Today I’d like to take a break from long articles and just focus on one practical tip you can use right now or whenever you need it.

A few years ago – well, probably 10 years ago by now – I discovered a really good way to get rid of hiccups.

It has worked every time I have used it. In the following years I have told family and friends about it and as far as I can remember it has worked as well for them as it has for me.

You need to focus

Here’s what you do. When you have the hiccups just focus your eyes and attention on something in front of you.

Maybe it’s a road sign, a painting or some other object. Focus on just that thing.

Don’t let anything or anyone else enter your field of focus. Just focus 100% of your attention on that object. Do so for a minute or two and you should have stopped hiccupping.

Why does it work?

My theory, and it’s just a theory, is that hiccups continue because the person having them focuses too much on wanting them to stop.

Just like in the case of much of the mind made suffering in our lives it is fed by you focusing on it and giving it more mental energy. If you shift your focus totally away from thinking about it and just stare at that object in front of you then you stop feeding the hiccups with mental energy.

And so they vanish.

This explanation may of course be totally wrong. :)

But the trick still puts a stop to those annoying hiccups.

What is your best tip for getting rid of the hiccups?

“The great breakthrough in your life comes when you realize that you can learn anything you need to learn to accomplish any goal that you set for yourself.”

”Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.”

“Success comes when you do what you love to do, and commit to being the best in your field.”

One of my absolute favourite personal development people is Brian Tracy. He has written many, many books about success, effectiveness and leadership.

What do I like about him?

• He gets to the point quickly. Brian Tracy is one of the most concise writers I have found in the personal development niche so far.
• His products are often jampacked with practical value. You get stuff you can use when you buy one of his products rather than just a few tips and a lot of motivational padding.

Here are just 11 of my favourite tips from Brain Tracy at the moment.

If you want to learn much more I highly recommend checking out books – either in paper or audio form – like Time Power and The Psychology of Achievement. Also, check out the Focus & Concentration Paraliminal, it’s my favourite to sharpen my focus and boost effectiveness.

1. Change your self image.

“The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.”

“We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.”

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”

You will often stop yourself from doing stuff that “just isn’t you”. But when that stuff is the new normal, the stuff you just do because you are you then it becomes a lot easier.

How can you change your own self image?

Here’s what I used to see myself as a fit and healthy person rather than a person who dabbles in such stuff occasionally:

• A ton of proof. Your mind needs proof that you are this new person. The proof is the experiences you have had. So if you really dive in and immerse yourself in something like fitness and work out every other/every day, read a lot about it all and are eating healthy stuff in a conscious way you change a lot about your day to day living environment. Expanding your comfort zone like this will quickly give you a lot of experiences and so the change can come about quicker than if you dabble a bit with it for a few years.
• Let go of your old self image. In my experience you can shift back and forth between two self images. I think at some point you have to make a shift and let your old identity go if you want to grow. It may be your identity when it comes to health. Or money. Or socially. The problem is that the old image is so familiar and reassuring that your mind may not want to let go. I recommend checking out Let Go! to learn how to better let go of your past self image and other things in your life.

2. Create helpful habits.

“Successful people are simply those with successful habits.”

Pretty simple. Our habits are what we tend to do consistently in our day to day life and so they control our success – or lack of it – very much.

What are successful habits? Some you can find in this article. A few others are:

• Do the most productive thing right now.
• Do one thing at a time.
• Do things even when you don’t feel like it.

How do you install them in your life? Two tips:

• The 30 day challenge. You have probably read about this old personal development concept before. Basically, you make a deal with yourself to do one thing for just 30 days (one example: exercise every day) and no more than that. But after those 30 days you may discover that your mind will have become so accustomed to this new behaviour that it will be easier to continue doing it than stop doing it.
• Just focus on the process. While doing something for those 30 days you focus on the process rather than the results. I for instance use this when I workout. I don’t take responsibility for the results in my mind. I take responsibility for showing up – even the days when I don’t feel like it – and doing my workout. The results come anyway from that consistent action. And this makes it easier for me to take this action and establish the new habit when I know that is all I need to focus on. Instead of using half of the energy and focus I have available on hoping that I “reach my goal real, real soon”. Focus on the process and you will be a lot more relaxed and prone to continue than if you stare yourself blind on the potential results that never come as quickly as you want to and puts you on an emotional rollercoaster from day to day.

3. Focus on what is useful.

“Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience.”

“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.”

This is very important and something I think many people don’t grasp the full extent of. I certainly didn’t before. When your focus is split, when you fill your mind just the “normal amount” of negativity or dwell on for example mistakes you are using up valuable time, energy and available focus to pull yourself backwards and to make mountains out of molehills.

