Certainty in Uncertain Times - Tony Robbins

Certainty in Uncertain Times - Tony Robbins

A new city. A new job. The loss of a loved one. The loss of a dream.
Change is a part of life. Sometimes it’s positive, and other times less so. But regardless of what form it comes in, you have a choice: you can either ride the wave of change, or let it crash upon you as you struggle to remain afloat.
Sure, it’s easy to adopt a laissez faire attitude when turbulence comes your way. It’s the path of least resistance to shrug your shoulders, step back and watch as the events unfold and take their own course. But while that certainly requires less effort, it also disempowers you and precludes you from taking control over your own life.
The secret to handling change is to focus on progress. If you can make progress on a regular basis, then you feel alive. Now, you may be thinking that this is easier said than done. When you are lost, or trapped in an emotional fog, it’s hard to even make sense of what is happening, let alone understand what steps to take to move yourself forward. But by following these mandates, you can bring a sense of structure and certainty to an otherwise chaotic time, and start building something new, and perhaps even better.
MANDATE 1: CREATE A VISION
Create a vision for what it is that you truly want. If you find yourself unemployed, what does your ideal career look like? If you recently relocated to a new city, what do you want your life to look like there? If you and your partner are having trouble, what does your dream relationship with him or her look like?
The vision must excite you. It has to be compelling. It has to pull you. It should not be something that you have to push yourself toward, it should be something that you desire more than anything else so that it moves you emotionally. Envision this goal, see how it makes you feel, and then dive in.

MANDATE 2: MAKE THE RESOLUTION
Now it’s time to declare: “Okay, I am not going to just sit here and hope everything will be okay. I am going to take control of this situation.” Cut off any other possibility. If this is what you want, then burn the boats. Make the resolution that you will find a way to make things work and mentally put yourself on the path towards achieving the vision you just set forth.

MANDATE 3: FIND YOUR REASONS
Now that you have your vision, and you have dedicated yourself on a fundamental level to reaching this goal, you need to find your reasons – your purpose for wanting to achieve this result.
This is one of the most important components to making progress because without it, you will lose your emotional drive. You will inevitably face hurdles, challenges and obstacles along your journey, but the reasons will help push you through. When the stress and pressure come, your reasons will propel you along and you won’t let the fear or negative talk take over.
Your reasons can be framed in a positive or a negative manner – “If I don’t do this, this is what it will cost me,” or “If I do this, then this is what I can gain in my life.” What matters most is that your reasons resonate deeply within you. They are not superficial, but rather, stem from a powerful purpose that carries a profound emotional weight.
Just remember, when you feel stuck or lost, reasons come first, answers come second. Find the meaning behind achieving your goal, and allow that to help you get on target when things get rough.

MANDATE 4: MAKE IT PART OF EVERY DAY
Think back to something you wanted more than anything, something you were so hungry for that you felt a deep emotional need for it, something that you were intensely clear about it, and thought about every single day. You just didn’t know how to make it happen. Then suddenly, you attracted the right situation or the right people, and everything just came together.
Why did that happen? Is it the Law of Attraction? Not exactly.
There’s a part of your brain called the RAS – reticular activating system – and it determines what you notice in the world. When you set a goal, become extraordinarily clear on it, and have strong enough reasons behind your intent, you trigger the RAS. Your brain then becomes incredibly acute at noticing anything that comes into your world that could help you move forward.
Invest yourself fully in your vision. Make it a key part of your focus every single day. Then start to take note of what pops up in your life. The opportunities and key insights that arise may just surprise you.

MANDATE 5: RAISE YOUR STANDARDS
Ultimately, if you want to create real change in your life, you have to raise your standards.
How many years ago did you come up with what you could or couldn’t do in your life? Take a look at any area in your life where you have a limitation and ask yourself when you decided to accept that. For many of us, it’s these self-imposed limitations that prevent us from making any real progress in our lives. We have convinced ourselves that our status quo is exactly what we deserve, and we in turn, base our identities around that – wherever people have their identity attached to, they live.
If you want to create a new life for yourself, then you have to raise your standards. You have to let go of the limiting beliefs that keep you locked in complacency. Make progress a “must” for you. Refuse to settle for anything less. This will take practice, it’s not something that happens overnight. But the more often you adopt the thoughts, behaviors and rituals of a new identity, the more powerful your brain will become at finding ways to bring you there.

MANDATE 6: ADOPT RITUALS
You have to back up your standards by what makes those standards real – rituals. Rituals are little things that you do each day that eventually build up so much momentum that it becomes a clear path to your vision.
If you are unhappy with your status quo, and feel that creating the life you desire is just a massive challenge, then break it down to bite-sized steps. Condition your body and emotions with a few small rituals. Maybe that means going for a short run in the morning. Or taking the time to make a healthy breakfast. Maybe it means incorporating incantations into your day. Or catching up with one good friend every week. It could even be doing something kind for someone else once a day.
Rituals are where the power is. They define us. They help us put our standards into action. Remember, when challenging periods come our way, we have the choice – to relinquish control, or to take action.
Creating the life you want is not an overnight event. It’s in the little things. It’s having a vision. It’s making it compelling. It’s seeing it and feeling it with absolute emotion. It’s caring about other people. It’s calling to say “I love you” for no reason. It’s about taking every opportunity to connect. To be playful. To honor and cherish your loved ones.
Change, no matter how devastating, does not have to define your life. You get to make that decision. And if you adhere to these mandates, then no matter how lost you may feel, you will be able to start designing the life you want, and living the life you deserve.

Team Tony
Team Tony cultivates, curates and shares Tony Robbins’ stories and core principles, to help others achieve an extraordinary life.


Source Certainty in Uncertain Times - Tony Robbins

The Easiest Trick to Breaking Out of Wrong Ideas

The Easiest Trick to Breaking Out of Wrong Ideas

Having correct beliefs is vital to having the best life!     

