How to Live With an Unknowable Mind
We know surprisingly little about our own personalities, attitudes and even self-esteem. How do we live with that? How do you imagine your own mind? I sometimes picture mine as a difficult and contrary child; the kind that throws a stone at you for no reason and can’t explain itself. Or while at the beach it sits silent, looking miserable. One reason minds can be frustrating is that we only have access to part of them, by definition the conscious part. Except we don’t know it’s doing things we haven’t asked it to, because we can’t interrogate it. This is quite a different view of the mind than Freud had. The idea that large parts of our minds can’t be accessed is fine for basic processes like movement, seeing or hearing. Other parts would be extremely interesting to know about. Here are three examples of areas in which our self-knowledge is relatively low: 1. You’d be pretty sure that you could describe your personality to someone else, right? Don’t be so sure. 2. 3. Road to self-knowledge
63 Ways to Build Self-Confidence
Confidence is a tool you can use in your everyday life to do all kinds of cool stuff, not least to stop second-guessing yourself, manage your fears and become able to do more of the things that really matter to you. But not many people realise that their self-confidence works just like a muscle – it grows in response to the level of performance required of it. Either you use it or you lose it. Learning is a Good Thing, so sign up for that evening class and enjoy it.Get out of your own head by asking your partner or best friend what you can do for them today.Hit the gym. Read full content
» The Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle Our daily lives are often a series of habits played out through the day, a trammeled existence fettered by the slow accretion of our previous actions. By Leo Babauta But habits can be changed, as difficult as that may seem sometimes. I’m a living example: in tiny, almost infinitesimal steps, I’ve changed a laundry list of habits. It’s possible. And while I’ve written about habit change many times over the course of the life of Zen Habits, today I thought I’d put the best tips all together in one cheatsheet, for those new to the blog and for those who could use the reminders. Keep it simple Habit change is not that complicated. The simple steps of habit change: 1. 2. 3. That’s it. The Habit Change Cheatsheet The following is a compilation of tips to help you change a habit. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.
List of Values
The following list of values will help you develop a clearer sense of what's most important to you in life, as explained in the article Living Your Values. Simply print out this page, mark the values which most resonate with you, and then sort your list in order of priority. As you scan the values list below, you may find that while most values have little or no significance to you (and some may even seem negative to you), there are those values that just jump out and call to you, and you feel, "Yes, this value is part of me." This values list is merely a guide. Steve RecommendsHere are my recommendations for products and services I've reviewed that can improve your results. Site Build It!
60 Ways to Improve Your Life
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to make drastic changes in order to notice an improvement in the quality of your life. At the same time, you don’t need to wait a long time in order to see the measurable results that come from taking positive action. All you have to do is take small steps, and take them consistently, for a period of 100 days. Below you’ll find 60 small ways to improve all areas of your life in the next 100 days. Home 1. Day 1: Declutter MagazinesDay 2: Declutter DVD’sDay 3: Declutter booksDay 4: Declutter kitchen appliances 2. If you take it out, put it back.If you open it, close it.If you throw it down, pick it up.If you take it off, hang it up. 3. A burnt light bulb that needs to be changed.A button that’s missing on your favorite shirt.The fact that every time you open your top kitchen cabinet all of the plastic food containers fall out. Happiness 4. 5. 6. How many times do you beat yourself up during the day? 7. Learning/Personal Development 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
Tapping our powers of persuasion
Most psychologists will read this “Questionnaire” with Robert Cialdini, PhD. That may or may not be true, but according to Cialdini, that statement is powerfully persuasive because we tend to go along with our peers. Cialdini, who retired last year from a teaching and research position at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., is a renowned expert in the science of swaying. In his seminal book on the topic, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” (Quill, 1984), he went undercover to learn the tricks mastered by used-car dealers and Fortune 500 executives alike, bringing persuasion research to psychology’s forefront. Cialdini distilled his findings into six “weapons of influence,” each grounded in how we perceive ourselves or others: Reciprocity: We inherently want to return favors. In recent years, Cialdini has been leveraging those weapons to address major world problems such as climate change by persuading people to reduce energy use. I think it’s a little too early.
How to Live Life to the Fullest
10 Simple Truths Smart People Forget
Email Some of the smartest people I know continuously struggle to get ahead because they forget to address a few simple truths that collectively govern our potential to make progress. So here’s a quick reminder: #1 – Education and intelligence accomplish nothing without action. It doesn’t matter if you have a genius IQ and a PhD in Quantum Physics, you can’t change anything or make any sort of real-world progress without taking action. #2 – Happiness and success are two different things. I know an extremely savvy businesswoman who made almost a million dollars online last year. I also know a surfer who surfs almost all day, every day on the beach in front of our condo complex in San Diego. “What will make me happy?” #3 – