How to Live a Good Life

2 Books in 1: Take Control of Your Life, Eliminate Negative Thinking, Relieve Anxiety, Improve Your Social Skills, Self-esteem and Confidence with the Habits of a Happy Brain

Tony Sanders

Copyright © 2020 Miky Rubini

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright

F*ck Your Negative Thoughts

Introduction: Mindset Over Matter

Chapter 1: Maintenance

Chapter 2: Stop Being a Bully

Chapter 3: Declutter Your Life

Chapter 4: Change

Chapter 5: Sh*t Happens (Deal with It!)

Chapter 6: Discipline

Chapter 7: Celebrate Yourself

Conclusion

References

Change Your Habits in 30 Days

Introduction

Chapter 1: Make It Tiny

Chapter 2: Choose an Obvious Change

Chapter 3: Make It Sexy

Chapter 4: Keep It Simple

Chapter 5: Change Your Perspective

Chapter 6: Be Patient

Chapter 7: Get Ready to Feel Uncomfortable

Chapter 8: Focus on the Things You Want

Chapter 9: Watch the Things You Say

Chapter 10: Find out Your Strengths

Chapter 11: Write Down What You Want to Achieve

Chapter 12: Face Fears

Chapter 13: Do the Things You Love

Chapter 14: Visualize

Chapter 15: Gratitude

Chapter 16: Don’t Let the Past Define Your Future

Chapter 17: Be Happy

Chapter 18: Learn to Listen

Chapter 19: Stop Making Excuses

Chapter 20: Fake It Till You Make It

Chapter 21: Accept How You Feel

Chapter 22: Stop Judging

Chapter 23: Live YOUR Life

Chapter 24: Meditate

Chapter 25: Listen to Music

Chapter 26: Don’t Be Hard on Yourself

Chapter 27: Spend Time with Those Who Make You Feel Good

Chapter 28: Deal with Your Problems

Chapter 29: Get out of Your Comfort Zone

Chapter 30: Celebrate Every Win

Conclusion

References

About The Author

Thank you!

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Now, let ’ s roll up our sleeves and get down to business! I know you ’ re going to love what we ’ re about to do…

F*ck Your Negative Thoughts

7 Steps to Get Out of Your Head and Start Living an Awesome Life

Tony Sanders

Introduction: Mindset Over Matter

One thing I’ve noticed about most self-help books is that they’ve got the ‘help’ down, but persistently overlook the ‘self’. Too often they market positive thinking as some sort of ancient magic we modern humans have lost touch with. According to the scores of empty advice floating around, all you have to do is assert your happiness every morning and voilà! You’re successful. But the world doesn’t work that way. It never has, and it never will. Something those guides persistently leave out is that to ordinary people, positive thinking is the most difficult thing in the world. How could you ever hope to look to the bright side, when one seemingly does not exist? I mean, just take a good look at the state of the world. One investigation by Business Insider found that not only are problems like depression, anxiety and substance abuse on the rise for Millennials; the effects of such are as severe as the Vietnam war was to its generation (Hoffower and Allana Akhtar, 2019). The cost of living has significantly increased, while the quality of life is slowly but surely deteriorating. We’re on the brink of world war, climate change is doing its best to kill us all, and for minorities, every day is a struggle for acceptance.

Not to mention that our personal struggles count too. Maybe you’ve lost your job or are grieving the loss of a loved one. Perhaps your relationship has come to an end, or health problems have plagued you.

There are countless reasons to be filled with negativity. So, when life throws lemons straight at our faces, our first thought is never, “Oh gee, time for lemonade”. Our instincts are to duck and cover, safe in the comfort of resignation and defeat, hoping that when we get up again the lemons will have retreated.

Ignoring the lemons won’t help. Repeating a daily mantra about how the lemons won’t get you down won’t help. Even if you have the tools and desire to turn them into lemonade, it won’t prevent the lemons from flinging themselves at you. All it would be is revenge because they had the nerve to attack you. It’s not problem-solving, nor is it self-improvement. If anything, it’s still defeat.

So how, then, is it possible to truly remove negativity from your life?

Honestly, it’s not. The bad will always be there. The trick is to not let it affect or change you. What you’re going to have to do is get yourself a baseball bat (or any impact weapon of your choice), learn how to wield it, and beat those bloody lemons to oblivion with it. As you can imagine, this will be a tiring, messy, and most importantly, continuous process, but with practice, it will become second nature. You taught yourself to be a negative person, so you can teach yourself to be a positive one instead. The seven steps listed in this book are the ingredients to the delicious cake of positivity you so desperately want to indulge in, but they’re no good on their own.

I’ll use a real cake as an analogy. You can go out and buy every single ingredient, measure them out by spoonful, mix them with all the culinary talent in the world; if your oven doesn’t work, your cake is going to flop. The same applies to self-improvement. Positive thinking for the sake of it doesn’t mean a damn thing if you have a negative mindset, and that’s the biggest problem of all.

A mindset is defined as your fundamental attitude, one that typically influences your beliefs and behavior. Your life (or circumstance) is not what you should try to change. You are. If not, you’ll be a physically healthy, disciplined, bubbly soul who follows the rules and sees the best in everything, yet goes to bed miserable night after night.

So, if you’re looking for an easy way out—that magical spell that wards off the demons of ill-fortune—you’re probably not ready for this book, and it won’t be much help to you. Consider putting it on hold, and returning when you feel that you are capable of changing yourself.

However, if you’re completely exhausted from feeling the way you do and are willing to put in the effort required to actually be positive—not just think that you are—then you, my friend, are about to experience the real magic of positivity.

Chapter 1: Maintenance

Imagine that you’re on a road trip. The journey is a long, tedious one and you’ll be on the road for many hours, days even, maybe. You’re well on your way, but your car starts running low on fuel. There’s a gas station right ahead, but you choose to ignore it. You stretch your fuel as far as you can because you’re silly and irresponsible. Further along the road, your car runs out of gas, and you find yourself stranded. It’s not the end of the world, because you have options. You could walk to the closest gas station, or even push your car there if you have the strength; you might be able to call roadside assistance and wait to be rescued, or you can leave it up to the universe and hope that a kind stranger will come along to help. No matter what you choose to do about your situation, it won’t change the fact that you put yourself in this position because you were irresponsible enough to ignore your gas gauge.

This analogy gets the point across, but it’s an unlikely scenario because most people have the good sense to fill their tanks when they can. The sad reality is that most people don’t have the good sense to maintain themselves with the same level of consideration.

A closer comparison would be computers or any computerized device that you might prize as a possession. While the inner workings of computers are complicated, we can simplify their operation by marrying their two biggest facets: hardware and software.

The former is the physical gadget; your computer’s motherboard, monitor, tower, keyboard, mouse and so on. The latter is the operating system, coding and all applications or programs that you use on your computer. Most people understand the difference between the two, but often we forget that one without the other is pretty much useless.

The software can be in perfect working order, but if your monitor breaks or stops responding, you won’t be able to access it. The same applies if your phone’s battery dies, or if your keyboard loses its will to live. On the flipside, we’ve all dealt with the agony of great hardware, but incompatible software, memory issues, or the dreaded updates that are necessary to keep our computers running.

Your body and your mind are in a similar relationship. Physiological and mental health are two sides of the same coin. It’s widely believed (and observed) that you’re never truly the best you can be if one of these is lacking. This is not to say that those with disabilities or psychological disorders can never be happy. Of course they can! In fact, I’ll cover positivity and mental health later in this book. Still, no one can deny that life presents more obstacles to those who have health troubles—be it physical or mental. Where difficulty exists, negativity is sure to follow and often the people who struggle in this way have to work harder to find all the silver linings that able-bodied, healthy people tend to take for granted. Regardless of your condition, I have a question for you. Why don’t you take care of yourself?

If you’re one of those people who are inclined to lie to me and yourself, saying nonsense like “I do take care of myself, you don’t know me!”, I’d like to point out that you’re obviously not living your best life, otherwise you wouldn’t need me to tell you how to do so.

Most of us are merely surviving; practicing what we’re obligated to do in order to keep ourselves alive and out of the hospital. We eat, we hydrate, and we sleep when we can or have to. But the second something demands more of us—like work, or even something as stupid as binge-watching an entire series in two days—these things, the things necessary to our survival, are the first to be compromised. And then, when we feel like crap in the morning, or we’re hungry to the point of emotional outbursts, or we’re running on so little sleep our bones hurt, we wonder why we can’t see the bright side.

There’s only one of you, and if your hardware is broken, your software won’t serve you as intended. So, the first and likely most important step you’ll have to take towards positivity is health improvement. Taking care of yourself is vital to feeling good.

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Its name is science, and it’s going to help me prove my point that health and happiness are symbiotic. Believe me when I say that there is countless evidence to support the correlation between good physical health and good mental and emotional health.

You may not know this, but everything you experience is a chemical reaction in your brain. Romance is the best example of this. As Harvard researchers found, the initial feeling of falling in love is literal anxiety thanks to an influx of cortisol—better known as the stress hormone (Love and the Brain, 2012).  This is the reason why you get butterflies in your stomach when you see, talk to, or even think about someone that you are attracted to. The discomfort, nervousness, racing heart, sweaty palms, breathlessness and other symptoms of romance, are physical fear—your brain’s way of preparing for a crisis, as the aforementioned Harvard researchers detailed in their study.

The reason why it feels good, is because cortisol isn’t the only chemical your brain releases in love. Dopamine—the happy chemical—is produced too, bringing about feelings of euphoria and reward. There are also observable spikes in oxytocin—the love hormone—so that you’ll feel satisfied, safe and content—and also a lesser-known hormone called vasopressin, which enables emotional attachment and bonding. Furthermore, the changes in your brain chemistry literally shut down your brain’s negativity center, so it is biologically possible to get high on romance, and also explains why those who are newly in love are so insufferably happy.

Love is the most talked-about response in humans, but the premise of why it makes us feel the way it does—it being a chemical reaction that we can’t control—applies to all things that feel good. Beyond romance, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins are necessary to happiness and pleasure, and by association producing sufficient amounts of each could make you a more positive person. The question is how can you go about making more of these happy chemicals?

You may not like it, but the answer has been there this entire one, you’ve probably just ignored or denied it. Taking care of yourself—by exercising, eating good food, making an effort to enjoy life, meditating, and getting ample quality sleep—all improve our body’s ability to produce and release the good stuff.

On the other hand, bad and unhealthy habits suppress them. One example of this is an animal study, in which rats were overfed junk food. The result was that their dopamine receptors lost power and so, higher levels of junk food were required to feel good (O’Callaghan, 2012). This is how addiction to unhealthy things works. You think you’re happy, but in truth, your ability to feel pleasure is stunted. As time goes on, you need more and more of the bad stuff to feel minuscule amounts of satisfaction.

With dopamine, in particular, a deficiency carries a variety of horrible symptoms (Cadman, 2018). These include physical problems such as muscle pains, loss of appetite, changes in weight, loss of balance, and vulnerability to pneumonia; but the psychological effects are quite simply disturbing. A lack of dopamine can bring about mood swings, hopelessness, demotivation, anxiety and depression, suicidal thoughts, insomnia, delusions and hallucinations, loss of self-awareness and self-esteem, and inexplicable sadness and guilt. If this doesn’t perfectly portray how a healthy body enables a healthy mind, then I don’t know what will.

In some cases, you might be producing too much of the good chemicals, which also negatively impacts your health, behavior, and mindset. Using the example of dopamine again, an excess of it may cause you to lose your inhibitions and become reckless. You’ll also become more aggressive and less empathetic and may also be susceptible to disorders like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), schizophrenia and paranoia, mania, and addiction.

Everything in moderation applies to each of these happy chemicals, and the key to using them adequately and to your benefit is to help your body balance their production. If you are producing sufficient happy chemicals, your outlook on life is bound to improve.

Fix Yourself

Now, here comes the difficult part. To maintain a positive attitude, you’ll have to balance and maintain the levels of good chemicals in your body. Sure, they are chemicals and fluctuations are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean that you should use the variability as an excuse to leave your mood, point of view, self-esteem or mindset up to chance. Not taking care of yourself in this way is paramount to waking up and choosing that you’ll be sad, off, depressed, or negative. We may not have full control over our biological processes, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get a say at all.

So, onto step one. You’re going to have to fix yourself. Remember the car analogy? When something doesn’t feel right as you drive, your first instinct would be to figure out what’s wrong and take the necessary steps to correct it. Why? Because driving road unworthy cars is a hazard and ignoring warning signs could lead to a rainbow of problems. Your car might cut out and leave you stranded at best. You might cause horrible, even fatal accidents at worst. If something doesn’t feel right, you’ll take your car to a mechanic and have it serviced. It will cost you money, yes, but less than an emergency will. It’s something you simply do, even if you have to grit your teeth or bite the bullet to bring yourself to.

Likewise, your body needs servicing too, and the degree to which repairs and maintenance must happen depends on your current condition.

It’s normal to feel groggy every once in a while, just as it is to feel tired, stressed, or under the weather. I must reiterate, being happy all the time is both unnatural and unhealthy, so don’t beat yourself up every time you’re feeling blue. However, if you’re persistently down, something is clearly wrong and it’s your responsibility to fix it. I can’t help you determine exactly what’s not working properly, but I can help you narrow it down.

In terms of happy chemical deficiencies, there are many underlying causes. Poor nutrition, lack of exercise, stress, scant sleep, excessive indulgence in alcohol and drugs (including caffeine), and smoking all contribute to and prolong insufficient levels of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. It doesn’t end there, though. Sometimes the deficiency stems from a pre-existing neurological disorder. It could also be the product of medical problems like thyroid trouble, obesity, or even a side effect or counterreaction to medication. Changes in hormones (as with puberty, menopause, pregnancy or sexual transitions) can also suppress production.

You’ll notice that of the above, some factors are beyond your control but the majority of them can be managed. It’s safe to assume that if you relate to the factors that you can control, the driving force behind why you don’t is because you’re too lazy to.

I don’t say this to be mean. We all have a touch of laziness in us. Still, there’s a difference between a day spent in bed and pure self-neglect. Chances are that if your outlook on life is bleak, it’s because you’re not making an effort to live a wholesome life. That’s not your fault either. We are creatures of convenience. But if you have any hope of improving yourself, you’re going to have to do two things.

First, you must learn to say no to the things that are bad for you. Second, you’re going to have to work on the things that are good for you. Neither will be fun.

The Habits of Happy People

Don’t be surprised if you’ve heard everything I’m about to say before, but I must reiterate it regardless, on the off chance that you don’t realize the truth and seriousness of this advice.

Successful people—happy and positive people—have similar habits, lead similar lifestyles, and all have the same powerful mindset; one that doesn’t hold them back, even when the going gets tough. This is because successful, positive people don’t see the here and now. This is not to say that highflyers can’t appreciate what they have, they can and they do. The difference is that they plan ahead and focus on results, not circumstances. It’s easy for someone to say that to be happy and healthy you should get more exercise in, but when it comes down to it, exercise is difficult. It’s time-consuming, it’s boring, it’s agony, and—if you don’t have access to equipment or a safe space to work out in and have to join a gym—it’s expensive too. Not to mention that exercise often comes with insecurity. Perhaps you’re not seeing results as quickly as you hoped. Maybe you’re facing judgment on social media because you had the nerve to pose for your ‘before’ photo and people don’t like the way you look. It could be that you feel as though you’re not trying hard enough because you keep skipping sessions due to other obligations, or just pure laziness or exhaustion. These difficulties are circumstantial, but they’re dominant enough to lead you astray until you decide it’s not worth it and give up.

That is negativity in full force. Positivity is the opposite. It’s telling yourself that there will always be critics, but you’re proud that you were courageous enough to photograph yourself even though it may not be a flattering picture. Positivity is telling yourself that you pay for the gym membership so you’re going to get your money’s worth. It’s reminding yourself that Rome wasn’t built in a day and if you continue to push through the pain, eventually you’ll have the figure you want, or your blood pressure and cholesterol will drop, or you’ll lose enough weight to feel okay with yourself. Positivity is both allowing yourself to rest when you really can’t push anymore because you deserve a break, and kicking your own ass into gear for even ten minutes a day no matter how tired you are so that you don’t fall off track—it’s up to you. At the end of it all, positivity is knowing what you want, and choosing to get it, regardless of the negativity your brain whispers to you in those times of difficulty.

To drive the message home, positivity is nothing short of commitment. You can choose what you’re committing to: yourself, your health, your appearance, or even just the resolve to keep your chin up in trying times. Positive people don’t have it easier than anyone else, they’re simply more efficient at ignoring their self-doubt.

You don’t believe me, do you? Well, in that case, I’ll give you an example. The names Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia might not mean anything to you, but, without a doubt, you’ve heard of their creation: Airbnb. These two fellas didn’t just wake up one day and decide they were going to innovate a new way to travel. They were pushed to it, by sheer desperation because they couldn’t pay their rent and were about to be evicted. Instead of succumbing to their problem, they forced a solution. They used what they had, an apartment and an air mattress, and listed it as budget accommodation. Because it was so affordable, it caught on and they seized the opportunity to expand it into the empire that it is today with all four of their hands (Rabang, 2019).

Do you really think that they weren’t filled with doubt, stress, fear and their own little shoulder-devils telling them that renting a blow-up mattress to travelers was the stupidest idea any human had ever concocted? They lost so much faith in their idea that at one point, they shelved it, concerned by competition in an oversaturated market. But they weren’t living in the present moment. They were living three weeks ahead—when their rent was due.

Airbnb is a multi-billion-dollar company now, but those billions of dollars weren’t the goal and a fortune wasn’t what kept the two going. Paying their rent was. They stayed positive and ended up changing the world. I’m pretty sure they’ll never have to worry about paying their rent ever again.

So how do you commit to positivity? Sure, you may not be in a desperate situation and therefore have no need to breed innovation, but you can still pledge to tell your negativity to f*ck off in order to achieve what you must to live a good life. You may not become a billionaire at the end of it, but you’ll have a healthy body, and so, will up your chances of having a healthy, positive mind. The following are some things that should be on your to-do list, no excuses.

Get Fit

I get it. I don’t want to be told that I have to put myself through physical pain to feel good either. I just want to write my books and help people, not run on treadmills and lift weights and pull muscles or fall on my head and other wonderfully fun things that happen when you don’t know what you’re doing at the gym. However, exercise is genuinely beneficial for both your physiological and psychological health.

I don’t mean to sound cliché, but our bodies are a marvel, and if you know a thing or two about biology, you’ll know exactly what I mean in saying that. Everything about us has its place and was designed to work perfectly as a single unit. For most of human history, we believed that our appendixes served no purpose. How silly of us to think that we were made with mistakes. It’s been theorized and is now accepted, that the appendix’s job is to store good bacteria and therefore aid your gut health (Warner, 2007).  No part of your body is independent of itself. If you were a machine, your brain would be the control center (and I must say that you’d be the finest model around!). However, it wouldn’t be a one-way communication. Your brain controls your body, but your body feeds your brain. That’s why keeping it in tip-top shape can and will improve your mood and outlook. We don’t enjoy being sick, because we function at our prime when we’re healthy. Think of how even a common cold can ruin your day, even if everything else is fine in your life. In much the same way that your computer or car will run smoother and faster when you maintain it, you have to make an effort to take care of yourself. It’s the best service you can do for your body. Taking care of yourself will keep your body operating to the best of its ability for as long as you continue doing so. Beyond physical health and the comfort of having a working body, there is a significant impact on your mental health too.

Exercise releases endorphins—the happy chemicals we discussed. In fact, it’s so efficient at producing endorphins that exercise is considered a legitimate means of fighting depression (DeNoon, 2008). It doesn’t end there. Studies show that exercise also releases dopamine and serotonin, the two big ones that are the likeliest to impact your mood (Collins, 2012). A lesser-known animal study also shows that exercise caused the brains of mice to produce oxytocin too, and so it’s likely that the same occurs in humans (Yüksel et al., 2019) . Taking it even further, exercise also reduces stress hormones, namely adrenaline (linked to anxiety) and the aforementioned cortisol (Harvard Health Publishing, 2018).

Do you realize what this means? Exercise enables the production of all the significant happy chemicals, and it does away with the harmful hormones that play a role in making you feel nervous, anxious or overwhelmed. Every item in this section is important and shouldn’t be overlooked if you’re serious about working on yourself. But exercise is in a league of its own because its benefits are undeniable.

Eat Well

As with exercise, there are a number of reasons why you should commit to eating a healthy, balanced diet. The obvious reason is that food is fuel, and if you’re running low on it, you’ll become grumpy. Being hangry, as the kids of today call it, is a real scientific thing. When you don’t eat enough, your body quite literally thinks your life is in danger and survival responses like aggressions kick in (Salis, 2015). Talk about being a drama queen!

Funny as ‘hanger’ may be, it’s still a serious thing. If you don’t eat enough, you’ll be in survival mode when you shouldn’t be. If you’ve noticed that your mood has changed dramatically and that you’re unusually snappy or short-tempered, feeding yourself could very well be the solution. Furthermore, we have to go back to the happy chemicals because eating releases them too, but not in the way you might think. A fascinating study by Finnish researchers found that eating releases endorphins. But, only eating junk food—pizza in this case— triggers our pleasure response. Healthy food—a nutritional drink with the same calories as the pizza—released more endorphins, but no pleasure responses were induced by it. The conclusion is that eating does make us happy, even if it’s not a physically enjoyable experience (HealthDay, 2017).

So, there are two ways to look at this. On the one hand, if you want to feel pleasure, you shouldn’t deprive yourself of your favorite treats too often. There is strong evidence that it’s a lot more than just a guilty pleasure, it is something we genuinely enjoy. On the other hand, though, healthy food is better for us as more endorphins are observed when we consume it. It’s more efficient in improving your mood over time to stick to the good stuff, even if the experience isn’t as great.

The latter is recommended beyond mental health, of course, because junk food can have damaging physiological effects in excess. Eating a balanced diet also goes hand in hand with exercising (and weight loss).

But what is a ‘balanced’ diet? Honestly, there are so many takes on this it’s impossible to give you a straight answer. Some people believe that extreme diets, like the ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting, are the most beneficial, others say they’re potentially harmful and aren’t good for us. One person might follow a vegan diet, another might go the carnivore route. What and when you eat is a decision you’ll have to make and do your own research for, but what I can tell you is that any diet that is worth a darn will place emphasis on the three most important components of nutrition: carbohydrates, good fats, and protein. They’re the building blocks of your body and supply you with energy, so you have to make sure you take in healthy and sufficient amounts of them (NIH, 2000).

For this reason, I find that a diet plan called If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) is a good place to start. The premise is that you eat whatever you like, junk food or otherwise, so long as it honors your personal recommended daily intake of these macronutrients based on your dimensions and age (Julson, 2018). I’ll add the disclaimer that you should consult a physician before beginning any diet, but this one is promising and is well worth looking into if you’re serious about eating well, losing weight, or changing the way you enjoy your food.

Sleep, Damnit

I’ve noticed that joking about serotonin, or the lack of it, is a new trend on social media. This generation—that drinks too much coffee, works too hard and hasn’t figured out that exercise works wonders on the mind—blames reduced sleep for its absence. But sleeping doesn’t give you serotonin. Serotonin enables sleep, so if you’re struggling with insomnia, or feel groggy because of low-quality sleep, a lack of serotonin is likely the cause and not the effect ( Settling the debate on serotonin’s role in sleep: The brain chemical is necessary to get enough sleep , 2019). This is because serotonin is necessary for the production of melatonin —the true sleep hormone (Raman, 2017).

See how all of this is tying together? Exercise produces serotonin, which helps you produce melatonin, which helps you sleep better, which will inevitably improve your mood, mental health, and quality of life.

Studies have shown that insufficient sleep increases anxiety and depression, most likely because it increases stress hormone production. It was also found that too little sleep prevents memory retention (Moisse, 2013). Not to mention that it’s associated with a number of health hazards, like impaired cognitive ability, or increased risk of cardiovascular trouble and diabetes. Sleep is healthy, and you need more of it.

However, there’s word that the quality of your sleep is more important in regulating your mood than the amount of sleep that you get. It follows the logic that poor sleep can still leave you feeling tired, even if you got your recommended eight hours a night. The main objective of sleep is to recuperate and replenish your body’s energy. For this reason, most people are inclined to believe that good rest is more important than a lot of it.

What we do know is that sleep deprivation has strong ties to mood disorders and can (and probably will) lead to irritability, anger, depression, anxiety and other instabilities ( Sleep Quantity vs. Sleep Quality , 2019).

Maybe you’re not a negative person. Maybe you just need better rest.

Calm Your Mind

Meditation is one of those things that stares us down every single day and yet we choose to ignore its glare. Ask yourself how many times you complain about noise, humdrum, stress and restrictions on how little time you get to relax. Then ask yourself why you’ve known about meditation this entire time and yet haven’t thought to take it seriously (unless you have, in which case good on you! You’re a rare gem!).

The practice is described as focusing your mind—or training your mind to focus—in order to achieve a calm, relaxed and peaceful state of being. It’s often portrayed as something mystical or even artsy-fartsy, but there is a lot of science backing up its very real benefits.

One study found that meditation increases your dopamine levels, which explains why practicing it leaves us calm and happy (Kjaer et al., 2002). An older study theorized, and showed strong evidence to suggest, that meditation also causes spikes in endorphins, emphasizing the good feelings that calming your mind induces (Rokade, 2011).

What’s even more interesting is that science shows that meditation can literally reprogram your brain to be happier by nature (Lickerman, 2013). Combine this with the benefits of eating well, sleeping well and exercising and you will inevitably become a more positive person.

If you are struggling to change your mindset, meditation might just be the best place to start. The hippies were right, guys. Who’d have thought?

Do What You Love

My good friend science has taken a back seat for now, but in its absence, I’d like to introduce you to another good friend of mine, common sense. While there are ongoing studies attempting to prove that doing what you enjoy improves the quality of your life, we live in a capitalist world and The Man doesn’t want you to know that this is true. So, this information is pushed into the background, and that’s where my friend comes in to play.

Think back to a few paragraphs ago, to the Finnish food study where something as simple as eating a slice of pizza triggered pleasure responses in the brain. It goes without saying that when you like something, it physiologically makes you happy; this was proven also in the study of love and how these happy chemicals affect us.

Pleasure is many things, and I suppose it could be considered abstract as such. It’s an emotion, but it’s also a sensation. It’s physiological, but also spiritual. Maybe it’s even psychological. What we do know is that, like almost everything else, it’s chemical because endorphins are the driving force behind it.

However, unlike serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine where the circumstances of its production are specific and even tiresome (as is the case with exercise), pleasure is something that you can find almost everywhere. Unless you have a psychiatric disorder that physically prevents your pleasure receptors from activating, the reality is that you can control your own joy.

When you listen to a song you enjoy, eat something really tasty, spend time with your loved ones, experience the thrill of a good book, or give your pet kisses on its chubby stomach, you feel good. So, why don’t you put more effort into chasing that feeling?

We’ll all complain that we don’t have enough time or energy because we’re busy or circumstance prevents us from doing what we want to do. We have lives. We need to work, or study, or do boring things like chores and taxes, but that’s why you should prioritize the things that fall outside of that. Not to the point that the necessities are neglected, only so that having a good time joins their ranks as equally important.

If you can make time to procrastinate, you can make time to tell your friends that you think they’re awesome, or to get started on that book you’ve been meaning to write. Take a vacation somewhere, or if all else fails, treat yourself to a chocolate or a funny video.

It’s not difficult at all to be happy. It’s simply a matter of practice. The harder you work at it, the happier you’ll become and the more positive you’ll be.

Know When to Quit

Finally, another discussion about common sense; you’ve got some bad habits and you need to call them off. It would be impossible to focus on every possible vice, so I’ll stick to the ones that concern health.

Smoking is an obvious one. It ruins your lungs and the environment. It’s an expensive, unhealthy and stinky habit. But try telling a smoker that. They already know, they just don’t care because cigarettes are one of those things that confuse your dopamine receptors into a sense of false happiness and eventual addiction. What most smokers don’t realize is that their habit is a factor that could cause or continue depression (McCoy, 2012).

