Image: kalandrakas (license).

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
Anais Nin

Today I’d like to share a few of my favorite timeless tips for improving your social life.

Here are six of them.

1. Be wary of building walls.

“People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.”
Joseph F. Newton Men

The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation and loves to play the comparison game. The game where people are different compared to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates fear. And so we build walls. But putting up walls tends to in the end hurt you more than protect you.

So how can you start building bridges instead? One way is to choose to be curious about people. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear.

Another way is to start to see yourself in other people. To get that there is no real separation between you and other people.
That may sound vague. So one practical suggestion and thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend.

Another thing you can try is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet. Try it out and see what you find.

2. Your relationships are in your mind.

“As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts. Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind. Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts. For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior. Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.”
Wayne Dyer

“It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.”
Epictetus

How you choose to interpret people and your relationships makes a huge difference. So much of our relationships may be perceived to happen out there somewhere.

But as mentioned in tip #1 in this article, your underlying frame of mind – do you build bridges or walls? – will determine much about your interactions both new people and people you know.

So you really have to go inside. You have to realize that your interpretations from the past are interpretations. Not reality. You have to take a look at your assumptions and expectations and thought habits. Find patterns that may be hurting you (and others). This isn’t easy. Or always pleasant. You may discover that you have had some negative underlying habits of thought for many years.

But to change you have to do it. Instead of just keep looking at yourself as some sort of unmoving and objective observer of the world and reality. A change in you could – over time – change your whole world.

3. Avoid being boring.

“The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.”
Voltaire

Don’t prattle on about your new car for 10 minutes oblivious to your surroundings. Always be prepared to drop a subject when you start to bore people. Or when everyone is getting bored and the topic is starting to run out of steam.

One good way to have something interesting to say is simply to lead an interesting life. And to focus on the positive stuff. Don’t start to whine about your boss or your job, people don’t want to hear that. Instead, talk about your last trip somewhere, some funny anecdote that happened while you were buying clothes, your plans for the summer or something fun or exciting.

4. Focus outward, not inward.

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
Dale Carnegie

A lot of people use the second, far less effective way. It is appealing because it’s about instant gratification and about ME, ME, ME! The first way – to become interested in people – perhaps works better because it makes you a pleasant exception and because the law of reciprocity is strong in people. As you treat people, they will treat you. Be interested in them and they will be interested in you.

5. Don’t get stuck in the questions.

“I wish I had an answer to that because I’m tired of answering that question.”
Yogi Berra

If you ask too many questions the conversation can feel like a bit of an interrogation. Or like you don’t have that much too contribute. One alternative is to mix questions with statements. Just say what band you are really into instead of asking what band they are into. Or say what you think about local sports team’s chances of winning the next game. Or, while using common sense, just what you are thinking about what is happening around you right now.

And then the conversation can flow on from there.

So open up and say what you think, share how you feel. And if someone shares an experience, open up too and share one of your experiences. Don’t just stand there nodding and answer with short sentences. If someone is investing in the conversation they’d like you to invest too.

And like in so many areas in life, you can’t always wait for the other party to make the first move. When needed, be proactive and be the first one to open up and invest in the conversation.

6. Genuineness is awesome.

“Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don’t over-analyse your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.”
Leo F. Buscaglia

I think that one of the most important things in a relationship of any kind is to be genuine. Few things are as powerful as genuine communication and letting the genuine you shine through. Without incongruence, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness.

It’s you to 100%.

It’s you with not only your words but you with your voice tonality and body language – which some say is over 90% of communication – on the same wavelength as your words. It’s you coming through on all channels of communication.

Being your geunine self – the one where you build bridges and are open and giving – will give you better results and more satisfaction in your day to day life because you are in alignment with yourself. And because people really like genuineness.

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PS. Just thought I’d give you a quick update and tell you that my new ebook will be out and for sale on the blog next week. It is called the Power of Positivity and contains 22 chapters on how to improve your life in areas such as productivity, social skills, attitude, motivation, self-esteem and thought habits.

I am very excited about it and about getting it out there. So be on the lookout for that.

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

“It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”
William Shakespeare

“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.”
Voltaire

Your thoughts are incredibly powerful. This can be an awesome thing.

It can also be a thing that cripples you, paralyses you, causes much suffering and gets you stuck instead of getting you to move forward towards a better and more positive life.

