strive to make things easy and simple?

Well, one reason I believe is protection from pain. By making the problem huge can you can invent a helpful excuse to convince yourself to not take action.

Another reason is that the ego wants more. It wants to feel better or worse than someone else. By making things more complicated than they need to be you can make them feel very important. And since you are involved in these important things, since you have these BIG problems, well, then you have to be important too, right? Plus, by doing so you can get a lot of attention and comfort from other people.

So how do you get out of the habit of making mountains of molehills? Two tips:

• Zoom out. Ask questions that widen your current perspective. Questions like: “Does someone have it worse on the planet?” The answer may not result in positive thoughts, but it can sure snap you of a somewhat childish “poor, poor me…” attitude pretty quickly. This question changes the perspective from a narrow, self-centred one into a much wider one and helps me to lighten up about my situation and to be grateful about my life.
• Bring awareness to you own thought patterns. Ask yourself further questions like: “Honestly, am I overcomplicating this?” and “What is the simplest and most straightforward solution to my problem that I may be avoiding to protect myself from pain?”

3. Refocus your mind and attention towards the solutions rather than the worry.

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

Two tips that have helped me to take action more consistently every week are:

• Using a morning routine. This is perhaps the most powerful tip I have found so far in this area. You simply set up a routine in the morning that you do as soon as you wake up. This works so well because what you do early in the day often sets the context for your day. As humans we have a strong tendency to want to be consistent with what we have done before. That’s one big reason why a bad start often leads to a bad day and a good start often leads to a good day. So create a routine that gives you a positive and proactive start to your day. A tip is to include doing the hardest task of your day first thing in your day.
• Starting small. To get from a state where you just feel like sitting on your chair and doing nothing much to one where you take action over and over you can do this: start small. Getting started with your biggest task or most difficult action may seem too much and land you in Procrastinationland. So instead, start with something that doesn’t seem so hard. One of my favorites is simply to take a few minutes to clean my desk. After that the next thing doesn’t seem so difficult to get started with since I’m now in a more of a “take action” kind of mode.

4. Go and do a work out.

This is perhaps a somewhat unusual step. But I have found that on some days I cannot change my thoughts or immediately find an solution by using the three steps above. Then I go and do a workout like lifting free weights for half an hour or I do a body weight circuit. And that will most often change how I feel.

Because I get a hormone boost and an energy boost. With that boost in hormones and energy you feel like you’re in forward motion, with a clearer focus and you feel more inner stability with a lot less inner doubt.

The nice thing about this is that it works kind of automatically. Sometimes you just can’t let go of that worrying feeling or pump up your own enthusiasm or motivation. Or see things from a positive perspective. When working out you don’t have to think or push through such inner resistance. You go and you work out. And most of the time it works like pushing a stress- and tension-release button in yourself.

5. Remember: Tomorrow will come anyway. Live and fully enjoy here and now.

To be able to let go all that excessive thinking about the future (which often leads to worries in the end), to live better today and to be able to take that positive action to move forward it really has been very helpful for me to develop a habit of learning to live in the present moment. Because it’s there that you can do things in the best possible way with your focus fully on what you are doing.

Three of my favourite techniques for developing this habit and drawing myself back to the now when I get lost thinking too much about the future or past are these:

• Focus on what’s right in front of you. Or around you. Or on you. Use your senses. Just look at what’s right in front of you right now. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel. Be still right there and just take in the world around you.
• Focus on your breathing. Take relatively deep breaths with your belly. Focus your attention on just the in- and out-breaths for about two minutes. This aligns you with what is happening right now and it also calms down a stressed and worried body.
• Pick up the vibe from present people. If you know someone that is more present than most people then you can pick up his/her vibe of presence by hanging out with him or her (just like you can pick up positivity or enthusiasm from people). If you don’t know someone like that then I have often recommended listening to/watching Eckhart Tolle in the past. I still do. I especially like his audio book “Stillness Speaks”. Another guy that I find helpful for picking up presence from is Wayne Dyer.

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

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denemiles/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”
W. M Lewis

“How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’.”
Martin Luther

I love getting started with a new habit or project. There is excitement and a certain freshness ahead of you as you are about to get going.

But sometimes it stops there. At about to get going. Because “you don’t have the time”. Or it’s “not the right time right now”.

I have whole chapters on how I establish new habits, keep up the motivation after that initial enthusiasm perhaps has started to wane and on how to become more of a person of action in The Art of Relaxed Productivity.

But today I would like to share just three tips for that first, crucial step. Three steps that have worked for me over and over to get started with something and to grow.