Problems seem to become bigger in your mind than they actually are when you dwell on them. But so does, for example, opportunities and gratitude. Your surrounding reality is huge. And the room for interpretations of that reality is wide. What you focus is what you will see in your reality (opportunities vs. more reasons why things suck). What you dwell on becomes bigger and bigger in your mind. And what you think about is what you will act upon.

That’s basically why it’s absolutely crucial to keep your focus and your thoughts in right place and on the positive and useful things in your life as consistently as you can. If you focus on the negative and irrelevant stuff it is quite likely that you never get all those most important things done.

4. Set clear goals. And write them down.

“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.”

To be able to focus consistently on what you want you can use goals. If you use them, write down so they transform from thoughts into something physical and real. You can use that piece of paper as a reminder – posted on a wall for example – later on to keep your focus in the right place each and every day.

5. Ask yourself helpful questions.

“After every difficulty, ask yourself two questions: “What did I do right?” and “What would I do differently?”

The questions you ask yourself in life determine much of your outlook and success. If you ask disempowering questions like “what sucks about this?” in any situation then you are creating a lot of unhappiness and victim thinking. If you on the other hand keep it on a useful and empowering level with questions like the ones from Tracy then your chances of succeeding goes up.

You can find more empowering questions in his post.

6. Luck is predictable.

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.”

People who take the action and more chances in life tend to get the luck. If you never take chances or action you don’t get the opportunity to get lucky. You might just sit around doing nothing and rationalize it as “being unlucky”.

Also, if someone focuses on what s/he wants s/he tend to find more opportunities and other useful things that someone with a negative focus will simply not “be lucky enough” to see.

7. Focus on the activities that brings you results.

“Most people engage in activities that are tension-relieving rather than goal-achieving.”

This is very true. People love to just take it easy or relieve tension – and create more of it – by procrastinating and complaining instead of doing. It seems easier on the surface but in the long haul it tends to cause you more pain.

Of course, you must take time to relax too. But find a good and helpful balance for the two aspects of life and the best ways and most positive ways to relieve tension. Three suggestions could be regular exercise, meditation in some form or just watching a good movie.

8. Realize that you have to pay the price.

“The price of success must be paid in full, in advance.”

Nothing you really want in life is free. You have to put in hard work to get it. And usually over a long time period. You have to make hard choices and sacrifices.

Now, doing so can produce a lot of happiness along the way and when you reach your destination. But when you take the step from comfortable dreams about success and happiness to actually start doing things then there is always a price to pay. So be prepared for that.

9. Keep going.

“Every great success is an accumulation of thousands of ordinary efforts that no one else sees or appreciates.”

That’s what people like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Bruce Springsteen did. They practiced a lot.

How do you put in all that time and effort if no will reward you right now? Well, you find things you love doing, things you do for yourself – rather than to get someone else’s attention and appreciation – and when things feel rough you just do what you know is the right thing to do anyway. You keep going with persistence but also simple the joy of doing what you love as two supporting friends.

10. Make a decision. Any decision. Just do something.

“Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.”

I harp on about this a lot on the blog from time to time. That’s because it’s one of the most fundamental things that hold people back. Sitting on you hands and hoping that someone else will do something for you usually results in a lot of waiting.

Just make a decision. Try something. The sky will most likely not fall if you fail. You will just feel bad for a short while and learn a few things from asking the question in tip # 5. Then you make new decision based on what you learned and take action again.

11. Take responsibility for your life.

“The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.”

“The more you like yourself, the better you perform in everything that you do.”

“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem and personal satisfaction.”

A lot of the tips in this article are based in taking full responsibility for your own life. When you do that you will start doing many of these things naturally like making decisions, putting in hard work and really trying to keep your focus in the right place.

When you decide to take responsibility for your life and doing what you know deep down is right – for example, going to gym instead of lying on the couch eating potato chips – you increase your esteem of yourself. You like yourself more and more as your self esteem goes up.

When your self esteem goes up you feel more worthy of any success and you are less likely to self sabotage in subtle and not so subtle ways. This is crucial and ties back to tip # 1. You tend to behave in alignment with your own self image.

Taking responsibility for your own life and doing the right thing are not the only things you can do to increase your self esteem and success. Another powerful tip is to like/love other people. Why? Because how you view, judge and think about people is usually how you view, judge and think about yourself.

This may sound a bit weird. But try it out for a week or two and see how it affects your view of yourself and your life. You may be surprised.

Note: This is a guest post by Vlad Dolezal of An Amazing Mind.

While explaining stress management to an audience, the lecturer raised a glass of water and asked ‘How heavy is this glass of water?’ 

Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter.  It depends on how long you try to hold it.  If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem.  If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm.  If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance.  In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”

He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management.  If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on.”

“As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.”

“So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down.  Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow.  Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.”