In this article I’ll explore 10 common mistakes I have made many times – and still do from time to time – and what I have done about them to improve the way I use my mind.

1. You overthink.

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

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

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

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

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

Set short deadlines for decisions. Another tip is to start using deadlines. Instead of thinking about something for days, tell yourself that you have – for example – 30 minutes to think. Then you will make a decision. I also use even shorter deadlines for smaller, daily decisions. I don’t sit around thinking about decisions like if I should exercise, make a phone call, try some new food or anything where I may feel a bit of resistance from within. Instead as soon as I think about it I make a decision to do it within seconds and start moving.

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

2. You see things in black and white.

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

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

What to do about it:

Try to understand the other side. It’s easy to stick to your point of view. But you can gain powerful insights about the other person and yourself too by trying to understand their point of view. This also tends to decrease harshness and negativity and can make it easier to reach an understanding where both parties feel more satisfied with the solution.

Be aware. Like with any mistake in this article, just being aware and paying attention during your normal day can help you to discover and reduce these thought patterns by stopping that thread of thought and then changing what you focus on.

Be OK with not having to be so smart and right all the time. It won’t kill you but can instead in my experience be the more helpful choice in the longer run. You tend to become more relaxed and feel better about yourself and your world if you make that choice.

3. You think the world is revolving around you.

You fall into the trap of worrying about what people may think and let that paralyze you from taking action. Or simply become too self-conscious or too focused on yourself in conversations and relationships.

What to do about it:

Be aware. Perhaps use a post-it on your bath room mirror or fridge to remind yourself each morning.

Act as you would like to feel. Use this when you feel self-conscious and like everyone’s attention is focused on you. In such situation or on such days act as if the world doesn’t revolve around you and people don’t care that much about what you do. After a while and after taking action you will actually start to feel that way for real because experience hands your mind proof that this is indeed the truth.

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 make you feel better about yourself and help you to reduce that self-centered focus.

4. You generalize yourself and your world.

You may tell yourself: “I’m this and that person just because I’ve done this. Or failed at that.” Just because you’ve failed with your 30 day challenge to exercise each day doesn’t mean that you can’t be a person who succeeds with that.

Maybe a few people in the real world don’t get along that well with you. They may not like you. It’s important to not let those few people dictate how you view what others think of you.

Or you may generalize because of one event or action. But what other people say about you or to you is often more of a reflection of them rather than you. Maybe they are having a bad day, week or year. Maybe their pet was run over. Maybe they are having a conflict with a family member or friend. You don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. But since we tend to be a bit self-centred we may interpret what someone is saying as being about us and that this one action or event represents this person.

What to do about it: Realize that the past is the past and just because you weren’t that good at something in fifth grade doesn’t mean that it is the person you are now or that you couldn’t become good at that thing now. You may find that parts of your self-image that you thought were accurate are just based on a few things that you did or that happened to you in the past.

When you examine those beliefs you may realize that they aren’t really that well-grounded as you had imagined. They are more like a house of cards rather than a house made of bricks. Just because you’ve failed a few times or made a few mistakes doesn’t mean that you are such a person. It is just stuff that happened.

And again, try putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. Remember that one event or action is not always the full picture and try to understand and form a more complex picture. And don’t make too big of a business out of a few people that you don’t see eye to eye with. That’s OK and just life.

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

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

What to do about it: I have written “There is no problem” on my white board on my wall to remind me each day.

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

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

6. You are addicted to your comfort zone.

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

What to do about it:

Be curious. When you are stuck in a bit of fear, when you get stuck in your comfort zone then you are closed up. Curiosity on the other hand is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear.

Do it in small steps. What holds us back in our zone of comfort is often a fear or that facing that fear head on might be overwhelming. Doing things in small steps allows you to stretch your comfort zone and slowly making it less uncomfortable and frightening.

Focus on the positive past. Realize it can be fun to get out of your comfort zone despite what your mind and feelings might be telling you before you get started. Think back to the previous times when you have broken out of your comfort zone. Focus on the positive memories, when you got out there, when you took a chance. And you will probably remember that it wasn’t so bad, it was actually fun and exciting and something new to you.

Accept that it will be uncomfortable. Even if you do the things above it can still be uncomfortable to step out of your comfort zone. If that is the case, accept it. That discomfort will be temporary and you can always take action and just do it even though you may not fully feel like it. The thing is if you accept that the discomfort is just there then it tends to become smaller or not so significant.

7. You think about yourself as a victim.

One big problem a lot of people have is that they slip into thinking of themselves as victims that have little or no control over their lives. In this headspace you feel sorry for yourself, the world seems to be against you and you get stuck. Little to no action is taken and you get lost in a funk of sadness and self-pity.

What to do about it:

Know the benefits of a victim mentality. There are a few benefits of the victim mentality.

You can always get attention, validation and good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out. When you feel like a victim you tend to not take action and then you don’t have to risk for example rejection or failure. Taking responsibility for you own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just heavy sometimes. In the short term it can feel like the easier choice to feel like a victim and not take personal responsibility. And when you feel like the victim and like everyone else – or just someone else – is wrong and you are right then that can lead to pleasurable feelings.

In my experience, by just being aware of the benefits I can derive from victim thinking it becomes easier to say no to that and to choose to take a different path.

Be ok with not being the victim. So to break out of that mentality you have to give up the benefits above. You might also experience a sort of emptiness within when you let go of victim thinking. You may have spent hours each week with thinking and talking about how wrong things have gone for you in life. Or how people have wronged you and how you could get some revenge or triumph over them.

Now you have to fill your life with new thinking and that may feel uncomfortable because it is not so intimately familiar as the victim thinking you have been engaging in for years.

Take responsibility for your life. Why do people often have self-esteem problems? I’d say that one of the big reasons is that they don’t take responsibility for their lives. Instead someone else is blamed for the bad things that happen and a victim mentality is created and empowered. This damages many vital parts in your life. Stuff like relationships, ambitions and achievements. That hurt will not stop until you wise up and take responsibility for your life. There is really no way around it.

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

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

What to do about it:

Use and strengthen your discipline muscle. You may for example not feel like going to the gym today. Your mind might say “It’s ok, you don’t need that anyway, you were there three days ago”. And so you lie back on the couch. But you can also say to yourself “No, today is workout day and I will go even though I don’t feel like it/don’t think I need to right now”. And so you go. And after you have been there for maybe 15 minutes you start to enjoy it and you’re glad you went.

Just be aware that your mind doesn’t always want what you know is the right thing to do. The mind often tries to get us to choose the easiest option in our daily lives. It makes it seem like what you feel now is reality. Even though emotional states are fleeting and you can change them around in just a few minutes or hours by going to that gym.

9. You compare yourself to other people.

One thing that can cause quite a bit of low self-esteem, frustration and unhappiness is comparing yourself to other people and their lives. You compare cars, houses, jobs, shoes, money, relationships, social popularity and so on.

What to do about it:

Be kind. The way you behave and think towards others has a big, big effect on how you behave towards yourself and think about yourself. Judge people more and you tend to judge yourself more. Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself. You become more OK with yourself and the people in your world instead of ranking them and yourself and creating differences in your mind.

Just realize that you can’t win. 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.

Compare yourself to yourself. 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.

10. You think you already know how things work.

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

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

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

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”
James Allen

“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

You have probably arrived here because you want to make a positive change in your life. Perhaps you want to improve your social skills, your health or simply your attitude and how you think.

Now this is great. But it 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 overcome them. Hopefully you’ll find something that can help you to move forward to make that change.

1. 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 the 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.

This is also why it is hard – if not impossible – to change someone else. So be careful about such wishes and hopes.

2. You don’t feel courageous enough.

Change can be scary. Doing things for the first time or stepping into the unknown can pretty frightening.

You may feel like you need some courage to make those changes you want, to take those first steps.

What to do about it:

Well, as Eleanor Roosevelt once said:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

You have to be willing to take action, to move out of your comfort zone and to face fear to increase your courage and self confidence in a way that stays with you (not like when you pump it up temporarily by using different exercises or music for example).

You have to be willing to take the punch and risk some emotional pain for a while.

There is no way of getting around that.

And I won’t lie to you. Sometimes it will suck. You will go to bed and feel sick to your stomach and just hope the day will end.

But many times you will feel great as you just move over that invisible barrier and face your fear.

You may not even get the result you wanted but still feel great about yourself because you just dared to face that fear or take some action.

But what about the times you felt sick to your stomach and went to bed feeling not so good at all?

Well, the next day you will wake up. And you realize that you are still here.

You are intact and the earth keeps spinning and you get up for a new day. Life continues.

But now you know deep down that you can handle things at least a little bit better because you could handle what happened yesterday. You have raised your confidence in yourself and become stronger.

And another thing is this: when you do things you don’t just build confidence in your ability to handle different situations.

You also experience progressive desensitization.

What that means is that situations – like for example public speaking or maybe just showing your latest blogpost to an audience out there – that made you feel all shaky become more and more normal in your life.

It is not longer something you psyche yourself up to do. It just becomes normal. Like tying your shoes, hanging out with your friends or taking a shower.

And so you don’t really need that much courage after a while.

3. 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 means 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. :)

4. 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, as I mentioned above while writing about courage.

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.

5. 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 are you 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.

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

This is a common obstacle. Fortunately, we nowadays 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.

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

If you have read this website for while then you know I like wise, funny and inspirational sayings from last few thousands of years.

Because even though the world may have changed quite a bit during the years the timeless wisdom about life still often applies.

So today I’d like to share 7 of my absolute favorite lessons that I have learned from other people. The lessons I have had most use of and that pop up in my head the most.

1. Andrew Carnegie on paying attention to the more important things.

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

I have to agree, I pay less and less attention to what people say. Because in the end, what someone does is the most important thing. Talking is easy, but walking your talk is harder. And walking it consistently even though you fall, slip back into old habits and make mistakes is a huge part of success.

Now, talking and discussing what you want to do can be very helpful. But at some point you also follow that up and take action.

And this is not just a good way to see people in a clear way. It’s also a good way to look at yourself more clearly. Because you can tell yourself and others all kinds of things all day. But what you are actually getting done shows a lot about who you are right now and how your future will look.

2. Carl Jung on what others may teach you about yourself.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

What we see in others is quite often what we see in ourselves. And what irritates us in people is may be what we don’t like in ourselves. What you judge in someone you are actually judging in yourself.

Therefore what you notice and what irritates you in others can teach you important things about yourself. Things you may not be aware of. In a way people can be like a mirror for you. A mirror that can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself.

3. Ralph Waldo Emerson on facing your fear.

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”

This is perhaps my favorite quote about fear. From a distance and in your mind things may seem very difficult and frightening. But when you actually step up and take action I think many of us have been surprised of how the beard of that bully just comes off. Why is that?

Well, you can’t sit around think and waiting for courage and confidence to come knocking on the door. If you do, you may just experience the opposite effect. The more you think, the more fear you build within.

We often build scary monsters in our heads.

Maybe because of things we have learned from the news, the TV or the movies. Or we just think so much about something that our minds start to create totally unlikely horror scenarios of what may happen.

As you may have noticed in your own life, 80-90 percent of what we worry about never really comes into reality. Instead things can become anticlimactic when we take action. The beard of the bully comes off surprisingly easy if we just step up and take action.

And many times we get the courage we need after we have done what we feared. Not the other way around.

4. Wayne Dyer on taking responsibility for your life.

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”

You can look for the next big thing that will fix you. Read more blog articles. Read more personal development books. Look for people to help. And yes, some articles or books or people will give you insights that resonate deeply with you. But in the end, if you are an adult then no one is coming. No one is coming to save you. You have to take responsibility for your own life and what happens in it. Other things and people can certainly aid you quite a bit. But you are responsible.

You can go around blaming society or some people for your problems in your social life or finances or health. You can always find scapegoats to judge to feel better about yourself. For a while. You can look for people that will “fix you”. You can do this for the rest of your life if you like. It won’t change much. Whatever has to be done, it’s you who have to take responsibility and do it.

Yeah, things might always not go your way and you will probably have bad luck from time to time. But you still have to focus on yourself and doing what you can do in whatever situation that may arise in the outside world.

5. Gandhi on being human.

“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”

“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different. So it’s important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are.

And I think it’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

It’s also important to remember this to avoid falling into the pretty useless habit of beating yourself up over mistakes that you have made. And instead be able to see with clarity where you went wrong and what you can learn from your mistake. And then try again.

6. Confucius on understanding.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

This is very much true in my experience. You cannot understand something by reading about it on a blog or in a book. You may think you understand something. But it’s not until you try it in your own life that you know how it feels and you get the full experience.

That is one of the reasons why it’s crucial that you take action. No matter how many books you read on a topic or how much you discuss it with people you need to add real life experience. It’s also in real life that you learn the quickest, because here you have access to great feedback like failure.

7. Mark Twain on doing what you want to do.

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

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.

