“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
Bruce Lee

The deeper I go into this area of personal development – and perhaps as I become older – I realize more and more how limited time and focus are. And a form of ruthlessness becomes stronger and stronger. A ruthlessness to cut out the pointless stuff so that you can spend your precious time and focus on what’s important, cool and fun.

Your focus and energy each day is limited. If you use it on the wrong stuff you will never have enough to tackle to important and positive stuff you want to do. You may not see it now but doing some of the things below a lot can really suck the energy right out of you and place your focus in places that won’t help you.

I’m not saying that anyone has to be perfect and not ever do any of these things again. But that you can aim to reduce these things as much as you can and fill up your time and focus with more interesting and positive stuff instead.

Make a habit of being a bit ruthless with your focus and time. Don’t waste them on things just because you think it is “normal” and what other people do. Or because you are used to it.

Now, here are a five of my suggestions for how you can waste your life. And how you can use your time, focus and energy in a better way.

1. Create drama.

Do you create drama in your life to liven it up? Do you have a lot of conflict in your life? Is a lot of people mean to you or out to get you in some way?

You may be in a rough spot right now. But you may also create quite a bit of the drama and conflict you experience by how you think and behave. A lot of these things are often avoidable.

Yes, the drama can be emotionally addictive and in a way feel comfortable and safe because it is what you know. But life becomes so much smoother and easier if you let that stuff go as best you can. Do it for your own sake, for the people around you and for your relationship with them.

What to do instead: Don’t taking everything so seriously. Realize that you say stop to yourself and choose your emotional responses and that you can for example walk away instead of turning situations into big conflicts or fights. Stop making mountains out of molehills to get attention and sympathy from other people. Examine your own life and see if you are perhaps under stimulated. Does nothing much fun happen in the daily life? If not, don’t fill your life with drama. Start filling it with goals that you are really excited to work towards.

2. Lack energy.

If you don’t have enough energy then you won’t have the energy to do what you may really want to do. Or to keep your focus sharply on the right things.

Instead you may take the easy way out because you feel tired all the time.

What to do instead: Eating and sleeping right and working out several times a week are three great fundamentals that will improve your energy levels. Keeping your focus in the right places – on the positive, on what you want instead of what you don’t want, on what you actions you can take rather than what you lack control over – can also help greatly with keeping the energy up.

Obvious? Yeah. But so is much of the most useful advice. The trick is to actually use the advice consistently in your own life.

3. Be judgmental and gossipy.

Being judgmental and gossiping about people can make you feel good. Or it’s just fun to share the latest news about someone. But what does it do to you?

Being judgmental makes you less attractive to most people since openness and positivity are two things that people like. Being judgmental also reinforces your own self-image of a person who needs to put others down and judge them to feel good about yourself. It’s a great way to never be able to raise your own self-esteem. It’s a temporary high with a hangover of negativity that can take over large parts of your everyday life.

What to do instead: One tip to help yourself slip out of such behavior is to focus on the positive in people a bit more and discuss that
instead. You can also focus on being kinder and on giving people genuine compliments. This will make both you and the people around you feel good without those negative effects that I mentioned above. And again, focus your time on doing and working towards what excites you and you’ll simply have less interest and time to go around being gossipy and less need to make yourself feel better through judgments.

4. Think that people care very much about what you do.

This can be a huge time waster. It can keep people trapped for years in their own minds, unable to take action and do what they really want.

What to do instead: Realize that people have their own lives. The world doesn’t revolve around you and the real challenges and imagined drama in your life. People have their own lives and challenges and drama to worry about. So don’t spend too much time thinking and worrying about what people may say or think if you try something. Just try it instead. You may be surprised by the positive or just indifferent response you get from the people around you.

5. Have endless discussions that just go around and around in your head.

People often replay old arguments over and over in their heads and get hooked on these mental reruns. I have certainly done so.

A few other popular ways to have endless discussions in your head are:

• “Should I do it? Or not do it? And what may happen if I do it?”. This is often caused by thinking that people care very much about what you do. Or that thinking that overthinking will somehow reveal a solution where there is very little or no risk of pain and failure.
• Beating yourself up. Instead of moving on.

What to do instead: Realize that the past is the past and that you cannot change it by replaying it in your mind over and over. When an old argument pops up in your mind accept that it is in the past and let go of it.