Source: Randall Munroe, used with permission

Right now you have something within your reach with an almost magical ability to break out of wrong ideas. You can use it to process data and identify patterns and trends. What do you think it is? Take a guess before reading onward.
Did you guess your computer or your phone? Then you’re wrong! What I'm talking about is much, much more powerful than that. It's more powerful than the fastest supercomputer on the planet.
I'm talking about your brain.
Humans didn't spread out to rule the entire planet because of bigger muscles or sharper claws. Intelligence, the kind of intelligence that all humans have, is our superpower. It's what separates us from other animals, and it is your greatest resource.
But most people don't really use their brain to its full potential. Do you?
You certainly weren’t taught to use its real potential in school. Children are taught facts that will pass tests, but the skills that are most important in life usually don’t involve stuff that’s on an exam. How do I make plans (link is external)? How should I decide between places to live? What’s the best way to negotiate for higher pay? All of these questions involve thinking about and modeling the future (link is external). Imagine how many fewer poor decisions you will make and how much better off your life will be if you learn how to unlock your brain’s true potential and gain agency (link is external) over your life!
Want to know a secret? It's actually pretty easy to make big improvements to how you think. A few quick tricks can make a world of difference and boost your future-predicting power. I'll share one of them right now.
Have you ever heard of Confirmation Bias (link is external)? It's one of the known problems that scientists have discovered about how we naturally think. Imagine a friend suggests that people who drive red cars are bad drivers. At first you don't think that's true, but after hearing a few stories of bad drivers in red cars from your friend, you think he might be onto something. The next time you're on the road you notice a red car swerving around like a maniac... proof! You're a believer now. You start seeing reckless drivers in red cars all the time.
If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to try it out. Drive for a month looking for reckless drivers in red cars. You'll see them everywhere. Or you can save yourself the time and trouble. This perception would only be in your head!
If you actually use science you'll find this is false (link is external). What happens is that if you look for something you'll find it, but you'll also end up ignoring things that don't fit the pattern. If a blue car does something dangerous you won't think about it. If a red car drives safely then maybe it's just a fluke or maybe you'll interpret it as reckless anyway.
Confirmation Bias affects all sorts of things, from racial prejudices to conspiracy theories to personal relationships. If you expect someone you know to act sad, you'll notice their sadness and ignore their happiness. And importantly, it can hurt your ability to predict the future.
Imagine a gambler (link is external) who loses five games of poker in a row. She thinks “I’ve been getting bad luck for a long time… surely my next hand will have to be good to balance it out!” Have you ever thought something like that? I have. After two more bad hands she finally gets a good hand and thinks to herself “I knew it!” But she was wrong twice before being right! With that sort of sloppy thinking it would’ve been smarter just to walk away.
There are several tricks to avoiding this bias and being a better thinker. The one I'm going to share today is to visualize alternate universes regularly. An alternate universe is just a world exactly like this one but where one or two things are different.
Let's use the example of drivers of red cars being reckless. There are two alternate universes here. One alternate universe is where drivers of red cars are *safer* than normal. The other is where red car-drivers are just as good at driving as anyone else. Take a moment to visualize these alternatives and imagine what they look like. Can you see how that would help? Just like focusing on red cars being dangerous causes you notice examples that fit the story, focusing on the opposite lets you catch examples you might otherwise miss. It’s all about controlling where you put your attention.
Let me give an example from my personal life. I once met someone who I had heard was “obnoxious.” Indeed, when I first met him I could immediately see why: the man had almost no social skills. With the seed of “obnoxious” sown in my mind I began to get annoyed when around him. I noticed every time he said the wrong thing or didn’t seem to understand what the topic of conversation was. But then I remembered what I had learned from my research into psychology and I flipped my thinking: I imagined the alternate universe where this guy was cool and easy to be around.
Did my visualization of the alternate universe mean my friend suddenly became suave and charming? Not at all. But it did make him not obnoxious! Specifically, I realized that having weak social skills did not mean I had to find spending time with him unpleasant, and I began to enjoy my time with him much more. I also noticed that his social skills weren’t as bad as I had initially thought. There were a few times when, not trapped by “small talk” or the pressure of meeting someone new, I noticed him acting much more like his alternate-universe counterpart than I would have otherwise expected.
I don’t invite this friend to parties very often (I doubt he’d even enjoy the experience), but we still talk fairly regularly and he’s someone I know that I can turn to if I have a difficult problem in his field. Without the technique of visualizing alternate universes I would have worse social interactions, fewer friends, and be generally less wise. This simple trick has brought many, many people success in their relationships, their work, and elsewhere!
This is just one step on the path to being a better thinker about the future (link is external), and as we move forward I think you'll see how the technique of visualizing alternate universes can be used for becoming more intelligent, effective, and happy!
What do you think?

• Have you had success in improving your life through visualizations before?
• Do you know anyone in your personal life that seems just convinced about something that isn't true?
• Can you think of any areas of your life where you might have an incorrect perception of the world?
• What are specific steps you can take to apply the techniques in this article to improve your perception of the world?

Bio: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is an author, speaker, consultant, coach, scholar, and social entrepreneur specializing in science-based strategies for effective decision-making, goal achievement, emotional and social intelligence, meaning and purpose, and altruism - for more information or to hire him, see his website, GlebTsipursky.com. (link is external) He runs a nonprofit that helps people use science-based strategies to make effective decisions and reach their goals, so as to build an altruistic and flourishing world, Intentional Insights (link is external). He also serves as a tenure-track professor (link is external) at Ohio State in the History of Behavioral Science and the Decision Sciences Collaborative, and published over 25 peer-reviewed articles. A best-selling author (link is external), he wrote Find Your Purpose Using Science (link is external) among other books, and regular contributes to prominent venues, such as Time (link is external), The Conversation (link is external), Salon (link is external), The Huffington Post (link is external), and elsewhere. He appears regularly on network TV, such as affiliates of ABC (link is external) and Fox (link is external), radio stations such as NPR (link is external) and Sunny 95 (link is external), as well as internet-only media such as podcasts (link is external) and videocasts (link is external).
Consider signing up to the Intentional Insights newsletter (link is external); volunteering (link is external); donating (link is external); buying merchandise (link is external). Get in touch with him at gleb (at) intentionalinsights (dot) org.

Gleb Tsipursky Ph.D. Intentional Insights

Source: The Easiest Trick to Breaking Out of Wrong Ideas

To Achieve Something Outrageously Extraordinary Requires Extreme Effort

To Achieve Something Outrageously Extraordinary Requires Extreme Effort

It’s your decision to be amazing. It’s an attitude. It’s how you live your life.   

Dan Waldschmidt

December 28, 2016   

    

We aren’t doing enough. Sometimes not even the bare minimum.
But it’s worse than that. This lack of effort is poor, lazy behavior. In every sense of the words.
I’m not even sure how we got to this point, but here is what I do know:

• We talk ourselves out of action before we even get started.
• We spend time, mental energy and emotion trying to look good rather than getting results.
• We debate the plan rather than working on it.
• We make excuses for our mediocrity.

If we want to be successful, it takes doing more. A lot more. To achieve something outrageously extraordinary requires extreme effort.

Effort is the great equalizer.
Seth Godin says ever so brilliantly the following about effort: “People really want to believe effort is a myth…. I think we’ve been tricked by the veneer of lucky people on the top of the heap. We see the folks who manage to skate by, or who get so much more than we think they deserve, and it’s easy to forget that these guys are the exceptions…. For everyone else, effort is directly related to success…. And that’s the key to the paradox of effort: While luck may be more appealing than effort, you don’t get to choose luck. Effort, on the other hand, is totally available, all the time.”
It’s inescapable. Effort makes the difference.
Effort is more than “If you pay me more, I’ll work harder.” It’s about not cheating yourself out of your own potential.
Think about that for a minute. Does anyone else really care if you are only putting in a half-ass effort?
No! You know deep down you are cheating yourself. And you are the only one who is really hurt by your actions.

No one cares about you like you. The least you can do for yourself is to put in the effort to give your dreams the chance to come true.
Think about what you want out of life right now. Perhaps you want:

• More self-assurance about your financial future;
• A better relationship with your spouse and children;
• A happier and/or more fulfilling lifestyle.

Are you willing to put in the effort to make these a reality? Not brains or money or manipulation. EFFORT!
If all that seems too overwhelming, if your dreams and goals seem too far off, let me offer the simplest of insights: Effort is simply you taking the next step. Again and again and again.
When you look closely at how ordinary people achieve amazing things, you begin to see it for what it is: one foot in front of the other. That’s all. A step is infinitely easier than a journey.
It’s your decision to be amazing. It’s a commitment to take the next step. It’s an attitude. It’s how you live your life. Relentlessly moving forward.
The world is full of good people doing good things in good ways. What will change the world is you putting in enough effort to do great things. One step at a time.
Be edgy. Put in extreme effort:

1. Avoid the need to blame others for anything.

Mean, small-minded people know they suck. That’s why they are so cranky and eager to point out others’ mistakes. They hope that by causing others to feel inadequate, everyone will forget about how woefully off the mark their own performance is. Don’t blame anyone, for any reason, ever. It’s a bad habit.

2. Stop working on the things that just don’t matter.

Not everything needs to be done in place of sleep. If you work for a boss, then you owe them solid time. You can’t cut that out. You can, however, cut out TV time, meetings and anything else that gets in the way of achieving your goals. Replace entertainment with activity toward your goal.

3. Refuse to let yourself wallow in self-doubt. You’re alive to succeed.

Stop comparing your current problems to your last 18 failures. They are not the same. You are not the same. Here’s something to remember: Your entire life has been a training ground for you to capture your destiny right now. Why would you doubt that? Stop whining. Go conquer.

4. Ask yourself, What can I do better next time? And then do it next time.

If you spend a decade or two earnestly trying to be better, that’s exactly what will happen. The next best thing to doing something amazing is not doing something stupid. So learn from your mistakes and use the lessons to dominate.

5. Proactively take time to do things that fuel your passion (for example, exercise).

Living in the moment requires you to live at peak performance. A huge part of mental fitness is physical fitness. So go fight someone. Or go running if fighting seems a bit extreme. Physical activity accelerates mental motivation.

6. Apologize to yourself and those around you for having a bad attitude.

Do this once or twice, and you’ll snap out of your funk pretty fast. When you start genuinely apologizing for being a bad influence on those around you, you learn to stop whining and start winning.

Excerpted with permission from EDGY Conversations: How Ordinary People Achieve Outrageous Success by Dan Waldschmidt

Source To Achieve Something Outrageously Extraordinary Requires Extreme Effort

The Poison Tendrils of Negative Emotions

How negative emotions lead to self-regulation failure

For readers looking to jump into the deep end of understanding procrastination, I highly recommend the recent volume edited by James Gross, Handbook of Emotion Regulation (link is external). This collection of chapters provides the most current and thorough review of the research literature in the area. Because I have put such emphasis in my own writing on the role of emotions in understanding procrastination, I thought I would summarize aspects of just one of the many chapters of this excellent book. The reference to the chapter written by Dylan Wagner and Todd Heatherton is below.

I was amused and delighted by the metaphor and image that these authors used to depict the role of negative emotions (also called negative affect) in the self-regulation process. In a very typical, academic-style diagram of a model of self-regulation, they first depict a high-level theoretical perspective.
The essential components conceptually look something like this:

TEMPTATIONS & DESIRES    GOALS & STANDARDS    Success
(food, drugs, media use, etc.)         Monitoring    Capacity         Failure

At the center of the model are our goals and standards. In other words, central to self-regulation is monitoring our progress towards our goals and our capacity to do this.  What they depict as directly influencing our goals and standards are temptations and desires. You know, other more fun stuff.  Finally, the model makes it clear that depending on how well we can ignore the temptations while maintaining our goal pursuit predicts whether we succeed or fail. In sum, it’s a common, simple model of self-regulation that is typical of a scholarly paper.
The amusing bit is how they chose to depict the effects of negative affect (negative emotions). They have the same diagram but with a giant black hole underneath the model out of which evil tendrils emerge. These tendrils, as tendrils will, grab on to every component of the model. This model now emphasizes a failure outcome, and the final piece of the model is how failure now feeds back down to the hole from which the tendrils emerge and feed the negative affect.
[Note: While I am tempted to add a photo of their diagram here, there are copyright laws that prevent usage in this way, so I hope that this description allowed you to imagine this quite vivid depiction of a psychological model.]
As they note in the caption to this figure, “Negative affect spreads poison tendrils into every aspect of self-regulation, amplifying desires, decreasing monitoring, depleting limited capacity, and encouraging misregulation strategies (e.g., mood repair and escape from aversive self-awareness), which can relieve negative affect in the short term but often lead to further negative affect upon failure to meet one’s goals” (emphasis added).
Well done!  That’s certainly the lived experience of the effects of negative emotions on our self-regulation. The tendrils pull us down.
These negative emotions seem to emerge from a dark place within us, grabbing on to every aspect of our self, and undermine our ability to self-regulate. And, of course, as we fail in our attempts to self-regulate, the self-blame begins, as does the downward spiral of self-esteem and self-efficacy.
In the bulk of the chapter, Wagner and Heatherton summarize numerous studies related to the different ways that negative emotions, emotion regulation and self-regulation interact. It’s important to remember that these are interactive effects, or as I like to say, it’s a sort of dance between these processes that undermine our success. As the authors summarize this interaction, we learn the following:

• Negative affect (emotions) leads to a desire to “feel good now,” escaping the negative state by engaging in pleasurable activities and reducing self-awareness (to lower any potential feelings of guilt; a process I have described previously);
• These choices related to mood repair serve to increase the pull or attractiveness of immediately available rewards and temptations grow;
• With a focus on pleasure and lower self-awareness, the ability to self-monitor is diminished; and at the same time,
• Negative affect, which is related to rumination, puts an increased load on working memory that further weakens the ability to self-monitor and further undermines goal pursuit, or any further attempt at self-regulation (i.e., no monitoring, no self-control).

It’s not a pretty picture, is it?  But it’s certainly one that I think every human being knows. It’s that downward spiral we experience when “we don’t feel like it” and negative emotions begin to “weave their tendrils” (as these authors depict) throughout our self-regulatory process.

Interestingly, Wagner and Heatherton paint this despairing picture even a little darker, writing:
“Throw in the fact that prior self-regulatory effort may leave the individual in a depleted state in which both resources for further self-control are lacking and the strength of impulses and temptations are increased, and it is a small miracle that people are not constantly acting out their fantasies, drinking, smoking, or indulging in every gastronomic desire” (emphasis added).
This is indeed a pretty dire picture, and it’s not helped by the fact that there is very little research documenting how positive emotions might reverse this. Although there is some evidence to suggest that positive emotions might buffer against ego-depletion and enhance self-regulation, positive emotions are not simply the antidote.  In fact, positive emotions might feed further off-task behaviors if this becomes the new focus of attention; a sort of carpe diem or even “what the hell” effect where we give in and decide it’s time to eat, drink and be merry.
The authors end with this sentence:
“Negative affect is thus a particularly potent threat to self-regulation, because it not only reduces the capacity for control (increased working memory load, reduced self-awareness and monitoring) but it may also lead to increases in the strength of experienced desires and emotions, rendering them all the more difficult to resist.”
So, you might ask as you join me in this dark place, “what are we to do?”  How do we manage to self-regulate?  Well, this has been the focus of most of my blog writing over the past years, with all sorts of strategies derived from a variety of different studies.
In my last blog post, I re-emphasized the importance of not paying attention to these emotions when they arise. Not a simple thing, I understand, as I noted above that negative emotions (affect) are related to and even seem to cause rumination. This rumination is the antithesis of “not paying attention.” But you get my point, right? The research summarized in this chapter makes it clear that negative emotions really do undermine self-regulation through processes like rumination that puts too much load on working memory (which derails monitoring our goal pursuit), or by provoking a hedonic response to feel good now.

Gross offers some potential points of intervention in his own process model of emotion. And, although it’s simply not possible to go much further in a single blog post, I will note that one effective strategy that is incorporated into many successful procrastination interventions is learning to modify appraisals of our situation to alter its emotional significance (I’ll come back to this at some other time, as this was part of the work we did in our recent book Procrastination, Health and Well-Being (link is external)). In any case, the focus here is on cognitive change, the kind emphasized in cognitive behavioral therapies, for example.
I hope that you can see that despite the “poison tendrils” of negative emotions depicted so vividly by Wagner and Heatherton, there are routes to self-regulatory success.  For some of us, this is certainly made more difficult by personality traits such as low emotional stability, as we are more chronically attuned to negative emotions. However, we can learn to act out of character as we learn new strategies to cope. Strategies that are much more effective than avoidance, self-blame and behavioral disengagement, each of which has been demonstrated to be risks not only to our success, but to our health.

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/201607/the-poison-tendrils-negative-emotions?collection=1096682
References
Pychyl, T.A., & Sirois, F.M. (2016). Procrastination, emotion-regulation and well-being. In F.M. Sirois & T.A. Pychyl, (Eds.), Procrastination, health and well-being (pp. 163-188). New York: Elsevier.
Sirois, F.M. (2015). Is procrastination a vulnerability factor for hypertension and cardiovascular disease? Testing an extension of the procrastination-health model. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 38, 578-589.
Wagner, D.D. & Heatherton, T.F. (2014). Emotion and self-regulation failure. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 613-628). New York: The Guilford Press.

Timothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he specializes in the study of procrastination

What Happened When I Lived by Dale Carnegie's Rules

What Happened When I Lived by Dale Carnegie's Rules

Tony Rehagen      

Let’s just say I know Aubrey.       

Apple Store employees don’t wear name tags, but I remember that name. That moniker and the wiry young man with thick glasses that belong to it were the unwitting foci of my frustration and anger three weeks ago, the last time I was sitting here at the so-called Genius Bar. Aubrey was the so-called genius who told me in some esoteric techie dialect that my old MacBook was out of memory or washer fluid or whatever, that three years of work I had failed to back up was essentially lost, and that I was a moron. (OK, I said that last part, but he didn’t argue.)

Well, now I’m back, snarling for a fight after having been cast into the next-door Macy’s for more than an hour, waiting to be paged. My brand-new MacBook won’t start, and I’m certain that almost a month’s worth of un-backed-up work is gone and my life and career are over. And Aubrey, of all name-tag-less messengers, once again drew the short straw. After a few minutes of poking and prodding the machine, he tells me that it might just be my display on the fritz, that all my data might be safe. But the only way to know, says Aubrey, is to plug the laptop into an external display. And the only one, says Aubrey, in this whole entire computer store, is currently being used by an hour-long Apple Watch tutorial.

I’m ready to blow—when certain words come rushing back to me:

Give honest and sincere appreciation, I think.

I hear the imagined Midwestern accent of Dale Carnegie reciting the second tenet of his “Fundamental Techniques in Handling People,” the first section of his best-selling 1936 field bible for relationships, How to Win Friends and Influence People, a building block for so much of the personal development content that has come since.

“People will rarely work at their maximum potential under criticism, but honest appreciation brings out their best.”

“Appreciation is one of the most powerful tools in the world,” the passage reads. “People will rarely work at their maximum potential under criticism, but honest appreciation brings out their best.”

It reminds me to take a breath and consider Aubrey: While I was waiting, I had observed him floating between customers, effortlessly untangling the power cable of one patron’s computer as he talked someone else through an iPhone issue, somehow paying attention to both. Both had walked away smiling, their problems apparently resolved. When he came to me, he knew my machine intimately, had an instinct for what the simplest explanation for its malady might be and how to check. It occurs to me that while I have been furious with one person for being so calm while my world is crashing, he must be dealing with dozens of frustrated, frantic people like me every day. And yet he is reassuring and doesn’t talk down to me. He is really good at his job.

“Look, I know you deal with idiots like me all day,” I say. “I can’t imagine what it’s like trying to solve a billion little crises, one after another. I honestly don’t know how you do it. My problem isn’t your fault—if anything, it’s my fault for not backing up my work. In fact, maybe you could help me with that once we get the machine working…”

Aubrey and I start up a little conversation. He tells me he enjoys helping people but eventually wants to move up to a more supervisory role. In fact, he says, he has an interview for a higher position later today. I tell him it must be hard to focus on trouble-shooting these little glitches with that event on the horizon. He smiles, shrugs off the notion, and mentions that he might be able to find another monitor in the back that can help us solve my problem.

***

The assignment was simple: Read How to Win Friends and Influence People, then live by its advice for an entire month. My initial reaction was one of incredulity. Of course I knew of the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and was one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential non-fiction books of all time. But I’ve never been into the self-improvement genre. It’s not that I’m perfect—I’ve just never thought to read an 80-year-old tome penned by a motivational speaker who died during Eisenhower’s first term.

There were grounds for skepticism: First of all, the material is a bit dated. Even after a second edition was released in the 1980s, leaving out the original sections on letter-writing for “miraculous results” and on marriage advice, the updated book comes off as a bit antiquated in places. For instance, the chapter suggesting that effective leaders use praise to sugarcoat criticism begins with an anecdote of President Calvin Coolidge telling one of his secretaries, “That’s a pretty dress you are wearing this morning, and you are a very attractive young woman,” before admonishing her for poor punctuation. (In 2011, Dale Carnegie & Associates Inc., which carries on the author’s teachings and training courses, put out a complete reboot, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age, with a 21st-century spin on advice and anecdotes.)

The second reservation I had was that I knew the book had been critically skewered, through the years, as a guide for manipulating people. But Carnegie evidently anticipated such cynicism. In the second chapter of the book, he explains, “One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned…. No! No! No! I am not suggesting flattery!... I’m talking about a new way of life.”

“Do unto others as you would have done unto you” might sound like common sense until you consider that 1) How to Win Friends was revolutionary in its time, practically inventing the genre of self-improvement books; and 2) When you reflect on your own daily interactions, the idea of taking a moment to sincerely appreciate where your counterpart is coming from isn’t all that common.

At least that was the case with me. And among the corny expressions (“Bear Oil!”) and dusty stories about William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, I found real nuggets that I put to use almost immediately.

The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere.

“Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.” This one is a parenting must. When my 4-year-old failed to put her dirty clothes in the hamper, I didn’t yell this time. I bit my lip and told her she did such a good job putting away her toys that she just had to do the same thing with her shirt and pants. “If a desired outcome seems like a momentous task, people will give up and lose heart,” Carnegie writes. “But if a fault seems easy to correct, they will readily jump at the opportunity to improve.” And I was sure to “praise every improvement” when she finally did it—two weeks later.

Carnegie also came in handy with the missus. “Whenever we argue with someone, no matter if we win or lose the argument, we still lose,” he writes. He was obviously married.

During this assignment, my wife and I happened to be buying a new house, and we had the occasion to meet the sellers at the property after we had come to terms. Haggling over the price had been a little contentious, and the inspection even more so. Still, I made it a point to “smile” and “begin in a friendly way,” as Carnegie instructs. I offered the sellers a firm handshake and a sincere appreciation for how they had kept up the property. I was a “good listener” as they talked about improvements they’d made to the place, picking up a few tips to store away for myself. I “talk[ed] in terms of the other person’s interest”—in this case one of the sellers mentioned the herb garden she had planted—and my wife and I followed her on a tour of the yard as she enthusiastically pointed out the tarragon, rosemary and sage that we’ll now know to harvest.

Carnegie also implores us to “make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.” Before we left, we asked for the inside scoop on the neighborhood, and the sellers immediately spilled the names of the plumber down the street, two auto mechanics we could trust, and the best off-the-menu Mexican food in the ZIP code.

***

More than any specific tip, however, a quick read (at 276 pages) of this book was a reminder that the key to being a human among humans is to always stop and consider the other person’s feelings and perspectives. The only way to break down any barrier between you and someone else is through mutual understanding—and it often has to start with you.

So back at the Apple Store, when I cork my internal tirade and recognize that Aubrey, my only chance at computer salvation, must be sick of my crap, I genuinely sympathize. I empathize. I try to connect on a human level. And when he returns from the back room with a newly rigged monitor, he quickly plugs it into my MacBook and establishes that it is indeed just a faulty display and that all of my files are fine. He indulges my paranoia and patiently waits while I back up my crucial data to a thumb drive, just in case. He tells me my machine will be ready in three business days. I thank him and wish him luck on his interview this afternoon.

As I leave, I’m happy, not only about my computer and files and the fact that the machine is still under warranty and the repair will be free, but that I might have made Aubrey’s day a little bit easier. I sincerely hope Aubrey’s boss recognizes and appreciates his skills. I sincerely hope he gets that promotion. And after I get my laptop back, I sincerely hope I never see Aubrey again.

http://www.success.com/blog/what-happened-when-i-lived-by-dale-carnegies-rules

Hilarious footage shows schoolgirl shouting words to hymn at nativity

If you're passionate about what you do don't be afraid to shout it out!!!!!!

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How To Become Really Unstoppable - Tony Robbins Amazing Motivation

Another great video by Tony Robbins.

If you need some motivation he's your guy.

Listen and channel your ambition.

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10 Things Successful People Never Do Again

10 Things Successful People Never Do Again

We all make mistakes but the people who thrive from their mistakes are the successful ones.

