Tiny Buddha

Tag: Motivation

  • Where Our Strength Comes from and What It Means to Be Strong

    Where Our Strength Comes from and What It Means to Be Strong

    “Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you thought you couldn’t.” ~Rikki Rogers

    A friend recently asked me: Andi, where does your strength come from?

    It took me a while before I had a good enough answer for her. I sat contemplating the many roads I’ve traveled, through my own transformational journey and the inspirational journeys of all my clients who demonstrate incredible strength for me.

    I moved to a different country, alone, at eighteen years old and have changed careers, battled a complex pain diagnosis with my child, and lost loved ones. I am now living through a global pandemic, like all of us, and most recently, I am recovering from a traumatic, unexpected surgery. Life has many surprises for us, indeed.

    So where does strength really come from?

    I wish I knew the precise answer to this question so that I could share the secret sauce with you right now, and you could have full access to all the strength you’ll ever need to achieve whatever it is that you really want. (Even the deeply challenging stuff and the tremendously scary stuff. All of it.)

    I do know this:

    Strength is a personal measurement for a truly unique, subjective experience. It’s entirely up to you to decide what strong means for you.

    And I also know this…

    Strength comes from doing hard things. It comes from showing up despite the pain or fear and going through the struggle, the endurance, and then building on that, to keep going forward and upward.

    Strength comes from taking the time to notice and acknowledge what you have managed to do and accomplish until now. So much of the time we go through things without realizing what massive effort something took, and we minimize the entire experience because we only focus on the end result and not the process.

    Strength comes from paying close attention to the small but significant steps and wins and incremental gains along the way. Strength comes from tracking progress and celebrating it one tiny bit at a time.

    Strength comes from within—from moments of activating your highest faith and belief. Knowing why you do what you do, even when it’s not easy.

    Strength comes from aligning with your core values and living with integrity even when no one is watching, and you aren’t in the mood. When we connect to what truly matters to us, we are stronger. When we believe there is a bigger plan and are hopeful about an outcome, we feel stronger. Even if we don’t know why.

    Strength comes from without—by surrounding ourselves with people who lift us up and see our worth, even when we sometimes forget. It comes from choosing to envelop yourself with kindness, inspiration, motivation, and gratitude. It comes from selecting role models and learning from them. It comes from seeing ourselves through others’ eyes—especially those who see our greatness and light when all we see is our flaws, weaknesses, and shortcomings.

    Strength comes from grabbing lessons and blessings, often dressed up as awful mistakes and painful failures.

    Strength comes from collecting moments you are genuinely proud of and taking the time to truly recognize these events for what they are and what they enabled you to accomplish. Don’t overlook them. You get to use these strengths in countless ways and in other areas of your life as much as you want to.

    Strength comes from knowing yourself. As you begin to discover and unmask more of you, you get to make choices that honor more of you, and you get to live your purpose and be more of who you really are. When we know better, we do better.

    The strongest people I know have had insurmountable trials. They know what to say yes to and how to say no. They know how to be proud of themselves with humility and honesty. They know how to pick their circles wisely and accept help, compliments, and advice.

    The strongest people I know cry a lot and feel everything.

    The strongest people I know are the kindest.

    The strongest people I know have wells of inner resources that are invisible to the naked eye.

    The strongest people I know can say sorry and forgive others.

    The strongest people I know can forgive themselves.

    The strongest people I know fall down hard, and slowly, with every ounce of courage, bravery, and might, find a way to get back up again, battered, bruised, and aching.

    The strongest people I know have incredible hearts that expand wider with each hurdle.

    The strongest people I know have endured so much and yet still find their smile to light up the world for others.

    The strongest people I know teach me every single day how to try and be just a little bit stronger myself.

  • How I Found My Place in the World When I Felt Beaten Down by Life

    How I Found My Place in the World When I Felt Beaten Down by Life

    “Some people are going to reject you simply because you shine too bright for them. That’s okay. Keep shining.” ~Mandy Hale

    After I finished school, I was excited about moving forward with life.

    I thought about the career that I hoped to have, where I hoped to live, and the things that I wanted to accomplish.

    After starting off as a secondary high school English teacher and becoming disappointed with the ongoing changes in the public school system, I went to graduate school for law. I thought it would open up a lot of possibilities, but it did not.

    I never had any dream of being an attorney in a courtroom. Instead, I always wanted to work in Europe or South America with people from different cultures, nationalities, and backgrounds. I wanted to make a positive difference in a humanitarian way by working with people personally to implement change and improve their lives.

    Life had something different in store for me, though. I ended up being rejected endlessly, well over a thousand times for every application that I sent out over a period of years.

    Disillusionment set in. There was the feeling of “why even continue to try anymore?” As the rejections piled up, friends that I had known for years began leaving as well. Their calls and visits became less frequent. They moved on with their lives, careers, marriages, and kids.

    I felt left behind and rejected not just by jobs, but by life in general. The hurts and betrayals were leading me to lose my passion and enthusiasm. Then there were the callous remarks from friends, people in the local community, when I asked if they knew of a position, former professors who couldn’t assist in any way now that I’d graduated, college career center advisors, and even extended family members.

    It took time, but I finally came to the realization that those who were endlessly rejecting me weren’t the ones who really mattered. I would keep shining brightly with or without them.

    Here are the four things that helped me to finally “reject” the non-acceptance and rejection that I was experiencing from others.

    1. Realize that “there is no box.”

    Our background, degrees, friends, teachers, families, and the larger culture as a whole try to get us to conform to a narrow set of parameters. If you went to school to be a teacher, you have to be a teacher.  If you studied to be an auto mechanic, you have to be an auto mechanic. And you have to live in this place or this country, because that’s where your family have always lived.

    Someone once told me, “there is no box.” Society tries to “box” us in and to restrict us to defining ourselves within certain narrow limits. However, I realized that there really is “no box,” and that I could apply my skills and talents in other ways and in other places.

    I didn’t have to conform to where I was or seek acceptance from those who were currently around me.

    I started meeting new people and looking at other places and countries, and I stopped trying to seek the acceptance of those who had already decided that they weren’t going to accept me for who I was. The employers, institutions, and agencies told me I was  “overqualified” or that that there were “many qualified candidates” and I hadn’t been considered, or they’d keep my resume on file.

    It was as though no matter what I accomplished and no matter how hard I worked, it was never “the right skill set” or “enough” for the particular place or person that I was submitting to.

    In a way, I came to accept their rejection, because I knew that the answer was getting out of my box and realizing that someone else would be more than happy to accept me for who I was.

    2. Let go of the need for approval by others.

    Letting go of the need for approval opens up exciting new doors. We are finally free to be who we really are.

    I wanted to live up to the expectations of family and society. I think that’s why it hurt so much to receive so many rejections over such a long period of time. I wanted to be “successful” according to society’s expectations. I wanted to follow the path of what everyone told me was a “regular” and “secure” life.

    I’ve since realized that I get to define success for myself.

    Success, for me, means doing what I love—teaching, reading, traveling, meeting and working with people from throughout the world, studying languages, and experiencing different cultures.

    Everything changed for me when I decided to live my life on my terms now rather than looking for a company, agency, government institution, or some other entity to provide me with the chance or opportunity. I wasn’t going to wait for permission from someone or something else.

    I also realized I can use my skills in the world outside of the narrow and limited context of the jobs and people who were rejecting me.

    For example, I can teach, and I can work to help others, but it doesn’t have to be within the rigid structure of the public education system.

    I can use the skills that I’ve acquired to be a global citizen and to learn and grow every day without confining myself to the parameters of one place, country, or culture. I can be an amalgamation of all of them, as I continue to grow as a person, both personally and professionally, but on my own terms, not those that are dictated to be by someone or something else.

    As I let go of the need for others to approve of me, my world expanded, because now I could go after those things in life that I was passionate about rather than just trying to conform and satisfy others.

    3. Start journaling.

    Journaling and connecting with our true selves, and what really brings us joy, can make us value ourselves again in spite of any opposition and rejection that we experience from the world.

    It can also help us reconnect with the things we used to love when we were younger—the passions we lost after going through years of school and trying to do what we thought we had to do in order to be successful in the eyes of society.

    Journaling helped me get back to my uniqueness as a person and was what really motivated and inspired me. It helped me pay attention to what made me happy again and those things that I’d really like to do or accomplish.

    I was inspired by my experiences in the world that were outside of my comfort zone and by the rich and varied cultures and experiences that were waiting out there. As I continued journaling, I also realized I’d always been inspired by the possibility of teaching and helping others, but in an international capacity.

    As a result, I’ve had the opportunity to help students with autism, to teach English to students and adults internationally, and to write for a variety of places abroad that did accept and value my work. However, I would never have explored these aspects of myself if I had been accepted by those who were rejecting me. Which means really, their rejections were blessings in disguise.

    4. Support those who support you.

    “Your circle should want to see you win.  Your circle should clap the loudest when you have good news.  If they don’t, get a new circle.” ~Wesley Snipes

    We can reject rejection by supporting those who support us through both the good and the more difficult times in our lives. Why support those who are only there for you when life is good?

    The hard times made me realize who really was on my side. The people who stayed with me and continued to believe in me supported me through both the victories and the disappointments. There was a tremendous difference between those individuals and others who no longer answered calls or emails, except when I was “successful.”

    Now, I may not have as many friends as I once did, but those that I do have are an important part of my circle and people that I can rely on.

    Someone once told me, “Now I know who the true believers are.” I feel that way about those who have proudly celebrated my successes and have also been there for me during my darkest moments.

    I hope you’re fortunate enough to have people in your life who genuinely support you, even if it’s only one person. If you don’t, try to open yourself up to new people, and stop giving your energy to people who accept you conditionally or regularly disappoint you. Creating a supportive circle begins with that first step of making a little room.

    —

    It wasn’t easy for me to overcome rejection and non-acceptance, and I still struggle with it at times. No one wants to feel left out or like a failure. But I’ve realized I can only fail by society’s terms if I accept them—and I don’t.

    Instead, I’ve rejected the “box” other people tried to impose on me, gotten outside my comfort zone, let go of the need for approval, started rediscovering what excites me, and shifted my focus to those people who have always supported me, regardless of what I’ve achieved. And I’m far happier for it.

  • How to Motivate Yourself with Kindness Instead of Criticism

    How to Motivate Yourself with Kindness Instead of Criticism

    “I don’t always make the best choices, but today I choose compassion over intolerance, sympathy over hatred, and love over fear.” ~LJ Vanier

    It’s crazy to me now, to look back and realize how freaking hard I was on myself for decades.

    Had I ever talked to anyone else the way I talked to myself, it would surely have left me friendless and jobless, and I definitely would have been kicked out of school.

    Basically, I was a bully. Just to myself.

    If I said something awkward, I called myself an idiot.

    When I couldn’t find the motivation to clean my house, I called myself a lazy slob.

    If I wasn’t invited to a party, I told myself it’s because no one liked me.

    When work projects were hard, and I had to make it up as I went, I told myself that I was going to get fired as soon as my boss figured out that I had no idea what I was doing.

    My parents set high expectations of me. A’s were rewarded and B’s were questioned: “Why didn’t you get an A?”

    They are successful, intelligent people (who somehow also are able to keep a clean house, like all the time), so if I did anything that didn’t meet what I assumed were their expectations, I told myself, “I’m not good enough, I’ll never be good enough.”

    At a certain point, I realized this “strategy” wasn’t working out for me.

    It wasn’t making me any smarter or more successful.

    It wasn’t making people like me more.

    It wasn’t getting my house any cleaner.

    What it was doing was making me feel like crap. Every day. And it got old.