Be kind to yourself, be smart about things and learn what you can instead of beating yourself up. No one will reward you for beating yourself up and you aren’t helping yourself. Realize that overthinking does seldom helps you find superb solutions, but instead traps you in analysis paralysis and just pumps up your fear and negative expectations so that taking action becomes even harder. Use your mind to find a solution but when that is done take action instead doing some more thinking.

Another of own favourite tips for snapping out of such endless discussions in my mind is to step into the now again by for example focusing my senses – what I see, hear, feel, smell and so on – just on what is in front of me and around me. And then to focus on doing something, whatever it may be and just do that. This places me in the now and now my mind is focused on something outside of myself that I am doing.

To avoid several the pitfalls described in this article I’d say that it certainly helps to live consciously by living in the present moment as much as you can. This stops a lot of the thought loops and negativity from showing up at all.

And if they do show up you are now conscious of your thoughts and can say to yourself “no, no, no, stop, we are not going down this pointless path again…”. This helps you to avoid getting stuck in old conditioned and unconscious patterns of thought and behavior that doesn’t help you.

Break out such thought loops or behavior quickly a whole bunch of times and you may discover that they start to show up less and less in your life.

*****

PS: Thank you for participating in last week short survey, I was blown away by the interest and the fact that over 1500 people participated and helped me to better understand what you want to improve in your life. So thank you again!

Image by jimharmer (license).

“God bestows upon one man genius without patience and upon another man patience without genius. The relative achievements of the two are often surprising.”
Walter C. Klein

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
St. Augustine

“If I have made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.”
Sir Isaac Newton

One of the most helpful qualities a person can have if s/he wants to grow is to be patient. With patience and persistence you can overcome pretty much anything.

But why is it hard to be patient? How can you improve your patience? And how can patience help you out practically in life?
Here are seven timeless thoughts that may give you some answers to such questions.

1. Social programming can stand in the way.

“How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?”
Paul Sweeney

Everything is moving fast in today’s society. Instant gratification is default setting in many minds.

I’m not saying this to rail against today’s society. I’m just saying it to give at least a partial explanation why patience is hard to understand and use to your advantage.

Social programming doesn’t pay much attention to patience. It wants you to do more right now instead. And after a few years here you may want to have more things right now. And the thought of delaying gratification may seem a bit… weird.

2. With patience you’ll get it.

“He that can have patience, can have what he will.”
Benjamin Franklin

This may not be such a popular thought. People may not want to hear about it.

Still it’s what every successful person has had. And so they chipped away. Practised day in and day out.

It often looks like they have some massive talent or big stroke of luck when they become successful. That might be the case. But people may not see all the years of hard work that came before that big break. Or they don’t want to see it and instead rationalize it as “huge talent” or “luck”. That way they don’t have to think about the fact that they also have the option of putting in all that work. And that they by doing things that way could perhaps someday even outdo the dreams they have right now.

It’s easier to just put it down as big talent or luck. And keep dreaming about quick fixes and magic pills.

3. Don’t give up yet.

“Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.”
Soren Kierkegaard

“It’s not that I’m so smart,
it’s just that I stay with problems longer.“
Albert Einstein

Since society tells us to look for quick fixes it’s easy to make the mistake of giving up to soon. After you have failed perhaps 1-5 times. That’s the “normal” thing to do. But what could have happened if someone just kept going after that? And for each failure learned more and more about what works?

I think people often make a mistake of giving up too early. Your mind probably has a reasonable timeframe for success. This might not correspond to a realistic timeframe though.

It’s useful to take a break from advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give you complete plan but a clearer perspective of what is needed to achieve what you want.

Now, that’s not to say that you should never quit. But it can be helpful to keep going on your current path for a while longer.

And that’s not to say that you should do the same thing over and over in exactly the same manner. It’s better to do and get an experience. Take the lessons you can learn from that real life experience. And then adjust how you do things as you try again.

4. It gives you an advantage.

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
Thomas Jefferson

While other people fly off the handle you can remain cool and patient. While other people give up after trying a few times you keep moving. While others run in circles chasing the next quick solution to their problems you stay steadily on your path.

5. It’s a form of protection.

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.”
Leonardo Da Vinci

This is a wonderful point. With patience wrongs or failure will not feel like the end of the world. They no longer hold such a large emotional power over you that you just give up. You know that if you just keep going and perhaps adjust how you do things then your life will improve.

6. Build it.

“Patience can’t be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.”
Eknath Easwaran

“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.”
Helen Keller

The more you can remain patient the easier it gets. It’s a muscle you build over months and years of time.

As Keller says, life can teach you to become more patient. During the rough parts of life you often have no choice but to be patient. These are the times that will especially strengthen your patience muscle.

When we are young we get much of what we want instantly from our parents and other grownups. As we become adults we learn that people won’t give us everything we want anymore. If we want to have the things we really want we often have to learn to be patient.

Otherwise we may time after time wind up in a loop where we get things we kinda want right now to cover up the real and deeper wants. This can bring dissatisfaction after the initial buzz of newness dissipates. A vague knowing at the back of our minds. As we consume more right now to make that uneasiness go away.

7. Be patient with yourself.

“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering you own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew.”
St. Francis de Sales

This is a very important thing to keep in mind when it comes to personal development and life. Because things will not always go as planned. You will fail. You will bail out because of fear. You will become confused. You will do things you know you shouldn’t have done. You will probably do these things more than once.

Don’t beat yourself up about it for two weeks or three months. Or give up.

Instead, be smart and patient with yourself. And get back up on that horse and back in the saddle again tomorrow.

If you found this article helpful, please share it with someone on Facebook, Twitter and Stumbleupon. Thank you very much! =)

Bodybuilding world champion numerous times.

One of the most highly paid actors in the last few decades and a living screen legend.

And then the governor of California.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s resume sounds more like the resume of three men rather than just one. How did he do it?

Here are a five clues, success habits and tips from Arnold himself.

1. Believe in yourself.

“I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way – I hope it never will.”

“We all have great inner power. The power is self-faith. There’s really an attitude to winning. You have to see yourself winning before you win. And you have to be hungry. You have to want to conquer.”

“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.”

A very strong belief in yourself can be ridiculously useful.

Corny as it may sound, your belief in yourself determines a lot about your journey and your results.

But the problem with statements like “Just believe in yourself!” is that they don’t come with any practical instructions on how to actually believe more I yourself. So you have a hard time getting anywhere.

I have found a few things that have been helpful.

• First, by realizing that you are able to handle negative stuff that comes your way your belief in yourself and your capabilities grows.
• You can also work on a similar process voluntarily. By setting goals and achieving them your belief in yourself increases. And by facing your fears and finding that you can indeed survive such experiences your belief in yourself goes up too. None of these options may sound that glamorous, fun or quick. And a lot of the time they aren’t. But like with so much else, you have to put in effort to get good results.

But there is also another side to this challenge. Quite a bit of the problem with a lack of belief in yourself comes from internal self-sabotage, self-limiting beliefs and resistance within your mind.

It’s you holding yourself back.

I have found that reading Eckhart Tolle’s books like “A New Earth” – or books on mindfulness in general I guess – to help you realize that you are not your ego, thoughts or emotions and rereading to strengthen and deepen that belief can be very helpful to reduce the inner struggle, over-analyzing and self-sabotage.

Over time you can get better control over your mind and you’ll stop listening so much to your own negative inner voices and emotional resistance.

Having a reasonably good handle on that part makes it easier to see yourself doing what you want to do. Because, as Arnold says, you have to be able to envision what you want to do or it will be very hard or just impossible bring that vision into reality.

By getting better control over your mind it becomes easier to hold this vision in your mind day after day, week after week. You’ll be less prone to self-sabotage. And your belief will waver less when being questioned or worse by other people or just society in general.

2. See struggle and failure as something positive.

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”

Failure is seldom the end of the world. It’s a part of the journey, a part of the learning curve.

The problem is just that if you have a scarcity mentality then every failure or potential failure may seem as the sky falling. This can hold you back from performing well. Or from taking action at all.

The key to overcome this is to develop an abundance mentality that tells you that there are always more opportunities. This allows you to not take the setbacks too seriously.

One way to help yourself to develop such a mentality is to replace some of the usual input – news, advertising – with information and the vibe from personal development authors/speakers.

Another way is just to hang out more with people with an abundance mentality. Or just people that are positive and enthusiastic about life.