Substance abuse messes with your brain chemistry ( Drugs and the Brain , 2018) . While the effects of narcotics and other substances are similar to natural activation of your brain’s receptors, it is abnormal and damages your neural communications over time.

Discretion is needed here. A drink every now and then isn’t a problem, but excessive alcohol consumption is. It becomes even more problematic when you think about how some substances, like alcohol, seem to change your personality or reasoning. You could become more aggressive or emotional, or even depressed and despondent.

Doing away with bad habits is necessary to give your brain the capacity to focus on the good stuff. Quitting smoking, refraining from or reducing alcohol consumption, controlling food addictions, or even overcoming nervous responses like nail biting or teeth grinding could have a significant impact on your outlook on life. We often use these things as safety nets, but they ultimately weigh us down.

Bettering yourself will serve you in the long run, and sometimes the first step is to acknowledge what’s not so great about yourself and then work on improving it. That’s another thing, you’ll physically feel better and like yourself more when your mind is clear and your body is not struggling with dependencies on things that aren’t good for you.

Tips and Tricks to Better Yourself

As I said, each of these things - working out, eating well, getting good sleep, calming your mind, making time for yourself and giving up what’s not good - is easier said than done. They seem so simple on paper, but when you really take a look at them, they’re drastic changes to your lifestyle, routine, and behavior. It will be difficult to streamline them, and if anyone says otherwise, they’re lying. To go back to my initial point though, the circumstances are worth the results and positivity, like these changes, is a commitment.

Still, not everyone has it in them to just decide that they’re going to fix their life. Resolutions are a prime example of how most of us are all bark and no bite. I can’t help you stick to your game plan, but I can show you some tricks that can help you help yourself. Each of these is easy to implement, free and will take up minimal time. Take your pick of the ones you like, and experiment to create a system that works for you.

Progress Diaries: Writing isn’t for everyone, so you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but keeping some sort of journal, log or record of your efforts can work absolute wonders on your mindset. For one, it helps clear and organizes your thoughts, which can be highly therapeutic. Describing your thoughts or activities to reflect on them later also assists with analyzing your efforts, which can pinpoint problems and help you work at them more efficiently. It also serves as a reminder of your motivation and goals. There’s also the fact that given enough time, you’ll be able to see your progress at a glance which can be satisfying and impressive, even if you aren’t experiencing your desired results yet. It’s also proof that you’re trying, and sometimes proof is all you need.

Bullet Journals and Creative Planners: In a similar vein, this is an idea for those who want to keep a progress diary but aren’t interested in writing monologues. Bullet journals are planners that are designed to be as efficient and effective as possible. While the premise is that they’re checklists that actually work, there’s an entire community of people who go about their bullet journals with a touch of creativity. You can create spreads that you can alter as you go for any and everything that you can imagine. For example, you could create a collection of motivational quotes. You can include a progress bar that you fill in as you go. Use them to plan as far ahead as you like, or to keep track of your daily tasks. Generally speaking, planners help a lot with organization and scheduling. Since you’re committing to some time-consuming things, they’re a failsafe that will keep you on track and eliminate excuses and procrastination. They’re fun to use and are sure to give you an endorphin boost.

Positive Reinforcement and Rewards: Try fighting fire with fire. If your brain is being unkind to you, fight back by celebrating your victories, no matter how small and even if it’s forced or insincere. Over time it will become a habit to be kind to yourself instead, and eventually, it will be second nature. I’m sure you’ve heard of Pavlov and his dogs? It was an experiment in conditioning by repeated exposure to a specific stimulus. In this case, Pavlov rang a bell every time he fed his dogs. Before long, the dogs associated the bell with food and the sound of it, whether they were being fed or not, caused them to salivate (McLeod, 2007) . The effects of this theory have also been noted in addiction and habit, for example when people snap an elastic band against their wrist in order to associate their bad habit with pain in an effort to reduce indulging in it. So, do the reverse. When a negative thought enters your brain and you feel like giving up on your exercise regime, bedtime, diet plan or other changes, bite back with something positive. There’s a good chance that in time your negativity will become an automatic positive response. If all else fails, bribe yourself with the promise of a treat or a reward every time you reach a milestone or stick to your plan.

Set Clear Goals: Remember that you don’t actually want to live in the present when it comes to fixing yourself. You’re after something. But you’re only human and there will come a time when you forget that. That’s why it’s a good idea to define exactly what you want. Make a note of it somewhere, whichever way you please. It could be a vision board, you could bet someone that you won’t reach your goal and chase the satisfaction of winning, or rewiring your brain to overcome negativity, depression, anxiety, and insecurity could be the end. Whatever it is, you need to assert it in some way so that if you ever feel yourself slipping, you’ll have your motivation on paper. This ties heavily into journaling, but it doesn’t have to be so. So long as you have evidence that your journey isn’t pointless, you’ll be able to get your determination back. Don’t be afraid to build on your goals as you progress.

Accountability: Tell someone. Tell everyone. Tell yourself. No one wants to fail, so if you know that people are watching, by nature you’ll be more motivated to succeed. There may be one or two drawbacks to this, as it takes some confidence and might cause a bit of fear of judgment, but that’s why the trick is to choose your audience wisely. All you need is someone, or some people, that will hold you accountable for your commitments. It could be a gym buddy, or a relative, or even your followers and friends online. Giving up is easy when you don’t have to answer for it, so make sure that if you’re ever led astray, you’ll have to explain it to someone. Whoever you turn to may even be able to give you constructive criticism. If that’s what you’re looking for, just be sure that they’ll be honest and kind to you.

Mentorship: There is no shame in asking for help, and there are experts out there who will be glad to guide you along your way. You can opt for a life coach or personal trainer, or it could be a matter of finding a motivational podcast you can tune into and engage every now and then. Social media comes in handy here too. Facebook is known for its ‘groups’ feature, where you can find and communicate with likeminded people who could function as both support and mentors. Reddit is full of communities that exist to inspire and uplift (my personal favorite one is Free Compliments). If you need a nudge in the right direction or you’re just looking for tips, advice, and guidance there are many free resources that you can tap into. You just have to find them and pick the ones that work for you.

Use Technology: Don’t underestimate the power of your phone. It has alarms, reminders, calendars, and access to an abundance of apps that can help you sort yourself out. Think of services like Headspace, which is highly recommended to beginners in meditation. You can download calorie-tracking apps, or even use your phone to watch exercise streams that you follow along to. Your phone can be your diary or schedule, or your means of reaching out to others for help or the aforementioned accountability.

Force It: If all else fails, kick your own ass into gear. If you want to start jogging, the only way you’ll get there is if you get off your bum and jog. The same applies to waking up early, working out, meditating or eating foods that taste like crap but unlock the doors to happiness. Willpower is an underrated force. Yours may be in need of some honing, but again, you’ll have to use it to nurture it. Push through the pain (but don’t hurt yourself). Sometimes that’s all you can do.

Lesson Learned

Positivity and happiness are chemical processes that can be altered by your lifestyle, so negativity often stems from unhealthy habits. Making the decision to correct this is the best way to reset and improve your mindset. It won’t be easy, but it will certainly be worth it. If you have any hope of improving yourself, you have to take care of yourself first. Leave your bad and unhealthy habits behind and listen to the experts when they tell you that wholesome meals, pleasant rest, exercise and me-time are good for you. Focus on your goals and not your circumstance to get started on fixing your health and mindset too.

Chapter 2: Stop Being a Bully

Have you ever heard the phrase “if everyone around you is an asshole, you’re the asshole”? There are various ways in which this can be interpreted, but I like to think of it as a warning that sometimes we forget to keep our own mood or attitude in check, and so are unnecessarily aggravated by everything around us. If we don’t manage ourselves, we may end up groggy or irritable and take our tempers out on people who did nothing to deserve it. Road rage is a common example of this. Regularly, minor grievances are blown out of proportion and the ensuing tantrum leads to violence on the roads, with a disturbing number of deaths resulting in these instances. The person who has road rage is the only one responsible for it, but most of the time, they feel justified because “other people don’t know how to drive”. Does that sound even remotely fair to you?

Road rage is an extreme example, but humans are inclined to behave this way all the time. Do you care to know why? Because of our mindsets. We’re programmed to want other people to see us in the same positive light that we see ourselves, most likely stemming from a desperate need to protect our image. One essay describes this as the “epidemic of infallibility” (Krugman, 2017) . It posits that powerful people, those in the public eye now more than ever, have lost touch with their humility and use their status to exploit the narrative, even when it’s abundantly clear that they are at fault.

While it’s not good to let things like that slide, some part of me understands why celebrities and other public figures are so determined in choosing the hills that they die on. When they’re wrong or are caught out, the audience has a tendency to rock up at their homes with pitchforks and torches and demand their head on a stick. To err is human, as they say. What they leave out is that sometimes our mistakes cost us our reputations, careers, associates, opportunities and even the company and support of loved ones. It’s only natural that we’ll fear shame, even if the mistakes we make are teeny tiny. The problem is that this denial of our own wrongdoing leads us to fabricate our innocence, even when it’s not a big deal. We won’t admit our mistakes. Our first instinct is to shun responsibility or justify how it wasn’t our imperfection that lead to the f*ck up, but rather external factors beyond our control or judgment ( Krauss Whitbourne, 2017).

What does this have to do with you being a bully? It goes back to the road rage analogy. If everyone around you is a problem, you are most likely the villain of the piece. That same attitude you use to deny your own faults is likely the same reason why you’re so hard on yourself. It’s the driving force behind why you’d blame the world for your own negativity rather than your inefficiency in taking care of yourself. We’re so eager to blame everyone else for our problems that we’ll convince ourselves we don’t have to work on them.

But I want to focus on a happier side to this. Admitting your flaws is actually a sign of strength. Sometimes it’s insincere and is only done in damage control (as we see so often with public figures), but the consensus is that admission of guilt is the most valid and important factor in forming apologies, compensating for wrongdoing and then finally enabling forgiveness.

That’s where you come in. The only way you can reconcile with your own personality would be to admit that sometimes it’s not a great one. A new problem enters, though: insecurity. Just as we exaggerate our innocence, we’re perfectly capable of exaggerating our imperfections. And then we beat ourselves up. Because we’re bullies. From there, we will spiral into negativity and stop rooting for ourselves entirely.

I really, really need you to stop doing that to yourself. So, for the remainder of this chapter, I’m going to tell you all about how you can learn to like yourself. If you do, you’ll respect yourself, and your mindset will be well on its way to becoming a positive one.

Why We Hate Ourselves

Self-esteem is a funny thing. While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what its function is or why it even exists in the first place, it has been theorized that it’s meant to be a catalyst for self-preservation ( Why Self-Esteem is Important and Its Dimensions , 2015) . Self-esteem is, in a nutshell, your perception of your own worth. So, if you have high self-esteem, you are less likely to take on destructive, demeaning, or devaluing habits. Those with high self-esteem are better at taking care of themselves and generally have more positive traits.

But here’s the problem. Our self-esteem is influenced by those around us. It is not a matter of simply deciding that we matter and deserve better. What people think of us affects our self-perception immensely. One study on the topic reported fascinating results. Using an MRI scanner, subjects were observed to gauge fluctuations in neural signals linked to our self-perception. In the test, subjects were made to upload profiles of themselves to a database. They were then told to witness the reaction of more than 100 strangers, who would rate their profiles with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”, much like on social media. Furthermore, the strangers were divided, and so the subjects came to expect positive results from certain groups over others. What the participants didn’t know was that the ‘strangers’ involved didn’t exist. It was actually an algorithm.

The test not only proved that our confidence takes a knock when we don’t get the approval of others, but it went much further and concluded that our self-esteem plummets even more when we expect to be liked and are not ( Self-esteem Mapped in the Human Brain , 2017) . I don’t know about you, but I am seeing a link between this and the theory above that our public image serves us and that’s why we so desperately protect it, even when we’re in the wrong. It’s almost as though there is no winning with our self-perception.

So why do we hate ourselves? How come we form such low self-esteem when it’s meant to help us put our best foot forward?

It would take some serious psychology to get into that, but the short answer is that we don’t know because there are too many variables. Naturally, someone who has been put down by others their whole life won’t hold themself in high regard. In other cases, it could be mental health disorder, trauma or just plain negativity.

The reason why the opinions of others threaten our self-perception to such extremes is somewhat unclear, but the accepted theory in psychology is that it’s inherent in us and quite literally aided our survival. Primitive humans were herd animals and had strength in numbers. When migrating, hunting or fighting the elements the stronger the group, the higher the chance of survival was. The weak were abandoned for slowing the rest down or burdening them as a waste of resources. If you weren’t liked or accepted, you were left behind to fend for yourself. We think the same way now (Formica, 2014) .

To take this theory further, it’s suggested that we still feel threatened and that it’s still a matter of survival because humans have become our own primary predator. We are also social beings who, unfortunately, live in a world in which you’ll be isolated if you don’t make a good impression. These instincts, to prove our worth so that we won’t be excluded are the best explanation that we have for our shoddy self-esteem.

But nothing changes the fact that it’s all codswallop. You are not a primitive human being, and as long as you’re a decent one, what others think of you doesn’t matter one bit. You won’t get left behind and eaten by sabretooths if people don’t like you. I promise. Sure, it doesn’t feel nice when people don’t reciprocate our affections, or validate our own sense of self-worth, but that’s just it. It’s SELF-worth. You’re the only one who can determine it.

Hey You, You’re Awesome!

… or, at the very least, more so than you may think. You are. I know this for a fact. Dealing with low self-esteem is difficult, but there is excellent news for those of you who feel like you’re bottom rung, or not good enough to fit into the frame of the bigger picture. You’re lying to yourself. The negative nonsense you have come to believe about yourself is humbug. And I’ll prove it with science.

First, I need to tell you about something called the beautiful mess effect. This theory, with promising evidence, explores why traits we hate in ourselves are the very same we admire in others. In one test, participants were told to imagine either themselves or others in situations where they were rendered vulnerable. One example of the scenarios included is confessing feelings to your romantic interest. They were then asked to rate their vulnerability—or that of the other subject they were imagining in that position. In almost, if not, all cases, the participants rated their own vulnerability far more negatively than that of others ( The “Beautiful Mess” Effect: Other People View our Vulnerability More Positively than We Do , 2018) . It's plausible that this also ties into our self-esteem and how it is affected by others. We see ourselves as particularly weak in certain scenarios because we think or believe that it’s how others would see us. The study proves the opposite, but there is one other thing to take into account.

It’s called the spotlight effect, and it denotes that we think other people notice us more than they do. In the spotlight effect, the flaws that you are so insecure about—from a coffee stain on your shirt to the smell of your armpits, to the size of your nose or a nervous stutter that you have—are exaggerated. But the truth is that those things are barely noticed by other people. Following the beautiful mess effect, there’s a good chance that even if they are noticed, the observers don’t think as badly of you as you assume they do (Heflick, 2011) .

It sounds like a fancy way of saying that you’re less to the people around you than you think you are, but that wouldn’t be true. It’s simply a matter of something called egocentrism. Your own life revolves around you because you are how you experience the world. You could call it self-centered, but really, everyone lives this way. You couldn’t be anyone or anything else if you tried, and because you are the center of your own world, your ego will exaggerate its place in the world of others. This doesn’t mean that you aren’t important to or noticed by anyone else at all. What it does mean, is that everyone is too busy worrying about their own big nose, or coffee stains, or armpits or stutters to judge yours.

Yes, we don’t live in a fantasy world and there will be people out there who will attack you for your appearance, or voice or other things beyond your control. But those people are mean spirited, and they aren’t the majority, according to numerous studies in psychology on this topic. Also, do you know what we call people like that? Bullies. And that’s why you need to stop being one to yourself.

You are, in fact, way cooler (or prettier, or more admirable) than you give yourself credit for. Chances are that you are the only person who paints yourself in a negative light (again, on condition that you are decent, harmless and have done nothing wrong). Your insecurities are unjustified and the only reason why you inflate them in your head is that you think you aren’t good enough for those around you.

It all has to do with fear. Fear that we won’t be accepted, or that people will laugh and point, or leave us to be eaten by sabretooths. But the sabretooths don’t exist. It’s all in your head. Ultimately, the only person’s opinion who matters is yours. If you come to tell yourself you are worthy, your ego might come to believe it. If you need a boost with that, remember that even if you are a mess, other people would rate you as a beautiful one.

So now you have to ask yourself why you are the only person that you’re cruel to. You wouldn’t mock someone else for their appearance (or at least, I hope you wouldn’t), and you wouldn’t deliberately ruin someone else’s self-esteem. Making others feel bad isn’t good for the soul, because we are empathetic and we don’t enjoy the suffering of others. Low self-esteem and negativity go hand in hand, and so we must put a stop to it. One way to do this is to treat yourself with the same compassion and kindness you give to others. The first step in this is developing your sense of confidence.

Confidence is Power

Here’s the thing: confidence and self-esteem are nowhere near identical. Confidence, or in this case, self-confidence, is the faith you have in yourself and your abilities. Self-esteem is your appraisal of yourself regardless of those abilities. Those who are confident don’t always have high self-esteem. You see this all the time with celebrities, who have all the courage in the world to perform in front of masses of people, but are self-deprecating in interviews, struggle with eating disorders or body dysmorphia, or who even value themselves so little that they destroy themselves with drugs or even worse, suicide. So, building confidence won’t necessarily make you like yourself more, but it’s a step forward that will make it a million times easier to learn what there is to like. It’s also easier to build confidence than it is to build self-esteem, because confidence is self-sustaining and doesn’t depend on the opinions of others, at least not as widely as the latter does.

This is because confidence is closely tied to achievement, which no one has the power to take away from you. If you’re proud, you’re proud. What’s cool though, is that the steps you’ll take to increase your confidence are bound to affect your sense of self-worth too.

But before I get into that, I want to showcase how far a little bit of confidence can actually go.

What do Oprah Winfrey, John Lennon, Angelina Jolie, and Marilyn Monroe have in common? They, among many others, struggled with their self-esteem before they made it big (Ellis, 2019). But when it came down to it, they believed in themselves regardless and went on to become legends, each in their own right. Imagine if they let their negative self-talk pin them down? We wouldn’t live in the same world, because their talents —which they were well aware of and made an effort to hone—changed it for us. Fair enough, in the case of Marilyn Monroe the end of her story was tragic, but no one can say whether poor self-esteem, mental illness or even just an error in judgment is at fault. Regardless, she like the rest of them, went on to live the dream and made her mark as one of the most iconic humans who ever lived. Because she had the confidence to.

How about another example? Back in 1995, a young lady tried her hand at being a writer. She drafted a synopsis of her idea and sent it away to publishers along with sample chapters. She was rejected 12 times by 12 different publishing houses. The reasons for this are unknown, but it’s not unfounded to think that there were varying reasons. Perhaps the publishers felt her writing was lacking. Maybe they thought it wouldn’t sell very well. Or maybe it was simply a matter of interest or taste. The fact of the matter is that 12 different people at different points in this young lady’s life, told her that she wasn’t good enough. But she was, and she knew it, so she didn’t give up. Two years later, in 1997, her book—Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—hit the shelves. Now, J.K. Rowling—the woman in question, in case you hadn‘t figured it out—who was kicked to the curb a dozen times, is undoubtedly the most important author of our time. She was the first author to ever become a billionaire from writing. Her book series—the very same that was rejected—went on to sell more than 400 million copies globally, and inspired the imaginations of the entire planet.

That, my friend, is what happens when you believe in yourself and don’t listen to stupid people who tell you that your efforts aren’t good enough. You show them who’s boss. But what if you have no confidence? Well, here’s what you can do to grow some.

Take Steps to Feel Good: If you smell bad, you’re going to be insecure about it. The same applies if your clothes are uncomfortable, wrinkled, dirty, if your hair is a mess, or if your nail polish is cracked. If you take pride in your appearance and personal hygiene, you won’t live in fear of people judging you for your lack of it. It also means that you’ll be ready to go and won’t have to shy away from opportunities that surprise you because you don’t look or feel good. A harsh reality is that people are most likely to criticize what we can see because we take in the majority of information we receive through sight. Even though people don’t notice you as much as you fear they do, they will notice what’s amiss if you place it front and center. So, make an effort to feel good about yourself by cleaning up. Even if no one is around, nothing is stopping you from dressing up for yourself. I guarantee you’ll like yourself a lot more if your armpits don’t smell like onions. Everyone will.

Tidy Up Your Space: Elaborating on the above point, your environment says a lot about you and opens up opportunity for judgment from the outside. If your desk is a mess at work, and you can’t find your paperwork on time, or there is a rat living in your drawer because last year’s sandwich lays forgotten there, people won’t like you. Most people believe that the outside is a reflection of the inside. While this isn’t always true, it still speaks volumes. For the same reason that you brush your teeth, take your trash out, make your bed and keep your stuff organized. People will respect you for it, and more importantly, you’ll respect yourself.

Try New Things: Skill and talent are great ways to hone confidence because you’ll know for a fact that you are good at something, and might even believe it to such an extent that you’ll want to share it with the world. You don’t have to though. For now, just having something to be proud of will do. If you already have a skill or talent, pay more attention to it. Tell others. Share it to places you normally wouldn't. You could even try teaching it to someone else. That’s sure to make you feel important and accomplished. If you can’t think of a single thing you’re good at, find something you’re interested in and commit to learning.

Set Yourself Up for Victory: Taking up new hobbies or classes can be daunting, so following the idea to try new things, there’s a cheat code. Try easy things; things you’re bound to succeed in. Everyone loves winning, and seeing yourself succeed will boost your confidence immensely. It could be something as silly as finger painting if you need it to be. Just make sure you enjoy yourself, and that you give your best effort regardless.

Avoid Your Triggers: Sometimes the situations we find ourselves in drag us down, so if you know what makes you feel low, stop doing it. Stop hanging out with people who drag you down. Stop walking down dangerous roads in an effort to get home faster. Stop obsessing over the art, creations or appearances of others if you’re only going to compare yourself and conclude that you are a failure. If you can’t avoid your triggers, you must make an effort to manage or overcome them.

List Your Accomplishments: In a similar fashion to how progress journals can help you stay motivated, boasting to yourself can fire up your confidence. Assert what you are good at. Make a list that you can reflect on when you don’t feel great about yourself and need reminding that you’re badass. The goal is to focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.

Be Kind: Appreciation from others also tends to stroke our egos, so do good for others. It sounds a bit superficial and insincere to only do nice things so that you can benefit, but the recipient of your kindness doesn’t have to know. They’ll feel good because you helped them. You’ll feel good because you helped them. So what’s the problem? Confidence comes from within, but sometimes hearing what makes us great from other people is just what we need to get the message to sink in. This idea, to be kind, applies to yourself as well. Say something nice to yourself. It’s cheesy, but it works.

Take Care of Yourself: You should already be doing this (or did you learn nothing from chapter one?). If you’re succeeding at your personal goals, you will become more confident, especially when they’re difficult and things that most other people fail at. Quit smoking. Own your diet. Go to the gym. You’ll look good, you’ll feel good and it will all tie back into my first point to take the necessary steps to feel better about yourself.

Fake it ‘Til You Make It: Are these steps too trying for you? Bypass all of them and just pretend you’re confident. I guarantee no one will know the difference. Not even you.

How to Like Yourself

There will, inevitably, come a time when your confidence is low or fails you flat-out. What do you do then? And how can you feed your self-esteem instead, so as to prevent these dips in self-perception? Honestly, you’re not going to like what I have to say.

The only way to fix your broken self-esteem is through therapy (if it’s necessary because your self-perception is the result of disorder), or through personal transformation. These steps won’t be easy, but they’re necessary. You’ll likely never be a positive person if you don’t try your hardest to make these changes. However, if you do—bearing in mind that it’s a process that won’t fix everything that’s wrong after one day of working at it—you will become your own friend, and those awful whispers from the bully in you will begin to fade. Over time, those instincts—to be cruel to yourself—will fade too, and your mindset will be one of confidence, self-worth, and positivity.

Admit Your Shortcomings! And so we return to the beginning of this chapter, where I touched on our resistance to admitting when we’re wrong. The truth is, that’s sort of asshole behavior, and no one likes an asshole. You don’t have to run around making amends with absolutely everyone that you have ever offended, lied to or wronged, but you do have to have an honest conversation with yourself. Be real. You’ll find you like yourself a lot more when you’re not pretending to be something you’re not—perfect. No one is perfect. And the sooner you remove the pressure to be perfect from your own shoulders, the more relaxed, likable and positive you’ll be.

Emphasize Your Awesomeness! Again, play to your strengths. If you’re insecure about the way your teeth look, for example, find things about your appearance that you actually like. Say, you have great hair. Wear a cute headband, or dye your hair a new color. Try out a new style, or simply wave it around as much as you can. Emphasizing what you like about yourself draws attention away from what you don’t. You’ll have less anxiety, and that spotlight we talked about will seem to dim. Do this with everything. Your talents, your personality, your job… You might not be good at public speaking, but maybe you’re an excellent writer. So focus on that. If you can’t sing at all but enjoy dancing, stop going to karaoke bars and head to a dance class, or the nightclub instead. Stop zooming in on everything you hate about yourself and use that same energy to flaunt what you’ve got.

Learn to Be Alone! For some stupid reason, we tend to dislike ourselves the most when other people aren’t around to do it for us. Look at most of the single people in this world. Loneliness—a real problem—leads to a sense of unworthiness. If the object of your affection rejects you, you’ll turn inward and wonder what’s wrong with you, instead of accepting that they don’t hate you, they just don’t feel the same. Learn to be okay with yourself. To do this, you will have to fill voids that other people might have left. If you are single, and you feel low because you don’t have anyone to go on date nights with, take yourself. And go all out, okay? Don’t be a cheapo. Wear your fancy attire, and go to the expensive restaurant. Buy the nice seats at the theatre, or beat your own record at the arcade. I mean, what’s stopping you?  That’s right. Nothing.

Or, if you're afraid (because there’s nothing wrong with that) start small and have solo movie nights. Cook yourself a nice meal. Pamper yourself. Or, learn to appreciate the moments of silence by doing things you enjoy. You’re pretty cool when you aren’t dragging yourself through the dirt.

Say F*ck It! Here’s a fun one! Stop caring and give it your worst, for the fun of it. If you don’t like your own face without make-up, I challenge you to stop wearing it. If you don’t like swimming because you have a nasty scar on your body that you don’t want anyone to see, you go out there in the skimpiest swimsuit money can buy, and you wear that scar as a badge of honor. If people have the nerve to say anything, you look them dead in the eyes and repeat these words: so what? You can even replace it with other cheeky catchphrases, my favorites being, “Yes, and?”, “Problem?”, or the snarkiest of them all, “I know!”

You have no idea how empowering this can be. A lot of our insecurities stem from the fear that our flaws will be noticed and used against us. But if you are the one that notices them, you take all power away from the people who would be mean-spirited enough to throw them in your face. It’s also quite funny watching people try to judge you and then being forced to explain themselves. It’s satisfying and is a sure-fire way to feel a little taste of awesomeness.

Reconcile Your Regrets! Look, you can’t change the past. The mistakes you’ve made can never be unmade, so you might as well forgive yourself for them. If you live your life longing for your glory days, when you were young and free and a million times cooler than you are now, you’re going to depress yourself. If you beat yourself up because you didn’t make the right decisions in life, you’re going to resent yourself. What’s done is done. Remember, and reflect, but don’t regret. You still have time. Enjoy yourself as you are, not as you were or how you hope to be.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others! This will come naturally if you master admitting your own flaws, and accepting that no one is perfect. Here’s the deal: you don’t know what’s in other people’s hearts. The most successful, best looking, admirable people you know could be bitter, miserable or empty inside. You don’t know what they’re missing, and so there is no valid reason to think you’re not enough by comparison. Maybe they’re even envious of you. Maybe their lives are so difficult they wouldn’t wish it on their worst enemies. You’ll never know, because there are some things we just don’t share with others.

Social media has desensitized us to the ordinary. We make ourselves look so glamorous, so together. But most of us aren’t. Use others as inspiration if you must, but never forget that you don’t know their stories. We’re all fighting our own secret battles. Be grateful for what you have. You never know who’s infinitely worse off than you.