    Looking back, I realize now my catalyst for change was when I finally pushed past my social anxiety and found the courage to take classes at the gym.

    I found that I performed better when in a group because of the positive energy of people cheering me on.

    After a while I noticed I didn’t cheer people on quite as much as they cheered me on, and since it felt good for me to hear it, I busted through my fears and started cheering on everyone else in the class.

    It felt really good.

    It felt even better when it dawned on me that I could talk to myself that way too.

    And that is what self-compassion really is.

    What is Self-Compassion, Anyway?

    Self-compassion is speaking to yourself as kindly and empathetically as you would a friend.

    It involves consciously directing kindness inward.

    Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing challenges are all inevitable parts of life, so they’re gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of their expectations.

    Therefore, they speak in kind words—intentionally—to themselves.

    It is recognizing the shared humanity in our suffering and difficult experiences.

    When we’re being compassionate toward someone who is going through a hard time or has made a mistake, we say things like:

    • “You’re not alone.”
    • “Everyone makes mistakes.”
    • “You’re only human.”
    • “I’ve been there too.”

    Because there is comfort in recognizing that pain and making mistakes is part of life, it’s part of the process, it’s how we grow, and we all do it—literally every human.

    When we don’t take the time to say that to ourselves when we misstep, we feel isolated, and isolation breeds shame and separation and makes us feel worthless.

    Why We Are So Darn Hard on Ourselves

    We live in a success-driven, “no pain no gain,” “win at all costs,” “if you have time to lean you have time to clean,” “failure isn’t an option” kind of culture.

    There is nothing wrong with pushing ourselves and driving success.

    The problem is, we are a mimicking species, and when all we see are examples of people being hard on themselves and few or no examples of people being kind to themselves, we don’t know what that looks like.

    So the idea of self-compassion is foreign to most people. As such, we have these misconceptions that keep us from being self-compassionate.

    Myth #1: I need high self-esteem to feel good about myself.

    One of the biggest misconceptions about self-compassion is that it is the same as self-esteem.

    We grow up believing that high self-esteem is the key to feeling good about ourselves.

    The problem is, in our culture, to have high self-esteem, we have to be above average or special in some way.

    It’s almost an insult to be considered “average.” If someone were to say, “There’s nothing special about her” that would make a person feel especially bad.

    So, by this measure, self-esteem is conditional to everyone else’s status in comparison to ours. Our self-esteem (and therefore self-worth) go up and down as those around us go up and down.

    That’s why there are so many bullies in our society—because putting others down is one way to make your self-esteem go up.

    (There are literally studies showing an increase in bullies and narcissism in our society in the past several years, and many psychologists point to the “self-esteem” movement as a big factor.)

    Myth #2: I need to be hard on myself, or I’ll let myself get away with anything.

    A lot of people have the misconception that self-compassion is self-indulgence.

    They worry that they could be too self-compassionate and too soft on themselves, that they need to be hard on themselves in order to keep on track.

    But self-compassion enhances motivation, it doesn’t hinder it.

    Let’s say your friend is upset that she texted someone, and they haven’t texted her back.

    Do you say to her, “That’s probably because you did something wrong. I bet she doesn’t like you anymore, or maybe she never really did. You should apologize even though you don’t know what you did wrong, since she is most likely mad at you for something.”

    Absolutely not!

    Not only is it a mean thing to say, you know objectively that this is almost certainly not true.

    You would likely say, “I know that feeling too. I get disappointed when I don’t get a response from someone. But she likely forgot or is busy, just like a lot of people. Her not replying isn’t a reflection of you, it’s an inaction by her. Don’t worry, she still might message you back, or you can message her again later!”

    Which one of those feels more motivating? Which one feels more stressful?

    Which way do you talk to yourself when you slip up?

    The motivational power of your inner bully comes from fear, whereas the motivational power of self-compassion comes from love.

    How to Practice Self-Compassion

    1. Mindfully recognize when you hear your inner critic talking.

    We get so used to using negative self-talk that we don’t even notice it. We just run with the critical stories we’re telling ourselves.

    But you can’t change anything unless you recognize when you’re doing it by mindfully bringing attention to your thoughts, without judgment.

    First, notice how you feel. Because self-criticism feels crappy. That’s your sign that you need to do a little mindful digging.

    Now, the best tool you can use when you get that sign is to ask, “What is the story I’m telling myself?”

    • The story I’m telling myself is that people at work think I’m a fraud because I’m making everything up as I go, and I’m not giving myself any credit for all that I do know and have achieved.
    • The story I’m telling myself is that I’m not a good mom because I let my house get messy, and I’m not thinking about how happy and healthy my kids actually are.
    • The story I’m telling myself is that I’ll never lose weight because I ate those cookies, and I’m not giving myself permission to make a mistake.

    What is the story you’re telling yourself, and what language are you using to tell it?

    2. Understand the positive intent behind your negative self-talk.

    This is going to help you reframe your negative self-talk into self-compassion.

    Let’s say you’ve been wanting to lose weight, but you look down and realize you just ate an entire box of cookies.

    And now your harsh inner critic is saying, “You’re disgusting, you’ll never be able to lose weight, you have no self-control, this is why you’re so fat.”

    Again, words we would never say to someone else.

    What is the positive intent, what is that self-critic voice trying to achieve?

    • It wants me to be more conscious of when I’m eating and what I’m eating.
    • It wants me to be a little stronger when I have these cravings so I can lose weight.
    • It wants me to make a better choice in the future.

    Right? It’s not trying to beat you up for the sake of beating you up. That voice has a purpose, it’s just using the wrong words.

    3. Reframe that positive intent with self-compassion.

    Restate what your self-critic is saying with the voice of self-compassion by talking to yourself as you would a friend or loved one, recognizing the shared humanity in the experience, and consoling in the fact that this too shall pass.

    Can you look inward and say, “I see what you’re doing here. Thanks, subconscious, for the reminder, I know you’re just looking out for me. Now that we’ve heard what you have to say through the self-critic voice, let’s hear what the self-compassion voice has to say…”

    What would that sound like?

    “I get it, I’ve had a stressful day, I skipped lunch, and I’m tired, so I just fell back on an old habit—I made a mistake. Now that I know why I ate all those cookies, I can make a better decision tomorrow. All is not lost.”

    Which one of these feels better? Which one would motivate you to do better tomorrow?

    4. If you think you can’t be self-compassionate…

    If and when during this growth process, you find yourself thinking, “I just can’t stop talking to myself in that negative way, it doesn’t feel natural to speak positively to myself,” I want you to understand two things…

    First, self-compassion is a habit.

    That negative self-talk you’ve been doing for years has simply become a habit.

    It’s become your habitual reaction to stress, adversity, and failure. And that’s what we’re doing here: breaking old habits and creating new ones.

    It will be a challenge at first, as are all new habits. But with some practice, this is going to get easier and easier. It’s making self-compassion your new default mode.

    It will feel weird and unnatural at first. Don’t let that make you think it isn’t working. The more you practice this, the more you are training your brain to focus on compassionate self-talk instead of criticism, meaning you’ll spend less and less time with that critical language and more time with the compassionate language. In time, this will become your new, natural response.

    Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you say, “Hm, if I did that a year ago, I would have beat myself up for days. Good for me!”

    Second, you have a natural negativity bias that is working hard right now.

    When you feel like you can’t be self-compassionate, understand our natural negativity bias.

    We all have a negativity bias. It’s there with the intention to keep us safe. Your ancestors who were on the lookout for mountain lions lived longer than those who sniffed flowers all day.

    But we are centuries beyond the point in our evolution where we need to be on guard in order to keep safe at all times. When you’re living with chronic stress and anxiety, your negativity bias is sticking in the on position.

    Meaning, all you can see are threats. What could go wrong. What is wrong. What might be wrong. If you get a ninety on a test, you look at that ten that you missed and not the ninety that you achieved.

    Know that you have blinders on to positivity, that your negativity bias is making you focus solely on challenges instead of achievements.

    It’s what I call wearing poop-colored glasses instead of rose-colored glasses. Mindfully notice when you’re wearing them. Then take the glasses off! (They smell and they aren’t helping anything, anyway!)

  • How to Stop Procrastinating When Things Feel Hard or Scary

    How to Stop Procrastinating When Things Feel Hard or Scary

    “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise L. Hay

    I dreamed of starting my own business for years. Ten years, exactly.

    While there are a few reasons it took so long to take the plunge, procrastination is at the top of the list.

    It’s hard work to change careers, uncomfortable to leave a steady paycheck, and nerve-wracking to think of failure.

    Even after spending months and years learning, studying, and getting certified, when it was no longer a matter of having the skills, the uncertainty of success was enough for me to keep kicking the can down the road to start marketing myself.

    I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of not being perfect. I was afraid that people would think I was a joke. And I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be capable of all the work it entailed.

    So I dragged my feet and kept passing my work off to “Future Me.”

    I did this for everything, though.

    “Tomorrow Sandy” can do the dishes. She’ll take care of scheduling that doctor’s appointment. Oh, and sign her up for that tough conversation I need to have with my mom too.

    At one point I recognized that I often procrastinated because I needed everything to be perfect.

    • I wouldn’t work on a craft project or cook a new recipe unless I knew it would come out flawless.
    • Or I would keep tweaking projects at work up to the last second and beyond, at the sacrifice of getting more work done.
    • Or I would agonize over every text and email I sent, often opting not to send any message unless I knew exactly what to say.

    But, as you can see, I’ve come a long way from that version of me.

    I’ve since started my own business (and I’m loving it!), and I’ve pulled my best tools together on paper for how to stop procrastinating—even though I actually procrastinated on writing this post (ironic, I know!).

    Today, I didn’t let my fear of “good enough” hold me back from sharing actual, helpful advice and mindset shifts to get moving and stop staying stuck.

    Because when we’re stuck, we start telling ourselves stories. So that’s where we’ll start, with this story we tell ourselves about why we procrastinate.

    What We Think Procrastination Is

    We have this misconception that procrastination is laziness.

    But procrastination is an active process. You choose to do something else instead of the task that you know you should be doing.

    In contrast, laziness is not caring. It’s apathy, inactivity, and an unwillingness to act. It’s an “I could, I just don’t wanna” kind of attitude.

    But when you’re procrastinating, you feel even more stressed because you do care about getting the task done. You’re just avoiding stress and having difficulty with motivation.

    Because that is why we procrastinate.

    What Procrastination Really Is and Why We Do It

    Procrastination is a stress-avoidance technique. It is an active process to temporarily avoid discomfort.

    We subconsciously are saying, “Present Me is not willing to experience this discomfort, so I will pass it on to Future Me.”

    (We do this as though we’re asking a stranger to do the work for us. Researchers have seen on fMRI that when we think about our future selves, it lights up the same part of the brain as when we think about strangers.)

    The really cool news is that by working toward overcoming your procrastination habit, you’re building your overall resilience to distress.

    That is how I define resilience: a willingness to experience discomfort.

    Examples of Procrastination

    Procrastination is tricky. Sometimes it’s obvious that we’re doing it. Sometimes we don’t quite realize it (like when I had to water the plants right then and there instead of writing this blog post).

    So here are some examples:

    • Scrolling through Instagram instead of getting started on important tasks
    • Putting off work assignments until the last minute
    • Wanting to start a new positive habit (dieting, exercising, or saving money), but repeatedly delaying it while telling yourself that “I’ll start soon”
    • Wanting to start a business but wasting time in “research mode” instead of taking action
    • Doing an easy, less important task that “needs to be done” before getting started
    • Waiting until you’re “in the mood” to do the task

    5 Steps to Stop Procrastinating

    Now that we know what it is and why we do it, let’s look at how to stop.