Now, most of the time you only really fail when you give up and surrender. If you keep going you’ll build your inner strength to live and move through rough patches.

And if you are able to look at your setbacks and learn from them you can also deepen you knowledge, avoid some mistakes in the future and find a better path towards your goal.

Remember that to succeed you need those failure. They make you stronger and smarter and that build-up of yourself is vital to success.

3. Go the extra mile.

“The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.”

Going the extra mile. It’s not easy.

Personally I think this has often been because I have just thought too much.

Overthinking often leads to negative thought spirals where you use your mind to decrease your own strength through self-doubt. And if you add up all the overthinking you can waste months or perhaps even years of your life.

It’s more useful to just stop thinking when all then thinking that is needed is done. And to then just go and do what you choose to do.

And then to learn from your experiences and to keep going.

4. Go work out.

“Training gives us an outlet for suppressed energies created by stress and thus tones the spirit just as exercise conditions the body.”

Yes, working out is very useful in more than one way.

I have found that one of the best ways to turn an anxious, negative or weak mood fully around is simply to exercise.

It is also reliable because it is not so dependent on your mind. You just have to drag yourself wherever you need to go and make your body do certain movements to get the desired result.

And, anyway, how are you going to be able to go the extra mile without extra energy? Over the last few years I realized that many problems are simply based in a lack of energy.

So working out or not isn’t much of a choice really. If you aren’t naturally a bouncy, high energy person then you have to exercise in some way to create that energy you need to achieve whatever it is you want in your life.

5. Go and help others.

“Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.”

Helping others is valuable in so many ways. Beside the wonderful upsides that Arnold brings up – like the fact that you are helping people out and at the same time enriching and adding meaning to your own life – you also create a lot of relationships.

And the Law of Reciprocity, the urge to give back is strong in people. If you provide value and help to them then they will often be inclined to give you a hand when you need it. Or feel the need give back by paying it forward and helping other people.

This creates big, expanding upward spirals of positive actions and thoughts. And that can be very useful for us all.

“Adventure is worthwhile.”

About 2500 years ago a slave called Aesop lived on the Greek island of Samos.

He is known for the fables that he wrote down. Many of them were even older that Aesop and had been passed down through the ages through the oral tradition.

So even though these seven useful tips are attributed to Aesop, they may be much older than that.

1. Your wishes may not be all that they are cracked up to be.

“We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.”

We wish for something. A new car, a new job, a new relationship or perhaps a new pair of shoes. And perhaps you think: “if I only get this thing, then I’m home, then I’ll feel happy and good all around”.

And then you get it. And it’s awesome. But often for just a while. And then you may feel like maybe something went a bit wrong. Like it didn’t fulfil you or complete you like you thought it would.

Why? Well, after while when you get used to something, when it becomes normal, then the ego tends to want more once again.

Or maybe you can’t enjoy something for what it is because even though your environment changes, you are still the same. The same person with the same outlook on life. With the same self-imposed barriers for your own success and happiness and maybe self-sabotaging behaviour. And until you take a look at those things you may find yourself repeating the same patterns over and over. When you are the same, you often tend to get the same results over and over again.

Also, our wishes can often come through accompanied by unexpected and not so pleasant side effects. Things may seem just perfect when you dream about them. In reality, it can become a little more complicated and messy.

Now, new things or people can be great. But if you think this one thing will fix all your problems or focus on the wrong aspects – what is not perfect, how can I get more etc. – instead of the positives and gratitude then you may find yourself always looking for the next thing and create quite a bit of stress and unhappiness within.

2. Learn not only from your own life.

“Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.”

This is a very useful thing to keep in mind. Not the easiest to implement consistently though. Some things are very hard to learn by just watching others make a mistake.

You have to make it yourself, get the experience of it and learn about the thoughts and feelings associated to it. With that understanding it can be easier to actually learn to avoid doing the same mistake over and over.

However, to keep your eyes and mind open to the mistakes and misfortunes of others around you – or via books or blogs – is still very useful. It can allow you to make quicker and less painful progress, for instance when you are a beginner at something.

3. Beware of complacency.

“Don’t let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth – don’t let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.”

One of the big, and sneakiest, obstacles to living the life you wish for is complacency. It tells you that it’s easier to just stay where you are, to watch TV and eat snacks instead of for instance working out or trying something new. Or expressing yourself in a genuine way.