Henry Cloud

“Never go back.” What does that mean? From observations of successful people, clinical psychologist and author of Never Go Back: 10 Things You'll Never Do Again (Howard Books, June 2014), Dr. Henry Cloud has discovered certain “awakenings” that people have—in life and in business—that once they have them, they never go back to the old way of doing things. And when that happens, they are never the same. In short, they got it.

“Years ago, a bad business decision of mine led to an interesting discussion with my mentor,” Dr. Cloud says. “I had learned a valuable lesson the hard way, and he reassured me: ‘The good thing is once you learn that lesson, you never go back. You never do it again.’

“I wondered, what are the key awakenings that successful people go through that forever change how they do things, which propel them to succeed in business, relationships, and life? I began to study these awakenings, researching them over the years.”

Although life and business have many lessons to teach us, Dr. Cloud observed 10 “doorways” of learning that high performers go through, never to return again.

Successful people never again…

1. Return to what hasn’t worked.

Whether a job, or a broken relationship that was ended for a good reason, we should never go back to the same thing, expecting different results, without something being different.

2. Do anything that requires them to be someone they are not.

In everything we do, we have to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? Am I suited for it? Does it fit me? Is it sustainable?” If the answer is no to any of these questions, you better have a very good reason to proceed.

3. Try to change another person.

When you realize that you cannot force someone into doing something, you give him or her freedom and allow them to experience the consequences. In doing so, you find your own freedom as well.

4. Believe they can please everyone.

Once you get that it truly is impossible to please everyone, you begin to live purposefully, trying to please the right people.

5. Choose short-term comfort over long-term benefit.

Once successful people know they want something that requires a painful, time-limited step, they do not mind the painful step because it gets them to a long-term benefit. Living out this principle is one of the most fundamental differences between successful and unsuccessful people, both personally and professionally.

6. Trust someone or something that appears flawless.

It’s natural for us to be drawn to things and people that appear "incredible." We love excellence and should always be looking for it. We should pursue people who are great at what they do, employees who are high performers, dates who are exceptional people, friends who have stellar character, and companies that excel. But when someone or something looks too good to be true, he, she, or it is. The world is imperfect. Period. No one and no thing is without flaw, and if they appear that way, hit pause.

7. Take their eyes off the big picture.

We function better emotionally and perform better in our lives when we can see the big picture. For successful people, no one event is ever the whole story. Winners remember that—each and every day.

8. Neglect to do due diligence.

No matter how good something looks on the outside, it is only by taking a deeper, diligent, and honest look that we will find out what we truly need to know: the reality that we owe ourselves.

9. Fail to ask why they are where they find themselves.

One of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that in love and in life, in relationships and in business, successful people always ask themselves, what part am I playing in this situation? Said another way, they do not see themselves only as victims, even when they are.

10. Forget that their inner life determines their outer success.

The good life sometimes has little to do with outside circumstances. We are happy and fulfilled mostly by who we are on the inside. Research validates that. And our internal lives largely contribute to producing many of our external circumstances.

And, the converse is true: people who are still trying to find success in various areas of life can almost always point to one or more of these patterns as a reason they are repeating the same mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes…even the most successful people out there. But, what achievers do better than others is recognize the patterns that are causing those mistakes and never repeat them again. In short, they learn from pain—their own and the pain of others.

A good thing to remember is this: pain is unavoidable, but repeating the same pain twice, when we could choose to learn and do something different, is certainly avoidable. I like to say, “we don’t need new ways to fail….the old ones are working just fine!” Our task, in business and in life, is to observe what they are, and never go back to doing them again.

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Jim Rohn ► Delivers The Most Intense Motivation Speech Of All Time - EPI...

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18 Signs You Have High Emotional Intelligence

18 Signs You Have High Emotional Intelligence

Are you emotionally intelligent? Here’s how to know for sure.

Travis Bradberry

Measuring emotional intelligence can be difficult because of its intangible nature. But Dr. Travis Bradberry has analyzed the data from the million-plus people that TalentSmart has tested for EQ to help identify the behaviors that are sure signs you have a high EQ. He shares them with us in this article, originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.
When emotional intelligence (EQ) first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: People with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into the broadly-held assumption that IQ was the sole source of success.
Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as being the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. The connection is so strong that we know 90 percent of top performers have high emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities and make personal decisions to achieve positive results.
Despite the significance of EQ, its intangible nature makes it very difficult to know how much you have and what you can do to improve if you’re lacking. You can always take a scientifically validated test, such as the one that comes with the Emotional Intelligence 2.0 book.
Unfortunately, quality (scientifically valid) EQ tests aren’t free. So, I’ve analyzed the data from the million-plus people that TalentSmart has tested in order to identify the behaviors that are the hallmarks of a high EQ. What follows are sure signs that you have a high EQ.

1. You have a robust emotional vocabulary.

All people experience emotions, but it is a select few who can accurately identify them as they occur. Our research shows that only 36 percent of people can do this, which is problematic because unlabeled emotions often go misunderstood, which leads to irrational choices and counterproductive actions.
People with high EQs master their emotions because they understand them, and they use an extensive vocabulary of feelings to do so. While many people might describe themselves as simply feeling “bad,” emotionally intelligent people can pinpoint whether they feel “irritable,” “frustrated,” “downtrodden,” or “anxious.” The more specific your word choice, the better insight you have into exactly how you are feeling, what caused it and what you should do about it.

2. You’re curious about people.

It doesn’t matter if they’re introverted or extroverted, emotionally intelligent people are curious about everyone around them. This curiosity is the product of empathy, one of the most significant gateways to a high EQ. The more you care about other people and what they’re going through, the more curiosity you’re going to have about them.

3. You embrace change.

Emotionally intelligent people are flexible and are constantly adapting. They know that fear of change is paralyzing and a major threat to their success and happiness. They look for change that is lurking just around the corner, and they form a plan of action should these changes occur.

4. You know your strengths and weaknesses.

Emotionally intelligent people don’t just understand emotions; they know what they’re good at and what they’re terrible at. They also know who pushes their buttons and the environments (both situations and people) that enable them to succeed. Having a high EQ means you know your strengths and you know how to lean into them and use them to your full advantage while keeping your weaknesses from holding you back.