    1. Motivate yourself with kindness instead of criticism.

    What really holds us back from moving forward is the language we use when talking to ourselves.

    Thoughts like:

    • I don’t want to.
    • It will be hard.
    • I don’t know how to do it.
    • It might not come out as good as I want it to.
    • I’ll probably fail.
    • This will be so boring.

    This is what we think that drives us to procrastinate. I mean, really, when you read those thoughts, they just feel so demotivating, right?

    This negative self-talk has a good intent. It is trying to save us from discomfort.

    Unfortunately, it’s achieving the opposite because it adds to the stress by making us feel bad.

    If you speak to yourself with kindness, just as you would a friend, it will feel so much more motivating.

    So think about what you would say to that friend. It might sound like:

    • I get it, it will be uncomfortable, but you’ll be done soon and then you can relax.
    • Once you get started, it will be easier.
    • You can do it!!
    • If it doesn’t come out perfect, at least you’ll have practiced more.
    • If you fail, you’ll have learned so much.

    2. Create a pattern interrupter.

    That negative self-talk has simply become part of your procrastination habit.

    Because that is what procrastination becomes—a habit—and habits are comprised of a cue, a routine, and a reward.

    • The cue is thinking about a task that needs to be done.
    • The routine is to speak that negative self-talk that leads to procrastination.
    • The reward is less stress. (Not no stress, because avoiding the task is still somewhat stressful because we know it eventually needs to be done.)

    In order to break the habit and create a new one, you need to introduce a pattern interrupter.

    Mel Robbins has a great one she calls the 5 Second Rule. When you think “I should do this,” before the negative self-talk starts in, count backwards, “5-4-3-2-1-GO” and move.

    I find this helpful when I’m having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.

    If I’m having trouble getting motivated to do something difficult like write a post about procrastination, my pattern interrupter is “I can do hard things.” Not only am I interrupting the pattern, I’m motivating myself positively as well.

    If I’m having trouble doing a boring and tedious task like my taxes, I use something like “I’m willing to be uncomfortable now so that Future Me can be at peace.”

    3. Break down the task.

    One of the big drivers of procrastination is overwhelm. Overwhelm happens when we’re looking at a project in full scope, either not knowing where to start or feeling like all the work involved will be too much.

    If the next task at hand is too big, or if you don’t know where to start, your first task really is to either 1) make a list, or 2) figure out the smallest thing you can do first.

    The whole house is a mess? I bet you know where that one sock goes!

    Another example, I had social anxiety and going to the gym was overwhelming to me.

    So I broke it down into:

    • I just need to put gym clothes in my car, that’s it.
    • I just need to drive to the gym. I can turn around if I want once I get there.
    • I just need to walk in the door. I can always leave.
    • I just need to get changed in the locker room I can do that.

    Honestly, I never turned around and went home. Because once I’d taken the small, easy step, the next small easy step was doable.

    Which leads me to the next step…

    4. Just commit to five minutes.

    Studies show that if we commit to five minutes only, 80% of us are likely to continue with the task.

    Five minutes is nothing. You can do anything for five minutes.

    There is an 80% chance you’ll continue working once you put in those five minutes, but even if you don’t, you’re still five minutes closer to your goal.

    And, you’ve taken one more step to breaking the old habit of not starting.

    It’s a big win-win!

    5. Reward yourself or make the task more enjoyable.

    Another problem with looking at a big task in scope instead of the next five minutes is that the reward is too far away or not satisfying enough.

    When you’re trying to lose weight, twenty pounds is weeks and months away.

    Or, when you’re putting off your taxes, if you aren’t expecting a return then the reward is “not going to jail.”

    So bringing in more rewards sooner will fast track creating the new habit of getting started.

    But also, making the task itself more pleasant will make it a less monotonous task.

    • To write this post, I put on my softest bathrobe and grabbed my baby’s tub from when he was an infant to make an Epsom salt foot bath under my desk while I write.
    • I’ll be starting my taxes in the next few weeks, and I already plan to have a glass of wine and super fancy cheese and crackers while I sit down to do them.
    • I save listening to super nostalgic nineties music for when I’m exercising just so that it makes that time extra special and fun.

    What Would Open Up for You If You Stopped Procrastinating?

    We spend so much more time avoiding the discomfort of a task than we do stepping into what it will be like once the task is complete.

    If you were to stop procrastinating, what would open up in your life?

    • Would you start your business because you’re no longer afraid of experiencing any discomfort if you “fail”?
    • Would you simply enjoy life more if you weren’t in a perpetual state of stress because there is a list of things you’re putting off?
    • Would you finally lose weight or get in shape and feel good once you push through being able to get started?

    The Bottom Line

    Procrastination is an active process to temporarily avoid discomfort (it is not laziness!)

    By overcoming your procrastination habit, you are building your emotional resilience.

    Notice the negative, demotivating self-talk and motivate yourself with kindness over criticism.

    Create a pattern interrupter before the negative self-talk starts weighing you down.

    Commit to just five minutes and you’ll either keep going to do more, or you’ll at least be five minutes closer to done.

    Reward yourself or make the task more enjoyable so there is less discomfort to avoid.

  • How to Make Progress On the Goals You’re Tempted to Give Up On

    How to Make Progress On the Goals You’re Tempted to Give Up On

    “To create more positive results in your life, replace ‘if only’ with ‘next time’.” ~Celestine Chua

    Most of us start each year with good intentions. We have a list of things we’re going to start or stop doing. The year feels fresh, and it’s time to be the person that we’ve always wanted to be.

    At some point in the year the shine wears off and we start to go back to old patterns and behaviors. Some of us even write off the entire year if we’ve failed at our new years resolutions by the time we hit February, and decide to try again next year. Holding on to the idea that a new year somehow magically makes it possible for us to do better, we postpone change to a later date.

    This is a little trick we play on ourselves; it’s a way to opt out of truly engaging in our lives. We’re effectively cheating ourselves and switching off because it’s too hard to keep showing up.

    I used to do this every year. I’d set myself impossible goals in January and then as soon as I fell off the wagon, it would be game over.

    I’d commit to having no chocolate ever again and then not only eat one but the entire box. I then decided I’d “broken the seal and might as well carry on eating,” I then declared that resolution out of date and postponed it to the following year.

    I’d commit to going to the gym three times per week when I know in my heart that I am not a gym person, and then spend the first six weeks of the year finding reasons and ways to talk myself out of it.

    I’d obsess about maintaining daily writing streaks because I knew I felt better when I journaled every day, but as soon as I missed a day I’d give up and not touch it until I bought yet another brand new journal to write in for the next year.

    My intentions would often fall outside of my circle of influence—for example, deciding that I was going to improve my relationship with my sister by myself, without even talking to her about it so that the onus was on me. Of course, as soon as we had an argument I’d give up because it was “too hard.”

    I was always so hard on myself, expecting that somehow I’d magically become this healthy eating, exercise obsessed, creative and brilliant being just by deciding to do so on the first day of the year.

    Worse still, I wouldn’t acknowledge that I was probably already a creative and brilliant being, who just needed to unlock these qualities from within herself, because I was too busy scolding myself for not maintaining a streak or meeting impossible goals.

    Sound familiar? How do we break this cycle?

    1. Set kinder, more manageable intentions.

    I’ve found that if I want to be healthier, I need to choose a small goal that’s aligned with that rather than something so big it feels too hard to do. So my intention this month, for example, is to do three minutes of meditation every day, or as many days as I can manage.

    The length of time is small so it feels achievable. More importantly, it’s not about having a streak, but about showing up as many days as I can, even if I miss a day or two here or there.

    2. Review regularly and gently.

    I then check in every week and reflect on how it’s going with my intentions. I’ll celebrate the three or four times I managed to actually commit to them, and gently look at how I might be able to increase that number. What’s getting in the way of me meditating seven days a week? Am I rushing too much in the morning? How could I improve that situation? Or do I feel comfortable with the amount I’m doing and can I celebrate that it’s working?

    3. Find a cheer squad.

    I’ve noticed if I’ve told somebody else that I’m going to do something there’s a little more gentle pressure to actually do it. It’s not that the other person would be judgmental if I didn’t, but that I’ve verbalized and created this intention outside of myself—and I know that there’s a cheer squad or cheerleader waiting to tell me what a great job I did.

    4. Become a cheerleader.

    By the same token, supporting other people with their intentions and goals has brought me more focus on my own. Every time members of my online community check in with me to tell me about how they are doing with their intentions so I can cheer them on, it’s a gentle and kind reminder that I also have my own to progress and share with them.

    5. Have a plan for when things go wrong.

    One of the main reasons we give up on things is that we don’t have a plan for when things go wrong. If I come home late because of a hard day and I haven’t already planned a healthy meal that’s easy to make (or already prepared), then it’s almost a guarantee that I won’t have the energy to think about it and will order a pizza. If I haven’t planned for the possibility of this sort of thing happening, I’m not even equipped to deal with it.

    The beauty of this is you learn as you go along. Sometimes things happen that you’re not prepared for and you act out of alignment with your intentions, but then you can look at why it happened (review regularly and gently) and try to put a plan in place for next time.

    There will always be some scenarios you haven’t considered, but the pool will get smaller and you’ll be more prepared to stay true to yourself through adversity or temptation when you have plans in place.

    I now have emergency meals in my freezer for when I get home and feel too tired to think about what to eat. Obviously, if I really want a pizza, I still order one, but it’s this intentionality of making the choice and being prepared that allows me to feel good about that decision.

    6. Remember why you are doing this.

    If it starts to get stressful, then you’re making it too hard. Sometimes I get stressed about not having had time to fit in my meditation practice (mostly because I’ve made the mistake of leaving it until later in the day rather than doing it first thing). Getting stressed about something that is meant to make you less stressed doesn’t make any sense.

    If your goal is to be less stressed and you don’t have time to do the twenty-minute meditation you planned, why not breathe long and deep for one minute or thirty seconds? That counts. If your goal was to go to the gym and workout for an hour but the day got away from you, why not do five minutes of jumping jacks and running on the spot? That counts.

    If you remember your why, you’ll find a workaround that motivates and keeps you going.

    One way you can do this is to ask yourself the question: What would this look like if it was easy?

    Give yourself permission to break this annual cycle. Be gentler with yourself and just show up and do your best. Surround yourself with people who will cheerlead, and commit to learning every time things don’t go to plan. It’s not about whether this is your year. It’s about the fact that this is your life. Go get it with kindness in your heart.

  • Ask Why: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Going When Things Get Hard

    Ask Why: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Going When Things Get Hard

    “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

    My father was an amazing man. I’m sure most sons think that about their fathers, but it’s a belief held by more than just myself. I’m not saying he was a great father, but he was a great man.

    He was a Vietnam veteran, a carpenter, and a social paragon in the small town I grew up in. Our neighbors declared him the “Mayor of Bluebank” (the road he lived on.) His funeral was one of the most attended events that our small town in Kentucky had ever held.

    Dad believed in working hard, and, true to his word, his health began to sharply decline after having a lung removed (the unfortunate “cure” to lung cancer caused by Agent Orange exposure). He passed away on Veteran’s Day, 2012. A cruel twist of irony.

    I had the pleasure of working with my father on many projects, from building homes to cutting staves at a sawmill. I was fortunate to learn what a real work ethic looks like by working with Dad.

    When Things Seem Impossible

    Even though Dad isn’t here to give me advice, I still ask myself what he would do when I’m faced with something that seems impossible.

    “I feel too tired to work today…”

    “Where will I find energy to tackle this project?”

    “I don’t know where to start…”

    Everyone faces situations that seem impossible at times. It’s an unfortunate lack of grit and resilience that’s common to my generation.