Stop Exaggerating! Finally, you’re going to have to put this entire chapter into practice and remember that the spotlight effect has caused your ego to inflate itself. Your insecurities aren’t nearly as bad as you may think they are. Unless you're in trouble, or in love, the attention of others doesn’t matter. Bring yourself back to earth, and realize that you are your own worst critic. All that would be left to do is to stop nitpicking. Stop being so mean to yourself. It’s not cool.

Lesson Learned

Self-esteem is everything when it comes to positivity, but it largely depends on the opinions of others. However, our egos make us self-centered and often, when we assume that people are judging us, they’re not thinking about us at all. Confidence is our belief in our own abilities. Though it’s not the same thing as self-esteem, the two are often confused and tend to lead into each other. You’ll have to improve them both if you’d like to be a more positive person.

To combat negative self-talk, boost your confidence, increase your self-esteem and brighten your mindset, you must make an effort to befriend yourself and then treat yourself as kindly as you do everyone else.

Chapter 3: Declutter Your Life

The first two steps—fixing your health and resetting your self-perception are the most important, which is why I took so much time to cover them. I strongly recommend that you return to them as needed, and place emphasis on mastering the first two steps for the best and greatest impact on your outlook. If you embark on your journey to positivity with this in mind, I promise that working through the remaining five steps will be so much easier.

Because I was so hard on you in the first two, though, let’s take a breather from the serious stuff and move on to something that’s simpler, and that has great potential for immediate, observable results: decluttering. It sounds like a chore, but trust me on this one, it’s one of the most therapeutic ways to get your negative thoughts to f*ck off.

Our environment can affect us in many ways, so if you surround yourself with negative things, you will develop a negative outlook. It's time to physically get rid of the things that dampen your spirits.

A Look at Minimalism

You’ve probably heard of this lifestyle before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you took it at face value and brushed it aside. There’s a lot of misunderstanding surrounding it. Minimalism is not living frugally, or with barely anything at all. It’s not a political statement, nor is it a trend in fashion. Minimalism is a commitment to live with what you deem important and nothing else, in an effort to streamline your life, mental health, and obtain inner peace.

There are five types of minimalism, and though you don’t have to pledge your allegiance to any of them, I think you should pick the one that appeals best to you, and base your decluttering off of its ideal. I have to emphasize here, that you don’t have to become a minimalist to be a more positive person, but the logic is sound, and there’s no harm in giving it a try just for the fun of it. You might find that it suits you.

Essentialism: This is often seen as the most extreme form of minimalism because as the name implies, the objective is to only keep and use what’s absolutely essential. So, in this style, sentiment, extravagance, and waste are frowned upon. If you don’t need more than one loaf of bread, don’t buy it. Those postcards you’ve been holding on to even though it’s 2020 and no one sends snail mail anymore? Throw them out. You stick to what is necessary to your survival, comfort, and happiness and that’s it.

Enoughism: Again, it’s clear what this one is all about. You keep what you consider is enough and get rid of the rest. Using the above example, maybe you’ll need a postcard one day. But just the one. An entire stack of them is excessive and therefore pointless. If you live alone, one set of plates is enough; you don’t need an entire cabinet full. In this way of decluttering, you still get to keep things you enjoy, so long as it’s not considered wasteful or pointless.

Eco-Minimalism: This one is rising in popularity because of the environmental crisis we are headed towards. Unlike the first two, the sole purpose of eco-minimalism is to reduce your footprint on this planet to your best ability. It could be that you decide to cut out meat completely, or just cut down on your meat intake. Plastic is avoided, while recycling is encouraged. Eco-minimalists also do their best to use less energy, and to contribute to the Earth’s waste problem as infrequently as possible.

Experientialism: My personal favorite of the five, experientialism promotes an awareness of how your stuff actually makes you feel. Those who follow it do their best to be non-materialistic, and to actively pursue experiences over things. Budget travelers or backpackers are experientialists by nature, even if they don’t identify as such. Sentiment is allowed, but only if it serves you.

Soul Minimalism: Best for those who are trying to alter their mindset, soul minimalism is similar to experientialism, but with more emphasis on the impact you make than on what’s happening to you. Soul minimalists practice mindfulness and attempt to reduce negativity around them. In this case, sentiment isn’t bad, but detachment is key, much like in the Buddhist ethos.

In all of the above, the core of minimalism is that if it means nothing and serves no purpose, don’t hold on to it. Excess is seen as negative because it’s wasteful, and it's important to focus more on your time here than on the stuff you collect. Simply put, it’s freedom that leaves you with more time and space for happier, positive things.

Take the Trash Out

So which path resonated with you the most? If you’re undecided, I encourage you to take the experientialist approach, though you can’t go wrong with soul minimalism either. What I want you to do is analyze your space and remove everything that’s not necessary to your comfort and survival, and that doesn’t fill you with joy.

There is science to back this up.  Clutter can cause anxiety, stress and even depression because it over-stimulates us. It pushes our senses into overdrive and can lead to negative thoughts and emotions (Carter, 2012) . Not to mention that clutter collects dirt and can impact your health; it can put you in danger, for instance in the event of a fire; and it can damage your self-esteem through fear of judgment or inadequacy.

Living (or working) in a space that is clean and stress-free will seriously boost your mood and your mindset. You’ll be more comfortable, you’ll feel safer and better about yourself, and your productivity and creativity will improve. If you’re following the minimalist way, you’ll have more room (literally and metaphorically) for the things you care about, enjoy and want to focus your attention on.

So give it a try, and remember; if it’s meaningless and unnecessary, chuck it out. You’ll be amazed at how big a difference this will make to your mental well-being.

Birds of a Feather

Decluttering doesn’t end with your possessions. You have the rest of your life to sort through too. What better way to free yourself from negativity than to get rid of the people who make you feel like sh*t?

No, I don’t mean kill them, though I can imagine why you’d be tempted. I mean, declutter them. Following the same logic that you’ll use to keep your space free of nonsense, cut ties with everyone who isn’t important or meaningful to you. If you’re not feeling up to ending friendships, at least pull away, just a little bit.

As you’ll recall, we are social creatures. So much that we imagine others don’t like us and as a result devalue ourselves. Now that you know exactly why and how other people affect us, you should seriously consider removing the people who truly are toxic.

It’s difficult, especially when you care about them, but your negativity could stem from manipulation, cruelty, meanness, or even just straight-up abuse from those around you. Determine what you shouldn’t be putting up with, do away with it. When you’re ready of course, but the sooner you get round to that, the sooner you’ll have more room for positivity and positive people.

Birds of a feather flock together, and you should make more time for the people that make you feel good about yourself and the world than you do those who drag you down.

By the way, this applies to social media too. That fool you keep engaging in arguments on Facebook? Remove them. That annoying Twitter feed that grinds your gears but that you can’t seem to look away from? Unfollow it. The YouTube channels that bug you, Instagram accounts that infuriate you, and all the contacts that ruin your vibe… declutter them. You don’t have to explain yourself, and you’ll have nothing to feel guilty about. It’s for your own good.

Soul Food

Once you’ve decluttered your online feeds you’ll notice that your time spent browsing your favorite apps, services or websites will seem lighter. You won’t be quick to anger anymore, you’ll laugh at what you experience with increasing frequency, and you’ll be more relaxed. This is because what we see affects us, and when we don’t tidy our favorite platforms we increase our exposure to the oceans of garbage that you can find there. It could be constant arguing that drains you of your energy, or something more serious, like violent news or stories of bigotry and corruption. Even the shows you watch and music you listen to could be upsetting you. Pay attention to how these things make you feel. If it’s no good, you know what to do.

There’s also advertising that tells us to do nothing but consume. Combine this with the aristocracy we see all around us; the apparent bliss of people who are seemingly better off than we are, and it’s no surprise that we might start to feel inferior. This is a lie. Your faulty self-esteem is to blame, even online and with people we don’t know personally.

The good news is that you can fine-tune and optimize your experiences on social media. Hide the posts you don’t like and each platform will learn to not show similar content to you. Block the pages and accounts you really don’t have time for, and support the ones you do. Your feeds will streamline and tailor to you. You’ll be so much happier because of it.

Lesson Learned

Minimalism is an efficient way to declutter, and decluttering is good for your mental health and mindset. Though it may be hard to let go of some things—and people—we are products of our environment and what’s around us will affect us. Clutter can cause a string of negative emotions, and entertaining toxic people will, without a doubt, ruin your self-image. It’s a process and a commitment like any other, but it’s recommended that you practice minimalism, even a little bit, to improve your outlook. The key is to determine what serves you and what doesn’t, and then to free yourself of the latter.

Chapter 4: Change

Decluttering is cool, right? Well, playtime’s over and now we’re back to the harsh realities of why your outlook and mindset are so gloomy. Negative is as negative does, and sometimes it’s as simple as that. Think back to Chapter Two, and the in-depth observation of how inflated our self-images are. We are egocentric creatures who believe we are more important than we actually are, to the point that we’ll actually justify flaws and mistakes that we are fully aware of just to save face.

But who are you lying to? If you really want a more positive mindset, you’re going to have to fully accept that sometimes you are the toxic one. Your behavior might be your worst enemy. If you keep repeating negative actions, and then continue brushing them off because of the epidemic of infallibility, you’re going to fall into a false sense of self-worth and immunity that will screw you over, massively, in the long-run.

One way that this could occur is that you might blind yourself to your own bullsh*t, but others will bear the brunt of it. They might withdraw or confront you, and you—adamant that you did nothing wrong—will convince yourself that everyone is against you. You’ll hate the world, wonder why no one likes you, and those negative whispers you’re trying so hard to get rid of will return.

You have to be honest with yourself. If you are adding negativity to the world, how will you possibly manifest the opposite? Whether or not you believe in karma, we can all agree that we should treat others as we want to be treated. But sometimes, you treat people like dirt. And it’s time to clean up your act.

Taking the Reins

The word ‘toxic’ is thrown around all willy-nilly these days to describe almost anything that’s even remotely unpleasant. But toxic behavior is far more serious than that. In one report, psychologist Nancy Irwin described a toxic person as someone who is emotionally unstable, abusive and unsupportive (Langslet, 2018) . There is a large difference between someone who is bothersome and someone who is toxic. You could be both, and so you must learn to recognize your own red flags, otherwise, your negative behavior will continue and drag you down.

Maybe you’re not toxic to the point of manipulating, invalidating or harming other people, but you could be toxic to yourself. Even if you aren’t so extreme in your negativity, no one is so innocent that they can say that nothing has ever been their fault and they’re absolved of any responsibility. Your negativity or toxicity might be in retaliation, but it’s still negative and still toxic and therefore, still problematic.

For the most part, humans function on autopilot. We do what we feel like, and we allow our instincts to guide us. We rarely put real effort into thinking about what we’re doing, and so, we blind ourselves to a lot that we do wrong.

A huge step that you must take in correcting your attitude is taking control of your own behavior and choosing to be kinder, and more positive and considerate of yourself and those around you. No one can do this for you. Though, it’s a good idea to find out which areas of your attitude need work from those who know you best. If you do this though, you must listen to them. Don’t pull the infallibility nonsense, okay? It’s not the time to defend yourself. It’s an opportunity to see yourself through the eyes of others so that you can better yourself.

Seeing Red

Toxic traits manifest in many different ways, but generally speaking, someone is considered toxic when they’re manipulative, destructive, abusive (in any form, be it physically, psychologically, sexually, verbally or emotionally), and narcissistic.

The following are recognized as red flags that mark a toxic person. Take care to remove the people who display such behavior from your life or inner circle, but also take responsibility for the traits that you show.

Neglect after interest: Toxic people are known to treat others as though they’re the center of the universe until they get what they want and lose interest. It’s more about the hunt than the kill. It’s not to say that you have to give your endless attention to everyone. People will lose sparks between each other, or grow distant. However, if you’re meant to be a priority to someone and they persistently ignore your needs, it’s toxic. Reflect on how you have treated the people who are important to you. You might just be the neglecter to others.

Devaluing others: It goes without saying that constantly undermining, belittling, or putting others down is wrong and a massive red flag to stay away. How do you speak to people? Do you focus on their flaws and insecurities? Do you give compliments as freely as you do criticisms? If not, you have a lot to think about and work on.

Dishonesty: We all know that little white lies are basically a free pass. But how often do you tell the truth? Do you lie unnecessarily, even about yourself? Dishonesty and distrust are partners in crime. Not being able to trust someone can lead to other negative things like paranoia, or in extreme circumstances, obsession, and control.

Unresponsiveness: Not everyone who is dead inside is toxic. Sometimes it’s a sign of depression, so this is one that requires a lot of attention to figure out. That said, toxic people don’t seem to have any regard for anything or anyone. Do you care, or react when someone shares something with you? Are you empathetic of others?

Ignorance: Again, this isn’t always a sign of toxicity. Some people really just don’t get it. It becomes a problem when the ignorance is egocentric. Toxic people aren’t aware of their own flaws at all. They’re not in denial of them, they literally cannot see them. Therefore, they can’t fathom it when their negative behavior or mistakes affect others.

Gaslighting: It ties into the ignorance. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which the perpetrator will manipulate the victim into believing they’re deluded when they confront the perp about their negativity. Even if a gaslighter is given proof of their wrongdoing, they will find a way to justify their thinking that the victim is at fault.

Narcissism: Another term that’s thrown around willy-nilly, narcissism and vanity are two vastly different things. Someone who is vain is simply self-appreciating in an arrogant manner. Narcissism (as a toxic trait) is the belief that you are more, better and of greater importance than those around you. Your needs matter most, and it’s always about you. Lack of empathy goes hand in hand with this, as does an extreme need for attention and admiration.

Control: Toxic people are also controlling of the people they keep around them. It could be in telling them what to wear, or in “allowing” them certain things that they’re actually entitled to as a freethinking adult. Control isn’t always easy to spot, as different people will have different dynamics. But if you feel that you make decisions for other people, whether you’re invited to or not, it may be invasive and you could very well be the toxic one.

The above isn’t always present in toxic people. It could be dominant behavior, or fleeting (or towards certain people only). They’re not always present as a group. Perhaps you know someone who only shows a few of these, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not a negative, toxic person. Now you have to figure out if that person is you.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a form of meditation, so refer to Chapter One if you need reminding that this isn't a choice and you should commit to practicing and eventually mastering it. In its most fundamental manifestation, mindfulness is the art of paying attention, but not to any old thing, specifically to the present moment. The goal of it is to simply acknowledge and accept what you are experiencing, without attempting to analyze, criticize or change it. Since it’s meditation, it’s used for therapeutic benefits, relaxation, mental clarity and also physiological health. Promising research has found that mindfulness has the capacity to lower blood pressure, relieve pain, and improve your sleep and heart health (Benefits of Mindfulness, 2019).

Many minimalists use mindfulness in their decluttering too. When you pay proper attention to what’s around you, you’ll be more decisive in whether or not you want to keep it. It also helps us in our relationships, as it makes us more attentive in our communications and experiences and so, we’re more considerate of how others feel.

That’s what matters here. You can use mindfulness to call yourself out. When you are focusing on your every action, every word, sensation, thought or reaction, you’ll gain insight into which of your choices are not okay, and how they affect the people around you. You can also use mindfulness as a means to stop bullying yourself. You’ll experience all your negative and intrusive thoughts and emotions as intensely as they present themselves when we don’t push them into the background or attempt to drown them out. You’ll be surprised at how cruel you can be to yourself, and mindfulness will inspire you to act with kindness, consideration, and positivity.

Mindfulness will teach you to think before you speak, decide, or follow through on anything, and it will also compel you to say what you mean and mean what you say. If there’s anything to be learned in mindfulness, it’s that once we act, we can’t take our choices back. If we are causing negativity, there is no way to retract it. When you’re mindful, instead of functioning on autopilot, you will have to face yourself. Many people don’t like what they see, and so are inspired to change.

Once you realize your own darkness, continuing with mindfulness is sure to pull you back into the light. It’s a highly recommended technique in the pursuit of positivity, because, as much as you’ll see your own flaws in high definition, you’ll also discover what’s beautiful about you. Mindfulness helps us enjoy life, and live life to the fullest.

Pay Attention. Mindfulness is practiced in many different ways and for many different reasons, but the simplest way that you can put it into practice is to make a conscious effort to pay attention to what’s happening to and around you.

Start small. Choose something simple, like drinking a cup of coffee or listening to a song. Do your best to activate each of your senses while you are doing your chosen activity. What does your coffee smell like? How hot is it? What sound does your mouth make when you take a sip? When you swallow it, does it warm you? How do you feel, emotionally, while you’re enjoying your coffee? Are you even enjoying it, or are you only drinking it because you need to stay awake? There’s more that you can discover. These questions are just examples of the things we usually leave to our autopilot system.

It’s the same with listening to music. Choose a song you like and really listen to it. You’ll notice some things about it that you missed before, like the tinkle of a cymbal you never paid heed to, or the breaths of the vocalist and how they change in between words. Maybe you’ll even pick up on some flaws, like a missed beat or an editing error. But also check yourself. Do you tap your fingers without thought? Are you fidgety? Does the song make you want to dance, or scream, or cry? Why is it your favorite song? Which line of it makes your heart race?

You get the picture. Then, using that same technique, apply mindfulness to everything. Your conversations, your internal monologue, your insecurities and the things you like about yourself. The more deeply you experience them, the more you will understand them. From there, you can work on changing what you don’t like, and emphasizing what’s important.

Words as Weapons

Remember when you were a child and you were taught that sticks and stones can break your bones but words will never hurt you? Let’s all laugh together at how false that is. Words often hurt more than “sticks and stones”, because they cut deep. If someone punches you in the face right now, it’ll hurt a lot. But in time it will heal and it won’t bother you anymore. I’m sure you can’t say the same about the mean things people have said to you, even if they were said years ago.

This is another thing that ties into our self-esteem. We want the approval of others, so when they dish out the opposite—and give us cruel disapproval—it is, quite literally, soul-crushing.

I know a girl who is insecure about her chin because when she was in grade school a boy who was teasing her said it resembled that of Johnny Bravo’s. She’s in her thirties now, and that wound never healed. As she explained it to me, she didn’t realize that her chin was somewhat oblong until that boy pointed it out. Words have more power than you know, and if any technique in this book equates to ancient magic, it’s using them to your advantage.

I already mentioned that I don’t have time or patience for mantras. Who does? You’re struggling with your sense of positivity. What on earth would inspire you to repeat meaningless phrases every day, or every hour, or every time you feel anxious. They’re the last thing on your mind, and unless you feel every word with every fiber of your being, they won’t help you.

But assertions will. The best part is that you don’t have to put any time or effort into using them, outside of being conscious of what you say, which will come naturally if you’re mindful.

I once listened to a motivational speaker who touched on the highly regarded “power of yet”. My view of the world and of myself hasn’t been the same since. I realized, with true clarity, how mean I’ve been to myself. The power of yet is simple. Instead of speaking negatives into existence, you turn them into positives by adding one single little word. So, instead of saying “I’m not happy”, try “I’m not happy yet”. It implies that you have acknowledged the negative, but haven’t succumbed to it. That there is still hope, and that you believe that a change for the better is due. Try it with something simpler. “I don’t have a job” describes an unemployed person, while “I don’t have a job yet” describes a job hunter. See?

There is absolutely no reason to talk down to yourself, but you do it every day without thinking. The next time you are self-deprecating, pay attention, and then change self-deprecation into self-appreciation. This will be more effective than mantras could ever be. Mantras are just words. Assertions are beliefs.

Lesson Learned

Sometimes You are the problem. It’s so easy to victimize yourself when you are blinded to your own red flags. However, living in denial and the inability to admit that sometimes you’re not a fantastic person will only hinder your personal growth and your journey to a positive mindset. Practicing mindfulness will make you aware of your own mistakes, and it will also help you appreciate yourself more. When you’re mindful, you’ll learn to be kinder to everyone, you included, and to be careful with what you say and how you act. Once you have realized your own negativity, you can actively work to change it into something good. Assertions make more of a difference than mantras or lying to yourself do, and they have underrated power that will change your perspective with minimal effort on your part.

Chapter 5: Sh*t Happens (Deal with It!)

You’re going to hate me, I can feel it. Before I drop the bombshell as to why, I have a question for you. Why do you want to f*ck your negative thoughts? I mean, there are obvious answers, like a desire to be happier, or chasing the willpower to make something of yourself, but I can’t help but wonder if you’re a little bit… deluded.

I’ve spent quite a few pages now drilling positivity into your head. I’ve sent you to bootcamp, and made it abundantly clear that if you want to be a positive person, you’re going to have to face the reality that your negativity is largely self-inflicted. And here’s why I’ll understand if you no longer want to be my friend:

Sometimes your efforts won’t mean anything, and nothing I’ve said so far will matter in the slightest. Why? Because you can’t be happy all the time. Sometimes there is no silver lining. Sometimes, the grass isn’t greener on the other side; it’s brown and weathered and full of horse poo that attracts flies and ants and other gross things. Sometimes, you're going to be utterly miserable and completely negative and there’ll be nothing you can do about it.

Constant happiness isn’t only unnatural, it can be unhealthy too. One report explains that permanent positivity can stunt your emotional development (Hosie, 2017). It goes on to say that though positivity is obviously the preferred emotion, it’s not always appropriate and doesn’t always serve us well.

I mean, picture something catastrophic—a truly awful event. Say, a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. Now imagine that the people affected were dancing in the street as it happened, praising the Lord above for this wonderful, happy and exciting day.

That would be an abnormal response. It makes sense when you think about the true definition of negativity. Oxford defines the word as “the expression of criticism of, or pessimism about, something”. Sometimes negativity is necessary. It’s how displeasure, pain or despondency manifest in us, and sometimes it can save our lives. If you have a negative feeling about someone or something, you’re likely to avoid it to keep yourself safe. If you don’t enjoy something, or aren’t comfortable in a situation, you can use your negativity to stop and get the heck out of there.

Negativity is how we’re able to spot the red flags in others, sense danger, or even stand up for ourselves. It’s not a bad thing in and of itself; it’s only a problem when it’s taken to the extreme. So when is it acceptable, outside of terror or safety? More importantly, when should you manage your negativity instead of fighting it?

Only Human

The truth is that it’s better to learn how to effectively process your negative emotions so that you can work through them and retain your psychological and emotional health. Pretending that negativity shouldn’t (or doesn’t) exist isn’t good for your wellbeing. Doing so amounts to suppressing your emotion, which can make you mentally and physically ill, mostly because you’ll have pent up anxiety that you’re not even aware of (Hendel, 2018) .

Humans don’t feel emotions one at a time. Let’s say it’s Christmas Eve, and you can’t wait to open your presents in a day’s time. You’re happy, yes, but you’re also excited, curious, filled with wonder, charmed, and maybe even a little nervous because you’re not sure if your friends and family will appreciate the gifts that you got for them.

Negativity works in much the same way. Rarely, if ever, will you be “just negative”. It’s typically a collection of a whole bunch of dark emotions; sadness, frustration, anger, guilt or shame, self-loathing, concern, distrust, the list goes on. So, by pretending that you’re okay, you’re ignoring all of those stressful emotions, and they’ll build up inside you until they have nowhere to go except out. When we suppress emotion, it tends to explode out of those. That’s when we get into fights or say something horrible that we didn’t mean. We’ll cry uncontrollably, or become aggressive and break stuff (hopefully no one’s nose). It’s safe to say then, that the more negativity you disregard, the more negative you will become.

You’re a human being. You’re allowed to feel down. You’re allowed to hurt, and get angry and hate the world every now and then. What matters is that you don’t let your negativity control you.

A little bit of anguish, when it’s appropriate to your circumstance, is acceptable. Anguish every day, for no reason is not, and is almost always a symptom of an underlying medical problem like a psychological disorder or a hormonal imbalance. You’ll have to use your discretion, as well as the mindfulness I told you about, to determine if your negativity is normal or not.

For example, if things have been difficult for you for an extended period of time, it’s understandable if you haven’t been yourself while you’ve endured them. Sometimes our circumstances are beyond our control, and all we can do is weather the storm. However, if everything around you has been perfect, and you have nothing to complain about, yet you feel dissatisfied, empty, inexplicably sad, nervous or hateful you should consider investigating to make sure that there isn’t a serious problem plaguing you.

I’m not trying to inspire fear in you. Our moods change and fluctuate faster and more frequently than we realize. But it’s suspicious and unhealthy if you haven’t experienced any changes in your mood in a while and seem to be stuck in a rut with no rhyme or reason.

If that’s the case, try not to be too hard on yourself. There is one thing I’ve said earlier in this book that applies here: nobody's perfect. There is no shame in not being okay.

Self-Inflicted Suffering

Even though negativity is inevitable, suffering is not. You may not realize it, but even when you aren’t okay, you can still manage or control your emotions and behavior, regardless of what life has thrown at you. According to the standard definition, to struggle is to experience difficulty. You might struggle to keep up with someone or struggle to lift a heavy object. Suffering, on the other hand, is a condition—how you feel when something (bad) happens to you. You can suffer the death of a loved one, or the consequences of ill-thought out decisions.

Yes, most of the time we’re subjected to suffering because we don’t actively pursue emotional or psychological pain. What we do, without realizing it, is prolong our suffering by not keeping it in check or nipping it in the bud when it comes to darken our doorways. Want an example? How often do you wait until you’re in agony before you go to a doctor or dentist to have illness remedied, or your tooth pulled? The last break up you went through… did you work your emotions out, or did you wallow in them until they subsided on their own? How regularly do you compromise your own comfort or well-being because you’re afraid of offending people that you should confront, or getting into trouble for speaking up?

Negativity is something you’re going to struggle with—we all do at some point. But suffering through your negativity is self-inflicted. Why? Because even though we realize that negativity is a problem (barring the exceptions mentioned in the previous section), we don’t manage how we react to it. This gives it all the freedom to take control of us, bleed into our lives, and ruin our happiness. You’re allowed to hate your job because the hours are unfair, the pay is low and your boss is a jerk. That’s justified negativity or struggle because it’s logical and acceptable to feel that way. But if you’re making absolutely no effort to find a better job, or instill boundaries that work can’t cross, or even if you’re waking up in a bad mood every day because you didn’t get enough sleep and so sit at your desk in misery all day, wallowing in the agony of working at your office, I’m sorry, but your suffering is of your own making.

You could easily choose to meditate every morning before you head out for work. You can say no to the extra hours because your family and health are more important. You can look on the bright side—that you have a job, aren’t starving and have a home to go to—instead of focusing all your attention on what you hate. It’s easier said than done, and there are people who aren’t in any financial position to stand up to their bosses or decline extra pay, I understand that. But even then, you can still be kind to yourself by making sure that you get quality rest in between, and that you pat yourself on the back for working as hard as you do. Or, as I said, you can actively look for a better job. If you’re not doing any of those things, you’re prioritizing your displeasure, and therefore amplifying it.

Other ways that you can manage your suffering include asking others for help and support, reaching out to a professional to help you work through loss or upset, or even changing your circumstance to enable recovery. It’s not always possible, I realize that, but if you can’t change anything else, you can always change your mindset.

Managing Your Mental Health

While we’re on the topic of managing things we can’t control, I’d like to take a moment to move away from negativity as a mindset and cover something extremely important: mental illness. I started this book by informing you that mental disorder now is a plague. It’s doing to us what war and epidemics did to the generations before and yet it is still sorely misunderstood. So, what’s considered a mental illness and how is it different from a negative mindset?

There are many types of mental illness and it would be impossible to cover each of them, but simply put, a mental illness is a condition that disrupts, alters, or otherwise affects a person’s thinking, behavior and emotions beyond their control, and beyond what is considered normal. So, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), a condition known for causing severe mood swings in women before it’s their time of the month, is not a mental disorder. Even though their behavior will change and is without a doubt no fault of theirs, it is the biological norm for women of childbearing age and is based on routine hormonal shifts. Female psychology does not factor in at all.

Bipolar—a mental illness—is marked by extreme, often unpredictable, shifts in a person’s mood or energy, ranging from depressive lows to manic highs (Holland, 2018) . People with bipolar disorder may be a danger to themselves or others, and the illness—though there are many variables at play—is likely caused by a chemical imbalance in the patient’s neurological system. Humans are not bipolar by nature, and so it is considered a disorder.

