Top 5 Ways to Build a Wonderful Life

1. Live Below Your Means

There will always be temptation to forsake the future for immediate gratification. We all want to buy that new piece of technology, treat ourselves to an expensive night on the town, or take out a loan for the flashy car we can’t afford. It might feel great at the time but rash spending hurts a lot later on.

Enjoy life’s simple pleasures and save as much as you can. Expensive things don’t create lasting happiness and security. Careful spending will bring you greater leisure and enjoyment in the long run.

2. Put Your Money to Work

Saving is great, but to make the most of your money you need to put it to work. Good investments can be the difference between retiring in your 40’s or in your 60’s.

A post today at The Simple Dollar really got me thinking. According to Trent’s projections, if a person in their early 20’s invests 20% of their income in an S&P index fund, the interest they earn will equal their current salary when they reach their early 40’s. They could retire without a drop in income!

Wise investing is the surest path to financial independence and it’s something everyone can work on. It’s definitely an area I’ll be devoting more attention to in my personal life and on this blog.

3. Educate Yourself

To be happy we need continuous growth. The best way to grow is life long education. This doesn’t mean you need to pursue a doctorate or spend 2 hours reading every day. Self education can be anything that takes you out of your comfort zone. The important part is keeping an open mind and searching for fresh ideas and perspectives.

Education builds over time. It might feel like the bits of wisdom you acquire don’t mean much, but over the years they add up to form a wiser, kinder, more interesting person.

4. Develop Lasting Personal Relationships

Suppose you had everything you wanted. Would you be happy without anyone to share it with? The personal relationships we develop with friends and family members are the greatest source of happiness in our lives. Don’t forget about them.

Taking the time to cultivate and enjoy personal relationships is essential to longterm happiness. Without the people you care about you’ll probably be miserable, no matter how successful you become.

5. Work Towards a Dream You’re Passionate About

Even if your life isn’t perfect, you can always build towards a goal you’re passionate about. If you aren’t building towards something, you’re probably stagnating. When this happens to me I start to feel like a victim trapped by my own life. The best way to reverse this is working towards a goal.

We can’t control everything about our lives, but working towards a goal gives us something positive to focus on and lays the foundation for future success. No matter what your passion is, get out there and start doing something. As Lao Tzu said, even a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.

Bonus: 6. Stay in Shape

You only get one body. Once it’s been ruined there isn’t much you can do about it. Exercise to keep the rust off. Avoid excessive consumption of damaging substances and unhealthy foods. It may feel like terrible self denial at the time but enjoying good health in your later years is worth the sacrifice.

by John Wesley

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Increase Motivation

If you want to make things happen the ability to motivate yourself and others is a crucial skill. At work, home, and everywhere in between, people use motivation to get results. Motivation requires a delicate balance of communication, structure, and incentives. These 21 tactics will help you maximize motivation in yourself and others.
Motivation

1. Consequences - Never use threats. They’ll turn people against you. But making people aware of the negative consequences of not getting results (for everyone involved) can have a big impact. This one is also big for self motivation. If you don’t get your act together, will you ever get what you want?

2. Pleasure - This is the old carrot on a stick technique. Providing pleasurable rewards creates eager and productive people.

3. Performance incentives - Appeal to people’s selfish nature. Give them the opportunity to earn more for themselves by earning more for you.

4. Detailed instructions - If you want a specific result, give specific instructions. People work better when they know exactly what’s expected.


5. Short and long term goals - Use both short and long term goals to guide the action process and create an overall philosophy.

6. Kindness - Get people on your side and they’ll want to help you. Piss them off and they’ll do everything they can to screw you over.

7. Deadlines - Many people are most productive right before a big deadline. They also have a hard time focusing until that deadline is looming overhead. Use this to your advantage by setting up a series of mini-deadlines building up to an end result.

8. Team Spirit - Create an environment of camaraderie. People work more effectively when they feel like part of team — they don’t want to let others down.