Complacency might give a feeling of things being good enough. Or a sense of security. But a sense of security is often a just false sense of security. You never really know what will happen.
If you want to fulfil more of your potential, if you want to find out what you really can do, then complacency isn’t such a good idea. But how do you keep yourself from falling into it?

I don’t have an easy answer. I think you have to keep your focus on the right things to help yourself to grow. And not only check your own thinking and actions continually but also fill much of your life with people and information that will inspire you, challenge you and keep you in a supportive environment. And keep you from falling back into a lazy, comfortable rut.

4. Work on your own goals.

“He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.”

“If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will use you for theirs.”

One good reason to have a direction and goals in life is simply because if you don’t, then someone else does. And that person will get the people without goals to work on his/her goal. Or as the second quote suggests, they might help you but with an ulterior motive.

And so you lose your personal power. You give it away to someone else by not having your own direction, by not keeping your own hands on the wheel. And it may not feel that horrible really. It might feel safe.

But on the other hand, if you start setting goals and get a direction in life you tend to perk up and feel more empowered. That vague, underlying uneasiness that seemed to float through your life start to vanish. You feel more alert. And you can start to work much more on what you really want out of life, instead of what someone else may tell you that you should do or want.

5. Kindness is always good.

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

Any act of kindness can put a positive spark into the world. Just a genuine compliment can make a person’s day. And even if someone doesn’t appreciate your kindness you can still feel good about handing it out. In the end, their response is their business. And in the long run, you tend to get what you give.

6. What they say might not really be about you.

“People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.”

“The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.”

Of course, criticism that may be valid should be taken seriously. But negativity directed towards you is pretty seldom about you. It’s more about someone else having a bad day, week or year and directing their negative energy at anyone passing by in their life.

So much complaining and negativity that people put out into the world is about how they feel about themselves and their lives. The problem is just that we are often so focused on own lives that we take every negative thing said to us personally. But the world doesn’t revolve around me or you.

So remember these two quotes when someone’s directing negativity towards you.

And more importantly, remember those quotes when you feel the need to lash out towards someone. Ask yourself what the real problem in your life is. And what you can do about it. Instead of just lashing out and feeding more negativity into your and someone else’s life.

One thing you can pretty sure of is that the more people try to boost their own value and temporary positive feelings by putting someone else down, the worse they feel about themselves and their lives. And that goes for you and me too of course.

7. Help yourself.

“The gods help them that help themselves.”

The ones that help themselves consistently by making plans and taking action get more opportunities and more of what may be perceived as luck. Things just seem to line up for them. While others may stand on the sidelines and begrudge all that luck and success that those people have.

The more you help yourself, the more help you tend get from the world around you. If you don’t help and empower yourself then there will probably be a whole lot less help of any kind coming your way.

“May you live all the days of your life.”

Jonathan Swift was a writer that lived a couple of centuries ago (1667-1745).

He is perhaps most known for classics like “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Propsal”. The latter being the ironic and shocking essay where he suggested that impoverished Irish people should sell their babies as food to rich people. Such works has earned Swift a reputation as one of the finest satirists of all time.

Since Swift was a writer there is a ton of things to quote. Here are seven of my favourite words of wisdom.

1. Don’t fear to be wrong.

“A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying… that he is wiser today than yesterday.”

So much of what we learn in society is about how you should not fail and not make mistakes. In school we are taught to get good grades and play by the rules. And so always taking a safe route and not taking risks can become an ingrained behaviour as we learn to associate failure with shame and pain.

But one should really not be afraid of making mistakes. Or admitting that he or she has been wrong. By recognizing that you can release the negative emotions that may dwell within and move on to the next thing. Admitting that you have been wrong also makes it easier to clearly analyze what you did and what you can learn from the experience.

2. Money is useful. Love of it is hazardous.

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

Money is very useful. But if you let it take the wrong place in your life it can wreck havoc.

It can create greed and much negativity in your life. And if you love the money, you’ll probably just want more and more. No matter how much you get. And it may not fill you up and finally make you happy as you may have hoped.

The drive to always want more can become like filling a bucket with a hole in it. And as you slowly realize that this won’t work as you had hoped bitterness and negativity can start to feste.