Of these examples, both affect your mood and behavior, but only the latter is an illness. The same applies to nervousness before a big event and generalized anxiety or panic disorder; sadness, disappointment or pain when something unforeseen occurs and depression; hunger because you haven’t made time to eat and anorexia nervosa, and so on.

Mental disorders are usually characterized by physiological damage or inefficiency in someone’s nervous system. It’s not the only definition, but I’ll use it to paint a clear picture of how it’s different from negativity.

Someone with depression might not be producing dopamine, endorphins, serotonin or oxytocin at all. If they are, they’re not being carried to where they need to be, or it’s in such short supply their effect is insignificant. They are predisposed to dissatisfaction, unhappiness, self-loathing and other negative emotions because they physically cannot feel happiness or positivity. Someone who is not depressed can and will, outside of what is bothering them.

Now the important part. It must be said, even though it’s a harsh reality.

Mental disorder is not an excuse to be  toxic to others. If you suspect that your negativity is a symptom of a more serious problem it is absolutely your responsibility to get the help that you need. Mental illness may not be curable (in some cases), but it can still be managed. We live in an age full of wonderful advancements in medicine, and there are various options available that suit people of all circumstances. To name a few, there’s therapy, medication, rehabilitation and in some instances, even lifestyle changes that make a difference.

Keeping your mental health under control is a big part of step one: taking care of yourself.

If you’re aware of the disorders you have and you have done nothing to treat them, it’s the perfect example of prolonging one’s suffering. To reiterate: there is no shame in not being okay, and with the rise of mental disorders in our society the stigmas associated with them are beginning to fade. But you still have to help yourself by taking the necessary steps to recover. You’re the only one who can. Sometimes your mindset just can’t be changed. It’s not your fault, but you have to know that help is available.

Unforeseen Circumstances

And so, to end off this chapter—which was, ironically, quite a negative one—I’d like to touch on the times when no amount of resolve, positivity, self-improvement, or even medication will help.

The universe is going to throw curveballs at you, and sometimes you won’t be able to dodge them. Unfortunate, tragic and stressful things are a fact of life. You’re going to experience loss, embarrassment, pain, fear, heartbreak, rage and all the colors of the negativity rainbow. It’s important to remember in these times that negativity is appropriate, expected and healthy and all you’ll be able to do is feel it.

That said, don’t wait for your life to turn itself upside down and then shrug because there is nothing else you can do in that moment. Brace yourself. Learn to feel negativity in a way that is natural and healthy. Put an emergency plan in place and make sure that you have people—even anonymous strangers on the internet—that you can turn to when you need someone to help you through the darkness. But also learn to embrace the darkness. It’s as natural as the day and if you resist it, you will weigh yourself down with unnecessary suffering.

There’s an adage I like to quote, “expect the best, but prepare for the worst”. Live your life to the fullest and appreciate what you have now (mindfulness helps immensely with this). It could all change tomorrow, and if you don’t brace yourself, that curveball could knock you off your feet. How can you do this? By strengthening your mindset so that it doesn’t fail you when the world does.

It’s also important to note that when unfortunate things happen, you are still your own responsibility. Continue taking care of yourself and when the shock wears off, make an effort to heal. No one likes to think about what could happen, but we know one thing as fact. Life goes on, whether you like it or not. Make it as painless as you can.

Lesson Learned

Perpetual positivity is unnatural and unhealthy, so don’t aim to be happy all the time. It’s a sign of stunted emotional development and could lead to disorders in your mood, psychology or behavior. Negativity isn’t pleasant, but it can serve us. What you need to do is discern between when it’s necessary and appropriate, and when it’s dangerous. Even when times are tough—because there will be times that are simply awful—your mindset still matters, and there is no need to suffer, even when you face difficulties.

Chapter 6: Discipline

Enough with the morbid stuff, let’s go back to figuring out how you can be less of a Negative Nancy. Maybe you didn’t believe me before, but positivity isn’t something that just happens. You won’t develop a positive mindset overnight, and if you don’t create a habit from it, you’ll lose your positivity anyway. Everyone will experience peaks in their mood; bursts of joy and optimism when life feels great. But then it will dip, and we tell ourselves that life is a rollercoaster. What nonsense.

Yes, life is unpredictable and change is the only constant, but that’s why it is important to build stability for yourself. If you do, when life throws those ominous curveballs at you, you won’t be knocked off your feet and you won’t abandon the positivity ship at the first sign of a storm.

Like every other aspect of developing positivity, creating that stability is easier said than done. In fact, you may be wondering how you can put any of these steps into practice. There are so many factors in life that could prevent you from doing so. Let’s use exercise as an example. You know you should be doing it. Maybe you want to do it. But when it comes down to it, you don’t have time, or energy, or desire, or maybe even space or resources. Exercise is important, but in your life, it’s probably not urgent. Your bills, kids, survival and other errands are taking up your attention. I get that.

Your children are important, as is your job, home, social life, grocery shopping, downtime, and what have you. No one is disputing that. Your health and happiness are important too, though, and if you’ve placed them in the backseat, that’s a problem.

That’s why I’ve saved this chapter. If I explained it to you first, I could almost guarantee that you would have abandoned this book in search of one that accommodates your laziness, procrastination, and excuses. Because that’s what you’re doing. You’re worming your way out of the truth, using other matters in your life to justify it.

This chapter will be the most difficult step of them all because no one except you can make it happen. So far, I’ve told you what to do but not how to do it. Everything we’ve covered so far—health, attitude, decluttering, changing and managing yourself—means nothing if you don’t have one very important quality.

Discipline.

Stop with your excuses. I can hear you through this book. You’re telling yourself, “Well, I don’t have discipline, so f*ck this, I’m out.” I’m not having any of it.

No one, I mean absolutely no one, is born with discipline. It’s something we learn and (surprise, surprise) commit to. Think about some of the things you’ve abandoned or failed at over the years. Was the universe really tormenting you, or were you just lazy? It’s never too late to change how you go about your determination, work ethic or resolve. Pay attention here. It will either make or break your journey to positivity.

The Real Magic

My problem with most other self-help books is that they focus more on validation and participation trophies than they do making a real difference in the lives of others. Take a look at other books on positive thinking. They’ll tell you what to think, but not how to think it (or even to think for yourself). So, you may read the book expecting magic to happen, but really all you’ve done is copied someone’s answer without learning the equation to get there. Don’t get me wrong, self-help is a valid industry and it does change and save lives through uplifting and motivating people. But I can’t help but feel that the market is so oversaturated with fraudsters that the majority of content that’s spewed out will be like telling someone “You can fight this war, I believe in you!” and then putting them on the frontlines without any weapons, protection, or knowledge of how to fight.

Here’s the truth of the situation. None of the techniques or practices I’ve shown you will have any effect at all if you don’t have discipline. They’re habits. You have to practice them regularly and seriously or else they’re just a waste of time, fillers that you participate in when you need to give yourself a pat on the back but couldn’t be bothered to really try.

It’s because the self-help industry has given you a false idea of how easy changing your life is. Life doesn’t change. You do. You can read as many books on positivity as you see fit, if you’re practicing them with the same attitude you had when you went in, you’re not going to see results.

The only magic when it comes to improving yourself is making the decision to and then following through. It’s saying that you are going to exercise, and then actually exercising routinely, without fail. It’s saying that you’re going to stop saying cruel things about yourself, and then catching yourself when you do until it becomes second nature.

Similar to how you force yourself to work even when you don’t want to, or put time and effort into a skill you’d like to learn (or even just enjoy), you have to practice positivity every single day. If you don’t, it will atrophy.

That’s the only secret to success. No more, no less. There’s no magic spell, no vital ritual you must do each morning or to appease the gods of good fortune. There is no instruction manual, or recipe for success that you can alter according to your preferred diet. Successful people are disciplined people. End of story.

Excuses, Excuses

I understand that discipline is difficult, that’s why so many people fail at it. It takes energy and patience, not to mention willpower which is something that doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. There are many factors as to why people lose their motivation. One example is someone who is struggling with depression or anxiety. Mental disorder, as discussed, changes your behavior. In many cases, discipline is the first thing to take a knock as observed when something as simple as taking a shower or checking your mail becomes too difficult to do.

Those cases are understandable because they’re not exactly problems that willpower can solve. Implying such would be the same as telling someone to just push through a migraine, or to walk with a broken leg.

However, for everyone else it’s simply laziness, and yet again the epidemic of infallibility ties in, because when we lose out because of our laziness, we won’t admit that we let ourselves down and that our troubles are our own fault. This is especially true when it comes to procrastination because it’s easier to self-validate.

So what’s the difference? Laziness is the lack of desire or intention to do something. It’s when you don’t feel like doing something, so you don’t. Procrastination is when you do have the intention to perform a specific task, but do your best to avoid doing it because you don’t feel like it. So, if you have to clean your house and you don’t because you don’t want to, and instead stay in bed watching Netflix, that’s laziness. Using that same example, if you tell yourself, “I’ll do some work, and go grocery shopping, and phone my friend, and delete some emails first… then I’ll clean,” that’s procrastinating. Regardless, both are the enemy to discipline.

Because we don’t want to admit that we’re getting in our own way, we come up with excuses to justify our laziness and procrastination. Most of these excuses are lame, but we’re so desperate to be a victim and not a perpetrator of failure that we’ll believe them with our whole soul.

That is negative behavior, and it won’t serve you. So, among other things you can do to become more disciplined, the very first step is to stop excusing the times when you’re not. Here’s a short list of things you’re not allowed to say anymore, as you work on your positive mindset:

●       “I don’t have time”. Make time. It is that simple.

●        “It’s not important”. Yes, it is. Or do you not want to better yourself?

●       “I forgot.” That’s what reminders and alarms are for, my friend.

●        “I’m too tired”. Then do it tomorrow. Or even better, have a bit of a rest and then get up and do it. If you use this same excuse, you’re lying to yourself and it won’t count.

●        “I’m not motivated”. Discipline does not require motivation. It’s the ability to do what must be done whether you’re motivated and inspired or not.

●        “I'm not ready”. Unless you mean that you haven’t changed into your gym clothes, or need the loo before you begin your practice, this is nonsense. If you use this logic, you will never be ready. Discipline demands a now-or-never attitude.

●       “I’ll do it later”. Really? Yeah, I thought so.

You get the gist of it. I’ll give you one pass though. If you can’t use the “power of yet” with your reasons for not doing something, they’re meaningless excuses, and you should throw them out along with your clutter and negativity.

Work Hard, Play Hard

Do you want to know why the only secret to success is discipline? It’s because we sow what we reap. The effort you put into something is proportionate to the result you’ll get out of it. If you only meditate once a year, you’ll only experience the clarity it brings once a year. If you only exercise when you feel like it, you won’t have the body you want or the endorphins you’re after as often as you’d like. If you want a  positive mindset, but you don’t put any effort into being positive, you’re going to remain a negative person.

That’s why earlier on I mentioned that go-getters don’t see the present difficulty, they focus on the end reward. Positivity is your reward, and that’s why you need to be disciplined in your pursuit of it.

Still, I understand that it’s tricky and that’s where the problem comes in. Discipline is tiring. It’s draining, actually. You might feel like you are sacrificing your joy by prioritizing it, and that’s normal. But the satisfaction of being lazy, or procrastinating, or wasting time so you can feel good temporarily will cost your positivity in the long run. Work hard so that you can play hard. Push through the initial agony and, like everything else, it will become a habit that will eventually feel better than you can imagine. I guarantee it.

Stick to Your Guns

I’m not going to throw you in at the deep end. Telling you to be disciplined without showing you the way would be a fruitless endeavor. So, when it comes to the steps that we’ve covered (and this one too, in some weird way), here’s how you can help yourself put them into practice. Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day and it will be difficult to stick to at first. Promise me that you won’t let it beat you down, and that you’ll continue instead of giving up.

Of everything in your artillery, these tips are the baseball bat that you’re going to pick up, find your way around and then beat the lemons with. But as they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. I’m giving you the baseball bat. You have to find it within you to use it, and unfortunately, I can’t help you with that.

Accountability

It’s so easy to fail when no one is watching you. Do yourself a favor and tell people about your commitments and journey. These can be people you trust, or an audience on social media. They can be medical professionals, your partner, your parents, even a support group of people who are making the same effort as you.

The logic here is simple. If you tell someone you’re going to do something, you’re more inclined to stick to it. If you don’t, it may cause problems, like disappointment, or having to explain yourself, or admitting your mistakes (and we’ve covered why humans don’t like doing that). Likewise, if you do, you’ll feel good about yourself (or at the very least won’t have the stress of the consequences of not showing up or doing your bit).

There’s also the fact that if you tell someone to hold you to your word, and you fail at whatever you’ve resolved to do, you risk judgment. No one enjoys being judged. Roping others in is a great way to kick your own ass into gear. You’ll be far less inclined to mess up if you have to answer for your slip-ups.

Positive Reinforcement

If you want to develop habits, you’ll need some motivation to stick to them. Make of this what you will. There's a lot of room for creativity here. Some ideas for you are:

●       Rewarding yourself with a treat whenever you complete your to-do list.

●       Allowing yourself one cheat day for every milestone reached.

●        Only engaging in leisure or fun stuff you enjoy, once your efforts are out of the way.

●       Pampering yourself once you’ve earned it.

It can be as simple (a piece of candy after a meditation session), or as complex (livestreaming to celebrate subscriber milestones if you’re documenting your journey for an audience) as you’d like it to be. The objective is to trick yourself into working more efficiently so that you can reap the benefits faster.

Don’t Think, Do

Using methods in chapter one, like scheduling or bullet journaling, don’t wing it. If you wing it, you’re going to fall off track because you’ll end up going with what you feel like instead of what you need. Use a planner, alarms, reminders and calendars to mark off your commitments. When the time comes, don’t ignore them. Don’t think, don’t feel, just do what your planner is telling you to do. Given time, you’ll find your groove.

Force It (Again)

Look, discipline isn’t fun. It’s work. You’re going to hate it and it’s going to be uncomfortable, tedious and unpleasant. But you’ll have to push through it. That is what discipline is. It’s forcing yourself to do what you have to, even when you don’t enjoy it.

I must give you a warning though: know your limits. There is a difference between discipline and danger. Don’t push through an injury, a mental health disorder, or burnout. You can exacerbate your condition if you do, so you must know when to work and when to rest. If you feel that there is no underlying problem or valid reason to put effort into it, then just do it. Your displeasure won’t last forever, I promise.

Lesson Learned

A positive mindset isn’t something you can develop overnight. You’re going to have to bite the bullet and force yourself to develop one through the only trick in the book that actually matters: discipline.

This is a skill that you have to hone. Practice makes perfect, so stop making excuses and make an effort to learn it instead.

Chapter 7: Celebrate Yourself

I’ve been hard on you, haven’t I? You can rest easy, the difficult part is done. From here on out, I’m going to give you nothing but praises and applause. You deserve it, and you should be proud of yourself. Before we party and celebrate how downright cool you are, there’s one last thing that you have to understand about positivity.

It’s something you create.

I know, I know, I’ve spent many pages explaining exactly how it’s something that you enable rather than find, but it still applies. When you actively work to improve yourself, you become an agent of your own happiness. So here’s the ultimate truth; the truth that outweighs all other truths.

When you commit to exercising for those endorphins or your ideal look, weight, or condition, that’s you taking matters into your own hands and creating your own positive mindset. The same goes for when you teach yourself to think happier thoughts, say nice words, be more considerate of others, and stay organized. In fact, if you’ve been feeling negative, or discovered those parts of yourself that you don’t really like, you started making your own positivity when you decided to pursue and read this book. I’ve reiterated many times now that positivity is a journey and that your mindset won’t change overnight. That’s true. But the truth is that you took your first steps toward it before I taught you anything because you made your own decision to seek guidance and learn a thing or two about how to change.

Do you know what I think about that? I think that’s brilliant and worthy of honor. I like to give credit where credit is due, and it just so happens that you’re due a lot of it. I'm not making light of this either. The final step to becoming more positive is to embrace, acknowledge and accept it where it exists. This practice—of celebrating yourself when you do good—is just as necessary as the others. It completes the circle, so don’t you dare skip this one, okay?

You might think it’s silly, but positivity begins and ends with you. I don’t mean to sound cliché, but you’re worthy. It’s time you realized that, and took steps to adore yourself for everything cool, powerful and lovely that you are.

Who’s a Good Human?

You are. I mean that.

Don’t you think it’s silly that we reward everyone and everything else for a job well done, even if it’s a nonsense job, but we never seem to do the same for ourselves?

You know what I’m talking about. If a little child approaches you and says “Hey! Look at me!” and then just stands there doing absolutely nothing, you know what you’ll do? You’ll respond with positivity. You’ll applaud, or say “That’s cool!” or “Well done!” and maybe you’ll even throw in a high-five. You’ll tell your pet cat it’s wonderful, even though it would chew your face off if you died in front of it and no one was around to stop it. You tell your dog that he’s a good boy for doing absolutely nothing. I want you to do the same for yourself. Celebrate your achievements if they’re seemingly meaningless.

It’s encouraging, and it will make you good, if not a bit silly. But silliness is a good thing. It’s positive and funny, so I don’t see how you can lose here. It’s a win-win. Now, go and congratulate yourself on winning twice too.

Silliness aside, you may not realize how much you actually accomplish every day, especially when negativity pulls you into its clutches. So you didn’t conquer the world. You didn’t feel good, or fix yourself, or do that thing you promised yourself you would do. But do you know what you did? You opened your eyes this morning. You continued breathing. You pushed through your negativity to go to work, or cook your family dinner, or even read this book in the hope that it will help you live a happier life. You did your best, even if your best was simply staying awake and fighting another day.

That’s what good humans do. You’re still here, you’re still holding on. You’re learning, growing and changing. And I think that’s awesome. This is what I mean when I say that you should celebrate yourself. Stop shoving yourself into the background and appreciate all that you have done to be here. Human existence can be difficult at times, and the fact that you haven’t given up yet and have decided to improve your situation shows that you are a true warrior. Or a rock star. Whichever you think is coolest!

Reap Your Own Rewards

I’ve already touched on positive reinforcement through the promise of reward, so I won’t ramble on too much more about it. I just want to explain to you that the same idea can be implemented in other ways outside of discipline as well.

Compliment yourself when you do something cool, or nice, or great. Tell yourself that you look pretty when you genuinely think you do. Give yourself a nickname based on your strengths, so that you can highlight them whenever you meet someone new. It’s ridiculous, but it’ll work. What’s important is that you remind yourself of, and reward, your awesomeness, not just your efforts. You can’t be all work and no play. What kind of life is that?

All you need is to make sure that you don’t overdo it. If you reward yourself too much outside of your commitments, the self-bribery you use inside of them won’t have as great an effect. So be careful, but have fun with it!

Toot Your Own Horn

You might want to recap the section on confidence for this one because what you’re going to do is flaunt what you’ve got. This can be absolutely anything, from a painting you made to a song that you enjoy performing, to your opinion on something, or even the superficial things like your looks, or a fancy photo of the food you’re eating.

We hold ourselves back in fear of criticism. I want you to break that habit and replace it with a much healthier one: being you and proud of it.

The only condition here is that you only boast when it’s an act of self-love. Don't use this as an excuse to be arrogant, toxic, condescending or other negative things. That will defeat the purpose of nurturing a positive mindset that will last.

Remember that although confidence and self-esteem are different, they’re widely regarded as two sides of the same coin and if you feed one, the other is likely to grow too. When you flaunt the things that you are proud of, be mindful of how you feel. This will encourage you to do it more, and soon, your confidence will become a habit, and no one will know that it was forced. When it becomes a habit, it will also become sincere and genuine and then, you will actually be confident, you won’t have to fake it.

Take little steps if you must, but tooting your own horn every once in a while is a good way to celebrate yourself, so seize the opportunities for it when you can. Just try not to be insufferable with it.

Oh, and one more rule here. Be confident on your own terms. Don’t flaunt what you think other people will like or enjoy. Flaunt what you are proud of.

Put Yourself Out There

Maybe you think that you would go around flaunting what you have if only you had someone to flaunt it to. This is a real problem for many people. Loneliness and isolation can dampen the spirits and cause your confidence (or desire for confidence) to dip.

So here’s an idea: get out there and find people who will root for you. This is a fun way to put your best foot forward even if you’re surrounded by people who love you.

Start a YouTube channel or a podcast if you’re not quite ready to put yourself on show. Even something as simple as a blog or a Facebook page will do. It can be intimidating at first because there is a risk that no one will care, or that the trolls will come out to play and leave nasty commentary on your work.

There are some things to think about that will help you get around or even over those fears.

The first is that even if no one finds your content engaging, you will know firsthand that you had the courage to give it a go and that’s something that a) not many people are brave enough to do and b) will boost your confidence.

The second is that trolls aren’t the only people out there. There are nice people too, ones who will say kind things and support you or relate to you. No one who built a following started out with millions of followers. They had to go through the same awkward process of finding their feet and battling the insecurity of “not being good enough”. The most adored people on Earth started out unnoticed, with very few exceptions.

The third, is that if you don’t like it, you can quit anytime. You have the option to delete your videos, or podcasts or accounts on various platforms. This is merely something to try to see if it’s for you. All you really need is your phone and any ideas you may have, even if all you do is tell the story of how you’re fighting off your negativity. Test the waters, you might find that the water’s just right.

Be Your Own Cheerleader

When it comes to celebrating yourself, I want you to place special emphasis on the word ‘yourself’. I know, better than anyone, what it’s like to feel like no one else is rooting for you and so being your own champion is stupid. Don’t believe that. It’s your self-esteem acting up because it doesn’t know any better (it thinks you’ll be eaten by a sabretooth if people don’t like you. Don’t trust it. It really doesn’t know what it’s doing).

Here’s the thing though. If no one else is in your corner, it’s still your corner, so be there for yourself. Celebrate the little victories as well as you do the large ones. Believe in yourself, even if others believe in you too. You matter just as much as anyone, so count yourself as you would others. What’s stopping you? Really. Ask yourself that.

I’m a huge fan of DIY. Have your own back. Sing your own praises. Beat your own drum and fly your own flag.

Having supporters is an amazing feeling, I will admit. I am not denying that interaction, affection and encouragement from others are important and valuable. It gives us massive boosts because it validates our self-worth. If others think so too, it must hold some weight, right?

Have you ever thought that to be validated, something already has to exist? You are cool (or strong, or brave, or smart, or pretty, or what have you). You don’t need other people to tell you that. It’s wonderful when they do, but it’s an echo.

So, the very last challenge in positivity is to teach you to see yourself through the eyes of others. What can I say? It’s a beautiful view.

Lesson Learned

The positive traits that you already have are worthy of being acknowledged and celebrated. If no one else is around to notice it, you make a good substitute, because there is nothing in this world that is stopping you from rooting for yourself.

Valuing yourself may be the most difficult of all the steps, but if you keep practicing you’ll form a habit of self-worth, self-love, and confidence. In time, your self-esteem will go up and maintaining a positive mindset (the one you’ll use to continue working at each of these steps) will have room to grow until it becomes genuine, and by nature, you’re a positive person.

Conclusion

Look at you, kicking negativity’s ass! You’ve come a long way. Let’s take a moment to recap how you’ve learned to combat negativity.

You’ve learned that a healthy body makes for a healthy mind and that all the doctors, scientists, motivational speakers, life coaches, mentors, gurus, and health fanatics haven’t lied about the importance of looking after yourself.

You’ve also learned that you bully yourself because you’re programmed to, and that improving your self-esteem and confidence (and therefore your sense of self-worth) is as easy and as difficult as not caring about what other people have to say. I hope you learned to like yourself more in the process.

Then, you saw the value of clearing out what’s not good for you. Sometimes you’re not good for you though, and we had to cover some serious topics, like how to recognize your own bullsh*t, and how to commit to fixing your attitude and treatment of others.

After that, you explored how negativity isn’t always a bad thing, and how happiness is not something we’re meant to feel 24/7. We touched on mental illness, and bracing ourselves for the big bad world throwing big bad curveballs at our faces.

I then drilled it into your head that your hope for positivity won’t mean a damn thing if you don’t have discipline. Without it, you’ll never reset your mind and you’ll fail, repeatedly, because it’s the only way to change.

Finally, we celebrated you, because ultimately, you are the master of your own fate and you made your own magic when you leaped into the world of engineering positivity.

Positivity is a powerful force that can change your life in ways you never thought possible. That’s no lie. It’s been observed time and time again, in all sorts of people, instances and circumstances. Though I set out to prove to you that there is no magic behind how to be positive, the fact that positivity itself is magical was never disputed. It’s transformative and compelling in the literal sense of the word. Positivity can take you places, because you can use it for motivation. With positivity, you’ll also have less fear of where you’re headed, or what you’ll do when you get there.

A positive attitude can improve your relationships, lifestyle, and career too. You’ll feel better about yourself and the world because you won’t have to rely on silver linings or greener grass to have hope, joy, love, confidence or spirit. The light, at the risk of a terrible cliché, will be one you shine for yourself. With enough determination, it could be the brightest light you’ve ever seen that will chase the darkness so far away from you, you’ll forget it was ever there to begin with.

This book wasn’t what you expected, was it? I’ll let you in on a little secret. It was never meant to be. My hope with F*ck Your Negative Thoughts is that you’ll truly learn how to give your negativity the finger—two fingers if you’d like. The methods I’ve taught to you aren’t happy-clappy, sunshine and rainbows, but they’ll work for you.

I hope I reached my goal in showing you that your life and your mindset are in your own hands. What you make of it is up to you, but it depends on what you use to build it with. Positivity is a foundation that the happy life you want will stand on. Strengthen it, and those tornadoes and curveballs won’t stand a chance trying to knock you down. And even if somehow, someway they succeed and you fall over, you now have the knowledge to get back up again. There’ll be some creases to iron out, but it’s nothing a strong mind like yours can’t handle.

You’ve been on quite an intense journey, and I won’t be surprised if you’re glad to see the end of it. Don’t forget to celebrate. You’ve completed his book, and that’s a little victory. Go on, reward yourself. When you’re done, there’s only one thing left that I must ask you to do. Go beat the hell out of those lemons that life gave you.

I know you can do it. Now you know it too.

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Change Your Habits in 30 Days

Small Daily Changes to Break Your Bad Habits, Build Good Ones and Start Living A Wealthy, Happy and More Successful Life

Tony Sanders

Introduction

First, I would like to thank you for choosing Change Your Habits in 30 Days: Small Daily Changes to Break Your Bad Habits, Build Good Ones and Start Living a Wealthy, Happy and More Successful Life . I hope that you will find this book informative and entertaining.

Changing your habits can be a pain in the butt because they are so ingrained in your brain that anything that goes against it seems wrong. It has taken you years to form those habits, so it only makes sense that they aren ’ t going to be changed in just a couple of days.

This book is here to help guide you through the habit-changing process with a 30-day challenge. Over the next 30 days, you will be making small changes that will lead you towards stopping a habit that you want to get rid of and picking up good habits.

The important thing is to make sure that you only focus on one bad habit at a time. You don ’ t want to overload your brain and the easier it is, the more likely you will be to actually make the change.

With that said, I want you to promise me right now that you will give these next 30 days your best. Some of the things you will do are going to be easier than others, so you will need to be mentally ready for whatever might happen. We ’ ve even got a day that talks about feeling uncomfortable, and that is perfectly normal. Go easy on yourself, and let ’ s begin.

Chapter 1: Make It Tiny

The first step you have to take towards changing a habit is deciding exactly what you want to change and make it as tiny as possible. I don ’ t mean the overall habit change you want to achieve needs to be tiny, but the steps you take each day to reach it need to be as small as possible because you want them to be stupidly easy to do.

This is what is called a mini habit. So, let ’ s say that your goal is to start flossing your teeth. This is actually one of the first examples of a tiny habit. If you wanted to start flossing your teeth regularly, all you would do is start by flossing one tooth on the first day. On the second day you would floss two teeth, and so on until you were flossing your entire mouth.