9. Recognize achievement - Make a point to recognize achievements one-on-one and also in group settings. People like to see that their work isn’t being ignored.

10. Personal stake - Think about the personal stake of others. What do they need? By understanding this you’ll be able to keep people happy and productive.

11. Concentrate on outcomes - No one likes to work with someone standing over their shoulder. Focus on outcomes — make it clear what you want and cut people loose to get it done on their own.

12. Trust and Respect - Give people the trust and respect they deserve and they’ll respond to requests much more favorably.

13. Create challenges - People are happy when they’re progressing towards a goal. Give them the opportunity to face new and difficult problems and they’ll be more enthusiastic.

14. Let people be creative - Don’t expect everyone to do things your way. Allowing people to be creative creates a more optimistic environment and can lead to awesome new ideas.

15. Constructive criticism - Often people don’t realize what they’re doing wrong. Let them know. Most people want to improve and will make an effort once they know how to do it.

16. Demand improvement - Don’t let people stagnate. Each time someone advances raise the bar a little higher (especially for yourself).

17. Make it fun - Work is most enjoyable when it doesn’t feel like work at all. Let people have fun and the positive environment will lead to better results.

18. Create opportunities - Give people the opportunity to advance. Let them know that hard work will pay off.

19. Communication - Keep the communication channels open. By being aware of potential problems you can fix them before a serious dispute arises.

20. Make it stimulating - Mix it up. Don’t ask people to do the same boring tasks all the time. A stimulating environment creates enthusiasm and the opportunity for “big picture” thinking.

Master these key points and you’ll increase motivation with a bit of hard work.

by John Wesley

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How to Master the Art of Forgiveness

Many people find it hard to forgive. As we go through life, it’s inevitable that we’ll come across people who wrong us in one way or another. From the one who cuts you off in traffic to the one who puts you on hold and forgets about you, there’s no shortage of people out there who aren’t treating us exactly the way we’d like. Unfortunately, we’re rather limited in our ability to influence their behavior. But the good news is that we have a lot of control over how we react to them.

Why forgive?

First of all, keep in mind that it’s generally in your best interest to forgive people. Choosing to carry a grudge forever keeps you from ever repairing the relationship. Long after you’ve forgotten what the other person actually did, you’re still focused on being mad at them because you’re stuck in that habit. It’s very easy to blow something way out of proportion because you think too much about what went wrong instead of how to make it right. Don’t be too attached to your anger.

Another thing to consider is what you accomplish by not forgiving. You might decide never to forgive Hitler, and I can’t really object to that. In that case, many people would consider forgiveness to mean compromising their integrity. But what about someone who just made a rude comment about you? Do you really need to be mad at them forever? Is it really worth the stress and the higher blood pressure, or can you just let it go? Just because you might be justified in being mad, doesn’t mean it’s your best option.

Forgiving others

To be able to forgive others, it’s helpful to understand where they’re coming from. Sometimes we make assumptions that someone must be a jerk to act a certain way, when there might be factors we aren’t considering.

The person who cut you off in traffic? Maybe they were racing to the hospital. Maybe they were late to an interview for a job that they really need. Maybe they swerved to avoid someone else.

The person who put you on hold and forgot about you? Maybe they were severely understaffed because some people were sick that day. Maybe they were trying to track down the perfect person to solve your problem. Maybe their phone system malfunctioned and you got transferred to the wrong place.

The person at the store who gave you bad service? Maybe it was their first day. Maybe they hadn’t been trained properly. Maybe they had a bad experience with the previous customer that had them frazzled.

In many cases, the person who wronged you might have acted completely out of character for some reason, and they might truly be sorry. It’s also possible that they don’t even know they did anything wrong! Try not to make assumptions, and just talk to them instead. Say what they did, why you think it was wrong, and how it made you feel. If they didn’t mean for it to be an act of vengeance, then why not forgive them?