Here are 5 simple ways to increase your peace of mind:

1. Do your most daunting task first thing in the morning

It’s tempting to start your day with easy tasks. Don’t. Pushing a daunting task back is like holding a glass of water in an outstretched arm.

At first nothing happens, but if you do it for hours or even days, you will soon feel the stress.

Do the most annoying task first thing in the morning, and enjoy increased productivity and peace of mind for the rest of the day.

2. Let go of things you don’t control

You make plans to go outside with friends. But at the last minute, it starts raining. What’s your reaction?

Some people upset and angry, and find the nearest person and start complaining to them. “It’s not FAIR that it’s raining. This _always_ happens to me!…”

That’s not going to accomplish anything – the rain won’t stop just because you throw a tantrum. *The rain doesn’t care.*

So make the best of the situation.

What I do in such situation is go for a quick walk in the park (because rain has its own awesomeness), or just lie in bed reading a good Terry Pratchett book, listening to the rain beating on my window.

Make the most of what you do control, and don’t worry about what you don’t.

3. Don’t worry about what others are thinking

I used to be very self-conscious about my dancing.

I would rarely go out with my friends, and even if I did, I wouldn’t dance, instead just standing awkwardly by the side, because I was worried of what others would think.

Then, one day in high school, I decided that enough was enough.

So the next time I went out with my friends, I just went to the dance floor, and danced like nobody was watching. And the funny thing was – nobody cared. In fact, people only liked me MORE, because I was having fun.

Don’t worry about what others are thinking of you – most likely they’re too busy wondering what others are thinking of them.

4. List 3 things you love about your situation right now

I first shared this technique with the Positivity Blog readers in my post The Plague of Happiness Ever After (it’s got a dragon and everything in it, read it!)

Just list 3 simple things about any part of your life that you love. Like “3 simple things I love about the room I’m in right now”, or “3 simple things I love about this week”, or anything else.

This is a great technique if you’re ever bored while stuck in traffic, or waiting in the grocery store checkout lane. You can immediately transform boredom into happiness and peace of mind!

5. Walk to a window, look outside, and take a single deep breath

I got this technique from the Zen master Mary Jaksch.

Just walk to a window, look outside, and then take a single deep breath, focusing only on that breath and nothing else in the whole world.

This technique sounds extremely simple, but you won’t believe how much it can instantaneously increase your peace of mind.

And because this is the last tip, you can try it immediately when you finish reading this blog post.

Just walk to a window, look outside, and take a single deep breath, focusing on the air going in and out of your lungs, and nothing else.

Check out Vlad’s blog to get even more happiness in the now! It’s got psychology, personal growth, and a crapton of attitude!

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.”
George Bernard Shaw

One of the biggest mistakes I believe people make when trying to improve their lives is one of the simplest. They just don’t take action based what they learn from blogs or books.

And that’s no good at all.

If you aren’t already taking action and doing so consistently you really need to start now. Here are five powerful reasons why.

1. No one is coming.

This may sound a bit harsh. But the sooner you realize that no one else will do this for you the quicker you will improve your life.

Personal responsibility is essential to improve and control your own life. Without that what you want will stay a dream or a sporadic activity/dabbling that leads to pretty much nothing in the long term.

You can blame your problems and lack of success on anyone you like and waste your time and energy. You can get help from family, friends, books or blogs. But your life is your responsibility and it’s up to you to create in the way you choose to.

2. Apply the knowledge or it is pretty worthless a lot of the time.

Yeah, reading this blog, other blogs or books can make you feel good. You are learning about all of this awesome and useful information so it kinda feels like you are making progress and improving your life.

Now, reading positive and helpful material can help motivate you in a world where you may be surrounded by more negative inputs like the news or people around you. Nothing wrong with that. I personally find it to be a good habit to spend a bit of time with a good personal development book rather than an extra half hour a day watching the news.

But I believe that many people fool themselves into thinking that reading in some way will replace action. That reading will take care of your problems in some magical way. I used to think so. It´s at the same time a pleasurable and frustrating headspace to be in. You tend to read a lot and think that the next thing will be the magic pill that will finally solve your problem.

3. You understand by doing.

There are no real magic pills of course. That idea is created by immaturity in person who still thinks to him/herself: “Mommy, it want it now!”.

When you read a lot you think that you understand things. But you never really understand anything until your experience it. Yes, knowledge can help you to avoid pitfalls and improve quicker. But it can’t relate how it feels to experience something. And it can’t relate how you experience something since we are all a bit different from each other.

When you start doing things you might also discover that things are often a bit more messy in real life than in books where it may seem like you only have to follow a clean ten step method to get the results you want. But that’s part of the fun of living life rather than just thinking and reading about it.