Here ’ s another example. Maybe you are a writer and you ’ re struggling to finish your first book. You would like to write 1000 words each day, but that ’ s a struggle for you right now. Look at how many words you have been writing each day if any, and then choose an amount that would be easy enough to reach in one day. Let ’ s say that number is 50 words. You start writing 50 words each day in your book, slowly increasing them as you go. Before you know it, you ’ re writing 1000 words every day.

The thing is, you are tricking your brain with these tiny little habits. Your brain ’ s like, “ Pfft, it ’ s only 50 words. How hard could that be?” And that ’ s why you may find that some days you naturally start to do more than your tiny goal because it is so simple.

This can work for any type of habit you are looking to create. Now, on the flip side, if you are looking to stop a habit, you can do the same thing. For example, if you are a smoker, figure out how many cigarettes you smoke each day, and then figure out how many you can smoke without feeling like you ’ re going crazy.

If you ’ re a pack a day smoker, you smoke 20 cigarettes a day. You could, feasibly, only smoke 19 and not be that hard on yourself. Then you would continue to lower the number of cigarettes you smoke each day by one. Now, if you don ’ t think you could lower the number every single day, you can do it every two days, or even every week. The point is to trick your mind into thinking that what you ’ re doing is stupidly easy.

So, on day one, figure out the stupid easy goal that you can accomplish every day.

Chapter 2: Choose an Obvious Change

Alright, you ’ ve made it to the second day. Make sure that you continue doing your stupid easy goal. In fact, that ’ s a boilerplate agreement from here on out: Do not stop doing the previous day ’ s task, only add on. Remember that from here on out, okay?

Now we are going to talk about the importance of making sure that the change you hope to make is an obvious one. There is a reason why New Year ’ s resolutions typically don ’ t work. They are either too big or not specific enough, and both of these tend to go hand in hand. We tend to bite off more than we can chew because we like to think we are capable of big things. That ’ s a great mindset. We all should shoot for the stars, but we also should be realistic about our current situation.

So why does it matter that your goals need to be specific? For one thing, when you have a goal that is measurable, you have less guesswork involved in what you are going to have to do in order to achieve your goals. Plus, when you make sure that you have a clearly stated goal, you will be able to track the progress you make, which will help to motivate you even more.

Let ’ s say that you have the goal of “ living a healthier life.” That ’ s admirable, but what does that mean? This could mean eating healthier food, exercising, getting more sleep, meditating, and so on. But you don ’ t have any types of exact goals. You will have a lot of questions that you are going to face on a day-to-day basis. These questions will most likely overwhelm you, causing you to give up because your goals  seem too big or too out of reach.

Remember back to day one, you want to make sure it is easy for you to do. Not knowing exactly what it is that you need to do is not making it easy on yourself. So, instead of saying “ I want to live a healthier life,” you could instead say “ I want to exercise for 30 minutes, five days each week.” This is something specific and measurable. You can easily work with this, and you can even come up with a schedule so that you can stay on track.

You ’ ll still find that you may struggle a bit. You are making a big change, but you ’ re not going to have to guess what you need to be doing. Once you get the hang of your goal, you will be able to stick to it more easily. It takes out all of the guesswork, and the less time you give your brain to second guess what you ’ re doing, the more likely you are to actually do it.

There are times when we are afraid to set a specific goal because we are afraid of failing. The truth is, as long as you give it your all and try your hardest, there is no such thing as failing. It ’ s also important to remember that every major goal in your life is going to require some type of flexibility in how you are going to reach it. You are going to encounter some bumps along the road, and you may even reach some detours, but simply having a solid plan in place before you start will help you out in the long run.

It ’ s also important that you aren ’ t too hard on yourself. We are trying to revise our approach to life and goals all the time. All we want to do is reach the best version of ourselves, and that will take time.

Chapter 3: Make It Sexy

The title “ Make It Sexy” may sound a bit odd, but all we are talking about here is making sure your goals are something that is going to motivate you. This is the next biggest problem in reaching goals or changing habits. Too many people lack the motivation to achieve whatever it is that they want in life. When you have the motivation you need, you are more determined and driven to create the life that you want. You won ’ t magically start thinking that everything in life is super easy, but you will know that you are completely prepared to do what you need to in order to reach your goals, no matter what challenge you may have to face.

A lot of people suffer from a lack of motivation, and while it may be common, it doesn ’ t mean that you need to accept it as just another part of life. You aren ’ t on this Earth to simply live a life like everybody else does. You have your own purpose and goals, and as such, you will have your own motivation.

Having a desire to change is one of the most important parts of setting goals, but having that desire just once is not enough. You have to be able to maintain that desire for change during the whole process, and this is what motivation is. When you come up with your goal, you want to make a change. Then, you should start asking yourself, how is reaching this going to help me? From there, you can start to find your motivation.

Motivation can come from positive or negative things. You may be unhappy with some part of your life, which is what is motivating you to make a change. If this is the case, then you need to figure out what is it you would rather be doing that will make you happy. Alternatively, it could be that you have something in your life that makes you happy and you would like to experience more, or you could have something that you want to add to your life.

It doesn’t matter if your desire is to change, add more, or add something new, it ’ s the motivation you have for these things that will inspire your goal.

Motivation also helps with prioritization. No matter what it is that you want to achieve in life, you are going to have to put your energy and time into it. These are limited resources since you are always facing things that you could be doing. This means you must have the motivation to prioritize the things you need to do in order to make sure that you get important things accomplished.

Motivation also helps you to make sure that you overcome setbacks. Think about the number of times you have given up on a goal simply because you have hit a roadblock. Nearly every single goal that is worth reaching is going to require resilience on your part. You are going to hit obstacles, and when that happens, you have to figure out if you are going to continue or give up. Motivation is what will help you to stay the course.

Finding motivation is a very personal thing. You have to figure out what is it that is going to keep you moving towards your goal instead of making you want to give up. The first thing you can do to remain motivated we have already discussed, and that is making sure that the goal is really easy for you to accomplish. Secondly, you want to make sure that your goal interests you in some way, shape, or form. You are much more likely to remain motivated if you are doing something that is bringing you closer to something that you actually want to achieve or do instead of what other people tell you to do.

If you need to achieve a goal that you aren ’ t completely interested in, then try to find something within that goal that will interest you. This is common if you are looking to lose weight for health reasons. The idea of having to change the way you eat may not be all that motivating. But try to find something within that process that will provide you with motivation. Maybe there is a dress or outfit that you have always wanted but they never have it in your size, which could help keep you motivated to make those dietary changes.

If you have struggled with finding motivation for something for a very long time, then you may need to find somebody that you trust to talk things through. Sometimes it can be very hard to reach goals on our own, so making sure that we have a good support system of people we trust can go a long way in helping us find motivation.

The other changes we will be discussing in the remainder of the book also look at helping you to find the motivation that you need in order to succeed. This is only the third day, so don ’ t give up on me or yourself. I promise we are going to be diving into some very motivating things.

Chapter 4: Keep It Simple

I mentioned this in the second chapter, but one of the main reasons people don ’ t reach goals is because they are unrealistic. Now, by “keeping goals simple” here I don’t mean the same as in the first chapter where I said to make them stupidly easy. Here we are talking about making sure that your overall goal is actually realistic for you to reach.

Let ’ s look at it this way. Let ’ s say that you just had a recent physical and your doctor told you that you would be a lot better off if you started to exercise and lost some weight, so you make the decision to lose 25 pounds in a month. You believe that you will be able to do this because you ’ re going to exercise for 90 minutes each day and maintain a diet of 1000 calories. But once you get tired of exercising, eat over your daily allowance of calories, or don ’ t lose any weight, you feel like you failed.

If you have never exercised in your life, it wouldn ’ t be realistic for you to think that you could all of a sudden start exercising every single day. For the majority of people, only eating 1000 calories each day isn ’ t doable, so it ’ s understandable if you aren ’ t able to keep up with the diet. Finally, the majority of doctors recommend that you shouldn’t lose more than four to six pounds each month. So, you didn ’ t fail, you simply didn ’ t reach your goals because they were unrealistic.

You want your goal to be realistic, so it needs to be something that pulls you away from the norm but is still something you could reasonably achieve if you stick with it. You have been a coffee drinker for the biggest part of your life, saying you will never drink coffee again is not realistic. What would be is saying that you will only drink coffee once a week or once a day, depending on how many cups you are used to.

Here ’ s a little fun fact for you. There was a famous study that was done back in 1953 at Yale University concerning goal setting. They asked the seniors of that year ’ s graduating class if they had come up with goals for the future. Only three percent of those graduating said that they did. Then, 20 years later, in 1973, the researchers met with those seniors again to see how they were doing. They found that the ones who had come up with a specific goal before they graduated ended up being far wealthier than the other 97% of students who didn ’ t. A countless number of self-help gurus have used this study as proof that you need to set goals to succeed. Now, to burst your bubble, if you try to look up that study, you will find that it does not exist. It is simply an urban legend.

There is absolutely no way to prove that goal setting means you are going to reach financial success. So, you should never feel as if goal setting is the only means to an end. That said, when you do decide to set goals and change habits, you must make sure they are simple and realistic.

Chapter 5: Change Your Perspective

We have all heard the saying, “ same song, different day.” This is how a lot of people feel about their lives. They look at how they do the same thing day after day without any change. Maybe they wake up and go for a walk each morning and walk in the same direction. Then they eat the same breakfast, have the same cup of coffee, go to work, have the same lunch, and on and on. This is perfectly normal for pretty much everybody. We wake up and do the same thing, or at least close to the same thing, every day. But this can get old and in the way of our success. It is important that we learn how to think in a different manner. You can ’ t simply go through life using the same thought processes. You won ’ t be able to create a different life if you don ’ t change how you think.

The best thing to do to help you think differently is to change your perspective and view things from a new point of view. We ’ ll discuss some of the best ways to change your perspective so that you can allow your mind to grow and create new space to let new habits take root.

First, change up your routine. If you always go for a walk each morning, then try to take the opposite route of what you normally take. Instead of walking out the front door, walk out the back. Instead of turning left, turn right. Or, take an entirely different route. When you take different routes, you are going to start to see things you have never seen before. You are also going to see things you have seen but from a different point of view. When this occurs, you will see more dimensions and you ’ ll start to understand things on a deeper level.

Your life is going to benefit from these little changes. These small changes will provide you with awareness that there is a lot more to the story than what you first see. After you have found that awareness, you will start to look for the whole story. The missing pieces that you find may be what you need to figure out any problems you may be having, learn something new, or simply change a thought pattern.

Another way to change your perspective is to take back your power. It is very easy to fall into a rut of thinking where we always point the blame at somebody else or a situation outside of us. For example, it ’ s easy to think that another person has more charisma than you do, making you think that you won ’ t ever be able to achieve what they do. But if you switch up that perspective and look at things positively, you would be able to see that you have a path to improve yourself. You might not reach the same type of charisma another person has, but you can develop your own in your own way. While this may feel weird or uncomfortable at first, you do have a chance to live your power and to make your success based on your skills while also acknowledging that you have the power to create better skills.

So, what is the best way to take your power back? Is there something within your life that you need to take ownership of and find a different perspective? If you focus on the fact that you actually have the power to change, you will discover that you actually feel better about yourself and that your perspective has started to change.

You can also visualize your problem in a different manner. This helps you to come up with some space in your mind to create a new reality. For example, imagine that you have climbed to the top of a very tall mountain and you look in front of you, what is it that you see? The valley below with its tiny figures, the horizon, the sky, and you see the immediate things like shrubs, rocks, or trees. Now, imagine you are at the bottom of the valley. Look around and see what you can see. You can see the mountain before you with its peak too far away that you can ’ t see the trees and rocks on it. You can see the sky that is even farther away and maybe a few puffy clouds. The immediate surrounding is no longer hard to see. They are now full of life. You can see what you couldn ’ t while you were standing on the mountain.

If you start looking at your problems in life in this way, by seeing them up close and far away, you will start to see something new. You will probably notice that things aren ’ t exactly as they seem, or you might find that one detail that you need to make it to your next step. You will start opening your mind up to new perspectives, details, and paths.

Try out some of these things today and every day after. Do things in a different manner and see what happens.

Chapter 6: Be Patient

Patience plays a large role in goal setting. The unfortunate thing is that many people set goals only to give up before they see any results. So many people will start something new, like a diet or business, and give up after a week. The biggest reason for this is that they lack the patience to see it through. The goal is realistic, it ’ s simple, it ’ s small, but it doesn ’ t happen quickly enough for them.

So, let ’ s take some time and a little bit of patience to look at how to overcome our lack of patience.

First off, you have to realize that reaching your goals will take time. How many times have you sat and listened to a big successful person talk about how amazingly easy it was for them to earn money with their business? Do they also tell you about the ten other businesses that failed? Do they tell you about all the long hours of working and reading? No, they don ’ t. Why would they want to talk about the struggles? There is a very simple answer to that. They want to sell you whatever it is they are trying to sell, be it a book or program.

What do you think the odds are if they told people the truth about how hard it was to get to where they are that a person would actually buy their product? Slim to none. We are only getting to see the finished product after they have made it through all of the difficulties.

Don ’ t believe me, think about all of those weight loss commercials for Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and so on. They make it look so easy to lose weight, and all of these people who have already reached their goals, but you don ’ t see the struggles they faced while losing that weight. That ’ s true even for those on diets like Nutrisystem where all of their meals are made for them. They are still going to experience the same cravings that people on Weight Watchers may experience.

There are no overnight successes. Your goals are going to take time and coming up with your goal is only a small part of the process. Every successful person will tell you that you have to be patient in order to reach your goals. Patience is one of those things that we have all lost due to our instant news environment.

Secondly, patience is a virtue. Every successful person realizes at some point that it takes patience and time to reach your goals. If you come up with a goal and accomplish it in an hour or a day, then it was probably way too easy. But it also taught you that you are completely capable of being able to reach a goal. This will give you the confidence to strive for bigger goals.

Goal setting and patience, together, is a wonderful combination because they create a great team. Being patient is never a bad thing. Not being patient is the one sure-fire way to lose out on reaching your goals and changing your habits. This is the reason why so many people end up giving up on their goals before the seeds of the goals have the chance to take root. There is no way that we can come up with a goal and then expect to reach it in a single day. If you were hiking up a mountain and it only took you an hour to get to the top, it probably wasn ’ t a huge mountain.

Mountains and goals are supposed to be difficult so that we are pushed to do something that we have never done before. Your big goal doesn’t need to be something that nobody has ever done before. The goal should simply be something that you haven ’ t done before, which will push you beyond the places where you have been.

This is what ‘ patience is a virtue ’ really means, because the goal should make you better than what you were before. This is what makes goal setting patience so important.

Chapter 7: Get Ready to Feel Uncomfortable

At this point, you have made it to the end of the first week, making these changes and sticking to them. It is normal when people start questioning their sanity and want to give up. We have all been there, but guess what, today, you are going to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Change can only happen when things get uncomfortable. Carbon cannot become a diamond without pressure, and a pearl can ’ t be made without sand.

As soon as you are completely clear on what it is that you want to change in your life, you start to notice that you are feeling more compelled than ever before to do what you aren ’ t supposed to. You ’ ve never wanted a cigarette, or a piece of cake, or a soda more. You take a deep breath in and release it while reminding yourself that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, and then you get a rush of panic. You decide you are going to start making healthy choices and cooking your own meals, but then you find yourself sitting in the drive-thru of McDonald ’ s.

This is how learned helplessness is developed. You want to make a change in your life, but you meet resistance that seems completely futile. This doesn ’ t mean that you are weak-willed. There is a psychological reason that bad habits only get worse when you try to get rid of them. Within the behavioral psychology realm, it is what is referred to as “ extinction bursts.”

You experience an extinction burst when you try to change a habit because it is no longer being reinforced. This is what normally happens whenever a child throws a tantrum, or acts out in order to get attention. When they don ’ t get the normal response to a certain behavior, it gets stronger. On the surface, it can seem as though all of your work and trying to change is all for nothing. Believe it or not, bad behaviors are going to peak right before they disappear.

This happens with adults as well but in a different manner. Most will need to reach their very limits of bandwidth, comfort zone, and tolerance to anxiety before a huge change is actually possible in their life. The biggest challenge that the majority of us face when we are trying to make a big change in life is that we are faced with a more intense resistance than we have ever met before.

The thing that you need to remember is that when you experience that bad behavior is strengthening, it ’ s because it has been threatened. That means you are right on the verge of  getting rid of it and whatever you think that the behavior is doing for you is placed at risk as well. You aren ’ t actually doomed, helpless, or broken, and you are definitely not weak for experiencing this.

In much the same way that parents condition their children as they grow up, we also condition ourselves with the things that we regularly and repeatedly expose ourselves to. We have spent our entire life building a comfort zone and then live in that space effortlessly until not changing is less comfortable. Humans are wired to seek, create, and stay within what is seen as safe. A huge change, especially when it comes to our habits or identity, is outside of this happy zone. This is why we face resistance.

In the end, the bad habit you want to get rid of is actually a subconscious coping mechanism. When you stop feeding your bad habit, you expose yourself to feelings that often trigger it. For example, you are looking to be more productive. Overriding the feeling that you should stop working when you face a challenge will be triggering, and then feelings of incompetence and inferiority may become stronger than they have ever been.

The one thing that you are certain of is that everything seems a lot harder than ever before. What you don ’ t know is that right now you are on the cusp of having a breakthrough.

There are no magical tips or tricks to work through this uncomfortable feeling or resistance. You simply have to find the motivation that will keep you moving forward. Remind yourself, the harder it gets, the closer you are to getting rid of that habit.

Chapter 8: Focus on the Things You Want

Most people find it very easy to say what they don ’ t want. In fact, when talking about changing their life for the better, people are more likely to state the things they want to get rid of. They say things like, “ I don ’ t want this debt,” or “ I don ’ t want to live in a small house,” and so on. The power of focus is an amazing ability that our mind has. But a poorly developed ability to focus is going to make life a bit difficult. That ’ s what happens with “ don ’ t” statements. A lot of tasks end up seeming utterly impossible.

If you take the time to properly develop your ability to focus, all of those distractions will go away. Your tasks will become effortless and you will jump right into what you need to do and your will complete it with ease. Within the brain, you have a very peculiar mechanism known as the “ Reticular Activating System,” or RAS.

This amazing system gives you the chance to filter the immense amount of data that is constantly flowing through your brain so that you can figure out exactly what is important. Without this system, you would end up being overwhelmed by the data you need to process on a day-to-day basis.

Your RAS is able to learn your habits of focus, and with that information, it will filter all of the data that you are facing during the moment. Basically, you are only going to find what it is that you are looking for.

What you are habitually focused on can be viewed as a pair of glasses that have colored lenses. When you put those glasses on, everything will be tinted in that color. In the same way whatever you spend your time focusing on is going to determine the texture and color of your life.

This is the reason why you have to make a sincere effort to cultivate a happy and positive mindset. The more you choose to focus on the good things, the things you want, happy feelings, and feeling good, the more all of these good things are going to show up within your environment because that ’ s what your RAS will sense.

Whatever your point of focus is will determine the thoughts that are within your mind.

Inevitably, if you start to focus on thoughts about your feet, those thoughts are going to start flowing through your mind. This is true with any subject.  The focus of your mind can be viewed as a direct command given to your mind. It tells your mind what it needs to think about next, and it is very important that you provide it with the commands that will lead you towards a better life. That ’ s what all of us want, after all.

If you allow yourself to focus solely on the reason why you are able to reach your dreams and goals, you are going to easily find those ways. Likewise, if you decide to focus only on the reasons you are unable to reach your goals, then you are going to find them too. While it might seem too simplistic, it really is true that all you need to do is look for what you want.

There are a lot of us who go through our lives feeling as if we have been doomed with “ bad luck.” It ’ s important to understand that there isn ’ t anything mysterious or superstitious about the way that the Universe works. It doesn ’ t play any games, and it definitely doesn ’ t play favorites. It works by following a set law, which it shows clearly within every star in the sky and every blade of grass.

The most successful people on this planet are those who make a point of studying how these laws work and try to live their life as best as they can according to them. “ Bad luck” only occurs when a person has been focused on it. People who fall into this trap believe that they are just who they are, and they think that they are doomed for failure and poverty.

When we are focused on this, it will bring us nothing but failure and poverty. Whenever you notice that a person fails, there ’ s likely a good chance that their problem was having thoughts of failure.

But, when you see people who are succeeding in their life, you can be certain that their thoughts have been focused on wellbeing and success. Your thoughts are what create your reality, and your thoughts are figured out by your point of focus. Start today to try and focus just on those things that you want in your life, like success, ease, connectivity, love, and happiness. This will help you to change your life and reach your goals.

There is a tricky trap that some people will fall into when it comes to trying to think of only the good and the things they want. People start thinking that if the smallest negative thought pops into their mind, they think they are doomed and have just screwed up their success. The same goes if they feel down for some reason. Luckily for you, we have a chapter that will discuss accepting every emotion you experience because that is just as important as focusing on what you want.

The main point of this is that you need to work on focusing on exactly what it is that you want to change and bring into your life. This places your mind's focus on the most important thing. You are wasting precious brainpower when you decide to focus on all of those don ’ ts. Get rid of the don ’ ts and bring in the do ’ s so that you can see the change you want in your life.

Chapter 9: Watch the Things You Say

In the world of goal setting and habit changes, there are two things that are critical when it comes to the wording of your definition. First off, you have to be incredibly specific. Ambiguous concepts or vague language are only going to make it difficult to adhere to the best timelines for the things that you want to accomplish. This is one of the biggest criteria in the SMART method of goal setting, which you are probably pretty familiar with. To expand on this, though, we need to be able to understand the result of using different forms of vocabulary when it comes to defining our goals. This is the concept of positive versus negative language and your words are intimately related to the idea of specificity.

We are going to take a look at two people who are, for the most part, very similar in social standing, means, ability, and talent. For this example, those two people are almost identical in the resources that they are able to use to reach their goals. Both of them have the same goal of running the Boston Marathon and finishing the race in less than four hours. They both come up with their goal.

Person number one says, “ I want to complete the Boston Marathon in less than four hours this year.”

Person number two says, “ I will finish the Marathon this year and I will complete the race in the less than four hours.”

With everything else being completely equal between these two people, who do you believe is going to succeed in reaching their goals? To figure this out, you have to look at the phrasing and specific language of their goal. Positive language affirms the statement, is bolder, and is stronger. Negative language leaves room for doubt, is weaker, and provides an excuse if things don ’ t go as planned.

The first person uses negative language by saying that they desire or want to reach a goal. They have already shown that they have their own doubts about the attainability of their goal, simply by phrasing as such. The second person has created a firm stance in that they believe they will reach their goal. They did not give themselves an alternative and they made a concrete decision that their actions have to create. You have to be very careful about how you phrase your goals and fully realize that the power of words will determine your mindset. This goes hand in hand with what we discussed in the last chapter.

For us humans, it is perfectly natural to experience doubts when it comes to making big important decisions in our life or choosing to tackle a big problem. Any goal that is truly meaningful is going to scare the crap out of you. That ’ s why it is important to take some time to think about the internal language that you use on a daily basis. Negative language is a pretty common thing when it comes to how we talk to ourselves.

You have to rewire your brain so that you think positively and begin to take a firmer stance on all of your decisions when it comes to reaching your goals. Not only is it important that you define your goals using positive language, but it is also just as important that you reinforce this positivity within your daily internal dialogue.

Whenever you start to think about your goal, or if you are faced with making a big decision, make sure that you pay very close attention to that voice you have in the back of your mind. What is the main type of language that you tend to use with yourself? If you find that it is mainly negative, then you need to take the time to rephrase those negative statements into something that is positive.

There are four main types of negative self-talk. First you have blaming yourself. When there are times when you need to take responsibility, excessively blaming yourself isn ’ t productive. In fact, it is closely linked to depression. Be on the lookout for thoughts like, “ it ’ s all my fault” or “ I ruined everything.”

The second is looking for bad news. It ’ s easy to look at the bad things, even if nine good things happened and only one bad thing happened. Dwelling on those bad things keeps you stuck in the dark place. You need to step back and get yourself a more realistic and balanced outlook.

The third is unhappy guessing. While you don ’ t know what tomorrow is going to be like, you could find yourself predicting doom and gloom. If you start imagining that you are going to fall on your face during your presentation, this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You need to do like you did with the bad news, think about how the presentation could go well.

The last one is being exaggeratedly negative. This is where you tell yourself that a little thing that may have been slightly bad was completely terrible and a disaster. The more negatively you think something is, the worse it is going to feel.

Once you have spotted your negative self-talk, you can replace it with something true. If you find yourself saying, “ I am never going to save enough money for that house,” you can change that and say, “ I can come up with a clear plan to save money so that I can afford that house.”

When you change those overly negative thoughts with thoughts that are more realistic, you will be inspired to take positive action.

Chapter 10: Find out Your Strengths

It is human nature for people to compare themselves to the people they are around the most. It is natural that you might either feel inferior or superior to them because of their weaknesses or strengths.

Every person is different, and everyone functions differently due to their personalities. The important thing is to know your capacities and yourself. Your strengths are the things that you can depend on that help you push yourself beyond your limits.

Basically, your weaknesses aren ’ t your downfall. These are just some areas that you need to improve. They aren’t anything that you are lacking. They are things that you have to develop. In order to use your strengths and improve your weaknesses, you have to know what they are first.

Most people don ’ t have any idea what their weaknesses or strengths are. We have to take the time to assess ourselves if we want to improve our own development.

Know Your Strengths

Your biggest strength is going to be whatever comes easiest to you. Take your time and think about what you can do naturally. It might be anything. You might not have any problems talking to people when you meet them for the first time. Maybe you can think up solutions when you find yourself in a tense environment.

Try this exercise. From the list of words below, pick five that sound most like you and put them in order. The last one—or the number five—will be the one that sounds least like you whereas the number one is most like you.

Don ’ t choose any attributes that you would like to have. Only choose the ones that truly sound like you. You can pick more than five if you like to.

Once you have your list, you know what your strengths are. You can use them to help you get everything you want.

· Action-oriented

· Athletic

· Compassionate

· Courageous

· Disciplined

· Focused

· Intelligent

· Optimistic

· Patient

· Team-oriented

· Adventurous

· Authentic

· Creative

· Strong

· Detail-oriented

· Leader

· Open-minded

· Empathetic

· Will Powered

· Analytical

· Communicative

· Helpful

· Organized

· Responsible

· Trustworthy

· Confident

· Determined

· Emotionally Intelligent

· Flexible

· Inspiring

· Motivated

· Self-controlled

· Visionary

Know Your Weaknesses

It is just as important to know your weaknesses as your strengths. Your weaknesses are going to hold you back from getting a lot of wonderful things. Weaknesses are things that you need to power through. It might be anything - from social skills to talking to strangers.

This next exercise is similar to the one you did earlier. You are going to pick five things from the list that you think represent you. The number five is the one that is least like you and the number one is most like you.

Once you have the list of weaknesses, you can start taking care of them.

· Aggressive

· Close-minded

· Cynical

· Ignorant

· Insensitive

· Lazy

· Naïve

· Prejudiced

· Shallow

· Stubborn

· Vague

· Arrogant

· Complaining

· Fearful

· Impatient

· Loose-tongued

· Reckless

· Wasteful

· Contemptuous

· Greedy

· Impulsive

· Irresponsible

· Obstructive

· Shy

· Strict

· Chaotic

· Controlling

· Hesitant

· Indifferent

· Passive

· Selfish

· Sloppy

· Undisciplined

Why Do You Need to Know Your Weaknesses and Strengths?When you know your weaknesses and strengths, you know yourself better and the ways you function. Knowing your strengths will give you many opportunities. If you are trying to find the right career path, you will be able to narrow it down to a certain job based on the things you are good at.

They can also help you to grow. When you know what you are good at, you can achieve more and aim higher. When you know your weaknesses, you have a better understanding of the things that are holding you back. You will be able to find ways to not allow these weaknesses to pull you down.