5. You’re a good judge of character.

Much of emotional intelligence comes down to social awareness; the ability to read other people, know what they’re about, and understand what they're going through. Over time, this skill makes you an exceptional judge of character. People are no mystery to you. You know what they’re all about and understand their motivations, even those that lie hidden beneath the surface.

6. You are difficult to offend.

If you have a firm grasp of whom you are, it’s difficult for someone to say or do something that gets your goat. Emotionally intelligent people are self-confident and open-minded, which creates a pretty thick skin. You may even poke fun at yourself or let other people make jokes about you because you are able to mentally draw the line between humor and degradation

7. You know how to say no (to yourself and others).

Emotional intelligence means knowing how to exert self-control. You delay gratification, and you avoid impulsive action. Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout and even depression. Saying no is indeed a major self-control challenge for many people. “No” is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, emotionally intelligent people avoid phrases such as “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them.

8. You let go of mistakes.

Emotionally intelligent people distance themselves from their mistakes, but do so without forgetting them. By keeping their mistakes at a safe distance, yet still handy enough to refer to, they are able to adapt and adjust for future success. It takes refined self-awareness to walk this tightrope between dwelling and remembering. Dwelling too long on your mistakes makes you anxious and gun shy, while forgetting about them completely makes you bound to repeat them. The key to balance lies in your ability to transform failures into nuggets of improvement. This creates the tendency to get right back up every time you fall down.

9. You give and expect nothing in return.

When someone gives you something spontaneously, without expecting anything in return, this leaves a powerful impression. For example, you might have an interesting conversation with someone about a book, and when you see them again a month later, you show up with the book in hand. Emotionally intelligent people build strong relationships because they are constantly thinking about others.

10. You don’t hold grudges.

The negative emotions that come with holding onto a grudge are actually a stress response. Just thinking about the event sends your body into fight-or-flight mode, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. When the threat is imminent, this reaction is essential to your survival, but when the threat is ancient history, holding onto that stress wreaks havoc on your body and can have devastating health consequences over time. In fact, researchers at Emory University have shown that holding onto stress contributes to high blood pressure and heart disease. Holding onto a grudge means you’re holding onto stress, and emotionally intelligent people know to avoid this at all costs. Letting go of a grudge not only makes you feel better now but can also improve your health.

11. You neutralize toxic people.

Dealing with difficult people is frustrating and exhausting for most. High EQ individuals control their interactions with toxic people by keeping their feelings in check. When they need to confront a toxic person, they approach the situation rationally. They identify their own emotions and don’t allow anger or frustration to fuel the chaos. They also consider the difficult person’s standpoint and are able to find solutions and common ground. Even when things completely derail, emotionally intelligent people are able to take the toxic person with a grain of salt to avoid letting him or her bring them down.

12. You don’t seek perfection.

Emotionally intelligent people won’t set perfection as their target because they know that it doesn’t exist. Human beings, by our very nature, are fallible. When perfection is your goal, you’re always left with a nagging sense of failure that makes you want to give up or reduce your effort. You end up spending your time lamenting what you failed to accomplish and what you should have done differently instead of moving forward, excited about what you've achieved and what you will accomplish in the future.

13. You appreciate what you have.

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it also improves your mood because it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23 percent. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy and physical well-being. It’s likely that lower levels of cortisol played a major role in this.

14. You disconnect.

Taking regular time off the grid is a sign of a high EQ because it helps you to keep your stress under control and to live in the moment. When you make yourself available to your work 24/7, you expose yourself to a constant barrage of stressors. Forcing yourself offline and even—gulp!—turning off your phone gives your body and mind a break. Studies have shown that something as simple as an email break can lower stress levels. Technology enables constant communication and the expectation that you should be available 24/7. It is extremely difficult to enjoy a stress-free moment outside of work when an email that will change your train of thought and get you thinking (read: stressing) about work can drop onto your phone at any moment.

15. You limit your caffeine intake.

Drinking excessive amounts of caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline, and adrenaline is the source of the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response to ensure survival. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. Caffeine’s long half-life ensures you stay this way as it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body. High-EQ individuals know that caffeine is trouble, and they don’t let it get the better of them.

16. You get enough sleep.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams) so that you wake up alert and clearheaded. High-EQ individuals know that their self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when they don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. So, they make sleep a top priority.

17. You stop negative self-talk in its tracks.

The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural tendency to perceive threats (inflating the frequency or severity of an event). Emotionally intelligent people separate their thoughts from the facts in order to escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive, new outlook.

18. You won’t let anyone limit your joy.

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from the opinions of other people, you are no longer the master of your own happiness. When emotionally intelligent people feel good about something that they’ve done, they won’t let anyone’s opinions or snide remarks take that away from them. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within.

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5 Ways to Stop Sabotaging Yourself

5 Ways to Stop Sabotaging Yourself

1. Give up dwelling on "If only..."   

Posted May 10, 2016    

Most of us have goals, both big (go back to school and get a master's degree) and small (pare down that pile of junk mail). What keeps us from meeting our goals? Why are some goals successfully achieved, while others remain on our to-do list, nagging us for months or even years at a time? 

I've written before about how to set goals that are more likely to be met. And though a few tweaks to your goal-setting method can have an immense impact on your likelihood of meeting those goals, for many of us the problem lies not so much in the goals we set, but the ways we prevent ourselves from meeting them. You might have the most functional, realistic goals in the world, but if you engage in self-sabotage, then guess what? Your chance to meet a goal is gone before you even begin.
With my clients, I consistently see the same behaviors keeping them from taking action. These methods of self-sabotage can prevent them from getting where they want to be, fixing what they need to fix, and becoming the person they would love to be. You may know what you want and be pretty sure of the path you need to take to get it, but it's not uncommon to be stuck in a rut of self-sabotage.
Do you recognize any of the following behaviors in yourself? 