Now, it’s important to not let this reasoning lead you to believe that money is evil. Money is a tool. It can help you to achieve many positive things.

3. Dig where you stand.

“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.”

It’s very easy to fall into an addictive pattern of criticizing yourself and others. But what are the positive things in you and the people around you?

If you just look for things to criticize then that is what you will see. If you look for things to criticize in yourself that is what you will see in yourself and pay attention to in others.

So what can you do? You can start digging where you are standing. Instead of asking yourself those negative questions continually, ask yourself: what is good about me? Ask yourself where your strengths and talents lie. And don’t give up at once just because a negative mindset may initially not let you see what’s good and positive about you.

What you focus on most of the time is what you will see of reality. Knowing your weaknesses and learning from mistakes is helpful. But to dwell on criticism and the negative parts will just keep you in a loop where you create more of that for yourself.

At some point it’s useful to move on from that and start to shift your focus to the positive. And see what gold that will help you uncover.

4. Go further than you may think you can.

“I’ve always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I’m going to make the next one.”

One big problem with success is that you may want it right now. Or at least very soon. No wonder, advertising continually bombards us with messages of how we can become thin or rich in just 30 days. And people often want to believe in that.

Now, I’m not saying that a lot of the stuff out there doesn’t work. They probably do work. I’m just saying that it may take more time, patience and work than advertised to get you where you want to go.

It’s useful to take a break from advertised perspectives and let more realistic perspectives seep into your mind. Learn from people who have gone where you want to go. Talk to them. Read what they have to say in books or online. This will not give complete plan but a clearer perspective of what is needed to achieve what you want.

And then you plug away. You don’t let setbacks or failure discourage you. You go out and try again. And just when you feel like giving up you go on a little further. And a little further.
Because it’s often darkest before the dawn.

5. Put down the extra, unnecessary baggage you are carrying.

“The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.”

We pick a whole lot when we are young. Some of it is helpful. A lot of it will hold you back and create a lot of unnecessary suffering in your life.

You may have learned things from society – or sometimes gotten stuff drilled into your head – when you were young. You may have taken what someone said or did to you once or repeatedly as an absolute truth about you and your life.

But as a grown up, as you start to examine your life and beliefs you may discover that those things was just things that happened. They are in the past. You are here now.

And by grasping that it’s you who are always in control of your life – that you are creating it right now – you understand that unhelpful beliefs or what happened doesn’t have to mean that much really.

You can choose to drop them and continue with a lightness in your step down a road that you are creating for yourself now. One tip that can help you with that is to first accept that you are carrying the negative thing and how it is affecting you. And then to let it go. Acceptance of what already is does – even though it may sound counterintuitive – make it easier to let something go.

6. Be good to yourself in simple ways.

“The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”

It’s nowadays common to run yourself into the ground and then, as you feel like a shadow of your former self, to seek help.

But a big part of keeping your health – mentally and physically – in good shape is to prevent problems before they even show up and force you to go to the doctor.

Swift brings some common sense into this challenge. By doing simple things consistently, by making them ingrained habits one can avoid many problems down the line.

• Doctor Diet. Eat not too little or too much. Eat slowly to really enjoy the taste and avoid overeating, an upset stomach and added stress.
• Doctor Quiet. Always being around noise, other people and stimulation via a lot of information can drain you. It’s important to find some quiet time for yourself regularly to avoid being overloaded. Being out in nature is for instance one good way to reconnect with the quiet and stillness.
• Doctor Merryman. How happy and positive one wants to feel is often to a large degree a choice. You can cultivate a negative attitude towards everything. Or a positive one. 

Now, this may sound like almost stupidly simple advice. And the information is very simple. Many very helpful things are very simple.

More advanced tips can sound intriguing because one may associate complicated with better. But everything has to have foundations. Without those everything you build on top of them will only work at a limited capacity or sometimes just crumble.

7. Be open to the idea that you can always learn.

“No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.”

Being open to this will open up your mind. If you think you know everything, great insights and wonderful new paths to explore will just pass you by.

By being open you’ll see, feel and learn things you wouldn’t otherwise. But be careful of focusing too much on learning from books, blogs etc. They have a place and can help you correct things may have done backwards for all of your life.

But the most important thing is to live. And to learn from your experiences. Because it is there you find true understanding of things.