    Luckily, I have one invaluable piece of advice that I managed to get from my father before he passed away.

    Advice on Working Hard

    When I was in my late teens and doing irresponsible crap, I once asked my father how he worked so hard. He enjoyed socializing on the weekends, but he seemed to enjoy working his butt off just as much (even with the occasional hangover.) I didn’t understand it.

    His response stuck with me. He smiled and told me, “Stop asking how I work so hard, son. Ask me why.” His response was rhetorical; he didn’t want me to actually ask him “why.” His point was that the reason he worked was how he found the energy to work.

    Dad’s wisdom didn’t quite click with me until my son was born. I’d always had what I considered an inherited strong work ethic, but it wasn’t truly tested until I was kept up all night for weeks on end with a crying baby.

    Babies, a Day Job, and a Side Gig

    It can be lonely at 3:34 a.m., especially when you’re awake with a crying newborn. The three minutes and fifty-five seconds it takes to heat four ounces of refrigerated breast milk can seem like an eternity when you want to go back to sleep.

    Once I manage to get the boy fed and back to sleep, I crawl into bed to wink before the alarm goes off at 6 a.m. so I can get ready for work. Quietly.

    In situations like this, energy at work can seem fleeting. You know your job performance is suffering, but you manage to grit your teeth and get back to it. Somehow. Your shift takes forty hours longer than it used to, but you push through.

    To top it off, I write articles in my downtime. That means research, writing, editing, submitting, promoting, etc. Work ethic seems like a stupid thing when the beautiful Siren of Sleep is calling you.

    Staying Strong to Get Things Done

    Fortunately, I remember the lessons that my father taught me. Not just, “If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re f*&^ed.”

    All I have to do is ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” when I feel like giving up.

    “Why am I working overtime at my day job?” So I can keep the heat on this winter for my family. So I can put food on the table.

    “Why am I pushing myself to write another article?” So I can build a business and legacy for my son. So I can spread ideas and wisdom.

    “Why am I feeding this thing that causes so much exhaustion and frustration?” Because it’s my son and I love him. I want him to grow up so I can teach him how to be a great person.

    Why Is “Why” So Powerful?

    Asking the wrong questions can get you stuck. We want to avoid questions that carry negativity.

    When you ask yourself why you’re doing something, you tend to attach a larger motivator to your actions. This becomes your motivating reason.

    Make sure you have a strong positive emotion attached to your motivating reason. When I ask myself why I’m doing something, it’s always attached to something large and promising, like my family and my future.

    A Recent Time When I Needed This Advice

    I was reading Smarter Faster Better, by Charles Duhigg, when I came across the following passage (edited for brevity):

    Quintanilla had been marching for two days by this point. He had slept less than four hours. His face was numb and his hands were covered with blisters and cuts from carrying water-filled drums across obstacles. […]

    “Why are you doing this?” Quintanilla’s pack buddy wheezed at him, lapsing into a call-and-response they had practiced on hikes. When things are at their most miserable, their drill instructors had said, they should ask each other questions that begin with “why.”

    “To become a Marine and build a better life for my family,” Quintanilla said.

    His wife had given birth a week earlier to a daughter, Zoey. […] If he finished the Crucible, he would see his wife and new child.

    If you can link something hard to a choice you care about, it makes the task easier[…] Make a chore into a meaningful decision, and self-motivation will emerge.

    My dad’s motivating reason was the same. He worked hard for his family.

    For the Impossible

    Going to work and writing articles with a newborn in the home is difficult, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.

    For the tasks that truly seem impossible, it’s important to break them into more manageable pieces. If I want to build a business so that I can eventually work from home, I can’t tackle the entire thing at once.

    Break your huge project into multiple SMART Goals—goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based (even if you have a newborn in the home). Don’t forget to ask why you pursue your “impossible” goal. The bigger the goal, the bigger your motivating reason will need to be.

    Check my goals again to see this tagging in action—I work overtime for food and electricity for my fiancé and my son. Not that big of a deal, still a big reason. I work on my articles so that I can grow my business and spread ideas. That’s a big deal to me, and ultimately a larger goal, so I have much larger motivating reasons.

    Find a Motivating Reason

    “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” ~John F. Kennedy

    Whether you have one purpose or multiple areas of your life that can give you incentives to tackle the impossible, find a reason and hold on to it.

    When things are getting too hard to move forward, when the baby is crying and you’re trying to get one more sentence typed out, when your day job seems like Hell and your alarm is the devil, just ask yourself why.

    The impossible becomes possible when you break it into manageable pieces and fuel the fire in your belly with a motivating reason. You’ll come out the other side of the “impossible” as a stronger person with more grit and resilience than you ever thought possible.

  • How a Hobby Can Boost Your Motivation and Change Your Life

    How a Hobby Can Boost Your Motivation and Change Your Life

    “If you want to be happy, be.” ~Leo Tolstoy

    We’ve all hit a low motivational point in our lives at one time or another. I am completely aware of that feeling of having nothing to fight for. In those reoccurring periods of despondency, I couldn’t find a reason to get myself out of bed.

    It’s funny that I got the life-changing question at a job interview. It was a stressful situation, and the hiring manager made it even more overwhelming when he looked at me straight in the eyes and asked: “What motivates you in life?”

    I can’t remember what I answered, but I do remember the devastation I felt from the true answer I found in me: “Nothing, nothing motivates me.”

    That was the turning point. Lots and lots of meditations later, I realized where all that frustration was coming from: I didn’t have a single thing that made me happy.

    Why was I so incomplete? I couldn’t get a job that made me feel useful, and all my friendships were superficial. I’ll spare you from the details of my reasoning process. I didn’t read, I didn’t write, I wasn’t trying to learn anything, I didn’t have a special someone in my life, and I didn’t have a hobby.

    A HOBBY! The sole thought of it made me burst in laughter. I’d never had a hobby. I basically had nothing to lose, so I decided I would give this idea a try. Picking a hobby was all I needed to do, and that’s how I ended up making endless reading lists.

    I found different reasons why I needed a hobby:

    It helps people express their creativity.

    I had an office job at the moment, and I was a total slave of routine. I needed that ‘escape’ activity that left me alone with my thoughts.

    I was already meditating every day, but I couldn’t call that a hobby… it was more like a responsibility for me. And, to be honest, it was making me even more miserable: I knew I needed a and I knew I didn’t have the courage to leave my job. A hobby like gardening, jewelry making, painting, knitting, or anything else related to creating would allow me to keep touch with the inner artist.

    That special activity clarifies the mind.

    It doesn’t matter what hobby I would pick. My options included reading, yoga, piano playing, running, or walking—all these activities have a meditative effect on the thoughts. The entire awareness is focused on the thing we are doing, and we can shut out every negative thought that was present before. In a way, when the hobby merges action and awareness, it becomes meditation in motion.

    Most hobbies have a social aspect.

    They give us the opportunity to interact with people who share our interests, so we develop connections that are not shallow at all. Let me tell you a secret: I have great communication with the people I met through Goodreads. We can Skype for hours and we never run out of topics. All discussions related to the activity I picked made me feel appreciated as part of something greater. That leads me to the next point:

    The hobby is a confidence-booster.

    When I realized I was good at something (other than my boring job), I started valuing myself as a person much more than before. In a way, I individualized myself in a non-egocentric way. When I opened the first page of War and Peace, I was hopelessly intimidated. When I finished it, I felt like my life was changed. Not because I read such an overwhelming book, but because I gained new perspectives through it. There is one word that conveys such an accomplishment: growth.

    Stress? No more!

    Trust me; I know how hard life gets sometimes. I’m the master of loss and heartache, but I realize that stress is an inseparable part of our existence. When people are immersed in a hobby, though, they find a simple relief. It’s like getting in a safe zone where stress has no access. When I return to my daily activities after a reading session, they no longer seem that problematic.

    When I was choosing my hobby, I knew it had to challenge me. I needed to pick something I always liked, but this activity was not supposed to be easy to conquer.

    Reading came as the natural response to my quest. It’s an activity that progressively gets more challenging, and it allows me to keep discovering new dimensions of the world that surrounds us. From Huxley to Orwell to Eco, I want to read everything! That’s what makes this hobby so motivating: the more progress I make, the greater challenges I need to face.

    From this point, I understand why I laughed at my realization that I needed a hobby: It was a subconscious reaction initiated by my fear of change and failure. I could find millions of excuses:

    I don’t have enough time for this.

    I’ll never make it through Tolstoy.

    I’m too busy looking for an actual job.

    I’m not smart enough to face Proust.

    At the end of the day, excuses don’t matter. I realized I needed to take action to make my life better, and that’s exactly what I did.

    Everything started with a reading list, which kept getting more and more extensive. Things didn’t stop with listing books I’ve read, though. This hobby helped me make friends, it made me a more confident person, and it eventually led me to inner harmony.

    From Hobby to Realization

    I don’t usually tell people how I met my partner. Mostly because I’m afraid the story is too much of a cliché. But, now is the right moment to share it: We met at a bookstore, buying the same book. Ironically enough, it was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

    He asked if he could add me as a friend on Goodreads, so we could share impressions. After the first 100 pages, I wrote an impression: I can literally feel my stomach dropping. I’m already crushed. He responded, and we had an arrangement for a coffee within hours. Everything was so spontaneous that I’m still surprised how I showed zero anxiety on the first ‘date’. We were madly in love from the first moment we met.

    This brings us to the lesson:

    • Passivity, inertia, excuses… we don’t need that stuff in our lives. What we need is an activity that makes our mind focused on something other than stress. A hobby.
    • I won’t lie: a hobby takes commitment. It’s not something you do in your free time; it’s something you make free time for. The first thing I did was an action plan. After I took the first step, nothing could stop me.
    • The hobby gives us a chance to open up to the world. Meet new people, see new places, learn new things, and become braver. We just need to grab that opportunity and stay spontaneous.

    When things get hopeless, I remind myself there’s a new reading challenge in front of me. The hobby is not a distraction; it’s a reminder that regardless of the struggles in our lives, we always have a spark that can brighten our days.

    With progressive steps and daily emergence in the hobby of choice, we can transfer that enthusiasm to every other activity we undertake. Suddenly, we will start feeling complete.

  • Your Story Doesn’t End Here

    Your Story Doesn’t End Here

    Keep Going

  • Create Lasting Habits: The 4 Psychological Triggers That Catalyze Change

    Create Lasting Habits: The 4 Psychological Triggers That Catalyze Change

    Man with Arms Raised Image

    “Things do not change; we change.” ~Henry David Thoreau

    The world knows no joy like an evangelist with an opening. My eyes lit up as I jumped into my sermon on the incredible power of lifestyle change.

    The year previous I had decided it was time to take charge of my health, and I had made some big changes.

    I transitioned to a whole food diet, put plants at the center of my plate, started meditating regularly, and began attending yoga classes multiple times a week.

    I was absolutely astounded at how the synergy of these three lifestyle changes completely transformed my quality of life.

    So when my friends began asking me to what I owed my newfound glow, I couldn’t wait to endow them with the key to lasting health, effortless weight loss, and inner peace.

    And so my lecture would begin. “It’s so simple! Just change your diet, start exercising, oh and don’t forget to meditate every day!”

    Can you guess how many people I converted? Not a one. My regretful interlocutor would begin to nervously shift their weight, looking for any opportunity to end the conversation.

    Finally, the realization made its way through my thick skull that everyone already knew that they should be eating right and exercising.

    The last thing they wanted was to listen to someone else preach the values of diet, meditation, and exercise—what they already knew that they should be doing.

    So I finally learned that knowledge isn’t enough to trigger a lifestyle change.