1. Dwelling on "If only...."

We all have regrets, whether they're about something we did (if only I hadn't dropped out of college), or something we didn't do (if only I'd stood up for myself more in that relationship). Sometimes we play the "if only" game about things that we can't control, but that we wish were different: If we had grown up with different parents, if we were more talented, if our partner could fundamentally change in some way.
These thoughts can follow us around for decades, and the problem with them is that they don't lead to action. Repeatedly revisiting "if only" fantasies when they involve things we can't do anything about keeps us idling in neutral. Given our lack of a time machine and the inability to overhaul people other than ourselves, continuing to indulge in these thoughts brings nothing but further frustration. These thoughts don't spur action, inspiration, or problem-solving. And worst of all, dwelling on them keeps the same patterns going (ruminating on how you wasted your 20s socially may make you less likely to go out and seek good friendships in your 40s; dwelling on imperfect aspects of your partner builds resentment that makes your relationship worse).
Try turning "if only" into a different mindset altogether by accepting what's done, but using this fact to influence your future actions. Such as, "X is this way, but Y can be that way" or "I can't undo my past, but I can influence my future" or "I have learned something from X, which is Y—and here's how I plan to use it to improve things." Each of these is a new, more functional spin on the "if only" mindset.

2. Being afraid of your thoughts.

One of the easiest ways to ensure that a thought will have power over you is to try your hardest to suppress it. Sometimes we do this because our thoughts terrify us: "This is the third argument my fiancee and I have gotten in this week. What if it was the wrong choice to get engaged?" Or because we feel guilty about having them: "My coworker is just not pulling her weight on this project. But she's a sweet person and a good friend so I shouldn't rock the boat."

When you suppress a thought, though, you have no chance to process it—to understand it, feel it, and perhaps eventually decide that it doesn't make sense. Ironically, walking around afraid of what your brain has to say gives your thoughts far too much importance. This is a hallmark of people who struggle with obsessional thinking. These people are locked in a battle of trying desperately to get a sticky thought to go away, mainly because they're so overly distressed by having it in the first place. But getting trapped in this battle doesn't move you forward. Try not to think of a rhinoceros in a bikini, and bam—there she is, and she's wearing quite a hot number!
The more you battle your thoughts, the more you deny yourself the opportunity to work through them, and the more you keep yourself locked in a negative pattern. Try acknowledging your thoughts and facing them, emphasizing that they are just thoughts, and labeling them as such. For example: "I'm having the thought that it was a mistake to get engaged. That's probably because I've been stressed out. I don't have to be afraid of this thought; it is human. I will get a bit more sleep, get over this bad week at work, and see if I feel differently. If I don't, I'll think things through further."

3. Burying your feelings.

A close cousin to avoiding bothersome thoughts is trying to bury or mask feelings deemed unacceptable. Many people think that to fully acknowledge feelings means yelling obscenities in the grocery store, or hysterically wailing at their next staff meeting. But letting yourself feel things is not the same as unleashing emotions onto the world at large. In fact, you'll be less likely to unleash feelings in inappropriate ways if you've actually acknowledged them and worked through them in the first place. Often times we bury feelings out of guilt: "I'm angry at my sister for making that comment about my weight. But she's a sweet person and does so much for me. I have no right to nitpick." Or fear: "If I let myself feel sad about my breakup, I'll get so depressed I won't even be able to function."
But feelings, when hidden, grow bigger and bigger. And they are prone to corroding people from the inside out. Emotions don't tend to go away on their own just because we try to keep them in. It's similar to repeatedly slamming down a lid onto a pot of water that's boiling over. You know that if you let the water get a little bit of air—set the lid so that it doesn't completely cover the pot—you'll soon get a calm, smooth boil instead of a frothy, rattling mess. Acknowledging your feelings doesn't make them spin out of control, but putting the lid on them does.

4. Habitually starting tomorrow.

So, you've eaten a third sleeve of Girl Scout cookies before noon, or you're completely frustrated that it's three o'clock in the afternoon and you've gotten little work done. Many times, the natural reaction is to abandon the rest of the day and visualize the beautiful blank slate of tomorrow. But it's never tomorrow. If you spend so much time saving until tomorrow, the habits you want to pick up and the changes you want to make will always be beyond your reach, because tomorrow is a constantly moving target.

If you are someone who must have a "clean slate" to get motivated, it need not be tomorrow. Why not have that clean slate start in one hour? Or fifteen minutes? This helps stop the surge of all or nothing thinking that can lead you to write off the rest of the day, getting you farther and farther from your goals. Even better, instead of arbitrarily declaring the slate clean because the calendar flipped over, create a true and meaningful clean slate through your behavior. Take a brisk walk. Do a brief meditation. Have a quick chat with a friend. Do some breathing exercises. Allow yourself five minutes of a video that makes you laugh. Each of these things can help reset your mind and your productivity much better than the vague "tomorrow," which, when you think about it, is never actually here and never really puts you in the driver's seat.

5. Letting inertia harm you rather than help you.

Inertia is fantastic when it's on your side. If you pick up a healthy habit and maintain it for several weeks in a row—making coffee rather than buying it, taking the stairs rather than the elevator, sorting your emails as they come in—it becomes much easier to continue it. But too often, inertia applies to habits we don't want to have, and activities that make us feel unproductive and unhealthy. This is the reason why the psychological clean slate discussed above can be so powerful. We desperately crave the ability to be free from the things we already view as tainted: A busted diet, a soured relationship, or a pattern of motivation-killing habits at work. We don't want to salvage any of it. We want to start fresh because it's a much more attractive option.
Here's the thing: Just like in the physical world, we are prone to staying in motion—or in place—by this force of inertia, and no one can change it but ourselves. The calendar flipping to a new year, feelings of being "fed up," new workout gear, or public promises can all (briefly) jumpstart new behaviors. But they don't address the underlying inertia, which is truly needed to change long-term behavior. You must build the right day-to-day structure in order for new habits to take hold. Otherwise the inertia of the old habits never really goes away. Yes, those new workout pants are fabulous, but if your gym is still too far away or too incompatible with your work hours, then you haven't done anything to address the inertia that prevents you from going to the gym. Focus not on the jumpstart, but on the overhauling of the battery to get inertia working for you, rather than against you.

Andrea Bonior, Ph.D. (link is external), is a licensed clinical psychologist and speaker. She is the author of the upcoming Psychology: Essential Thinkers, Classic Theories, and How They Inform Your World, (link is external) and The Friendship Fix (link is external), and serves on the faculty of Georgetown University. Her mental health advice column Baggage Check (link is external) has appeared in the Washington Post Express for more than eleven years. She speaks to audiences large and small about relationships, work-life balance, and motivation, and is a television commentator about mental health issues. Join the conversation on Facebook (link is external) or Twitter (link is external)! 
Photo credit: Victor (Flickr Creative Commons)

Source: 5 Ways to Stop Sabotaging Yourself