Do You Need to Focus on Your Weaknesses or Strengths? Most people want to know if it is more important to just focus on their strengths or to improve their weaknesses. Normally, it ’ s better to focus on your strengths. These are what you are good at already, so you shouldn ’ t have to invest too much effort and time into these.

When you focus on your strengths, it is about looking for opportunities rather than problems. Don ’ t focus on the negatives; focus your energy on what you are good at.

When you focus on your weaknesses, you are decreasing your self-confidence, performance, and enthusiasm. You normally won ’ t achieve a lot when you try to fix your weaknesses. But when you work on your weaknesses, it can help improve your personal growth.

If you improve something that you aren ’ t good at, improving it just a bit can make a huge difference in your performance. Never try to get rid of or fix your weaknesses. It isn ’ t going to work. Just try to work around them. Find some way where they won ’ t hinder or hold you back.

Let ’ s say you are responsible for planning a huge event for a client, you know you are going to need posters to advertise it. You aren ’ t artistic, but you are great at coordinating things, use your strengths here. Find a team to design the posters and work with them to make sure you get everything you want.

This is where it is important to know your weaknesses and strengths. It is necessary for your personal growth and self-development. There are so many wonderful things that you can achieve if you only know what you can do. It can show you your true potential.

Chapter 11: Write Down What You Want to Achieve

At some point in your life, someone might have told you that you needed to write down your goals. This might sound a bit cliché but there is a little bit of truth behind writing down goals and then accomplishing them. You are about 42 percent more likely to reach your goals if you write them down regularly.

This is all about the way the brain works. When you write down the things you want, you will be activating both parts of the brain: the logic-based left half and the imaginative right half. This practice is well known among the business community. Many CEOs use this technique to remain on track with all their responsibilities.

Goals will help you become a better version of yourself. You might not have ever gotten in the habit of writing your goals down. This holds true for many people. Less than 20 percent of people have said that they write their goals down very descriptively.

Humans process visuals about 60,000 times faster than imagine them. When you write your goals down, you can actually see them. This is important because once we can see something differently, it will affect the way we act. You will be more productive if you see the things you have to do rather than just think about them.

Track Your Progress

You have to keep track of your progress. You are going to fail from time to time. You have to keep track of your failures, too so you won ’ t make the same mistakes over and over again. Once you see how much progress you have actually made, you will be encouraged to keep going.

Tracking progress allows you to see what worked best for you. It is a way you can remind yourself about what you would like to achieve. You can get easily distracted and lose your thoughts. When you write everything down, you can get back on track.

Most people have goals to write but it isn ’ t easy to do. If you find it hard to bring your vision to reality by writing it down, don ’ t allow it to hold you back. There are services and tools that could help you.

Everyone wants to achieve success and writing down what you want is a great place to start. It ’ s easy to do and it will help you become more effective while reducing your stress at the same time. It is time to try it and make your goals come true.

Reach Larger Goals

Goals can feel overwhelming from time to time. One good technique is breaking them down into smaller ones. Most people overestimate their ability when making a timeline. Try to make the timeline as realistic as possible and break the big ones down into pieces. This is where writing down things will come in handy. Be sure that your targets are measurable and concrete.

Reduce Your Stress

When you move your goals out of your head and put them on paper, it reduces your stress. It won ’ t get rid of the stressor, but it might remove the burden of keeping everything bottled up inside. Once you have all your goals written down, you will gain control over how you react emotionally. Once you have accomplished your goals, you will feel more at peace with yourself.

Improved Focus

If you are focused on the things you are doing, you will be directing your energy toward the goals and get better results. It is easier to set things aside if you need to focus on other things. Goals that are written down will help you stay on track and have better focus. Once your goals are defined clearly, it will be easy to get rid of distractions.

Boosts Your Motivation

This is the most important reason why you should write down your goals. Using your goals will motivate your actions. Try using goals to create habits since habits will drive performance. You can ’ t control everything but goals will help you have enough control so you can see some results.

Think about your life for a moment, how much time do you spend on thinking about doing things? Is this the same amount of time as you spend acting? No, it isn ’ t. You have to have specific goals in order to increase your motivation and take action. Once you have written down your goals, you create a sense of urgency that will make you move closer to reaching them.

Chapter 12: Face Fears

Fear is a normal part of life. Fear can help you protect yourself from harmful situations. Fear can help you see when you are about to do dangerous things. It might help you make safer choices.

You may find that you are scared of things that aren ’ t dangerous such as public speaking. This fear could prevent you from getting that raise or better position at work. This is very frustrating. You have dreamed of going to Ireland on vacation but you are afraid to fly, and this keeps you from getting on a plane. You may feel that your fear is keeping you from living your dreams.

You might realize that your fear is causing larger problems and holding you back.

Face Your Fears

This isn ’ t saying that you have to conquer every fear that you experience. If you have a fear of cold weather, it isn ’ t going to be a big deal if you live in Hawaii. It can become a problem if you move to Alaska.

You need to have a conversation with yourself and talk about the things your fears are keeping you from doing. Figure out if it is a problem that you are going to need to confront. Are you living a life that isn ’ t as fulfilling as you hoped? Is it your fears that are keeping you from it?

Think about the cons and pros of what would happen if you don ’ t face your fears. Write down all of these. Then find the cons and pros of what might happen if you come face to face with your fears. Write down what you could achieve and ways your life could be different.

Read this list over and over again to help you make the best decision about what you should do next. If you make the decision to go forward, the best way to get over your fear is to face it. It is important that you do this in a healthy way that will help you move beyond your fears instead of ways that will traumatize you.

Find the Risk Level

Fear is sometimes simply not knowing what you are afraid of. You may be afraid of flying because you hear about airplane crashes a lot. If you actually look at the statistics, you might realize the probability of death on an airplane is just one in seven million.

You might learn more about what causes those jolts and bumps when the plane experiences turbulence. It is just the movement of air causing the airplane to move around. If you are properly buckled in, this poses very little threat.

Fears like being afraid of speaking in front of others don ’ t have any statistics that will help you learn more about the risks that you are facing. You can read about successful people ’ s ventures in front of a crowd. You could learn more about their strategies in order for you to feel more confident.

Remember that just because something makes you feel scared, it doesn ’ t mean it is really risky. Get yourself educated about the risks and facts that you are actually facing by doing what scares you.

Make a Plan

The main key to facing fears is taking one step at a time. If you go too fast or do something scary before you are ready, it could backfire on you. It is very important to move forward. Having a moderate amount of anxiety is normal. You don ’ t have to wait to move forward until the anxiety goes away.

The easiest way to create a plan is to make a “ fear hierarchy” that is made up of baby steps. Look at this example about how you might face your fear of public speaking. This is using exposure therapy and taking one step at a time:

· Stand at a mirror and talk to yourself for two minutes.

· Record yourself talking and then watch it

· Practice your speech with your spouse

· Practice your speech with a family member and your spouse

· Practice your speech with one friend, a family member, and your spouse

· Practice your speech with two friends, a family member, and your spouse.

· Give a speech during a meeting at work

If you can ’ t do what scares you in a practice run, you could use imagined exposure. It is hard to practice flying in an airplane by doing the steps above.

You could induce some anxiety by imagining yourself stepping onto a plane. Think about how you might feel when you sit in your seat. Think about how you might behave when the plane takes off.

You could watch some videos about airplanes or park close to an airport where you can watch airplanes take off and land. Learning more about planes and being near them might help ease your fear with time.

Virtual reality treatment might be an option to give you some exposure therapy. This type of treatment has helped with treating PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).

Find Professional Help

If there is one specific phobia that plagues you, you might not be able to work through it by yourself. If these fears are debilitating or you aren ’ t having a lot of success facing them by yourself, find professional help.

A therapist that specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy could help you conquer your fears one tiny step at a time. Many professionals can treat various phobias that range from the fear of snakes to the fear of open spaces.

If you have a history of trauma that causes your fear, you need to really consider finding a therapist. PTSD can play a huge role in your fears.

Treatment might involve talking about our fears, practicing some relaxing strategies, and handling your anxiety while you face your fears. A therapist can help you continue at a pace that is healthy and comfortable for you.

Chapter 13: Do the Things You Love

Have you been living on autopilot? Do you wake up each day knowing what your life will be like daily, monthly, and yearly? Do you feel unhappy, bored, or you daydream of having more? Do you see yourself living through other people ’ s lives? Do you often think: “ Is this all there is? Is this all I am meant to be?” If you do, it is time to make a change whether it is small or large.

Everybody is able to make a huge impact on the world. In order to make an impact, you need to adapt and make changes as life happens around you. With all these changes will come a mixture of anxiety, sadness, fear, excitement, and happiness. Don ’ t allow the fear of working hard or failing stand in your way when you are making decisions. You need to embrace all the negative emotions and look at them as a way to learn and grow. Continually think about and remind yourself of the reasons why change will be good for you, like:

You Might Inspire Others

Changing is a domino effect. Most people will wake up each day and go about their normal routine because everybody else is doing the same thing. Wake up, go to work, eat lunch, come home, eat dinner, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, eat lunch, come home, eat dinner, go to sleep… This becomes your never-ending cycle. They have started to believe this is the norm, and they have to continue to live their life a certain way. People like talking about their dreams, making changes, even if they are extremely small, yet most people never commit to making these changes because of all the hard work, judgment, fear, etc. If just one person sees another making a change, taking a leap of faith, or succeeding, then they might decide to do it too. People have to feel inspired. We have the ability to do that for one another.

You won ’ t ever have what you want if you don ’ t go after it. The answer will always be no if you don ’ t ask the right question. You will always be in the same place if you don ’ t move forward.

Change could be scary. Something that is even scarier is looking back and regretting not making any changes. There isn ’ t anything more important than living a life that you will be proud of. You have to ask yourself these questions:

· Am I happy doing what I am doing?

· Are these things enhancing my life?

· Do I love waking up each morning?

If you can ’ t answer yes to all of these questions, you need to find the strength to make changes and start new things.

You can try to plan your path through life. You have to know that things are going to happen, and you might get rerouted. You have to expect the unexpected.

Experiencing True Happiness

If you do what you love to do, you are going to be a lot happier. I’m not saying that there aren’t going to be some hard days and moments on your path. Even if you find yourself struggling, you have the ability to work through easier since it ’ s something you ’ re passionate about. It will be easier for you to wake up and get ready for work when you are going to a place where you want to be. If you do what you love, it isn ’ t even going to feel like you are working. You are going to be focused. You will be capable of being fully in the moment since your mind isn ’ t going to be wandering off and thinking about better things. Your conversations and smiles will be genuine, and you will attract happier people.

Meeting New People

It doesn ’ t matter where you go in life, you are going to meet new people. Inspiring, humble, selfish, introverted, clueless, educated, short-tempered, opinionated, negative, motivated, lazy, energetic, fit, careless, political, miserable, happy, sick, healthy… this list can go on and on. Not to mention everyone from various educational and religious backgrounds and cultures. How diverse people are in this world is astounding. We get caught up in our own little worlds too often and become narrow-minded. When we expand this world, we open ourselves up to learning more, challenging our thoughts and widening our network.

You can ’ t know what might come from a relationship, conversation, or interaction. You might find your new employer, wife, husband, best friend, a connection to another opportunity or a spark to the next big idea. You have to expand your network.

Learning New Things

If you have graduated or getting ready to, you are probably already thinking about beginning your “ career.” Once you have a job, it doesn ’ t mean that you have to stop learning. We learn throughout our entire lives. Everybody is born with a curious mind. In fact, our brains crave new understanding and information. It ’ s important that we don ’ t ever stop seeking new things, researching, reading, or asking questions.

Pick a career that you know you are going to love. If you are already working and you don ’ t love your job, change it. Doing the things you love is going to open opportunities and doors that will allow you to meet new people and create new environments. It will help you learn about the world and people around you. You can do this while learning more about yourself.

· What makes you get out of bed?

· What drives you to do better?

· What are your talents and strengths?

· What is your purpose?

· What are you passionate about?

When you answer the above questions, you will be able to figure out which career is best for you and what makes your really happy. You might need to find some different career or make several job changes before you find the “ one,” but it will be worth it.

Accept the Challenge

When you step outside your comfort zone, you will be challenging yourself and leave what you know behind you. It is fine to close doors on your way. It’s not because of arrogance, incapacity, or pride but just because they don ’ t lead you anywhere. If you feel like you need a challenge, and want to push yourself, a change in your career or scenery might be the answer. It might mean you need to go back to school, enroll in something new, or take a leap of faith and do something that doesn ’ t need that degree that you worked long and hard to get.

When you put yourself in a new environment, with new guidelines and rules, around new people, you are opening yourself up to new opportunities. Your thoughts and opinions are going to be challenged through further learning and conversation. You aren ’ t going to know you true capabilities until you put yourself into a situation that constantly challenges you. Ideas might be sparked. It might lead you to places or things that you didn ’ t think were possible just because you challenged yourself.

If it isn ’ t challenging you, it isn ’ t changing you.

Chapter 14: Visualize

Creative visualization is a technique that makes you use your imagination to make your goals and dreams come true. If you use it in the correct way, it could improve your life and bring you prosperity and success.

This power can change your circumstances and environment. It can make things happen. It can attract love, people, work, possessions, and money into your life. Visualization uses your mind ’ s power. It is the power that pushes success.

When you visualize an event happening, you are attracting it into your life. This process is almost like daydreaming. This might look a bit like magic, but technically there isn ’ t an ounce of magic at work; it is just a natural process of thoughts, power, and natural laws.

There are people who use this daily. They aren ’ t even aware that they are using some kind of power. Every successful person out there uses it both unconsciously and consciously. They attract every success that they want by just visualizing their goals as already accomplished.

Power of Thoughts

Our subconscious mind accepts all the thoughts that we repeat and changes our mindset, along with our actions and habits.

Actions, habits, and changed mindsets all bring you to new circumstances, situations, and people that will help you reach the goals that you want. Thoughts are full of creative powers that attract and mold your life. They will bring you everything you think about.

Thoughts can travel from one person to another. If these thoughts are strong enough, they can be picked up by others who might be in a position to help you reach your goals and desires.

Every person on this planet is a part of Divine Power that helped to create the universe, and this means we participated in the creation. When you think of things this way, it makes complete sense that thoughts can materialize.

Just stop and think about that for a minute. You are a part of a great Universal Power. This simply means that thoughts do come true. Not every thought but the ones that are focused, repeated, and well defined.

Thoughts are energy, specifically a focused thought that has been formed with a lot of emotional energy. Thoughts can change the energy that is around us. They can cause changes to the environment around us.

Many people often repeat specific thoughts in their minds. They focus these thoughts on their situation or environment and thus create the same circumstances and events over and over again.

This preserves their world. It is similar to watching the same television show or movie constantly. There is good news. You can change that movie by just changing your thoughts. You can imagine a different situation or circumstance and thus create a different reality.

When you change your mental images and thoughts, you change your reality. You aren ’ t using supernatural powers or magic; you are just using the natural laws and powers that everybody has. It ’ s not material things that you are changing. You are only going to change your attitude and thoughts because they can reshape and change your world.

Look at this example: Let ’ s say you live in a tiny apartment and you absolutely need a bigger one. Don ’ t sit around and brood about your lack of money and fate. Change your attitude and thoughts and imagine yourself in a larger apartment. This isn ’ t that hard to do. It is very similar to daydreaming.

Getting Rid of Limited Thinking

Visualization does great things. Everybody in this world will have certain areas in their lives where they find it hard to make a change. Visualization is powerful. There are some limits to using it. The limits are inside us and not inside the power.

We normally limit ourselves and can ’ t see past that limited circle. We cause these limits by our beliefs and thoughts. This limits us in the life that we know. When we learn to be open-minded, and when we dare to think big, our possibilities and opportunities become greater. Limitations are only in our minds. We have to be stronger and rise above them.

It might take time before you notice any changes. Small, simple demonstrations might come fast, whereas larger results might take some time to get. The effort and time that you put forth are going to be worthwhile. Have patience and faith and results will begin to appear.

Chapter 15: Gratitude

Gratitude is probably the most important factor in life to help you find happiness and success. Knowing the things that you appreciate in life means that you know who you are, the things that matter to you, and the things that make every day worth living. When you pay attention to the things that you feel grateful for, you put yourself in a positive mind frame. You connect to the things around you and yourself. Research has shown that focusing on the things that you are grateful for is a rewarding way to feel more fulfilled and happier.

Gratitude is an important principle for mental health. Its benefits extend farther than we can even imagine. Studies have shown that being grateful can cause:

· Better self-esteem

· Better sleep

· Increased empathy

· Increased generosity

· More determination

· More alertness

· Less aches and pains

· Moving toward goals

· Improved health

· Lasting relationships

· New relationships

· Positive emotions

· More optimism

· More happiness

There isn ’ t a downside of practicing gratitude. It should be a goal that everyone needs to embrace. While you try to bring more gratitude into your life, there are some questions that you need to think about: how can you connect to your feelings about appreciation better and what barriers are you facing when feeling grateful daily? Let ’ s begin with the first question. Are there ways that you can feel more grateful?

Sense of Wonder. You need to wake up your sense of wonder. If you can follow all the suggestions I am offering, you can get more in touch with yourself. Your senses are going to wake up, and you will respond to things you feel, hear, and see more. You will be able to experience awe.

Awe is simply a sense of amazement. Awe isn ’ t a cheap thrill. It isn ’ t a feeling of helplessness. It is appreciating your entire life. Awe enables you to see through all of life ’ s pettiness. It will connect you to the bigger picture: your greatest adventure. This adventure has the potential to give your life meaning, heal you, and lift you.

It can be both awe-inspiring and humbling to acknowledge how important every experience is, everything that is outside yourself and how dependent you are on other people. When you awaken your sense of wonder about all the things you overlook daily, you open your heart to the feeling of appreciation and connection to all the miracles of your world.

Mindfulness. When you practice mindfulness, you become present in your body, grateful for the life you have and for the people around you. From all of that will grow the spirit of gratitude.

Mindfulness is basically paying attention to every single thing that is happening around you without judging. Do this like your life depends on it. Mindfulness is a way to connect to your life and it doesn ’ t take any energy. You just have to learn how to pay attention in a certain way. Once you can learn to practice mindfulness, you let your feelings and thoughts move through you without getting lost or taking over. Being mindful allows you to stay connected to all the people who are around you and to be aware of everything you ’ ve been missing while going through your daily life. Being mindful is an effective, organic, and ongoing way to tap into your gratitude.

More Accepting. This sounds too simple and obvious, but it is truth. If you can learn to act with more love, you can connect to your feelings of gratefulness and love. You can do acts that will help you connect to your gratefulness, from the smallest of gestures such as looking people in the eye while you talk to them or thanking someone for helping you do something. It might mean calling a friend you haven ’ t talked to in a long time and telling them you miss them and appreciate their friendship. It might be doing something unexpected and thoughtful for your significant other to make their day easier or to just show them how much you love and appreciate them. When you do any of these acts, you need to absorb everything that happens. You need to try not to move your eyes to push away from the responses you will receive.

Most people are surprised at how hard this is. It isn ’ t as easy as it sounds. Acceptance is your largest challenge. From early age, we are taught to take care of ourselves and not expect or take anything from other people. You really shouldn ’ t turn down offers, compliments, or gifts from other people. Anytime you push away another person ’ s generosity, you are hurting them and denying them the good feelings that they get from giving. You are failing to reciprocate their gratitude. You have to stop listening to your critical inner voice if it gets suspicious and paranoid about other people ’ s generosity. Make sure you make eye contact and thank other people for the recognition or generosity they bring to you.

Critical Inner Voice. You can begin feeling more grateful when you quiet the negative thoughts that actually turn you against yourself and others that you love. Your critical inner voice is destructive and will hurt you daily by shaming you and warning you about others. This critic is a dark cloud that follows you around. It sprinkles you with thoughts such as: “ Today is going to be one of those days. It ’ s just too stressful. Keep your head down and ignore everybody.” At times your inner voice will flood you with a downpour: “ Nothing is going to go right. Everybody expects you to fix everything for everybody. You won ’ t be able to handle this.” Your inner voice could sound soothing from time to time: “ Just take care of yourself. Nobody else is going to.” It might even say: “ Don ’ t even try. You don ’ t have anything to offer anybody.”

It is very easy to see how this critic interferes with your gratitude and feelings. It makes you leave your present and keeps you totally in your head and this makes a distorted version of the world. When you are in this state, you will be unavailable to others. While you are listening to this inner voice, you are going to miss out on seeing what is around you through a compassionate lens. You don ’ t appreciate all the good in your life, in yourself, and others. You lose sight of knowing that you can pursue and value everything that gives your life meaning. You can become more aware of this voice without letting it control your actions.

Why is It So Hard to Feel Grateful?

Gratitude Reminds You of Things You Used to Not Have.

Many people are filled with happiness when they find that someone special and fall in love, but they are totally terrified. Their partner is treating them very differently from how they are used to be treated. You might think that getting somebody that you truly want after not having them for such a long time would make you feel more grateful and this might be true to an extent. You also have to face all the challenges of accepting generosity and love while expressing gratitude when you experience things that are so different from what you are used to. This could subconsciously wake up old feelings about things that were lacking in your past.

If this happens, you begin to feel unworthy of or uncomfortable with all the things you are getting. Seeing everything you have could also bring up feelings of guilt. You might feel apologetic or embarrassed for getting something that someone else wanted. You might even feel that you have more than others, especially if it is a close friend, sibling, or parent. You might feel overwhelmed by feeling that you now owe to somebody for your happiness. You might not even realize it, but you might be avoiding gratitude to stay away from these undesirable feelings.

If you feel shaken up, you might pull away from whatever it is that is making you happy. You might begin to look at your life in a distorted way and have thoughts like: “ They just want things from you.” Or “ This won ’ t last, so you shouldn ’ t get comfortable.” These emotions and thoughts can make you feel unsettled. It can make feeling grateful or even acknowledging the differences between your present and past seem harder and possibly threatening.

It is Hard to Acknowledge Everything You Have.

One explanation that people have given for why they stopped being grateful is they just quitted paying attention. When their lives became faster or just routine, they tuned out of all that was around them. The main reason you begin to take things, especially relationships, for granted is that it is hard to have feelings and see everything you have. You have to slow down and live in a state where you can feel more aware and present in what makes you happy and what gives your life meaning. This will let you feel more joy, and this is also a gateway to sadness.

Even though you might say you want generosity, kindness, happiness, acknowledgment, and love, it is extremely hard to accept all of these things for many reasons. When you love, you ultimately become vulnerable. This will put you in a position where you have things to lose. When you are in touch with the things that matter to you, it brings you closer to your feelings. This makes sadness and happiness more abundant. Having an offering generosity will sometimes bring up sadness. This emotion makes you feel anxious and uncomfortable. It could have an invigorating and calming effect all at the same time. This will make you feel even more exuberant and vital. When you feel sadness, you center yourself.

Chapter 16: Don’t Let the Past Define Your Future

You can ’ t change the things that have already happened, but you do have the ability to change the part those things play in your future. In some form or fashion, your past experiences have helped to shape who you are today. Past events have influenced the situation that we are all in right now in some way. The past brought us to where we are living. It has given us the type of work that we are qualified to perform, and it has played a role in every aspect, no matter how big or small, of how we are living our lives today.

Allowing your past to dictate what you do right now, especially when it comes to goals and habit change, is only going to hurt your efforts. In order to keep your past from defining how your future will turn out, you need to make sure that you place it firmly where it belongs: behind you as a memory that has no power to influence what you do. Make sure you don ’ t get stuck in the trap of using your past as an excuse or reason for your failure to reach your goals. The past may be what has placed you where you are at the moment, but it can ’ t reach its hand out and hold you back unless you give it that power.

Unfortunately, there are many people in the world who have had to face traumatic events in their life. Those traumatic events have directly influenced their current circumstances, but the amount of power the past will have over their future is fully in their control. A tragic, traumatic, or mildly unfortunate beginning in no way automatically means that is how the remainder of your life has to be.

Let ’ s put this into perspective with an example. If you looked at a man ’ s history or childhood, you may have found that he was raised by alcoholic parents who neglected his education. He would likely explain to you that this is why he doesn ’ t have any academic qualifications and currently works as a low paid manual worker. This information may be stating facts about his life, but if he continues on to say that these past events are why he won ’ t achieve much in his life, he is allowing his past to be an excuse for his present.

He, himself, is depriving himself of a future he could have if he would simply take the power of his past away. When you are in the position of blaming your past for how your life currently is, it is very easy to slip into the attitude of self-pity. It is very common to hear others blaming their childhood deprivations for the fact that they no longer have any hope of achieving greatness in life. These are the people who live in a place of hopelessness and helplessness. The truth is, they have just as much chance as anybody else in the world to achieve success if they simply quit using the past as an excuse.

If you don ’ t believe me, you can look at the stories of many great achievers to see that the past has no real power over what your future can hold. Think about almost any wealthy businessman, entrepreneur, supermodel, movie icon, scientist, or leading sportsman. Did all of them achieve wealth, fame, and success because they had a privileged upbringing? Did all of them have limitless financial backing, a superior education, and caring parents? If you look into their life stories, you are going to find that the answer is no. A lot of these successful people began life in a very ordinary or underprivileged fashion, but they were still able to achieve success because they broke free of the constraints that the past created.

There are various ways in which you can work to let go of past hurts and move on with your life. And, if you ’ re wondering whether you are holding onto anything, think about thoughts that pop up in your mind at random times. Do you ever find yourself thinking about that one time when somebody did something to hurt you? Or thinking about how your parents weren ’ t there for you? If you do, then you ’ re holding onto the past.

The first thing you need to do is to make the decision to let that all go. When you make that conscious decision to release those things, it means you are accepting that you have a choice. Then choose a way to express your pain. Whether the bad thing happened years ago, or last week, you need to express the pain. This could be to the person that did it, or through a venting system, such as journaling, writing a letter you won ’ t send, talking to a friend, or going to a therapist. Get every single hurt out, and this will show you what your hurt is about.

Our world isn ’ t black and white, even if it seems like so. Once you have those feelings out, find your responsibility in the issue. More than likely, you played a small part in it, so figure out what you may have been able to do differently. You may find that you weren ’ t active in it and instead you were just a victim, but it ’ s important to be honest with yourself about it.

Now is the time to let go of everything you just vented about. This is where you move out of the role of victim. Being a victim is easy and feels good, it ’ s like you are on the winning team. But the truth is, the world doesn ’ t care. Yes, you ’ re special and your feelings matter, but the same is true for everybody else in the world. You can ’ t mix up the statement “ My feelings matter” with “ My feelings are more important than everybody else’s.” The world is a messy, crazy place where all of our feelings and lives are interwoven.

In every moment of every day, you have a choice. You can either continue to feel sorry for yourself about another person ’ s actions or to feel good. You have to take responsibility for your happiness and quit placing that power into the hands of other people. Why would you want a person who has hurt you to have the power over you right now? No matter how much you ruminate over the issues you have faced, it isn’t going to fix the problem. Never. It makes no sense to spend so much time and energy on a person who wronged you.

It is very easy to blame your starting point for the failures you may have faced, but it ’ s just as easy to push your past away and create the future that you want. Nothing has to be changed except for your outlook. By thinking about things in a different manner, you can drive your future in whatever direction you want it to go. By not allowing yourself to think negatively and filling your life with positivity, you can achieve whatever goal you set for yourself.

Chapter 17: Be Happy

Have you ever experienced true happiness just for yourself at some point in your life? We ’ re talking about that feeling you had as an innocent child who simply got to enjoy the time of being carefree without a single worry. When you got to go to school for free and then came home to watch your favorite shows and all of those times you spent with your family during dinner or playing with your friends. Those were great times, right?

How ’ s adult life? Those student loans have probably set you back. What about finding that dream job that is going to make you a bunch of money, or having been in multiple failed relationships where you fall for the same type of person that doesn ’ t think about you? Yeah, it sucks, I get it. You probably feel depressed from time to time, or you feel unsatisfied with the way your life is because society caused us to set such high standards. Society has made us think we have to be rich and successful in order to live a comfortable and happy life. So, are you actually happy with yourself and where you are?