    Despite knowing full well the value of yoga, meditation, and eating veggies, few people are able to make and sustain such changes, especially with career obligations, social engagements, and the other demands of modern life.

    So I was left with a conundrum. What was it that had allowed me to make these changes? What was I missing in helping others to realize the same health benefits and increased quality of life?

    I became obsessed with answering these questions, and thus a quest was born. A few months later I packed up my life and moved to Arizona to work for a holistic healing center.

    I spent the next four years at the Tree of Life center in Patagonia, Arizona, where individuals are taught yoga, meditation, and a plant-based diet as a healing modality. I supported hundreds of people as they adopted the same lifestyle changes that I underwent, and the results have been powerful.

    But what I was most interested in exploring was not the effects of diet, yoga, and meditation, but rather understanding what allows individuals to make and sustain these changes in their lives.

    Why were some able to take these holistic health practices back into their busy everyday lives when they left the center? Why were some successful when others continued to struggle?

    I devoured every book on the science of behavior change that I could get my hands on, and had the incredible opportunity of applying the principles in a real life setting.

    The takeaway? Behavior change itself is a skill, and there are certain psychological triggers that we can employ to kickstart the process. Anyone can learn these triggers and cultivate the ability to make healthy changes that are sustainable and lasting.

    Here are the four best ways to catalyze change:

    1. Start small and celebrate success.

    Healthy habits are the bedrock of lasting and sustainable health. Why? Because once established, they no longer require willpower to maintain.

    But what is the best way to create a habit?

    Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg has pioneered an extremely effective behavior change method that he calls Tiny Habits.

    The premise? Start small and celebrate your successes.

    Want to cook more plant-based meals? Start with putting a recipe book out on the counter on Sundays.

    Want to start meditating? Start with just three breaths every time you sit down at the computer.

    These tiny actions may seem insignificant, but by starting small we remove the biggest barrier to change—simply getting started.

    Engineering (and celebrating) early success is key in reinforcing the creation of new habits and also motivates us to make bigger changes in the future.

    Tiny habits transform into big habits, which cascade into big life changes.

    2. Understand the motivation myth.

    The key to changing behavior is motivation, right? We need to be motivated to cook healthy food, to go to the gym, to wake up early and study.

    Not exactly.

    Motivation naturally waxes and wanes, and psychologists have found that trying to change how motivated you are at any given moment is hard. Really hard.

    The better bet is to use times of high motivation strategically.

    Everyone has periods of peak productivity, and the best way to leverage these times of high motivation is to do something that helps structure future behavior.

    Next time you find yourself having a super productive day, use that motivation to sign up for a weekly yoga class, invite an interested friend over to explore healthy cooking every Sunday, or plan a plant-based potluck.

    These are all examples of setting up future events that will help keep you on track. Using your existing motivation to create accountability and social support increases follow through.

    3. Get laser focused on one big win.

    The archnemesis of healthy change is a pernicious little devil called overwhelm.

    Take getting healthy for example: There are thousands of different dietary theories, conflicting health information, and more exercise programs than I can count.

    Should you be fasting one day a week? Eating a low-carb or low-fat diet? Doing yoga? Jumpstarting yourself with a cleanse? Doing three hours of cardio weekly? Eating plant-based meals? Weight training?

    The options are endless and analysis paralysis can easily set in.

    Focusing on one big win is about identifying what is going to give you the greatest result for the least amount of effort.

    For weight loss, a great “big win” is to focus on meals that are low in caloric density, i.e. plant-powered dishes which include a wide range of veggies, beans, grains, and greens.

    You can eat as much of these nourishing, delicious, hearty foods as you like and make sustainable progress toward your goal weight.

    Whatever your goal, find what gives you the biggest bang for your buck and ruthlessly cut back everything else.

    Simplicity empowers change.

    4. Learn one thing at a time.

    In their book Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard, authors Chip and Dan Heath share some surprising truths about change.

    For me, the most interesting revelation is as follows: What looks like resistance is actually a lack of clarity.

    When taking up healthy habits, there is almost always a learning curve.

    We might go the gym, but we don’t really know how to work out.

    We want to cook healthier meals, but the recipe is full of exotic ingredients we’ve never heard of before.

    And we most often resist making these changes not because we are unmotivated, but because we don’t see a clear path forward. We don’t know the exact steps to take to begin eating better, exercising, or sitting down to meditate.

    The best way to reduce the resistance and get started? Break down the task in front of you into baby steps and learn one thing at a time.

    If you are interested in cooking healthier meals, first learn how to shop. Add a new-to-you ingredient to your list every time you go to the store.

    Once shopping is a breeze, then devote time to learning to cook up a few quick, easy, and delectable healthy recipes.

    Breaking down the learning curve into easy, manageable steps is one of the best ways to catalyze change.

    The most important takeaway here is the understanding that behavior change is a skill that can be learned and cultivated.

    There is no secret source of motivation, willpower, or discipline that some have and others don’t. Apply these psychological triggers and you’ll be well on your way to creating healthy habits that are sustainable and lasting.

    Man with arms raised image via Shutterstock

  • A Powerful Way to Motivate Yourself to Pursue What You Want

    A Powerful Way to Motivate Yourself to Pursue What You Want

    Chances We Didn't Take

    “See the positive side, the potential, and make an effort.” ~Dalai Lama

    Until fairly recently, I was somewhat afraid of talking to girls.

    Well, that’s not exactly true. I was afraid of talking to girls if I had a romantic intent. If it was an innocuous conversation, I could be cool as a cucumber.

    As you can imagine, this stifled my romantic life somewhat. If I met someone and things were going well, once I realized that she liked me a little and I could move things forward, I would freeze up. Self-sabotage.

    This was very frustrating to me, and I know that I’m not the only one who has experienced this phenomenon. In some ways, it looks kind of like a classic case of “fear of success.” But in reality, it was more subtle than that. Consider the following situations:

    Scenario #1: Imagine that you see someone who you are attracted to walking down the street. You’d like to go strike up a conversation with this person, but you feel some anxiety. What if they don’t like you? How embarrassing it could be! Your mind fills with all kinds of negative thoughts.

    Scenario #2: Now imagine someone on their bike loses control and is barreling down the sidewalk toward them, but the object of your attention doesn’t notice. How much would you hesitate before yelling at them to move out of the way, or even to grab them and help move them out of harm’s way? I’ll bet you didn’t have to think twice.

    In each of these situations, the action that you want to take is to talk to someone who you are attracted to. But the intent behind each is incredibly different.

    I realized that when I wanted to talk to a girl in a romantic context, the intention behind my action centered on my wanting something from the girl. There was no malice or anything—it’s just that I felt as though I needed to “get” their romantic interest. It’s something I was “taking” from them.

    In hindsight, this was such a silly thing to believe! I must have felt that somehow I wasn’t good enough, that she wasn’t going to receive some benefit from talking to me. She would be doing me a favor by giving me attention, and I was somehow imposing a burden upon her.

    You can imagine how this intention might make me feel bad about going after what I want.

    But that need not be the intent that I go into the interaction with. I’m a pretty cool guy and I have a lot to offer. Instead of my intention being “I want to get her to like me,” why not “I want to make her smile,” or “I want to share my positivity with her”?

    When I started going into my interactions with women with a positive intent, the difference was extraordinary.

    I used to be far more hesitant, but why would I hesitate to share my positivity with someone? Most people are very welcome to having positive experiences, so why would I be nervous?

    That is the power of having a positive intent. But while dating may be one of the most obvious and easy to relate examples, this principle can be extended to many other areas of your life.

    It’s far easier to motivate yourself to take any action when you know you are doing so with a positive intent. And when you do take that action, you are more likely to be successful with it.

    Let’s say you are considering applying for a job that you think you’d love, but it might be a stretch to get it.

    You might be thinking something along the lines of “I want this job because I know I’ll get paid a lot and have a good time doing it. But they are asking for five-plus years of experience and I only have three, so maybe I shouldn’t bother…”

    It’s a very understandable intent (who doesn’t like getting paid and enjoying their work?), but it leads to a thought process that isn’t conducive to your success. You can see how much less likely it is that you’ll even apply for this job in the first place. And if you do apply, do you really think your best self will shine through?

    Far better would be to have a different intent: “I want this job so that I can make a positive contribution to an organization that I believe in.”

    Even if you don’t have all the experience that the job listing is asking for, you still want to contribute to this organization, so why wouldn’t you apply? And if you get an interview, you are far more likely to focus on how you can help the organization, and that will improve your chances of getting an offer.

    The next time you are feeling unmotivated or are anxious about doing something, examine your intentions.

    Getting yourself to actually pursue what you want could be as simple as reframing your intent.

    Regret quote image via Shutterstock

  • I Can, I Will

    I Can, I Will

    I Can I Will

    Source: NotSalmon.com

  • 5 Ways to Get Energized and Motivated When You Feel Lazy

    5 Ways to Get Energized and Motivated When You Feel Lazy

    “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

    Although laziness is common and a natural part of life, it has the potential to completely consume us.

    I personally have times where laziness causes me to feel trapped. No matter what I do, I cannot seem to shake it off. I feel tired, fall asleep constantly during the day, sit around a lot and feel unable to be active, avoid doing anything productive, and put on hold things that I want to accomplish.

    I believe there are two kinds of laziness. First, there’s the kind where you have been working your butt off for weeks and finally, after all your hard work, all you want to do is be lazy and do nothing.

    But then there’s the kind of laziness where you struggle to find motivation. Every time you think of something you would like to do or achieve, you cannot find the energy or drive to work toward it. This is the kind of laziness that I am talking about.

    Being lazy is actually quite draining and depressing. I know because I regularly find myself feeling so lethargic that even the simplest task seems like a challenge. I’m sure I’m not alone in this struggle.

    I have found five effective ways to overcome my laziness that I want to share with you so you can win your personal battle too.

    1. Focus on just a few things at a time.

    We often create a big list of things that we want to do and achieve. Focusing on two or three things at a time will allow you to feel less overwhelmed. Instead, you will feel motivated, as your goals will now seem so much more achievable.

    Out of the two sets of six-month goals below, which set gets you more motivated?

    Learn to play guitar, do well at work, and get fit.

    Learn to play guitar, do well at work, get fit, build big muscles, get better at singing, get top marks at school, learn how to draw better, and write a book.

    When I see the second list, I feel overwhelmed. When my life looks a bit like this, I usually don’t know where to start or if I can succeed at anything I’ve set out to do.

    People feel motivated when they feel they have a good chance of success.

    This has been a big learning curve for me. When success seems like it is just around the corner, suddenly I get an amazing rush of energy where I feel liberated and excited to achieve bigger things.

    Set yourself two or three easy to achieve goals at a time and you will notice that you will naturally gain inspiration and motivation.

    2. Exercise.

    Exercise is the simplest way to overcome laziness. A lot of the time, we feel lazy because completing a task seems too difficult. With exercising, you don’t have to figure anything out. You just have to make that one big decision to literally start moving your body (jump up and down, go for a run, or start doing lunges in your living room).

    This has been a big revelation for me. Sometimes I get so fed up with feeling lazy and lethargic that I literally just start running. I have learned that if you can overcome physical laziness, your mind will naturally follow.

    You will find that you will become more willing to think about complicated things, such as working on a project or doing something that you have been avoiding. Exercise will help you break through that barrier of inertia and will help you feel motivated and more willing to put in effort.

    3. Allow yourself time to relax and do the things you enjoy.

    Sound’s ironic, doesn’t it? Overcoming laziness by relaxing! But it works.

    Often, we become lazy because a task seems too difficult. By relaxing and doing the things we enjoy, we allow ourselves to feel satisfied. When we are satisfied, we are more willing to take on bigger tasks and achieve bigger things.