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

“Guilt is anger directed at ourselves.”
Peter McWilliams

Guilt. Although it can sometimes be a healthy signal that you have done something that goes against what you think is right and that you should change it can also become a huge and terrible thing makes life unnecessarily hard and heavy.

So in this article I’ll share some tips that can help you to minimize guilt right now and prevent much of it in the future. I hope you’ll find something useful here that will make your life lighter and more enjoyable.

Accept and let go of the feeling.

If you are feeling guilty about not getting enough exercise, people you may not have had time for lately, missed opportunities, not sticking to your goals this year or something else then don’t reject that feeling. Instead, accept it.

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

This sounds counterintuitive and perhaps 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 problem. It then tends to just kinda 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.

Find the actions you can take. Then take them.

After you have accepted how you feel it becomes much easier to think clearly. Now, find the actions you can take to change what you are feeling guilty about. Shape up your diet starting tonight with a healthy dinner. Make a specific schedule where you exercise three times each week and your first workout is today. Catch up with people and reconnect with them.

Find a system that keeps you consistent.

So the first two tips can help you today. But it’s easy to fall back into your old behaviors after a while. To avoid that you can set up a system. This will take time and you will stumble. But the more you use it the easier and better it will stick.

A few suggestions for that system would be:

• Write everything down. Ideas, meetings, you biggest goal(s). Keep those notes on paper, cell phones, white boards and your computer as reminders and inspiration so you stay on track with things like your career, social life and health.
• Use a limited to-do list. Do you have a to-do list? Think about what the absolutely most important items on the list are. Just two or three. Then put them on a new to-do list. This list will seem less daunting and I have found that it makes it easier to actually take action and get those most important things done.
• Set limits in your daily life. If your life is overfilled with stuff you may need to set some limits. You may need to stop doing some of the least important things, the things that if you are honest really don’t matter that much. And set a limit for how many times you will check inboxes etc. per day. Checking on stuff all the time creates a lot of stress. And say no if you really don’t have the time. By going about things this way you will have more time and energy for the things that you may feel guilty about missing too often right now.

Be OK with being good but also being human.

On one hand it’s great to challenge yourself and doing what you think is right or fun or exciting as much as you can. But on the other hand you have to balance that with being human.

Take it easy on yourself. If you slip don’t beat yourself up. It’s not a big deal. Everyone slips from time to time. Just get back on the horse the next day again. But learn what you can so you don’t fall into the same hole or do the same mistake again.

Striving for or expecting perfection can be pretty dangerous. Because you will never feel like you or what you do is good enough.

Even though what you do, for example, is just fine 90 percent of the time you still feel deep inside like you are not OK. No matter what you do. You have set the bar at an inhuman level.

If you expect perfection then your self esteem will stay low, your stress levels will shoot up and you will feel disappointed or guilty even though things may have indeed been very good overall.

So stretch yourself. But remember that you are human. Finding that balance will make it easier to both to achieve things and to find enjoyment in your accomplishment.

Live by your own standards rather than someone else´s.

Who set your standards and values? Society, your parents or friends, media or advertising? Where did they come from?

One big problem people run into with guilt is that that try to live up to standards that just don’t fit them or that are simply unrealistic.

So question things, figure out where they came from. Then see if those standards and values serve you well. If not, then consciously choose your own human standards for all kinds of things rather than just accepting someone else’s standards.

As an adult you have responsibility for yourself. But you also have the option to live your own life according to your own rules. Choosing and using that option can make life both a lot lighter and at the same time more productive and exciting.

Forgive yourself.

Perhaps you feel guilty about things in your past.

Well, if you look at it from a very practical perspective then forgiveness is the smart thing to do. It saves you from a lot of pain. It makes you clearheaded again.

Forgiveness centres you in the now and in yourself once again. You stop regretting what is already in the past. You stop feeding your thought loops of negativity with more energy. And now you can use that energy and focus that was previously spent strengthening those loops to start moving forward again.

It might not always be easy to forgive. But it has many big benefits. And personally I would be a bit wary of playing up forgiveness and what happened more than necessary. Many of our challenges – not all, of course – become so large and complicated in our heads that we build huge, monumental problems. Making mountains out of molehills is a good way to strengthen a victim mentality. It’s an effective way to paralyse yourself.

Instead, focus on forgiving yourself for what happened in the past. You are only human and you cannot change the past anyway.

By forgiving yourself you can over time release that pent up guilt and let it go.

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