Forgiving yourself

Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself. If someone else makes a mistake, we’re more objective about it, and we can see that they really did the best they could. If we make the same mistake, it’s a lot harder to be objective. We think back over all the details and see how many things we could have done differently. Other people might say it’s OK, but how do you appease your own toughest critic?

As with other people, you need to consider what you have to gain by not forgiving yourself. Usually it’s very little. If you can make the situation right, do it. Otherwise, work on doing better next time. If necessary, avoid similar situations until you’re sure you can handle them better. But don’t wallow in guilt. It’s one of the most useless emotions of all.

Is there anyone you need to forgive today?

by Hunter Nuttall

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Over 40? The 10 steps to FINALLY doing the work that’s JUST right for you

1. P is for Perfect: Purpose

What is life about? How will you make a difference in the world? Your purpose drives your behavior and can provide you with daily energy and happiness. What is the purpose of your life? Think deeply about where you most want to make a contribution in the world.

Does making people laugh give you purpose? How about making food for others? Maybe it’s helping others become physically fit. Perhaps it’s helping supply a service that helps people stay organized. Your purpose is personal. No one will really care except the most important person in the world — YOU. Having a purpose will change your life and give you the direction you are looking for.

2. P is for Perfect: Prize

What is most important to you? What behaviors would you have to follow each day to be true to yourself? What would you have to do each day to NOT follow what is most important to you? The choice is yours.

Look at your daily activities. Are you spending your time on what is most important to you? Does your work align with what is most important to you? Is your work a natural alignment of your abilities and your interests?

Living life through others and their values will leave you feeling out of control and stagnant. Living life through what YOU prize most will give your life meaning, and give you a feeling of fulfillment.

3. P is for Perfect: Perspective

Others have views about you. What’s more important is the perspective you have of yourself.

You can change perceptions that aren’t useful to you any longer. What is your perspective of the world?

How do you feel about you? Where do these feelings come from? Could you replace these feelings with new ideas that are most useful right now?

What we focus on is what we get. If you continually think about what is not working, you will only attract more of this into your life. Instead, focus on what you want with regards to your work. Find others who are doing exactly what you want to do. Talk to them; study them. If they can do it, so can you.

4. P is for Perfect: Possibilities

What is possible for you in your vocational life? So many of us focus, instead, on what’s impossible. What would you have to do to start believing more things are possible for you?

Possibilities start with you. If you really think something you want is not possible, then you will not move towards it. On the other hand, start to believe what you want IS possible, and you will find new energy to move towards what you want.

Give yourself proof that what you want is possible and real. The mind can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined, when thinking about the future.

Make sure what you focus on is what is right for you.

5. P is for Perfect: Place

What is your role in the world? In your heart, what is the vision you have for yourself? What are your abilities and your interests? Do they match?

Is your current job something you could really do for the rest of your life?

If not, you must change. The only people who retire, are people who don’t love what they do. Most people dream of retirement, and then when they get there, they are bored and depressed, and they die not too many years after.

The solution?

Find work now that you can enjoy doing until you stop breathing. Many financial experts now will help you make a financial plan that covers 100 years. That’s a lot of years, and if you are between 40 and 50, that’s nearly half your life to go!

Time for a change if your work no longer serves you.

6. P is for Perfect: Position

What is your attitude on a daily basis? What would you like to change, and why? What small steps could you take now to “try on” a new daily position?

Does your work bring a smile to your face each day?

Do you want to pinch yourself because you can’t believe you actually make a living doing what you love? If this is NOT true for you, it’s time for change!

Yes, you can decide to have a good attitude at a lousy job for a while. But you are only fooling yourself, and it will not last long.

7. P is for Perfect: Passion

What are you really passionate about? Can you identify the vocational patterns in your passions? Don’t let negativity defeat your creativity.

What do you most often think about — what gets you excited with regards to your work?

What type of work makes you happy, alive, and full of energy?

8. P is for Perfect: Perfect Vocational Day

Do you have a vision of your perfect day — can you imagine living your dream while making the income you require at the same time? If you can’t imagine it, you can’t move towards it.