    By relaxing and enjoying yourself, you also allow yourself to think about things, reflect, and feel inspired.

    For example, I often feel uninspired to write articles. I get a mental block. Writing and researching becomes an overwhelming task, so I retreat to laziness. I completely block out anything that requires hard work.

    I have learned that as I relax and do things I enjoy, my mind is encouraged to reflect again. It is not scared of becoming overwhelmed because it knows that I am not going to push it to do something productive if it does not want to.

    This is how I gain inspiration again. When I relax, I suddenly find myself thinking of all these great ideas and I regain inspiration and motivation.

    4. Get organized.

    Your physical surroundings have a big impact on how you feel. If your house is a mess, you are likely to feel even more overwhelmed—both because clutter creates a sense of chaos and because having to clean your house adds to your giant list of things to do in a ridiculously short amount of time.

    Clean your house and organize your physical surroundings and you will naturally feel motivated to be more productive and active.

    You will be making life simpler and easier to manage.

    Once you’ve organized your home, you may feel motivated to get organized in other areas of your life and tackle tasks you’ve neglected.

    As I mentioned earlier, laziness is often our attempt to avoid difficult or unpleasant tasks. Ironically, once you start tackling them, it will all feel less difficult and overwhelming and you’ll likely feel a lot less tense.

    5. Be aware of and monitor your internal dialogue.

    Our internal dialogue (the way we speak to ourselves) has such a big impact on how we feel and what we do.

    Anthony Robins, world famous motivational speaker, explains that if we want to feel ecstatic, all we need to do is adopt a point of view that creates that emotion.

    For example, picturing in your mind the things that make you feel that way, change the tone and content of your internal dialogue and change your posture and breathing to create that state in your body.

    This has become my personal motto, and I am genuinely amazed at how much more positive I feel just by choosing to have a positive outlook.

    Every time I have a negative thought, such as “today is going to be a long, hard day at work,” I immediately challenge that thought by telling myself something like this: “I have so much to be grateful for and today is going to be fun and enjoyable!”

    I then make a choice to get rid of my slouchy posture and tell myself that I have lots of energy.

    Just thinking that way makes me feel excited and gives me a big boost of energy.

    I once learned that we have over 50,000 thoughts a day. Even if only 10% of them are negative, it equals a total of 5,000 negative thoughts a day. When I heard this, I realized that we have way too many negative thoughts and it helped make sense of why so many of us struggle to feel motivated.

    Being aware of and monitoring your internal dialogue is so important, and will inevitably impact on how lazy you feel and how easy it will be for you to overcome that laziness.

    These methods have helped me incredibly and continue to help me everyday. I am sure that if you apply them too, you will experience a big boost of energy and motivation in your daily life.

  • Two Words That Can Motivate You to Keep Going: What If?

    Two Words That Can Motivate You to Keep Going: What If?

    “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” ~Mary Anne Radmacher

    Carefully, I wrote my New Year’s Resolutions neatly in my purple leather bound journal, which chronicled the ups and downs of the past year of my life.

    Resolutions, whether they’re made on the first of January or any day of the year, are refreshing. It’s a chance to start again—the closest you can get to a “redo” of the past.

    In prior years, I made resolutions that were destined to fail. Read one book per week. Write a book. Learn yoga.

    It wasn’t that the previous resolutions were bad. Rather, I had failed to put any sort of plan in place to help me succeed. I only had a lofty goal, not steps laid out to get me from where I was standing to where I wanted to be. 

    But this year, I needed change. I needed a fresh start. I didn’t need the seemingly constant stress and the disappointment that plagued me last year to carry over into 2014.

    So my resolution was a succinct two words: Be happy.

    And unlike prior years, I made a plan for how to transform my resolution into my life. It felt weird trying to develop a way to be happy. But this year had to be different, and if planning was required, then plan I would.

    The plan? Take steps. And keep taking steps—don’t freeze in place.

    I took steps. I enrolled in a course in a subject I had long been interested in but too afraid to try. I decided that I would spend the Fall 2014 semester in London. I went to Chicago’s new Nutella Bar—because not every source of happiness requires a big change; sometimes the little things add up.

    And then only days into January, I panicked. Say this whole “Be happy” thing didn’t work out?

    What if I made all these changes and I wasn’t happy?

    What if the decisions I was making were actually wrong?

    What if life was still really stressful and exhausting?

    It took me a while to realize what all the what-ifs were really disguising. Superficially, the panic appeared to be the fear of not achieving the resolution.

    In reality, though, the fear of not achieving the resolution was a cover-up for the fear of failing as a person. What if I took all the steps to create the life I wanted and it didn’t work out? Would I be left with an unfilled life on top of an unfilled resolution? 

    Everyone talks about how going after what you truly want takes hard work and perseverance. Few people mention the courage required. It takes courage to forge your own path in a forest overgrown with what-ifs and brimming with the beast of society’s potential judgment.

    Being honest with yourself about what you want, whether it’s happiness, a new job, or significant other, is scary. When carving your own path, you don’t know what’s in store for you ahead.

    I came close to letting the fear of what-ifs consume me and abandoning my goals along with the little progress I had made in the first few weeks of January.

    Fittingly, however, the one thing that overpowered all the what-ifs swirling in my thoughts was one single what-if: What if it all worked out?

    What if you succeeded in creating the life you envisioned? It doesn’t need to be a perfect life; every life has a few rough spots or bruises.

    And for me that hope, that possibility, that single gnawing question was enough to take the leap of faith and go forward with my goals.

    That isn’t to say that I now believe unequivocally that my resolution will work out and every moment of my life will be Kodak-worthy. Rather, it’s to say that I now counter each doubt that creeps into my mind with the single rebuke: What if this all works out? 

    Focusing on the positives of your goal or resolution is a much more powerful motivator than concentrating on the negatives.

    Acknowledge the negatives as potential pitfalls to be aware of, but then counter them with positives. Truly immerse yourself in the positive potential of success.

    If your thoughts of doubt are enough to stop you, then your positive thoughts are enough to help you succeed.

  • 50 Ways to Find Creative Inspiration

    50 Ways to Find Creative Inspiration

    “If we look at the world with a love of life, the world will reveal its beauty to us.” ~Daisaku Ikeda

    I have always loved that scene in American Beauty when Ricky Fitts shows his video of a plastic bag blowing in the wind.

    He’s the complete opposite of his neighbor Lester Burnham, who seems to have decided long ago to live life in a comatose state of submission, completely disconnected from authentic joy.

    Ricky seems inspired by everything that most people simply overlook. He explains of his bag video:

    “It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes.

    “And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember—and I need to remember. Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.”

    Though it can look different for all of us, I suspect this is the feeling we wait for in life: a sense that there’s boundless beauty out there, and we have the capacity to feel, channel, explore, and express it.

    We all want to feel moved, and then to use that to create love, joy, passion, and purpose.

    If you’ve been feeling stuck or uninspired, these ideas may help you find inspiration. (more…)

  • How Do You Motivate Yourself: With Love or Fear?

    How Do You Motivate Yourself: With Love or Fear?

    “The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?” ~ Jack Kornfield

    My whole life has been a story of discipline. I started exercising and eating healthier in eighth grade. I planned out my studies meticulously so I would finish school assignments exactly on time. I always arrived five minutes early for any appointment or meeting. Disciplined.

    When I began my yoga studies in earnest at the age of twenty-two, I applied the same disciplined nature to my yoga practice. I had extensive practice plans and had scheduled in all the parts I should be doing: pranayama and meditation at dawn, asana practice after work with standing poses on Monday, hip openers on Tuesday, etc.

    People would comment about how disciplined I was. I just smiled, knowingly, because I knew what I was doing was “good” and they could learn something from my organized way of living. Yep, a little self-righteousness, too!

    Then one day, about fifteen years ago, while I was contemplating the yogic term tapas (self-discipline), I had an awakening: my discipline, everything, all that I did (including exercise, eating well, rigidity around how I used my time), came from fear, not love.

    It wasn’t focused on all the wonderful benefits I received through discipline but what I would lose if I didn’t do it.

    If I didn’t exercise, I wouldn’t have my exercise high all day. If I didn’t eat perfectly, I would gain weight. If I didn’t do my practice, I would lose my state of consciousness.

    So much fear! I knew I wanted it to change. I didn’t want this level of fear in my life, especially around my spiritual life whose very essence was love.

    I was planting seeds with my practice, as Jack Kornfield’s quote said: “The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?”

    I wanted to be planting seeds of love.

    While choosing to make a change in our life because we are afraid of something at least gets us going (quitting smoking because of the fear of dying, working on being on time at work because of the fear of being fired, beginning meditation after a heart attack), we ultimately want to shift from fear to love, from what we don’t want to what we do want.

    Focusing on what we don’t want simply continues to plant fear in our hearts. Focusing on what we do want, and that we deserve what we want, plants seed of compassion and love.

    So, what did I do? I quit everything. I quit my entire practice—including eating well, exercising, being rigid with my schedule—and entered into a study of discipline. Two discoveries would forever change my perspective.

    The first reflection came from the word tapas, itself. Roughly translated, it means “inner fire” and refers to the inner fire to know ourselves, the desire; and we learn about ourselves through our yoga practice, our study of life, and everything we do for ourselves.

    I like to also think of it as the inner fire to feel good, to be doing what we really want to be doing, to love our life.

    We can use this “inner fire” to inspire us to be disciplined with whatever we want to do, to continue our actions even when we feel resistance. (You know, the preference to sleep in rather than get up to exercise, to eat junk food rather than prepare something healthy, to grab for a cigarette rather than not.)

    The desire drives us to want to learn more and is stronger than the resistance when we stroke it. And we stroke it by focusing on what we want, getting excited about what our action will help us feel.

    The second transformational nugget was the word “discipline” itself. The word comes from the Latin root “disciplina” and means “instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge.” Think in terms of a disciple learning at the foot of a master.

    Again, our discipline to do our own practice helps us to learn about ourselves, it is a teacher for us, our master, so to speak.

    Knowing I wanted my practice to be based on love, not fear, to be planting seeds of love from it, I continued to hold myself back from practicing.

    The fear bubbled to the surface. I feared I would lose “everything” for quite some time. But then, a deeper desire began to percolate up. A curiosity about a certain pose and how it would feel, a curiosity about a breath, a new meditation I felt a niggling to try. 

    I felt an inner excitement to get to my mat, and I finally did.

    Self-discipline is tricky for many of us. In my work, I rarely come upon anyone who says that what they do for themselves is deeply satisfying and they feel they do enough. Most of us feel we need to do more, we aren’t disciplined enough.

    The judgment itself comes from fear. Let me say that another way, if you are judging yourself for not having enough self-discipline, you are basing your practice on fear.

    So how do you change the focus?

    Instead, return to why you do what you do. Why do you do yoga, exercise, eat well, or do anything else you feel you would like to be more disciplined around? What brought you to it in the first place? Sometimes along the way, we lose site of our deeper purpose.

    Bring your attention back to that deeper purpose. Put your love into it.

    While I wish I could say the fear was eradicated for me, never to return, I must admit it does return. I can say that when it surfaces I now have new tools to handle it. I am better able to see it for what it is and return to the state of love quickly.

    Ironically, I realize that my fear-based discipline did teach me something about myself and led me to a life with more love.

  • How To Keep Yourself Motivated When You’re Not Feeling It

    How To Keep Yourself Motivated When You’re Not Feeling It

    “A diamond is just a piece of charcoal that handled stress exceptionally well.” ~Unknown

    I’m great with short-term goals. In fact, I prefer them. Work my butt off for a few months to reach a goal? I’m down with that. I’ll give up a social life, down time, spending money, eating yummy food (read: sugar), drinking alcohol—whatever it takes, for the short-term. Long-term goals… ugh, not so much.