There are some people out there who are content with their life, whether they live in the lap of luxury or not, and that ’ s great. However, there are many others who, no matter how much money they have, are depressed because they feel they don ’ t have everything they wanted, or they forget to put their happiness first. One of the biggest problems people face in reaching their goals is not being happy. Too many people say, “ I will be happy when…” when it comes to reaching their goals and changing habits. This doesn ’ t help anything, and you have to start putting your happiness first, right now.

We all think that in order to be happy, we have to figure out what we need in life to be satisfied. We always feel like there is some hole that we need to fill. We are always looking for more. We will make mistakes that we never get over. We question our lives and our reason but don ’ t come up with an answer. I am here to let you know that you are responsible for your own happiness and nobody else ’ s.

It is extremely important to figure out what is that you want for yourself. What is it that gets you excited when you are just thinking about it? Have you ever tried to learn how to be confident, independent, and happy? Do you like the job you are currently at? Or are you simply working there because it pays the never-ending stream of bills each month?

If you aren ’ t happy, right now, with who you are and where your life seems to be going, it is time to make a change. I personally know a woman who decided to make the change, took an entire year off and lived in Australia to figure out who she was after she graduated. During this time, she didn ’ t have family or friends with her and wound up in an unhealthy relationship simply because she was afraid of being alone and didn ’ t believe she could make it on her own.

For the first four months of her trip, she wasn ’ t herself. She found that she always felt depressed. She was at her lowest and had little to no motivation to do anything, but that was when she grabbed her life by the horns and took charge.

She was able to make changes by accepting the issues and flaws she had. That was when she started to make her short-term goals, and this was when things began to change for her. She was able to find her dream job and she was able to see herself as the amazing woman she was. She began to travel all over Asia and Australia all by herself and found her inner beauty. This has given her a completely different outlook on life and has opened her eyes to the opportunities she had. She is happier with herself because she took the time to remove herself from the toxic and stressful people she had met in her life. Because she loved herself and was happy with who she was in her lowest moment, she began to make the changes she needed in order to be happy in her life.

You are the most important person in your life because you are the only person who understands what is best for you. It is your mind that plays tricks on you and tries to pull you away from the things you need. It is never too late to find happiness within yourself and begin to make those changes to put happiness in the center of your life, no matter what happens.

You are the only one who can take of you and make the most out of your life. Stop letting others tell you that you aren ’ t able to do something or allow their judgments on the way you live your life get in the way of what you think is important. You must be honest with yourself and be confident that you know yourself better than anybody else. Be the best version of yourself that you already are and know that you are never alone if you have yourself.

Chapter 18: Learn to Listen

Listening is having the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages that another person is trying to convey. Listening is one of the most important aspects of effective communication. If you can ’ t listen effectively, messages tend to go misunderstood. This causes communication to break down and the person talking can end up becoming irritated or frustrated. If there is any communication skill that you want to master, it ’ s listening.

Listening is such an important skill that many employers provide listening skills training for employees. This isn ’ t surprising considering that good listening can lead to greater productivity, better customer satisfaction, and increased information sharing that, in their turn, can lead to innovative and creative work. A lot of successful entrepreneurs and leaders credit their success to having great listening skills.

Great listening skills can help your personal life as well. Good listening can increase your number of friends, boost your confidence and self-esteem, improve your grades at school, and can even help your overall wellbeing. Several studies have shown that speaking can raise blood pressure, but attentive listening can lower it.

Listening and hearing aren ’ t the same things. Hearing only involves the sounds that enter your ears. It is simply a physical process that happens automatically. Listening, on the other hand, requires more from you. It will require concentration and focus on what you are hearing.

Listening means that you aren ’ t just listening to the story, but how the story is being told, how the person moves their body, and the use of voice and language. Basically, it means you are aware of both non-verbal and verbal messages. How well you listen will depend on the degree to which you understand the message.

Listening is something that happens passively. In fact, the best listeners are those who are at least as engaged in what is happening as the speaker. This is referred to as active listening.

An average adult spends about 70% of their time communicating in some way. Of that, research has found that 45% is spent on listening, 30% on speaking, 16% on reading, and 9% on writing. That is a lot of listening. That ’ s why it is so beneficial that you take some time to make sure that you listen in an effective manner.

There should be no doubt that effective listening is important in your life, but why is it so important? There are a lot of possible purposes for listening, and its purpose will greatly depend on your situation and what the communication is about.

1. To reach an agreed-upon or shared understanding and acceptance of two viewpoints.

2. To create a selfless approach by placing the speaker first.

3. To help encourage the speaker to communicate in a manner that is open and honest.

4. To show concentration, interest, and concern.

5. To notice the non-verbal signs that the speaker uses to help enhance your understanding.

6. To critically assess the things that are being said.

7. To gain an accurate and full understanding of the ideas and points of view of the speaker.

8. To focus, specifically, on the message that is being shared, avoiding preconceptions and distractions.

More often than not, our main concern while listening tends to be to come up with our response. This isn ’ t what listening is supposed to be used for. When listening, we should focus completely on what the person is saying and how they are saying it so that you can understand what they are saying. Once they are done speaking, you can take a moment to formulate your response.

In order to improve your listening skills, you may look at the barriers to effective listening. For example, one of the biggest issues is that instead of listening to what is being said, we get distracted after a few sentences and start thinking about unrelated things or our reply. This means that we aren ’ t completely listening to what the message is.

This issue is partly caused by the difference between the speech rate and processing rate. The average speech rate is around 125 to 175 words per minute, but our brains are able to process on average 400 to 800 words per minute. It is very common for listeners to use the extra time to daydream and think about different things instead of remaining focused on what the other person is saying.

Of course, how clear the person is speaking will affect the way we listen as well. Typically, we find it a lot easier to focus on what a person is saying if they are fluent in their words, have an accent that ’ s familiar, and speak at an appropriate volume. It ’ s a lot harder to focus if a person is speaking too quickly or too loudly, especially if they are trying to tell you something complex.

It is also possible to get distracted by the appearance of the speaker, or by something that somebody else says that sounds more interesting. These are issues that not only affect you. You ’ re more likely to show that you aren ’ t paying attention through your body language.

It ’ s hard to control your body language, and you are likely to show the speaker you ’ re distracted through your posture or lack of eye contact. The speaker will probably notice this, and, at best, is likely to stop talking. At worse, they could get upset and offended.

Lastly, it is very important that you don ’ t jump to conclusions about the things that you hear and see. It is always a good idea to try and get clarification to ensure that you understand what is being said correctly.

Chapter 19: Stop Making Excuses

According to Benjamin Franklin, “ He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

Do you ever find yourself making up excuses when things didn ’ t go how you wanted them to? Have there been times when you didn ’ t take responsibility for the circumstances and events of your life? Have you ever tried to explain why you wouldn ’ t, shouldn ’ t, couldn ’ t, or didn ’ t do something?

These are all little signs that show you ’ re living a life full of excuses. All of these excuses will prevent you from living up to your full potential. But what are excuses?

Excuses are simply rationalizations that people come up with about circumstances, people, and events. They are dreamed up reasons we make in order to defend our actions, to neglect responsibility, or postpone taking action. Excuses mainly involve placing blame for an internal issue onto an external condition.

There are a lot of reasons why we make excuses. In fact, each person will have a variety of reasons for making them. But, for the most part, the reasons for excuses will fall into one of these categories:

· Perceived lack of resources or confidence

· Fear of making mistakes

· Fear of responsibility

· Fear of uncertainty

· Fear of change

· Fear of success

· Fear of embarrassment

· Fear of failure

In order to get rid of excuses, you need to find a way to get rid of your fears. Fear locks and traps us into our comfort zone. However, the nature of fear is mainly understood. Fears will normally emerge because we lack perspective, experience, resources, information, or understanding. If for some reason, you lack in one of these areas, you are going to naturally start struggling with self-confidence. This will cause you not to make the needed steps that could help take your goals forward. In turn, you will start to make excuses in a feeble attempt to boost your self-esteem. All this is really doing is creating an illusion of security. The only thing those excuses are doing is holding you back from reaching your goals and habit changes.

Those excuses are like painkillers and are simply masking the real issue.

Excuses not only hold you back from reaching your full potential, but they also prevent you from seeing your strengths, skills, and opportunities that could help you to overcome your problems. New opportunities live around every corner, but you won ’ t be able to find them if you are living a life of unending excuses.

When you live a life full of excuses, you could face:

· Mental blocks that stifle creativity and proactive action.

· The constriction of your comfort zone.

· Paranoia that keeps you from taking decisive action.

· Poor judgment when making important decisions.

· A pessimistic outlook.

· Continuous regrets in “ what if” situations.

· Self-made self-limiting beliefs.

· A lack of growth and responsibility.

These things will definitely not provide you with a fulfilling life. In fact, they will paralyze you and keep you from moving forward.

The first step in overcoming excuses is admitting that you are making them. This can be hard, though. However, it is important to do if you want to prevent yourself from succumbing to the consequences. First, ask yourself these questions:

1. What excuses do I make?

2. What things am I settling for?

3. Why do I make excuses?

Lastly, come up with some consequences that could happen as a result of making these excuses.

1. How are the excuses crippling my ability to get the things I want?

2. How are the excuses preventing me from moving forward?

Now, there are around 11 common types of excuses that people make. Each is caused by certain beliefs you have about a situation.

1. “ I don ’ t have enough time.”

This excuse means you lack direction, discipline, focus, or passion. It could also mean your priorities are out of whack and you could be struggling to manage your time. This could also mean you don ’ t value your time. You could actually blame it on laziness and procrastination. When you make this excuse, ask yourself, “ How bad do I want this?” Having a lack of desire may be cause for concern.

2. “ I don ’ t have money.”

When you use this excuse, you don ’ t think money is a priority in life. You could also be looking for an easy way to make some money, and, as such, don ’ t have the patience, persistence, determination, or desire to reach financial security. If you are making this excuse, you may want to read books about finances or find a financial coach or mentor.

3. “ I ’ m not educated enough.”

This type of excuse is caused by a lack of desire, inspiration, and creativity. It could mean that you lack the willingness to work hard to reach your goals. There are a lot of rich people who don ’ t have anything more than a high school diploma. What they do have, though, is a desire to work hard.

4. “ I ’ m too old/young.”

This means there is a lack of perspective, confidence, or understanding. While your age may make it a bit harder to achieve certain things, it does not mean it is impossible. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but only if you work at it. Age has the ability to work in your favor as well. It ’ s important that you make an effort to learn from your mistakes and failures.

5. “ I don ’ t know how.”

This means you lack confidence and self-belief in your abilities. It also shows that you haven ’ t taken the time to learn, practice, or gain experience. The way to combat this is to learn how to do what you want to do.

6. “ I just can ’ t change.”

This shows you lack motivation and reason to change. It is also likely that you haven ’ t found the emotional pain to accelerate change. Start to look at the dire consequences of not changing to find the motivation to change.

7. “ I ’ m afraid to fail.”

This excuse shows that you lack experience, knowledge, confidence, or understanding. It’s our perspective of fear that frightens us, not the actual thing we fear. When you have enough experience, you start to develop confidence and competence.

8. “ It ’ s not the right time.”

This excuse shows there is a lack of resources, information, and perspective. There are times when it isn ’ t the right time to take action, but, more often than not, this is simply an excuse that shows you have a lack of understanding. To overcome this, you have to get the resources you need to reach your goal.

9. “ I have to plan thoroughly first.”

This type of excuse is caused by a lack of perspective or fear. Planning things is fine, but if planning is all you do, then you are likely to have a fear that is keeping you from moving forward. Figure out what is it that you are afraid of so that you can move past the planning phase.

10. “ It just won ’ t work.”

This excuse shows a lack of determination, perspective, patience, creativity, motivation, or self-belief. All of these qualities are crucial if you want to reach your dreams.

11. “ I ’ m just not inspired.”

This excuse shows you have poor habits that are causing you to lack self-discipline. Dig around in your daily habits to figure out how you can change your daily rituals to find inspiration. A lack of sleep could be what is causing your lack of self-discipline.

If you identify your most common type of excuse, then you can easily overcome it and start moving forward in your life.

Chapter 20: Fake It Till You Make It

While the idea of faking your way to success may seem dubious, there is a lot of scientific evidence that has proven it is actually possible to fool yourself into becoming successful, increasing happiness, and finding love. Researchers have discovered that “ acting” in a particular manner allows your brain to have the chance to “ rehearse” a new way of thinking and can end up creating a chain of events later on down the road. We are going to discuss five different ways to fake your way into a new life. That does not mean these are the only ways to fake it ‘ til you make it.

Say Cheese

Researchers have discovered that if you want to improve your mood, you should make yourself smile. In 2012, Psychological Science published a study where 169 university students were trained to hold chopsticks in their mouths to force certain facial expressions. The expressions were neutral, a standard smile, and a genuine smile.

After the participants learned the right expression, they were provided stressful activities to work on, like tracing a star using the non-dominant hand while looking at the star ’ s reflection. Researchers discovered that those who used the standard and genuine smiles experienced a lower heart rate after doing the tasks than the ones with a neutral expression, which meant that they were less stressed.

In Psychology Today , there was a similar study in which the participants were asked to “ contract their eyebrows” or “ raise their cheeks” while judging images of faces that were either angry, neutral, or happy. They found that people had a more positive reaction to the pictures that depicted somebody who was smiling. They also found that the benefits of a forced smile lasted for four minutes.

Power Pose

Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business School social psychologist, studied how adopting a power pose can affect the body chemistry. She made her participants adopt a power stance or a meeker pose. The power stance involved standing with their head and chest lifted and their hands propped on their hips. The meek pose was the one where they stood hunched over with arms crossed. The people who held a power pose had a decrease in cortisol and an increase in testosterone.

Pretend to Know the Answer

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology published a 2012 study that showed that people who expected to know the right answers were able to improve a person ’ s test-taking ability. They took two groups of people and asked them to answer a set of questions. One group was informed that the answers would pop on the screen right before the question. It would be too quick for them to notice it. In reality, the “ answers” were a random series of numbers and letters.

The second group was told that the flashing screen just signaled the next questions. Once they took the test, the group that had been told the flash meant they were seeing the answers got more of the questions correct.

Dress for the Job You Want

A study performed at Northwestern University ’ s Kellogg School of Management discovered that wearing certain clothes that were associated with positive qualities would improve the person ’ s performance. People were given either a lab coat or a painter ’ s jacket to wear as they performed a task. They also had a control group that performed the same task after only having been shown the lab coat.

The tasks they had to perform were to test their sustained attention. The ones who were wearing a lab coat did better than the ones wearing the artist ’ s jacket and the control group.

Mimic Leaders

Let ’ s say that you have just been given a position that has job requirements outside of your skillset. There is a research that suggests that one of the best things you can do is to mimic somebody around you who has the skills that you need, even if you are first worried about coming off as a fraud. Researchers have found that if we see ourselves as a work in progress, is multiplies our capacity to learn.

Chapter 21: Accept How You Feel

Research has found that one of the biggest causes behind most psychological problems is emotional avoidance. This might come as a surprise, considering we talked about how getting stuck in negative emotions is a bad thing. After all, negative emotions aren ’ t fun and tend to be linked to negative events which all we want to do is forget and avoid. Plus, we are all very familiar with the relief we get from avoidance. In the long term, however, avoidance will lead you to a bigger problem than the one you have been trying to run away from.

Avoiding a negative emotion will only provide you with a short-term gain at a long-term price. There are a lot of reasons why emotional avoidance is harmful to you.

First off, important pursuits in life and goals could involve going through some challenging times, and unwillingness to face those times could narrow your horizons. With time, avoidance will become a prison because over time you will start to feel like you have to avoid many places, experiences, people, and situations that could cause a negative emotion.

Secondly, those attempts to avoid negative emotions tend to be futile. Making yourself believe that certain emotions are dangerous or intolerable traps you into a constant state of vigilance when it comes to things you need to avoid. You will be plagued with a fear of impending negative experiences.

Thirdly, emotional avoidance will typically involve denying the truth, which is not great for a healthy life. It ’ s as if you are looking outside and watching it snow, and then telling yourself, “ It can ’ t be snowing.”

Lastly, avoidance increases the period of anticipatory anxiety and anticipation is usually more noxious than the situation. This is typically due to the fact that your imagination is unbounded. Your head can take you anywhere you want in regards to things that haven ’ t happened. What actually happens tends to be less catastrophic.

It ’ s important that you understand the function of emotions. Look at emotions as a source of information. Your emotions let you know what is going on around you and with you. Emotions, however, aren ’ t the only information source you have available. You can also use your rational thoughts, stored experiences and knowledge, and goals and values. Information you get from your emotions should be evaluated and appraised in light of these other sources you have so that you can figure out how to behave. This also keeps you from falling into that negative emotional trap we mentioned earlier.

When you view emotions as part of a spectrum of all the sources you have available, they become like a weather report. It is important to understand, consider, and know them, but they shouldn ’ t be the overriding factor in your life. Whenever the weather is not to your liking, it doesn ’ t mean you need to deny it, focus completely on it, or cancel plans. What is important is that you need to accept the weather and change your plans accordingly. If I need to pick up my daughter at 4:00 at school but it starts to snow, and I don ’ t like it, I ’ m not going to waste my time and energy screaming at the sky, nor am I going to leave my daughter at school. What I will do is make sure that I leave the house 15 minutes earlier and drive safely to pick her up.

We ’ re all humans, so we are going to experience many different emotions, just like there are all types of weather. When you accept your emotions, you affirm yourself that you are human. This makes emotional acceptance a much better choice than avoidance.

Emotional acceptance means that you are willing and able to accept and experience your negative emotions. Acceptance provides you with many advantages. First, when you accept your emotions, you accept the truth of what is going on. This means that you won ’ t be wasting your energy on trying to push your emotions away. Instead, after you acknowledge the emotion, you can then try to pursue actions that will align you with your values and goals.

Second, when you accept your emotions, you give yourself a chance to learn more about the emotion and become more familiar with it. You learn how to work with it instead of trying to ignore it. Avoidance won ’ t teach you these things because you won ’ t be able to learn to do something if you don ’ t actually do it.

Third, acceptance is a lot like saying, “ This isn ’ t all that bad.” And this is the truth, negative emotions aren ’ t fun, but they aren ’ t going to hurt you either. Experiencing them for what they are will be less of a drag than constantly trying to avoid them altogether.

Finally, when you work to accept a negative emotion, it will often lose its destructive abilities. While this may seem counter-intuitive or surprising, if you take the time to think about it, you ’ ll see the logic. If a swimmer gets caught in an undertow and they start to feel themselves being pulled out into the ocean, and they panic, they will start to try to swim against the current. They will often end up fatiguing, cramping, and possibly drowning. However, if the swimmer doesn ’ t panic and simply lets go and allows the current to drift them out into the ocean, in a few hundred yards the current is going to weaken so that they will be able to swim back.

The same is true when it comes to a powerful emotion. Pushing against it is futile and can be dangerous. On the other hand, if you accept this emotion, it will simply run its course, which will give you a chance to run yours.

Chapter 22: Stop Judging

Michael J. Fox once said, “ The least amount of judging we can do, the better off we are.” Yet we all tend to judge others without even realizing we are doing it. Then again, you could meet somebody who tells you straight to your face that they love to judge people because it helps to boost their self-esteem and they feel better about themselves. Regardless of why we judge, we don ’ t have the right to do it.

Most people won ’ t realize the mistakes they make. Instead, most of us strive to find everybody else ’ s mistakes. But the problem is, when we judge somebody, we are doing so without understanding the entire picture.

First off, you have a lack of information. Are you positive that you have all of the facts about the person you are judging? Most of the time, we will end up judging people or situations without knowing everything that has happened. It is extremely important that you find out all of the facts before you come to any sort of conclusion. This is the most obvious reason why we shouldn ’ t judge others.

Everybody is different. Remember that the only thing that we all have in common is that we are all different. If you don ’ t like something, it shouldn’t matter to you that another person does. You may not like a TV show, but you shouldn ’ t make fun of somebody else who does. For example, if you don ’ t like going shopping on weekends, you shouldn ’ t judge another person who wants to go shopping. People are allowed to do exactly what they want, so you shouldn ’ t judge people on their choices. Think about it this way: how would you feel if somebody judged you based on your choices?

You know the Golden rule, right? “ Do unto others as you would have them done unto you.” Before you start to judge somebody, put yourself in their shoes. It feels horrible when you ’ re judged, but we, too, often judge others without thinking. So, the next time you feel tempted to judge another person, ask yourself how you would feel in their shoes.

It ’ s also important to have tolerance. There are a lot of different ways to train yourself to become more tolerant and wiser. Maybe you don ’ t approve of what another person has done, but it is really not your place to judge them on that. You have to live and let live. When a person does something wrong, but would really like to change, why don’t you give them another chance? How would you know that they really don ’ t want to change?

Also, you shouldn ’ t judge a book by its cover. When you meet a person for the first time, we all tend to make the mistake of judging them based on how they look. You can ’ t assume a person is going to act in a certain way based on how they look.

When you judge another person, you are actually defining yourself. Earl Nightingale once said, “ When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself.” Look at it this way: would you like it if others viewed you as a person who judges people? Talk to your peers and friends about this, and if the majority of them say that they think you judge other people a lot, then you definitely need to make an effort to stop being so judgmental.

Judging doesn ’ t just mean judging others. You can wrongly judge yourself as well. This is often one of the reasons why people come up with excuses for not doing something. They judge themselves as inadequate or uneducated simply because they have very low self-esteem. This low self-esteem can cause you to judge others as well.

One of the basic premises of habit-changing is if you can ’ t stop a habit, it ’ s because you aren ’ t acknowledging what it is providing you. Judging others provides you with benefits that make you justify judging yourself. All of this will slow down your process of reaching your goals and changing habits.

Judging others will help to bring you attention. Judging people behind their backs can make others laugh, but this is by no means a positive form of attention. But when you crave some form of attention, judging can help you reach that.

When you judge a person, through bits of “ feedback” or “ jokes,” it provides you with control. It puts others in their “ place” and asserts your power. It ’ s also a way to stop intimacy. Whether you are aware of your fear of intimacy or not, it can still cause you to judge others so that you are able to keep them at arm ’ s length.

For most of us, making ourselves consciously aware of our judgments is enough to stop ourselves from judging others. However, if you have come to realize that your judging is out of control, you may need to speak with a counselor in order to get help for your hidden emotions and angry thoughts.

Chapter 23: Live YOUR Life

One of the main causes for a person to feel like something is missing in their life is that they are living somebody else ’ s life. They have allowed other people to determine or influence the choices they make. They want to please the other person ’ s expectations.

Social pressure is very deceiving, and we all fall prey to it from time to time without noticing it. Before we notice that we have lost control of our life, we will end up envying how others are living. We are only able to see the greener grass, and ours is never green enough. In order to regain your passion, you have to recover ownership of your choices.

Trying to please others is like chasing a moving target. People are going to have multiple hopes for you. The pressure of society will fluctuate. By constantly trying to please everybody, you will end up pleasing nobody, yourself included. Expectations are simply illusions. This is the reason why most people won ’ t live the life that they want, and this leaves them feeling disappointed and frustrated.

The frustration you feel in life is caused by a gap between what people expect you to do and who you truly are. For you to bridge that void, you have to reframe your relationship with the expectation of others. Expectations form a social contract between you and others. If you don ’ t push against this, then the others will assume that you are okay with their expectations.

You have to speak up, or everybody will continue to invade your life. If you aren ’ t willing to put up some type of resistance, not only you are saying that social contract is okay, it becomes practice. Eventually, you are going to start doing the same thing to other people. When you allow other people to dictate your life, you will want to dictate theirs.

Not expecting others to do something is the first step you need to take in preventing people from being able to tell you how to live. Life is a two-way street. Once you fully realize that nobody owes you anything, you stop expecting people to owe you.

The first step to take in order to overcome all of those expectations is to treat yourself kindly. In order to take care of other people, you have to make sure that you take care of yourself first. You put the oxygen mask on yourself before anybody else. Accept yourself, flaws and all, and this will create the foundation of an amazing friendship.

Then you have to set limits for people in your life. If they don ’ t have limits, they will try to control you as much as they can. So, the next time they start trying to tell you what to do, speak up. Create boundaries and learn how to draw a line.

When you learn to live your life for you, you will find that your goals and habits start to easily fall into place.

Chapter 24: Meditate

Meditation is powerful. It is free. It can be done by anybody, anywhere and it is very beneficial. It can even help you feel happier.

What exactly is meditation? It is a practice that has been around for many centuries. It can help us control our minds, our lives, and find ourselves. It is a way you can recharge your batteries and calm your mind.

Has this happened to you? Your mind has completely taken over and you can ’ t get out of it. You feel like your energy has been completely depleted and you feel too tired to even try to sleep.

Meditation can help you control your thoughts and mind. It can turn off your mind when you don ’ t need it. Meditation is a necessity for having a happy life and feeling well. Why?

Meditation can help you get rid of anxiety, worries, and negative thoughts. All of these things can keep you from feeling happy. It has been proven that meditation that is practiced regularly can relieve the symptoms of anxiety and stress.

If you can get into the habit of meditating on a regular basis, you will feel fresher mentally and be able to handle difficult situations easier. You don ’ t have to be a Hindu, Buddhist, or of any religion to meditate because it doesn ’ t have anything to do with religion. You don ’ t even have to spend hours sitting in a cross-legged position.

Most people need a reason to begin doing things. If we aren ’ t feeling well, we will try to be more open and try anything to make us feel better and that might include taking various medicines.

I personally don ’ t think anyone needs a reason to begin meditating. Even if your life is happy, meditation can still be beneficial to you. It can improve your quality of life and help with various health problems.

We are in an age where we want a quick fix for everything. You see all kinds of ads that offer you hundreds of pills or other medications with a promise that in a very short time everything will be just fine without doing anything different with your life.

I ’ m talking about anxiety, sleeping problems, headaches, and many other health problems. Don ’ t misunderstand me; there are times when medicine can be beneficial.

There are many benefits of meditation and they have been scientifically proven.

The biggest physical benefits of meditation are:

· Recharging your batteries

· Slowing down the aging process

· Strengthening our immune system

· Lowering blood pressure

· Helping prevent stress

· Getting rid of psychosomatic disorders that are caused by tension

· Decreasing physical tension

The biggest psychological benefits of meditation are:

· Helping personal growth

· Helping improve confidence

· Bringing clarity

· Getting rid of worries

· Energizing

· Controlling anger

· Helping you be more sensitive and tolerant

· Comforting

· Soothing

· Calming

Benefits of meditating at school or work:

· Helping with creativity

· Helping you control yourself in high-pressure situations

· Helping you learn more easily

· Being more receptive

· Improving memory

· Lowering distractions

· Helping with concentration

It is unbelievable just how many benefits you get when you are just sitting quietly and not doing anything.

It is very simple to begin meditating:

· Pick a place where you won ’ t be disturbed while you meditate.

· Turn off your phone

· Close the door to the room if possible

· Put up a sign that asks others to not disturb you

· This is your time of day

· Pick a room or place that isn ’ t extremely bright

· Wear clothes that are very comfortable

· Fix up the place where you like to meditate

· If you want, you can open a window or burn some incense

· Don ’ t meditate after meals

· Choose a time when you aren ’ t full of energy

· Don ’ t drink coffee before meditating

· You should try to meditate daily at the same time to create a new habit

As with all things, it is going to take you some time to learn how to meditate. The more you practice the faster you are going to learn and the more benefits you are going to receive.

Chapter 25: Listen to Music

You might have made a goal to have more fun, learn more, or move more, and here are five ways in which music could help you achieve your goals.

Music is Fun

Music can bring us lots of pleasure. How we interact with music can be fun. It might be listening to an old vinyl, playing an instrument, singing, or just moving our body. Why do you think people love going to concerts? It is fun to watch other people make music. We sometimes sing along, move to the music, and stand while the music is playing. Why is music loved universally? Music can trigger the part of the brain that releases dophamine. It could be said that we have been hard-wired to actually enjoy music. Since music brings us many benefits, why not start playing some right now?