4. You raise your self-esteem.

One of the hardest things to do in life is to do the right thing. What you think is the right thing. Not what you friends, family, teachers, boss and society thinks is the right thing.

What is the right thing? That’s up to you to decide. Often you have a little voice in your head that tells what the right thing is. Or a gut feeling.

It might tell you to get up from the couch, stop eating those snacks and go to the gym instead. Sometimes you will put your exercise clothes on and go. Sometimes you will not.

Creating a habit where you take action every day and do the right thing is not just important to get the results you want. To me it’s very important to raise self-esteem and keep it up.

If I do the right things today I feel really good about myself. If I don’t then I don’t feel good about myself.

A common question that I get is: “How can I raise my self-esteem?”. The answer is not an easy answer of course (otherwise people wouldn’t have so much self-esteem problems in the world today). I believe that taking action and doing the right thing consistently  (your self-esteem not something you can just “fix” by doing one thing one time) is a big part of the answer. Because when you do the right and (often) hard thing instead of being lazy or wuzzing out your esteem of yourself goes up.

5. Time will pass no matter what you do.

“A year from now you may wish you had started today.”
Karen Lamb.

Your life is not endless. Your time is one the most important things in your life. Don’t waste a huge chunk of it. Start taking action towards what you really want out of life today.

Note: This is a guest post by Bob Lotich of ChristianPF.com.

Getting Laid Off

Almost two years ago, a larger firm purchased the company that I worked for. It turned out that when you have two fortune 500 companies merge, there is often quite a bit of overlap between departments. So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise that the department I worked in was completely eliminated.

We were given some advance notice and a severance package, but in July 2008 we were still getting laid off. I had never been laid off before and it was eye-opening to see how different people responded to the same news. We had some people who were excited about the news, looking forward to the new opportunities that would present themselves, and on the other extreme we had some people who seemed to lose all hope in life.

Regardless of whether I got laid off or not, just being in that environment and watching people’s response to the news was an invaluable life lesson. I saw fear strike and nearly paralyze some people, I saw people fill themselves up with anger, and I saw some people take the lemons and make lemonade.

I have to admit that it was probably a bit easier for me to stay positive in that environment. First, I didn’t really like my job that much, so I was interested in the idea of finding something else. Second, I was underpaid for what I did, so taking a paycut was less of a possibility. And third, I was a “young whipper-snapper” who would have an easier time adapting – or so the older workers said.

Providing New Opportunities

But the truth of the matter is that while layoffs are often perceived as a negative thing, it really can be an open door of endless possibilities – if we let it! As I watched my entire office process the news and begin job searches, it was amazing the effect that a positive outlook had. Most of the people I would have classified as “optimistic” or “hopeful” quickly found jobs and many of them actually found better jobs paying more!

And I remember a few co-workers who had a terribly negative outlook and didn’t even try. When they were asked how the job search was going, they responded by complaining about the company and talked about how things used to be. They fed themselves with negativity and I watched as it eliminated more and more options until they were backed into a corner with few choices.

I tried not to be “that guy” who was always looking at the bright side when everyone else wanted to complain – but secretly I was. Even if I wasn’t overtly making mention of my optimism, they could tell because I didn’t join in complaining. Having been a complainer before, I knew that I needed to keep my mouth shut if I was going to maintain a positive attitude.

Optimism Affects Actions

I had always thought it was better to stay positive than to feed on negativity, but after this experience I finally understood why. It is because your outlook affects your actions! The people in the office who walked around with the confidence that they would find an even better job, often did. I don’t really think it happened because they hoped more than the others, but because they had their eyes open and were taking steps to make it happen!

It reminds me of a middle-aged single woman who is longing to meet the man of her dreams, but never leaves the house! Yes, he could end up knocking on the door, but why not improve your odds by getting out of the house and meeting him halfway

It really was so sad to watch a few of my co-workers, so bound up with anger and self-pity that it prevented them from taking any action. And sadly some of them got exactly what they were expecting to happen.

Victor Frankl

I remember reading a bit about Victor Frankl, a Jewish man who survived the Holocaust and he said that one of the keys to survival was choosing the right attitude. If anyone could say that attitude is a choice, it would be a concentration-camp survivor. Frankl wrote, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

I don’t mention Frankl’s story to make light of layoffs – I do realize that they can be incredibly trying times in one’s life. But I think we can learn from Frankl’s experience. If a positive attitude is essential to staying alive in some of the worst conditions known to man, then it will also be important to remember in the workplace challenges that we may face.

After this layoff, Bob pursued full-time blogging and recently surpassed his day-job income with his blog earnings. He used this experience to write an extensive article about how to make money with a blog. He typically writes about getting out of debt, saving money and other personal finance topics from a Christian perspective at ChristianPF.com.