    Despite this preference for pretty immediate gratification, I have followed through with many long-term goals in my life (school and various trainings, long-distance relationships, starting and re-starting businesses, to name a few).

    There have also been quite a few of these goals that I’ve dropped that I wished I hadn’t.

    I, like many of us, have noticed a pattern of finding it much more difficult to stay engaged once the initial excitement of starting something new has worn off.

    Through this learning process of motivating myself to follow through with longer-view goals, I’ve come up with a few steps that have really helped me to stay focused and on track. Here are three steps that can help.

    Remind yourself that you’re in charge.

    There are loads of reasons we get off track with goals. Self-doubt, fear we won’t succeed, and concern that we are not setting realistic goals are just a few of them.

    This is really important to remember: You can change this goal if you want. You can keep going, you can revise it, or you can dump it altogether.

    When we are experiencing doubts, it’s easy to feel like we have no power; it’s easy to feel like we don’t have a choice. However, most often, we do.

    I find it helps to simply remind myself that I’m in charge. Many times, when the going gets tough, we begin to feel like the choices we made (sometimes long ago) are not our own. Sometimes a reminder to ourselves that we are the ones who originally set this goal is a good way to rev the engine.

    When I first started acupuncture school, I was pretty young, but it had been several years since I’d been in school. I’d been living on my own, partying it up, and doing whatever I liked.

    I saw pretty quickly that I had to get serious, stop staying out late so often, and learn to organize my time and resources far better than I had been. In short, I had to get productive.

    Well, the meltdown that ensued was not very attractive. I didn’t want to give up my young, single, and independent lifestyle! I didn’t want to trade late nights with my friends for late nights with textbooks and manuals!

    That went on for about a week, until a wise friend (who was tired of my whining), said, basically, “You wanted this. Get with it, or quit school.”

    It was the kick in the butt I needed to stop complaining and remember that I did want it. I was very driven to be an acupuncturist, because it’s an amazing modality. And I strongly desired (and continue to desire) to live a life of service.

    I won’t say it was completely smooth sailing from there on out, but my productivity and focus were certainly much improved.

    Look back at all you’ve already achieved.

    If you have been taking steps towards your goal for a while, then it can be great to take some time to consider all that you have already accomplished. All long haul goals take multiple, incremental steps to attain. Pat yourself on the back, and remind yourself of these achievements.

    The thing is, once an incremental step is attained, it can quickly feel like not quite so big of a deal. It becomes commonplace, and it’s not as exciting as it was when we first accomplished it. That’s normal, and understandable, and it’s great to look back occasionally and remind ourselves what a big deal reaching that step really was at the time.

    When I’m frustrated about what feels like a lack of movement toward a goal, I sit down and make a list of the steps I have already enacted to reach it, and what the results of those steps have been. I am almost always surprised at how much I’ve produced. This clarity helps in releasing those feelings of frustration.

    Explore the reasons you’re going for this goal and remind yourself often.

    While I was in school, there were many times when I simply wanted to quit.

    I had student loans (that were growing!). As I mentioned, there was little time for a social and personal life. I was learning a technique that required a very different perspective (energy medicine vs. the physical body) than I had previously.

    Besides that, I was starting to sweat the idea of running my own business. Would I fail? Could I make it work? Maybe I was nuts to think I could succeed at this at all!

    When I’d start to get too caught up in all that noise, I would literally sit down and remind myself of the reasons I’d chosen the path I had.

    I loved acupuncture; despite fear about being self-employed, I craved that independence; I resonated strongly with the concepts of energy I was learning, even if the vocabulary was new.

    Taking the time to have these talks with myself helped to re-invigorate me, to renew my focus, and encouraged me to continue.

    To really follow through with a longer-term goal, we have to have solid reasons that make sense to us.

    That said, goals aren’t set in stone. Like everything in life, it’s good to approach them with flexibility and open-mindedness.

    If you can’t successfully remind yourself of your initial reasons for going for the goal, and get re-ignited about those reasons, then it might be time to re-assess.

    Only we can decide what is best for us, and that can change over time. It’s so important to give ourselves permission to go for goals with full-on focus and gusto, or to change them, or put them aside for a while, or whatever else we decide is right at that time.

    What techniques do you use to keep yourself motivated on your goal-getting journey?

  • How Simple Mini Habits Can Change Your Life

    How Simple Mini Habits Can Change Your Life

    “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

    It was late 2012, just after Christmas, and like many others I was reflecting on the year.

    I realized that I had ample room for improvement in too many areas of my life, but knowing that New Year’s Resolutions have a poor 8% success rate (University of Scranton research), I wanted to explore some other options. I knew I wanted to start before January 1st too, because arbitrary start dates don’t sit well with me.

    On December 28th, I decided that I wanted to get in great shape. In the previous days and weeks, however, I hardly exercised at all and felt quite guilty about it. My goal was a thirty-minute workout, and it seemed impossible.

    I wasn’t motivated, I was tired, and my guilt was making me feel worthless. Feeling stuck, I remembered a technique I learned from a book, and little did I know that this technique would change my life in a big way in 2013.

    The technique is from the creativity book Thinkertoys, and it is to consider the opposite of an idea you’re stuck on. So I looked at my thirty-minute exercise goal, and my giant fitness plan to get in great shape, and I thought about the opposite.

    You could say the opposite is eating fast food and sitting on the couch, but the opposite that came to my mind was one of size.

    What if, instead of carrying around this overwhelming fitness anvil on my shoulders, I just did one push-up?

    Initially, I scoffed at the idea. How absurd to do a single push-up and act as if it means anything! But when I continued to struggle with my bigger plans, I finally gave in to the idea and did one, and since I was already in push-up position, I did a few more.

    After that, my muscles were warmed up, and I decided to try one pull-up. Just like you guessed, I ended up doing several more. Eventually, I had exercised for thirty minutes.

    My mind was blown—did I just turn a single push-up into a full workout? Yes, yes I did.

    The One Push-Up Challenge Is Born

    From here, I challenged my blog readers to do at least one push-up per day for a full year. People have had great success with it, and here’s what it turned into for me: For the last three-plus months, I have gone to the gym three to six times per week to exercise and I’m in great shape because of it. Now I know why it works.

    I have always held a keen interest in psychology and neuroscience, and I study them for my writing. So when I read about the studies on willpower that show it’s a limited resource, everything started making sense.

    I couldn’t do my thirty-minute workout because my willpower wasn’t strong enough or was depleted. But I could do one push-up and segue into a thirty-minute workout because it only required a tiny amount of willpower to start, after which my body and mind stopped resisting the idea.

    Of course, this concept does not only apply to fitness, but to any area of your life you wish to change. And I believe I’ve found the perfect way to leverage this technique – habits.

    What’s More Important Than Your Habits?

    Nothing. Habits form about 45% of your total behavior, according to a Duke University study. Not only that, but they are behaviors that you repeat frequently, which compounds their significance in your life. Habits are your foundation, and if this foundation is weak, you won’t be happy with the way you live.

    The reason people fail to change their lives, and fail to instill new habits, is because they try to do too much at once. In simplest terms, if your new habit requires more willpower than you can muster, you will fail. If your new habit requires less willpower than you can muster, you will succeed.

    The calculation can’t just be for one instance, however, but also for when you’re tired and your willpower is zapped. Can you continue it then?

    One thing I’ve been wanting to do more is write. It’s therapeutic for me and I write for a living, so it’s fairly important that I practice. When I found that I wasn’t writing as much as I should, I found out how to combine the power of The One Push-Up Challenge with a habit plan.

    How To Change Your Life With Mini Habits

    Mini habits are exactly as they sound. First, you choose a desired habit or change you’d like to make—it could be thinking more positively, writing 1,000 words a day, or reading two books per week. I’ve had success doing three at once.

    Next, you shrink these habits down until they are “stupid small,” a term I made up because when you say the requirement out loud, it is so small that it sounds stupid. Here are mine:

    1. Write fifty words per day (article, story, etc.)

    2. Write fifty words per day (for the habits book I’m writing)

    3. Read two pages in a book per day

    Easy, right? I could complete this list in ten minutes total. So far, I’ve met these daily requirements 100% of the time, and then much more.

    I’ve actually written one to two thousand words and read ten to thirty pages per day, for these twelve days in a row and counting. Prior to this, I wasn’t reading at all and writing very little.

    It works because your brain falls for the bait.

    “Oh, only fifty words? I can write that.”

    And then you start. And you’ll find, like I have, that once you start, good things happen.

    Ten Daily Mini Habit Ideas

    1. Compliment one person

    2. Think two positive thoughts

    3. Meditate for one minute

    4. Name three things you’re thankful for

    5. Do one push-up

    6. Write fifty words

    7. Read two pages

    8. Do ten jumping jacks

    9. Go outside and take 100 steps

    10. Drink one glass of water

    You can change nearly any area of your life, and at one mini habit at a time, it’s easier than you think.

    When you remove the pressure and expectations, you allow yourself to start.

    What mini habit(s) will you start today?

  • It’s Not Over: Failure Is Success in the Making

    It’s Not Over: Failure Is Success in the Making

    “A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.” ~James Joyce

    Everyone has a story of failure and disadvantage—those things we wish were done differently, better, or not at all. Take these stories for instance:

    A speaker intending to be unifying and encouraging onstage leaves the audience disappointed and bored instead.

    A lone manuscript is rejected by publishing houses over twenty-seven times, dismissed as too fanciful, fake, and “never gonna sell.”

    A poor eleven-year-old boy, deprived of toys his entire childhood, trudges through sleet and snow on his newspaper route in order to help support his family.

    An author struggles to write a novel, while a divorced, jobless, and homeless single parent facing a deep depression.

    Maybe your story sounds a lot like one of these? Is your situation cause to give up or is it motivation to keep pressing forward?

    I, myself, press forward past my bouts of feeling like a failure. Like when I ran for student body treasurer in the seventh grade and lost to my opponent. Or when I got fired from my first job after college. And especially when I had to dissolve my two-year old, bankrupt business at the turn of the 2008 recession.

    No fun.

    Fast forward: At the end of junior high, I graduated valedictorian. Weeks after I lost my job, I found work with a company that was a much better fit for my skill set and personality. And after shutting down my business, I went back to school, earned my Master’s in Business Administration, and graduated with honors.

    Not having perspective vast enough to see how failure could actually help me, I thought I had met my end during those painful days. Each event felt tragic. But I consistently came to find there was something else to be enjoyed after one door closed.

    Looking back, I see it was all good, everything that happened.

    What if we had that hindsight now—amidst the difficult times? Wouldn’t our experience be much more bearable (if not enjoyable)?

    The opportunities that arose after the so-called failures made what I wanted before pale in comparison to what I eventually got. I just had to be patient to see it unfold.

    You and Failure

    Failure is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the action or state of not functioning.” In other words, failure’s something that stops you; it gets you nowhere. Do you stop moving, stop breathing, or stop living when things don’t go as planned?

    This body only stops when its heart stops beating. So every day it keeps ticking is another chance at progress.

    Don’t you always take another step, even if it was just to pick yourself up out of bed today? Even when you think you failed, you haven’t because you’re still taking in air.

    Failure is a misnomer. It is an attempt to describe an event that leaves us with nothing—no opportunities, no chances, no understanding. When is that ever the case?

    Failure is only failure if you say it is. It only exists if you’re not willing to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and walk on. Besides, success depends on those struggles, those attempts, those defeats. Success requires that climb up.