Write down exactly what would be just perfect for you with regards to an average work day doing something that could last a lifetime. Why not? Most jobs were not developed for you.

Most job searching is backwards. Instead of trying to fit yourself into a job, start with exactly what the pattern of your perfect day would be; a daily plan that works best for you. This will lead you to the right work. You won’t need Human Resources for this!

9. P is for Perfect: Present

What are you doing in the present to move towards your perfect vocational day? Do you know the gap between your dreams, and where you are now? Do you know the real reason why reaching your perfect vocational day is so important to you?

Do you have the right relationships now to support your journey?

Do you have the right people in your life to support you and fuel your journey?

Write a future biography that describes what you want your life to be like in 2-3 years. You are not done until this vision fits you perfectly.

10. P is for Perfect: Putting it all together (Giving yourself permission)

Have you defined and written down exactly what you want? Have you talked about it with others?

If you follow your heart, you will become a magnet for your dreams.

Look for those defining moments in your life — the times when you find yourself saying “enough is enough!”

Maybe it will be something big like a divorce, illness, layoff, or a financial crisis. Maybe it will simply be a realization that these faceless bosses, meetings, and paperwork are getting in the way of an authentic life. Most jobs would not be done if people were not paid to do them.

Only you can find and do the work that matters most to YOU.

I think this might be JUST the right time for you to get started!

I’ll be cheering you on as you go.

by: Craig Nathason

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Overcoming a Loss of Motivation

How many times have you started a new activity (such as a personal project or exercise routine) with a burst of enthusiasm, only to see that initial momentum evaporate? This often leads to depression and causes us to give up prematurely. I’ve experienced this letdown dozens of times myself. But fortunately, with a bit of thought and reflection you can turn this negative emotion around.

The key to harnessing your emotions is understanding them. The natural pattern of human emotion is peaks and valleys. When we start a new project we’re filled with tremendous optimism. All we can think about is the expected benefits, and since we haven’t started yet, we aren’t aware of the difficulties involved. This natural high causes a surge of mental and physical activity. The peak is a great thing because the energy boost gets projects off the ground. If you’re a creative type like me, you know that this period is euphoric. You feel like nothing can stop you.

The downside of this surge of energy is that it inevitably ends. Exerting large amounts of energy wears you down, and after the initial optimism wears off we feel extremely tired. However high you started off, you fall down just as low. This causes a loss of confidence. The combination of fatigue, scant results, and an awareness of impending adversity makes us want to give up. From personal experience I’ve learned a few ways to hold strong against negativity.
Be Prepared for a Letdown

Emotions, by nature, lose their power when we understand them. Prove this to yourself. Next time you get angry, take a moment to reflect on the reason behind the emotion. When I step back and reflect, it’s easy to see that my anger is caused by insecurity/selfishness/jealousy etc. After I understand the cause my anger fades away.

The same technique applies to a loss of motivation. Instead of giving into negativity, step back and analyze. Look at the causes. Are you tired, burned out, disappointed by the results? Are these feelings justified, or are they a by product of a low point in the emotional spectrum?

To illustrate these ideas, I’ll use my most recent project as an example, the creation of this site. When I launched Pick the Brain it took an enormous amount of effort. I was completely new to blogging, web design, and traffic building so there was a steep learning curve. Writing new posts, setting up the site, and trying to build traffic took up nearly all my free time. After about three weeks I was completely burned out. I got depressed and started to question if the site was worth the effort. I wasn’t seeing any returns and I started to find enormous faults in my writing and the purpose of the site. There were moments when I was resigned to failure.

One reason I was able to overcome this loss of motivation is that I prepared myself for a letdown. Beforehand, I researched blogging and learned that it generally takes 9-12 months before a site begins to see significant traffic. Knowing that my lack of success was perfectly normal helped me get over it. The same is true for other endeavors. If you know losing 20 pounds in a month is unrealistic, you’ll be able to accept losing only 5 more easily.

