Recent Articles
5 Tips to Help Get Your Goals Back On-Track
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
- Calvin Coolidge -
Here we are, four months into 2012. If you’re like many folks, there’s a good chance your New Year’s resolution is a distant memory. That doesn’t have to be the end of it though. You got off-track with your goal. That’s all. Everyone does at some point.
Behavior change takes time, and it takes persistence. Research on people who quit smoking, for example, shows that it takes several attempts before they finally quit for good. Beating yourself up over a short-term setback will only keep you stuck. Instead, forgive yourself completely, and use these five tips to start fresh today.
6 Ways to Feel Great About Yourself & Your Life
Here’s a pop quiz. Which of the following statements are true for you?
- I like most aspects of my personality.
- I have experienced several warm and trusting relationships with others.
- I have confidence in my opinions, even if they are contrary to the general consensus.
- I am quite good at managing the many responsibilities of my daily life.
- Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them.
- I think it is important to have new experiences that challenge how you think about yourself and the world.
These six statements represent six key dimensions of psychological well-being; that is, how good you feel about yourself and your life.
I’m sure you’ll agree that your sense of well-being profoundly influences how you perform in every area of your life, especially work and creative pursuits. In fact, as I’ve written, happier people are generally more creative and productive than their less happy peers.
With that in mind, here are six ways to increase your well-being, love your life, and in turn, create more positive energy to do great work.
6 Inspiring Quotes for a Happier, Healthier, More Prosperous Life
Your playing small does not serve the world.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Inspirational Video: Running for My Existence
This is the inspiring story of Roger Wright. At age 47, and weighing in at nearly 250lbs, he decided to change his life. Over the next 10 months, he lost over 100lbs, raised money for Cystic Fibrosis and fulfilled his lifelong dream to run the Boston Marathon.
“I have discovered that regardless of my age, previous eating habits, a complete lack of exercise and a sedentary lifestyle, that I have been able to change my life for the better. I have accomplished this simply by changing the way I look at food (I eat to live, not live to eat), started to exercise, no longer accepted excuses and most important, pure desire to help my niece, other people (friends and strangers) and myself. I know it’s cliche to say, but I have discovered that if you really want something bad enough, you really can accomplish it.”
- Roger Wright -
How Behavior Patterns Can Change Your Life
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face … The danger lies in refusing to face the fear … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living -
As a musician and actor, Will Smith has accumulated an impressive array of accomplishments in his career. In 2007, Newsweek called him “the most powerful actor in Hollywood.”
No doubt he earned that distinction – in part – because of his multiple Grammy Awards, Golden Globe nominations and Academy Award nominations. Not to mention the fact that his movies have grossed nearly $6 billion worldwide. It’s safe to say he’s come a long way from the hard streets of West Philadelphia where he was born and raised.
I’ve been a Will Smith fan for years. He starred in many of my favorite movies, such as The Pursuit of Happyness, I Am Legend and Independence Day, to name a few. Having come of age in the late 80′s, I remember when he “rocked the mic” as part of a quirky but entertaining rap duo named DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. To this day, I still get a good laugh whenever I catch a rerun of his 1990′s sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
My fandom reached a higher level though, after I watched a 10-minute Youtube video composed of Will Smith interview snippets. When you watch the video, you get a clear sense of the experiences, philosophy and practices that have surely helped Will reach the heights of success he’s created in his life. Further, if you’re anything like me, you come away feeling inspired and enlightened about how you might reach the next level of success and fulfillment in your own life.
I could probably write for days about the many inspiring ideas Will shared during that 10-minute video. Today though, I’m compelled mainly by these words, which he spoke during a 2002 Charlie Rose interview:
“I’m motivated by fear … fear of fear. I hate being scared to do something. And I think what developed in my early days was the attitude that I started attacking things that I was scared of (emphasis mine).”
Attack the Things That Scare You
Attack the things that scare you. I admit the language is somewhat macho, bordering on militant, but the idea is no less provocative. How might the course of your life change if you developed the habit of moving toward things that scare you rather than away from them? What if fear served not as a warning sign to back away from something, but instead, as a cue to move toward it?
Inspirational Video: Rocky Balboa
“Let me tell you somethin you already know. The world aint all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it aint about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward … how much you can take and keep movin forward. That’s how winnin is done!”
- Rocky Balboa -
The Number One Predictor of Greater Health, Wealth and Fulfillment in the 21st Century
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”
- Leonardo da Vinci -
Want to know the number one predictor of greater health, wealth and fulfillment in the 21st century? Here it is.
Self-Mastery.
Scientists who study self-mastery call it self-regulation (or self-control), and it’s the ability to get yourself to consistently behave in ways that move you toward your long-term goals and aspirations rather than away from them.
It’s the ability to set a course of action and keep moving forward no matter how hard it gets or how unmotivated you feel.
It’s the ability to recognize and overcome your negative habits, so you can intentionally create the amazing life you’ve always imagined.
It’s the ability to say no in the face of increasing temptation from slick marketers and global companies who care much more about their bottom line than your long-term health and financial security.
It’s the ability take sustained action toward your goals in the face of self-doubt and the endless array of distractions imposed by more and more technology.
I may be overstating this, but I believe it to be true. More than any other time in history, self-mastery is the essential skill that can rescue humanity from its path of overindulgence, under-regulation and certain self-destruction.
Self-mastery is such an important skill that one expert on the subject – Professor Roy Baumeister, PhD – says that a lack of self-mastery is “the major social pathology of our time.”
“One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.”
- Buddha -
6 Keys to Being Excellent at Anything
From Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything by Tony Schwartz.
1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That’s when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4.5 hours a day.
4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It’s also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them — build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.
Inspirational Video: Wisdom from Will Smith
If you’re a Will Smith fan, and even if you’re not, you’ll find the bits of wisdom in this video quite inspiring. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:
“You don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built.’ You don’t start there. You say ‘I’m gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid,’ and you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall.”
Gandhi’s Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World
I love this. Download it, and get it printed at Kinko’s. Compliments of francesca.