    You and Success

    Success is a journey; it consists of every trial and triumph combined. And the best kind of journey…

    • Makes you stronger
    • Teaches you more about yourself
    • Gives you insight and answers
    • Is an opportunity to evaluate and do different
    • Is better than the regret of not doing
    • Puts your goals within reach

    Everything that happens contributes to a new awakening, a new way of life, a new way of being. We just have to see it as such.

    When we don’t stop at failure, we’re bound for success. So really, failure is success in the making…

    Which brings me back to the four stories I mentioned earlier. They didn’t end there. Their journeys continued:

    The speaker was Abraham Lincoln delivering the (now legendary) Gettysburg Address.

    The manuscript was eventually published. It was one of many books written by Theodor Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss.

    The boy, Walt, went on to create the childhood he never had and opened Disneyland, a take on his last name.

    The author finally finished the novel. Using the pen name, J.K. Rowling, she wrote of a boy wizard named Harry Potter.

    Batteries fail, people don’t. We’re always full of potential to do different, do more, and do better. Failure is what you thought you couldn’t be; what you thought you couldn’t do; what you thought you couldn’t have. Change that thought.

    Start looking at life in terms of what you can and will do from where you are, with what you’ve got right now. Start looking toward success no matter what…and make lemonade!

    Success is our lesson learned. Success is our silver lining. Success is our second chance.

    What failures have you overcome only to find yourself living your own success story? What keeps you pressing forward?

  • 4 Massive Motivation Killers and How to Overcome Them

    4 Massive Motivation Killers and How to Overcome Them

    “Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.” ~Robert H. Schuller

    For the entirety of my life I have had an external source of structure.

    I’ve very much thrived when both guided and held accountable by others. You could say that I’m a “systems” friendly person and have always felt safe and secure when I can simply follow the guidelines or instructions and then arrive at the intended destination.

    The only problem is that I didn’t always create the “intended” destination. In fact, it usually wasn’t even where I wanted to be. It was where I thought I should be. So I decided to change all that.

    Since starting my own business I have both felt the power of freedom, control, and expression as well as experienced the terrorizing fear of … freedom, control, and expression!

    Nobody is telling me what my schedule should look like anymore. No one is checking in on me to make sure I’m staying proactive in marketing myself.

    After being a corporate “yes man” for years I have finally obtained the independence that I have always wanted, and yet I swear that many times I would just prefer my old boss tell me what to do and crack the whip when I am slacking.

    Parents, school, sports, work—the structure has always been built in for me and now I struggle daily to find the motivation from within. In response, I have worked hard to identify four of the biggest motivation killers out there.

    1. Fear of Failure

    For all the perfectionists struggling with procrastination, it’s actually pretty straightforward what the underlying road block here is: the crushing weight of expectations, the proverbial gun to the head mentality.

    How many times have you been defeated before even taking on a task or challenge because of the overwhelming unknown of whether or not it’s going to be executed to your (or someone else’s) high level of expectations?

    I can justify putting off just about any chore or task by telling myself that I don’t have the time or resources to get it done right.

    This mindset leaves me feeling paralyzed. I have found that it’s better (more often than not) to take the jump, regardless of whether or not circumstances are optimal. Regardless of whether or not rejection is a possible outcome. Regardless of whether or not other people will appreciate or understand your actions.

    I’m not saying you shouldn’t put your best foot forward, but you do have to realize that at some point you’ll need to start taking steps forward.

    Even though missing the mark is uncomfortable at times, most happy and successful people that I’ve interviewed or read about have all gotten okay with taking shot after shot until they finally hit their target.

    2. Lack of Clear Goals

    We can mitigate the overwhelming fear of failure by focusing on rewarding, enjoyable, and achievable goals.

    Ultimately, living out a productive, inspired, and motivated life requires us to make choices. We simply can’t have it all. But sometimes we get so caught up comparing our own situation to that of others (what others have and where others are in life) that we sabotage any chance we have of making the choices we really need to make to get to where we really want to be.

    And worse, whenever we feel that our hand is forced in our journey, our intrinsic motivation is killed. Dreaming about what you want and then actually believing that you can achieve it (even during times of adversity) is the only way to really find motivation from within.

    While big picture goals are important in order to understand where it is that you ultimately want to go, overcoming inertia (remember that heavy weight of expectation?) and making movement by knocking out a smaller plan of attack is a perfectly viable option when you are moving at zero miles per hour.

    Whether it is by creating your to-do list and schedule the night before or creating a flow chart of how to get from point A to B, it’s remarkably more fun, effective, and rewarding to create and implement daily strategies to get what you want out of life.

    Without more tangible realizations of your dreams, wants, and goals (no matter how big or small) you are going to struggle knowing where to start.

    3. Ignoring Your Health

    As a personal trainer, this is more my area of expertise, and yet I still struggle to follow my own advice at times. And much like depression, physical neglect will rob you of feeling pleasure for any activity.

    One of the biggest battles I have on a regular basis is getting enough sleep. If I consume caffeine too late in the day, or decide to reflect on life at 10pm, there is a good chance I’m going to toss and turn till 2am, leaving me with little time to mentally rest and physically heal by the time my 5:30am training rolls around.

    The entire next two days I will be tired, so I choose to consume even more caffeine to stay peppy for clients, thus creating a vicious cycle and yet all the while wondering why I’m so lethargic!

    Poor hydration, lack of exercise, and large amounts of insulin in the body (primarily from overconsumption of carbohydrates) will also leave you riding the motivation roller coaster (with mostly drops) thus killing self-esteem, leading to depression, and in turn creating a whole new vicious cycle of negative thoughts and negative energy levels.

    You need to stop the cycle at some point. Recognize this and get off this ride immediately!

    4. Loss of Core Identity

    How can you possibly handle any of the above three challenges effectively, let alone find the intrinsic motivation to even try, if you do not know in your heart who you are? Or more importantly, who do you want to be?

    I’ll never forget my first private therapy session as an “adult” and how shocking it was to fail to articulate an answer to the above questions. At the conclusion of our first meeting all I could dejectedly muster was “I don’t know even know who I am.”

    It took (and still takes) a lot of work to uncover and stay true to my answers to these questions.

    If there has been one best practice I would advise anyone to perform it would be journaling. There’s rarely a moment after being truly honest and fair with myself that I haven’t been able to dial up some immediate intrinsic motivation and be okay with “doing me.”

    Because for me, having a stronger sense of self, combined with re-committing to loving, humble, and honorable principles has kept my world from collapsing when something doesn’t go my way.

    This is such an empowering feeling and makes risk taking so much more exciting, goal planning more identity congruent, and proactive health care a worthy and top priority.

    —

    All four of these productivity and happiness assassins seem to work together in an effort to kill my momentum. Sometimes they still win. But more and more these days I realize that I’m in control over them. It’s been the battle of my life, and it may be yours. But our lives are worth fighting for.

  • 15 Reasons to Start Following Your Dream Today

    15 Reasons to Start Following Your Dream Today

    “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

    Do you have a dream? A wish? A desire?

    Do you ever wake up and wonder: What would it be like to love life?

    People can tell you “follow your dream,” but is anyone really doing it?

    Not someone in a TV show or movie—a real, living, breathing human, just like you?

    Is it possible?

    The Depression

    Three years ago I couldn’t sleep. Night after night, I’d lie awake at 2am. My heart would pound in my chest.

    The anxiety overtook me. I welcomed it. If I fell back asleep, the next time I woke I would head back to that place. The place I despised.

    Fifty hours a week to a job that was slowly, inch by inch, sucking the life out of me.

    I was twenty-six years old, but I didn’t feel twenty-six. I felt old, tired, and overwhelmed.

    As I write this post, I remember that night. Staring in the mirror. I could barely look at myself. The breathing in my chest pushing in and out rapidly. Tears rushing down my face. I was a grown man, or at least I was supposed to be.

    Allowing Fear to Stop You

    I was so scared. I’d put all my work experience, degrees, and life into my career. Yet, I hated it.

    I had gone all in—and I was losing.

    I couldn’t argue with the tears flowing down my cheeks. Something needed to change.

    Follow The Dream

    I know what it’s like to feel depressed, lost, and burned out. But I also know what it’s like to follow a dream.

    I’m now thirty years old, and my life is a lot different than it was four years ago.

    Soon after that experience, I made a commitment to discover and follow my dream.

    What’s my dream? I want to become a ninja.

    Not a ninja in the traditional sense. It’s a childhood dream.

    Over the course of four years I quit my job in America, moved to Japan, and now I train extensively in martial arts.

    I arrive at the dojo at 7:30am Monday through Friday. Over the next year of my life I will train over 1,000 hours in Aikido (a martial art).

    I’m living, breathing proof that it’s possible to follow a dream.

    I’m thrilled to wake up each morning. I love my life in a manner I never knew possible. But this post isn’t about me—it’s about all of us. More importantly, it’s about all of our dreams.

    I hope with all my heart, today is the day that you begin the journey to turn your dream into a reality.

    15 Reasons to Start Following Your Dream Today

    1. You’ve always wanted to do this.

    When I think about the question: If you had a million dollars what would you do with your life? I can now say, “Exactly what I’m doing.”

    You’ve always wanted to follow your dream—so start today!

    2. You’ll experience things you never could have imagined.

    I’ve taken Japanese tea lessons with a fifty-year-old woman. I’m learning a new language. I eat foods that I never knew existed.

    The pursuit of a dream will give you experiences you never thought possible.

    3. You will become courageous.

    At some point your dream will mean so much to you that you will stop at nothing. When the dream overtakes you, no matter what your fears are, you will not allow it to stop you.

    You will stare your fears in the face. You will become a courageous person.

    4. You will become an inspiration to those around you.

    By doing what I want to do instead of what others want from me, I have been able to inspire others to follow their dreams.

    Focus on your dreams, not what others want you to do, and you will do the same.

    5. You will realize the incredible things you are capable of doing.

    When you step forward to pursue your dream, you will face challenges you never could have anticipated. You will allow nothing to stop you. You will shock yourself at your ability to plow through any situation.

    6. You will like yourself more.

    You will feel excited and energized by the life you are choosing to live. You will feel proud of what you are doing. And you will like yourself more for it.

    7. Life will become beautiful.

    As you realize your own potential, you will realize the potential in others. You will start to recognize the beauty that life, you, and others have to offer.

    8. Your joy and happiness will become contagious.

    When people are around you, they will feel better about themselves and life because you are living proof it is possible to live a dream!

    9. You will connect on a deeper level with the force of the universe.

    The pursuit of a dream requires an act of faith. You step forward and take action. When you do this, you will face experiences that will bring you closer to the force of the universe.

    10. You will smile more.

    Life is better when you smile more. If you follow your dream, you will enjoy yourself and this will happen!

    11. It will give meaning to everything you do.

    Before I started following my dream I would often wonder, “What’s the point?”

    Now, I know the answer to that question: Every action I take brings me closer to my dream.

    12. The food will taste better.

    Yup, you read that right! When you step forward with your dream, you will feel more alive and you will better appreciate all the beauty life has to offer. So, yes! Even the food tastes better.

    13. Every day you will learn new things.

    Every day I learn more Japanese, more martial arts, and more about myself. I’m challenged and excited. The deeper I get in my dream, the more I learn.

    14. Your happiness will show on your face.

    It’s true! When you are optimistic, excited, and happy, guess what? You are drastically more attractive.

    At twenty-six I looked stressed out and overwhelmed. At thirty I look happy and excited because I am happy and excited.

    15. You will love being around you.

    When we pursue a dream, we are connecting with our heart’s desires. It’s a way of telling our soul “I love you.”

    It’s pretty great to hang out with people you love—especially when it’s yourself!

    What has stopped you from following your dream?