I also knew my own emotions and was prepared for the initial emotional peak to pass. When I was first inspired to launch a website, my expectations were through the roof. Dreams of AdSense revenue danced in my head and I pictured throngs of loyal readers as if they already existed. But because I understand my emotional pattern, I realized this optimism would give way to depression. In the back of my mind, I foresaw the impending motivational battle, and when it came I was ready.

Reevaluate Your Strategy and Motivation

The passing of the emotional peak is a blessing in disguise because it allows us to reevaluate our plans from a fresh perspective. At first we are blinded by our own optimism. When we lose our motivation we can see gaping holes our in plan. We can either get down on ourselves and give up, or we can use this negative emotion to discover our faults and correct them. After I pulled myself out of the motivational cellar, I went back to all the negatives thoughts I’d had and applied them to improving the site. Having a pessimistic attitude opened my eyes. It made me realistic about my abilities and expectations. Emotional valleys bring us back to reality. Without them we’d be raving lunatics with unlimited self-confidence.

Use a loss of motivation as an opportunity to reconsider what your motivation really is. One reason I lost motivation is that I became too concerned with the financial aspect of blogging and lost sight of the real reason I started: sharing my passion for self improvement and the pursuit of happiness. When I realigned my motivation with my passion, the lack of results didn’t matter. My motivation returned because I realized connecting with people through my writing is an end in itself. Even if this site never makes I dime, sharing my ideas and experiences to help other people is worth the effort.

In truth, sometimes giving up is the right decision. If you started doing something for the wrong reasons you’ll likely lose your motivation. This is a good thing. It allows us to see what really motivates us. In these cases, the best choice is to move on to a new endeavor. Don’t fight self doubt, use it for your benefit.

Conclusion

Dealing with emotional highs and lows is an experience common to all people. We generally accept our emotions as beyond our control. They are powerful and mysterious and appear quite irrational. But if we contemplate our emotions, if we explore the inner workings of our minds, we find that like all things, emotions obey the law of cause and effect. Armed with this knowledge, we can continue to allow our emotions to dominate our lives, or we can use them to our benefit.

Don’t be surprised by a loss of motivation and don’t be disappointed by it. Understand it as natural effect of the human mind, and utilize this knowledge of self to make your emotions work for you.

by John Wesley

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How to Achieve Your Goals with Healthy Habits

We’ve all faced the disappointment and guilt that comes from setting a goal and giving up on it after a couple of weeks. Sustaining motivation for a long-term goal is hard to achieve, and yet the best goals can usually only be accomplished in a few months or even years.

Here’s the solution: Focus instead on creating a new habit that will lead to achieving your goal.

Want to run a marathon? First create the habit of running every day. Want to get out of debt and start saving? Create the habit of brown bagging it to work, or watching DVDs instead of going to the movies, or whatever change will lead to saving money for you.

By focusing not on what you have to achieve over the course of the next year, but instead on what you are doing each day, you are focusing on something achievable. That little daily change will add up to a huge change, over time … and you’ll be surprised at how far you’ve come in no time. Little grains of sand can add up to a mountain over time.

I used this philosophy of habit changes to run a marathon, to change my diet and lose weight, to write a novel, to quit smoking, to become organized and productive, to double my income, reduce my debt and start saving, and to begin training for an Olympic triathlon this year. It works, if you focus on changing habits.

Now, changing your habits isn’t easy — I won’t lie to you — but it’s achievable, especially if you start small. Don’t try to change the world with your first habit change … take baby steps at first. I started by just trying to run a mile — and by the end of the year, I could run more than 20 miles.