Ask yourself: Do I really want this?

One reason that you may never seem to get started is because your heart is not in it. If you set a goal but it isn’t your goal then it will be hard to achieve or even getting started with it.

If you realize that it’s a goal set by people around you – parents, teachers, bosses or society in general – then, when possible, eliminate the goal and set a few goals you would like to achieve.

Or try to find you own motivation and reasons for achieving a goal rather than the ones people around you have set. This could put the goal in different light and suddenly you’ll feel a whole lot motivated to get started.

But you don’t always have to have a burning desire to do something to get going. I have begun something many, many times  just because I was curious. If you are curious but feel an inner resistance then the next two tips will be helpful.

Ask yourself: What is the worst that could happen?

If you feel like you can’t get started for some reason then ask yourself: what is the worst that can happen?

A lot of the fear we feel before getting started comes from fuzzy and foggy thoughts about what could happen. But if you actually imagine the worst realistic scenario then it’s often not as frightening as you thought. You won’t die or anything. And it won’t ruin the rest of your life.

Imagine the worst scenario and then try to create a plan how you could get on your feet again if that scenario, against all probability, should happen. You’ll then most often realize that whatever your fear is you could probably get back on your feet and back to your normal life pretty quickly once again.

Start the easy way.

If it feels like too big of an effort in your mind then you’ll come up with all kinds of reasons to not get started.

So start easy. Take a small step into something new.

• Go out running for just 10 minutes. Instead of running for 45 minutes. Or run for just 5 minutes and walk for 5 minutes. The important thing is to make the habit stick and you do that by actually doing it a whole bunch of times. Then you can slowly, step by step, increase the amount of time you spend running each time you are out.
• Work on something new for just 10 minutes. If you feel reluctant to starting with something new then commit to start doing actual work – not more planning or preparation – for just 10 minutes. Or for 5 minutes if 10 seems too much. Then do just 5 or 10 minutes of work on the new thing each day. After you have gotten started you will however often just continue working after those first few minutes minutes are up.

Getting started is often the hardest part so make it easy on yourself by initially setting the bar as low as you are comfortable with.

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
Sydney J. Harris

Maybe you are on vacation right now and are trying to relax and release the pressure and tension from a year of school or work. And maybe you are soon going back again.

So what can you do to increase your sense of centeredness and relaxation not only during these remaining weeks of summer but also during this fall?

Well, here are six tips that have worked well for me. I hope you’ll find something useful.

Spend your time online in a very focused way.

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

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

Let go of what you “have to do”.

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

“Will this matter in 5 years?”.

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

In the end you can choose what you want to do and not do. There are of course consequences to everything that we do and that is something one must keep in mind. But I think it is very important to feel like you are in control of your own life to be able to stay centred and minimize stress and pressure. It’s important to choose what you want to do instead of always living in reaction and feeling controlled by outside forces all the time.

You may for example feel like you have all these things you “just have to do before the summer is over”. If such thoughts are stressing you out, you may want to choose to say no to some of those things.

And you might want to take a day where you take it easy and do pretty much nothing. It can do wonders.

Take 30 belly breaths.

This is one of the quickest and most consistent way to relax that I have found so far. It can be done anywhere and anytime. It’s great way to release pent up tension and to centre yourself in the present moment once again as you bring your focus to just the in- and out-breaths.

Here’s a simple instruction on what to do:

• Sit or stand up straight but in a relaxed way.
• Put your hands on your stomach. Using your stomach breathe in slowly through your nose. If you are doing it right your stomach will expand and you’ll feel it with your hands.
• Breathe out slowly through your nose.
• Breathe in and out 30 times. Take deep and slow breaths.

Act as you would like to feel.

Another simple tip you can use just about anywhere. Your emotions work backwards too. If you slow down then while walking, moving your body or talking you can often start to feel less stressed (compared to if you move/talk fast).

Slowing down to decrease stress goes for many other things you do in everyday life too like riding your bicycle, driving the car and eating.

Stop thinking the world revolves around you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just accept how you feel right now.

Maybe you try out some of the tips above. And maybe they still can’t help you to shake that stress, inner pressure or whatever you are carrying around. I would then suggest just accepting that it is there. To tell yourself: “This is how I feel right now and I accept it”.

This may sound like you’re giving up. However, by accepting how you feel instead of resisting it you reduce the emotional energy that you are feeding into this conflict/problem. It then tends to just lose speed like a car that runs out of fuel. And oftentimes it becomes so weak after while that it just moves out of your inner focus and disappears.

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