Music Makes You Move

Music is made up of various rhythms, and it is the rhythm that gets us moving. Find a song that has a great beat. It is a lot harder to try not to tap your foot than it is to just let the music move you. Everyone pairs music and physical activities like sports, working, marching, and dancing.

Exercise and music make a great team. Studies have shown that while listening to music, you exercise longer, pedal faster, and run farther. Any song that matches the tempo of your movements will help synchronize your movement and make you move more effectively. If you like walking, find music that has about 120 beats per minute. If you like running, it needs to be 160 beats per minute. Whatever you choose, the beat needs to be strong enough to keep you moving.

Connects You with Others

Music is present in every culture and people of all ages enjoy it. Even though you can just put in some earbuds and listen to music anytime you want, music was performed live as a group experience throughout the ages. Tribes or groups would get together to share songs and dance. This act can strengthen social bonds and communicate a sense of belonging. This is still done today at schools when we sing our school ’ s song, dance at a club, or connect with friends over your favorite song.

Most people will have a goal that is related to connecting deeper and more often with others. Music gives us the means to do this. You could join a choir, find a drum circle, or sit in on someone ’ s jam session. When you play music with others, you require cohesion, cooperation, and coordination, and all of these help improve your social life. Studies show that making music or singing with other people gives us many benefits like improving empathy in children, increasing levels of oxytocin, and increasing social bonds.

Helps You Learn

There is a lot of evidence which shows that music education enhances learning in all subjects. It provides a lot of benefits in reading and language development. Babies at the age of nine months show a better ability to recognize patterns and process sounds after participating in music. Children that play an instrument have better executive functions, reading ability, and verbal memory.

Children aren ’ t the only ones who benefit from studying music. Making music is like giving your brain a full-body workout. Music is unique because various regions of the brain have to be used together. Structured music strengthens pathways in your auditory, visual, and motor systems. All of the benefits can be carried over to other activities, too. Music is helpful when you are learning new information. It can help you sharpen your attention span and helps you retain things better. If you can put the information to music, whether it is the alphabet, grocery list, or science concept, music can help improve retention. Plus, it makes learning fun.

Music helps us recover, remember, and relearn. Music does take advantage of our brain ’ s ability to create new pathways through life. It can help you adjust to new situations, changes in your environment, and injuries. Since music uses so many areas of the brain, in various ways, it could give you access to forgotten or damaged areas. A person who has lost the ability to speak because of a brain injury or stroke could still sing. Speaking and singing aren ’ t processed on the same pathways. Therapists will use certain techniques that involve music to help regain speech. Research shows that listening to familiar music helps people who have brain injuries access memories that weren ’ t available to them previously.

Changes Moods

Music is connected to our emotions. Movie composers know this very well when they use swells to bring a rush of emotions. They create tension by layering instruments. They bring triumphant feeling by using drums and horns. Listening to music could change the way you feel. It could lower anxiety, provide positive distractions, increase arousal and energy.

Music can activate the regions of the brain that are associated with arousal, motivation, and reward. Listening to music you enjoy could bring a positive change to your mood. Begin with music from the genre you like the best and take notice of how various songs make you feel. You will probably notice that certain songs will bring up feelings of melancholy, others will make you smile, and others will help you feel relaxed. While you are becoming more aware of the ways music makes you feel, you could create ways to use music to help you change your moods.

Chapter 26: Don’t Be Hard on Yourself

It has been said that: “ We are all our own worst critics.” This is one obnoxious cliché, but it isn ’ t just fluff. Many therapists have studied what is called our “ negativity bias” - an instinct in everyone that makes all those nasty little negative experiences seem like a whole lot more than they actually are.

Basically, we have evolved to give our shortcomings, mistakes, and flaws more weight than we give our success.

Being critical about ourselves can take a toll on our bodies and mind. It could cause harsh thoughts that may interfere with productivity. It could impact our bodies by stimulating mechanisms in our brains that can cause accelerated aging and chronic illnesses.

There are ways to get around our negative bias. You could turn your self-criticism into personal growth and ways to learn. Let ’ s first figure out how we got to this point.

We can begin by blaming evolution.

Our brains are equipped with a mechanism that monitors our behaviors and mind. When we make mistakes, we can see it, but for us to recover, we have to first see that something has happened.

Just knowing that we have deviated from our goals or expectations isn ’ t the same as degrading ourselves. Maybe you didn ’ t finish your to-do list today or you ate too much at dinner last night. There are some cases when our moral integrity or safety are at risk. During these times, our brains have to tell us what is good and what is bad so we can learn from these experiences.

There are times when we give a negative value to our behavior and experience, which can trap us into a cycle of rumination. Do you ever find yourself lying awake at night replaying that experience over and over again? This is when we put ourselves in counterproductive and harmful self-criticism.

It is this kind of self-criticism that could have destructive effects like negative self-image, substance abuse, anxiety, or depression. If it gets too bad it could cause decreased productivity and motivation. People who criticize themselves often get too preoccupied with failing.

When you beat yourself up for only doing three out of five things on your to-do list, you are less likely to finish the other things on your list. The bad news is that we have been programmed to fall into this type of pattern.

So, what exactly do you need to do?

We have been predisposed to nitpick at our feelings but doing this can have the opposite effect. This solution is called self-compassion. This is where you practice being kind to yourself and understanding when you get confronted with a failure or flaw.

The biggest barrier to feeling compassionate about yourself is the fear of losing your edge or being complacent. This just isn ’ t true. It is actually the complete opposite. Being compassionate to yourself could lead to bigger achievements than criticizing yourself could ever do.

Many studies have shown that being compassionate to yourself supports positive change and motivation. Researchers have found that being compassionate to yourself can lead to more personal improvement through acceptance. If you focus on compassion, a positive adjustment is prompted when you face regrets.

This is a lot easier said than done. The main thing you have to do is not get caught up in your mistakes and obsess over them until you start to degrade yourself. Instead, you need to try to let them go so you can move on to the next action from a place of clarity and acceptance.

If you get caught up in thinking only about yourself, something that happens when you judge yourself, feel guilty, or worry, the self-referential brain network is activated.

Once you can let go of all that mental chatter and learn to take it easy on yourself, those regions of the brain will shut up. Creating an approach to self-compassion and willingness to let go begins with practicing. So how and where do you start?

Steps to Self-Compassion

1. Think About Yourself Differently

Make a choice that you will try a new approach when thinking about yourself. Treat yourself kinder. Let go of all the self-judgment. Go easy on yourself. Practice self-compassion or whatever you need to do. Anything you can do to help you remain in the moment and see what it feels like when you get caught up. Notice how painful it is when you compare it to being nice to yourself.

The best way to notice your thoughts and learn ways to let them go would be to practice meditation. Mindful meditation involves placing your attention on your breathing to stay present without losing your thoughts to assumptions, stories, and judgments.

You can interrupt your negative self-talk by focusing on external things that you care deeply about. This can help you create some perspective and meaning that goes beyond yourself.

If you can find things to do to get out of your own head, you can chase out all the negative voices that are in your head. You may do something nice for someone or volunteer at your local community center.

2. Meet Criticism with Kindness

If your inner voice tells you that you are worthless and lazy, you need to respond with: “ Everyone makes mistakes,” or “ You are doing your best.”

3. Recognize the Difference

If you want to make a long term shift, it is important that you make a deliberate effort to see the difference between the way you feel while you are caught up in your self-criticism and the way you feel once you let it go.

This is when you begin to use the learning system that is based on rewards. The orbitofrontal cortex of the brain is always looking for the “ bigger better offer.” It is constantly comparing things and if one brings more pleasure or is more painful the brain will go with the other thing.

Think about this: “ How would it feel if you took a breath after you made a mistake instead of berating yourself?”

You just need to think about talking to a friend. If you tell your friend: “ I ’ m feeling lazy and fat and I ’ m not succeeding at my job.” Now your friend tells you: “ Yeah, you are a loser. Just give up. You are disgusting.” How does that make you feel? That ’ s not really motivating, is it?

The main idea behind this is to be nicer to ourselves. You have to practice what it would feel like to treat yourself just like you treat your friends. If we want to stop abusing ourselves and be more compassionate with ourselves, we have to make it a habit.

Next time you feel like you are ready to fall into a spiral of shame, think about ways you would pull your friend back from that point then turn that inward onto yourself. It might feel funny the first few times you try it. You just have to do it over and over again until it feels natural.

Chapter 27: Spend Time with Those Who Make You Feel Good

Have you been spending time with the people who help your happiness and health?

Most people like to focus on their exercise and diet to reach better health; science actually says that our well-being can be influenced by the people we have around us. Research has shown that specific behaviors can actually be contagious and our social networks both online and in-person could influence our happiness, anxiety, and obesity. It has been found out that your workout routine gets influenced by your social network.

It is amazing how well being around others can boost your enthusiasm for life. I once have taken part in a wellness cruise that was created to attract like-minded people. They have all experienced different types of adversity like losing a loved one, losing their vision, and cancer. All of these people were very upbeat and optimistic. The group had different ages, too. They ranged between age 17 to age 90. One man who was in his 80s was very inspiring. He had changed his lifestyle where he was now a vegan and he followed a strict exercise plan in order to control his diabetes. There was a woman who was in her 50s who was a lung cancer survivor, cheered for me and kept me going through a very hard work out.

Once the trip was over, everyone promised to keep in touch. I was pumped by the whole experience and returned home with a new commitment to live healthier and exercise more. I also made a commitment to increase my social life and spend time with the people who make me happy.

People who live in the “ blue zones” of the world live a lot longer than normal people. The most common theme in these “ blue zones” is friendship.

Friends can give you more influence on your healthy behaviors in ways that diets never could. In the city of Okinawa, Japan, women live to be about 90. They form a social network they call a moai. It consists of five close friends who offer financial, emotional, logistical, and social support for their entire life.

This is an extremely powerful idea. Their parents will place them into their moais as soon as they are born, and they go through their entire lives together. Within the moai, the group will benefit if things go well like sharing a bountiful harvest. The group ’ s families also support each other if a child becomes sick or somebody dies. They influence each other ’ s healthy behaviors, too.

Some scientists and health officials are trying to create moais in certain cities within the United States. One city is Fort Worth, Texas, where some residents have formed a walking moai. They meet on a regular basis to socialize and walk.

In most cities, they have been able to put people who are looking to change their behaviors to better their health together. They organize the group around a potluck or walking. They encourage them to hang out together for about ten weeks. Some of the moais are few years old and they are still having a healthy influence on their members ’ lives.

The main point of creating a successful moai is to begin with people who have similar values, passions, and interests. This team tries to put people together based on family, work, and geography schedules. They will go through many questions to figure out their common interests such as: “ Do you consider your perfect vacation to be a backpacking trip or a cruise?” or “ Do you prefer classical or rock and roll music?”

Surrounding yourself with positive people can help you cope with loss. A good friend of mine was widowed at the age of 30. She was left with two small children. They were two and five. By getting help and support from her friends and family along with her own tenacity, she supported her children and even remarried. In 1992, her husband unexpectedly died. In order to handle this loss, she started contributing and volunteering in her community.

She confided in me one day that she learned her positive outlook from her mother who was a Holocaust survivor. She left Germany when she was only 19 and didn ’ t see her parents ever again.

While growing up, they were very poor. There were four members in her family and they lived in an apartment that only had one bedroom. The children got the bedroom and the parents slept on a pullout sofa. She says she never remembers her mother ever complaining. She thinks her mother knew that times were tough, but you appreciate the life you have, and you make the most of it.

My friend did find love again and married for the third time. She has been married for 15 years now and they are very in love. Life is just too short to surround yourself with negative people. You need to have people around you who care, are appreciative, and look at the world as a glass that is half full.

You can find a quiz created by The Blue Zone team that will help you assess your social network. In the quiz you will be asked about your friends, their outlook, how much they exercise, eat, drink, along with their health. The purpose of this quiz isn ’ t to get rid of your friends but to find the people who score the highest so you can spend time with them.

The best thing you can do for yourself that will add years to your life is to look at your immediate friends. You simply need to focus on just three or five true friends who are in your immediate life instead of distant social media friends. You need to have friends who you can have meaningful conversations with. You can call them daily if you need to know that they care and will be there for you no matter what. Your friends are better than any supplement or drug. They will do more for you than anything else in this world.

Chapter 28: Deal with Your Problems

Everybody has problems. I haven ’ t met anyone whose life is perfect. Well, wait, let me put that in a different way. I have met people who pretend to have a perfect life. You know, the kind of person you meet, and you ask them: “ How are you?”

Then they begin a huge story about how their life is just so perfect and how wonderful everything is. Most of the time, they are just full of crap because real people will have problems. What kind of problems do you have?

· Do you procrastinate all the time?

· Haven ’ t spoken to your parents for several years?

· Hate the entire world and everybody in it?

· Can ’ t quit complaining?

· Are you addicted to something: dating, porn, gambling, drugs, alcohol?

· Don ’ t finish anything you start?

· Constantly lying?

· Trying to deal with depression?

· Living in a bad relationship?

I try my best to truly care for others. When I meet someone new, I like to take my time and get to know them. Most people I have met have some kind of a problem. I have heard things like: “ I have a terrible time with relationships,” “I am not a patient person,” “I don ’ t give anybody a second chance,” and “ I am not perfect.” These are things that need to be changed.

Most people won ’ t ever do anything about their problems. Do you know what happens if you don ’ t work on your problems? They won ’ t go away… EVER.

I had a friend who was in a loveless marriage. She was constantly complaining about her husband and she wanted to get divorced, but she wouldn ’ t leave him. She always claimed that she wanted to sell their house and divide the money. She would take her part and move away from him. But nothing ever got done. She always made excuses for not putting the house on the market. I heard things like: “ I need to clean the carpets,” “I need to paint the walls,” etc.

She would go to bed feeling miserable. She would wake up each morning miserable. Nothing ever got better because even though she was completely miserable. Deep down, she was afraid to be alone.

Did anything ever get better? Nope. She just “ learned” to live with it. So, if you have any problems in your life, the world isn ’ t going to stop for them. Did you think it would? Did you seriously think that because you had a problem, the world would stop turning? It doesn ’ t matter how huge your problem is; we are all going to be here tomorrow.

You can only deal with your problems. You have to make them go away. Why waste your energy crying and complaining about something that you know you aren ’ t going to do anything about? Are you just looking for sympathy? That isn ’ t going to change anything. Your problems are still going to be there just waiting for you once you have finished complaining.

I know someone out there is saying: “ Yeah, but I…”

But, nothing, there is always going to be a but. I am not trying to tell you that it is going to be easy. If you want your problems to go away, you are going to have to do things differently. You have to try different ways. You have to change your mindset and thoughts.

If you don ’ t, you are always going to think of yourself as being helpless. If you know how to solve your problems, you would do it already. The sad truth is that you won ’ t. So you begin admitting you have a problem that you don ’ t know how to solve.

Sounds hard, right? This doesn ’ t mean that you won ’ t EVER be able to solve your problems. If just takes some effort on your part. To quote Albert Einstein: “ We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

If you have problems, do something. Doing something is better than doing nothing. But most people won ’ t do anything. Don ’ t turn into “ most people.” Be better than that.

You have to be bigger than your problems.

Chapter 29: Get out of Your Comfort Zone

It is so easy to get into a routine and be comfortable with how things are. If your work life and home life are good, why in the world would you change them and take the chance of things going bad? We think that we have to push ourselves to expand our horizons in order to get better every day in whatever we have to do to grow.

When you decide to push yourself past your comfort zone it doesn ’ t need to be something extreme such as bungee jumping or taking on a project you don ’ t know anything about. The zone you need to find is called an “ optimal anxiety” zone. This zone is where your skills will increase, you will be more productive, and you will be more alert. If the anxiety and discomfort are too high, you aren ’ t going to be productive and you might just shut down.

In order to get yourself in the habit of getting outside your comfort zone, try these tiny little steps:

· Read a topic about something you don ’ t know anything about

· Do something spontaneous and fun

· Hang out with somebody who is your total opposite

· Drive a different route to work

· Try new foods

It is usually easier to take a few steps to get outside your comfort zone with the help of a support team or mentor. If you know somebody who is willing to help you and give you encouragement, they could make the changes seem less scary. They might be able to introduce you to new things—things that you would have never thought about by yourself. Having a mentor means they hold you accountable and keep you from going back to your comfort zone.

When you get outside your comfort zone, you become more productive. It could even spark your creativity and make you more flexible when unexpected things happen. Learning new things in life can also make you happier.

The Science Behind the Comfort Zone

Your comfort zone is a space where your behaviors and activities fit into a pattern and routine that will minimize risk and stress. It gives you mental security. You benefit in some obvious ways: reduced stress, low anxiety, and happiness.

Being in a comfortable state can create a level of steady performance. If you want to maximize your performance, you need to be in a state of anxiety. This is a space where your stress levels are just above normal. As stated above, if we subject ourselves to too much anxiety, it could be counterproductive and your performance will drop off quite a bit. If you push yourself too hard, it could actually create a negative result. It reinforces the idea that challenging yourself is bad. It is human nature to remain in our anxiety-free, comfort zone.

A comfort zone isn ’ t bad or good. It is a normal state that many people move toward. Leaving it means an increase in anxiety and risk which could have both negative and positive results. Don ’ t look at your comfort zone as a place that is keeping you from succeeding. Everybody needs some space where we aren ’ t stressed or anxious so we can process all the benefits that happen when we leave that zone.

What Happens When You Try New Things

“ Optimal anxiety” is a place where your performance and productivity have reached their peak. Many people think that enhanced productivity and increased performance simply mean more things to do. What actually happens when you finally step out of your comfort zone?

·         You Will Be More Creative and Brainstorm Better

This isn ’ t much of a benefit, but it is common knowledge that when we look for new experiences, learn new skills, and open doors to new ideas, we get educated and inspired in the ways that nothing else would give us. When we try new things, we have to stop and think about old ideas and how they clash with new knowledge. This inspires us to learn more and challenge ourselves. We like to find information that we already agree with. An uncomfortable experience could help us brainstorm, see old patterns in new ways, and tackle any challenge that we might be facing.

·         It Will Be Easier to Push Boundaries

When you begin stepping out of your comfort zone, the more you do it, the easier it gets. As you begin stepping outside your comfort zone, you will get more accustomed to being in a state of optimal anxiety. Some people call it “ productive discomfort.” This will become normal for you and you will be willing to push yourself more before your performance stops.

·         You Can Handle Unexpected Changes Better

The worst thing you can do is to pretend uncertainty and fear just don ’ t exist. When you take risks and challenge yourself to do things that you usually don ’ t do, you might experience some uncertainty in a controlled environment. Living outside of your comfort zone when you want to can help you get ready for changes in life that will force you out of it.

·         You Will Be Productive

Comfort can kill your productivity because if we don ’ t have a sense of uneasiness, which happens from meeting expectations and deadlines, we normally phone it in and do the least amount possible that we have to in order to get by. We will lose our ambition and drive to learn new things. We might also fall into a trap at work where we pretend to be busy as ways to remain inside our comfort zone, so we don ’ t have to do anything new. When you push your personal boundaries, you find better ways to work, get more done, and hit your stride.

Chapter 30: Celebrate Every Win

Imagine that a brand-new year has just begun, and now might be the time to plan what you want to do with this New Year. You need to take some time and do some soul searching. Remember every success you had in the past year and celebrate it. You don ’ t have to stop there. You can celebrate every success you ’ ve had in your entire life. Don ’ t forget to celebrate the small victories, too. When you celebrate all the small wins, you know that you are on the right path toward success.

When spring is right around the corner, many people begin their spring cleaning. This is the time to let things go. It ’ s that time of year where we feel a bit sluggish in our energy levels. But there is also a feeling of electricity in the air around us and we look forward to the warm days of summer and spending time with family and friends while enjoying the great outdoors. This time of year could also be a bit stressful for some as they are going into their busiest time of year or it might be the time when they aren ’ t as busy and then they begin to stress about not making any money and all the work they need to do in spite of not making any money.

Average humans like to focus on their “ daily hustle” and their struggle to keep their sanity during tough economic times. We focus so hard on this that we forget to celebrate any success that we have whether it be in our personal or business lives. Celebrating small victories is a powerful motivator. When we share our stories about achievements and overcoming, we can inspire others to fight their battles and come out victorious.

Before you get caught up in planning your summer vacation or letting yourself become your own punching bag for the goals you haven ’ t reached yet, take the time to look at everything you have achieved, and celebrate all of those victories.

Why You Need to Celebrate

Everybody sets goals for themselves and subsequently works hard to reach these goals. Celebrating and recognizing those successes is a powerful motivator for people as well as teams since it reinforces all the hard work that was put into reaching them. It shows that you appreciate your achievements. It will give your self-esteem a boost. It will also motivate you to take the next steps toward reaching you next goal.

Share Your Story

You might have read a story about somebody who has overcome what seemed like insurmountable obstacles to you, but still remained victorious. Even if the story doesn ’ t apply directly to your life, think of the way you felt when you finished reading the story. You probably didn ’ t climb Mount Everest or beat an illness that threatened your life, but I bet you did overcome some big obstacles to get where you are at today. Tell your story. Whether you tell it to yourself, friends, family, coworkers, or a stranger on the street, just share your true feelings. When you share your story in a vulnerable and authentic way, you are connecting with others on a deep level. You are giving them permission to be vulnerable and authentic, too. It shows others that everybody has setbacks, and everyone has things they have to overcome. We might not reach that goal completely but that is perfectly fine, too. If you keep working to reach that goal, you story will motivate other people.

Consistency and Frequency

If you don’t practice gratitude daily and take time to look at your past week along with giving yourself a little praise for everything that went well, it just might be possible that you aren ’ t really celebrating your successes. It is possible that you are caught up in all the hustle and not celebrating the successes of your coworkers because you are just too distracted.

You have to recognize all the efforts of yourself and others as quickly as you can. Just telling your coworkers “ thank you” can boost their productivity by about 50 percent. If you are in a leadership role, you have to create an environment where you are showing consistent appreciation. It is important to continuously show appreciation for your coworkers’ commitment and their hard work. If you work for yourself, it is equally important for you to show yourself the same kindnesses.

Reward Yourself

Giving people hugs and thanking them is great, but it isn ’ t a true celebration if you don ’ t make a fuss. You don ’ t have to spend lots of money. It might be as simple as bringing your team cupcakes and celebrating their success while sharing stories. It could be taking some time off work to do fun things or just take a rest. It might even be an epic celebration. Just do what you can afford. Celebrating your success holds a lot of impact when you can link it with a reward.

As you move through the year, please remember to take time to celebrate your efforts and the efforts of the people around you. If you took the time to celebrate your success to date, it might just give you some motivation to get through the next month so you can aim higher for the next. At the end of the year, I bet once you look back at it, you are going to be extremely proud of everything you have accomplished. This should make you feel very proud.

Conclusion

Thank you for making it through to the end of Change Your Habits in 30 Days , let ’ s hope it was informative and able to provide you with all of the tools you need to achieve your goals whatever they may be.

The next step is to start your 30 days and pick the habit you want to change. Remember, take small obvious steps towards reaching your goals and you will be there in no time. When you realize that you have successfully gotten rid of a bad habit and adopted a new healthy habit, you will be so happy and proud. Over the next 30 days, you will be making minute changes that you may not even notice, but you will, and they will be big changes in the end.

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Thank you for choosing to read How to Live a Good Life: Take Control of Your Life, Eliminate Negative Thinking, Relieve Anxiety, Improve Your Social Skills, Self-esteem and Confidence with the Habits of a Happy Brain.

With so many books available in the self-help category, I ’ m honored and flattered you chose to read this one. It means more to me than mere words could ever express.

If you found this book helpful and valuable, it would mean so much to me if you could take a moment to write a review on Amazon.

My hope is that your words inspire others to take action, to take that crucial first step in achieving the same positive results that you realized by reading How to Live a Good Life.

As well, we have some fantastic things for you to check out down the road. To get advanced notice of a brand new (and free) guide and my free downloadable ebook, Create the Life You Want: 7 Simple Steps to Start Your Transformation (PDF), please join my mailing list at

https://www.mikyrubini.com/freegift .

As a member of my list, you ’ ll also receive regularly emailed tips, tricks, and hacks on important areas such as self development, productivity improvements, and designing a more rewarding lifestyle.

I look forward to being on this journey with you!

All the best,

Tony Sanders

https://www.mikyrubini.com

About The Author

Tony Sanders

Tony Sanders is an author, blogger, entrepreneur, motivational speaker and co-founder of mikyrubini.com, a website devoted to showing and teaching how to create the life you want.

Tony’s focus is on helping people to develop their full potential.

After graduating from Harvard University, Tony experienced massive failures in every sphere of his life for several years in a row. He realized that unfortunately, the university was not able to give him any skills for becoming successful. As a result, he suffered a major nervous breakdown and had no idea what to do with his life anymore.

To make things even worse, at that very time he got into a terrible car accident that almost killed him. Tony was bedridden for three months. With no willingness to live, he was very close to committing suicide.

Then one small event changed his life forever. Tony received a self-help book from his friend as a gift with the best wishes of a speedy recovery. At first, Tony put the book aside, did not have the slightest desire to read it, but after a few days, he decided to give it a try. To his own surprise, he read the book in one shot.

From that moment on, Tony’s life has never been the same. He ordered all the best self-help books that were on the market and spent all his time reading. By the time he recovered, he had formed a new, more productive and positive approach to his life. He was ready to make changes.

As soon as Tony was able to walk again, he fully concentrated on the self-help sphere, investing all his savings and time in reading more books, visiting live seminars of the best experts as well as practicing meditation daily. He did not stop his own research and study until he became one of the main experts on self-development.

This relentless and unapologetic approach helped Tony undergo his own transformation – from a negative, insecure and timid being to a self-confident, efficient and successful person.

He continues to work on himself up to the present day. By sharing his knowledge with the world, Tony aims to show that anyone can create a better life.

“So here you are, looking for advice on self-improvement. I guess that if you are still on this page, then you might be seriously interested in taking control of your life. At the same time, you might feel frustrated and confused, since it all seems too complicated and unattainable. Believe me, I know how it feels. I’ve been there many times. But let me tell you this. By making this move – searching for some tips that will make your life better – you’ve already made a small, yet essential step towards improving your life. And it means a lot. It means that you are brave. Brave enough to realize that all change should start from within you. Now, with this in mind, you can start transforming your life and finally change it for good.”

Tony Sanders is living in Palm Springs Florida today, has an amazing wife and two children. He likes to travel and run marathons all around the world.

P.s. You will not find him on social networks because he believes they are a waste of time.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

F*ck Your Negative Thoughts

Introduction: Mindset Over Matter

Chapter 1: Maintenance

Chapter 2: Stop Being a Bully

Chapter 3: Declutter Your Life

Chapter 4: Change

Chapter 5: Sh*t Happens (Deal with It!)

Chapter 6: Discipline

Chapter 7: Celebrate Yourself

Conclusion

References

Change Your Habits in 30 Days

Introduction

Chapter 1: Make It Tiny

Chapter 2: Choose an Obvious Change

Chapter 3: Make It Sexy

Chapter 4: Keep It Simple

Chapter 5: Change Your Perspective

Chapter 6: Be Patient

Chapter 7: Get Ready to Feel Uncomfortable

Chapter 8: Focus on the Things You Want

Chapter 9: Watch the Things You Say

Chapter 10: Find out Your Strengths

Chapter 11: Write Down What You Want to Achieve

Chapter 12: Face Fears

Chapter 13: Do the Things You Love

Chapter 14: Visualize

Chapter 15: Gratitude

Chapter 16: Don’t Let the Past Define Your Future

Chapter 17: Be Happy

Chapter 18: Learn to Listen

Chapter 19: Stop Making Excuses

Chapter 20: Fake It Till You Make It

Chapter 21: Accept How You Feel

Chapter 22: Stop Judging

Chapter 23: Live YOUR Life

Chapter 24: Meditate

Chapter 25: Listen to Music

Chapter 26: Don’t Be Hard on Yourself

Chapter 27: Spend Time with Those Who Make You Feel Good

Chapter 28: Deal with Your Problems

Chapter 29: Get out of Your Comfort Zone

Chapter 30: Celebrate Every Win

Conclusion

References

About The Author