How do you change your habits? Focus on one habit at a time, and follow these steps:

1. Positive changes. If you’re trying to change a negative habit (quit smoking), replace it with a positive habit (running for stress relief, for example).
2. Take on a 30-day challenge. Tell yourself that you’re going to do this habit every day, at the same time every day, for 30 straight days without fail. Once you’re past that 30-day mark, the habit will become much easier. If you fail, do not beat yourself up. Start again on a new 30-day challenge. Practice until you succeed.
3. Commit yourself completely. Don’t just tell yourself that you might or should do this. Tell the world that DEFINITELY will do this. Put yourself into this 100 percent. Tell everyone you know. Email them. Put it on your blog. Post it up at your home and work place. This positive public pressure will help motivate you.
4. Set up rewards. It’s best to reward yourself often the first week, and then reward yourself every week for that first month. Make sure these are good rewards, that will help motivate you to stay on track.
5. Plan to beat your urges. It’s best to start out by monitoring your urges, so you become more aware of them. Track them for a couple days, putting a tally mark in a small notebook every time you get an urge. Write out a plan, before you get the urges, with strategies to beat them. We all have urges to quit — how will you overcome it? What helps me most are deep breathing and drinking water. You can get through an urge — it will pass.
6. Track and report your progress. Keep a log or journal or chart so that you can see your progress over time. I used a running log for my marathon training, and a quit meter when I quit smoking. It’s very motivating to see how far you’ve come. Also, if you can join an online group and report your progress each day, or email family and friends on your progress, that will help motivate you.

Most important of all: Always stay positive. I learned the habit of monitoring my thoughts, and if I saw any negative thoughts (”I want to stop!”) I would squash it like a little bug, and replace it with a positive thought (”I can do this!”). It works amazingly. This is the best tip ever. If you think negative thoughts, you will definitely fail. But if you always think positive, you will definitely succeed.

by Leo Babauta

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Using Your Motivational Skills to Develop a Team

When you are given a situation that evolves a group of people you will find that not only will you have to learn how to work as a team, but motivate each other to work as a team. There are so many things that you are going to have to do in order to get the group to come together, but all a team needs is some direction and leadership.

One of the best ways that you can motivate a team is by coming to the team and being a great listener and communicator. You will also want tot come to the group with good leadership skills. Leaderships skills is hard to obtain, however, you can always learn how to become a great leader by taking some classes, as well as, seminars. When you come to the group as a leader you will find out that everyone will appreciate the direction and come together.

The other thing that you might want to keep in mind is being able to come to a group with leadership, but not dictatorship. You don't want to seem the boss of the group, however, if you keep the communication channel open, there is no reason why you cannot suggest some ideas of your own.

If you notice that the group has gone off track from a task, you can always bring the group back through various motivational tasks. Some of these things could be like taking a quick break, reviewing the meeting, and even asking the others to come up with a solution to the group.

You will also want to come up with task-orientated activities so that you can always have the group motivated and ready for the tasks at hand. You will also find that if you look up some task orientated activities then you will be able to control the direction of the group and keep the communication open.

The activities that you can do will vary and you can find plenty of ideas online or from higher ranking co-workers. You will find that you can even make up your own activities because it depends on the type of people that you are working with and the type of team that you are apart.

If you really want to motivate someone, you have to find it inside yourself to get the team to reason with you and to get the motivation it takes to stay focus. You will find that if you are good leader you will not have so many issues with team motivation, however you should always be thinking about the communication channels, and how you can communicate better within the team. You will find that communication skills are vital for you to be able to motivate anyone.

It is very important that you learn how to motivate or lead a team, because there are many life lessons in being part of team. You'll learn even more lessons if you are in a group that can function as one. You will find that it is very important as a leader for you to be able to communicate clearly and by being in several teams you'll get the practice and training of how to be a leader. Being a leader is a great honor and you might just want to take it all in with a positive attitude. Remember, when you are a positive leader then you will be a part of a positive team. What you bring in the team is what you have to survive as a team. If you do not give it the time and energy needed to find out how to motivate anyone then the team will fail.

About the Author

Carl Hoffman has over 20 years of sales and marketing experience and is considered an expert cook. he has many online ventures and author of countless articles on cooking, health, sales and marketing. You can visit him at Hoffy's Kitchen.

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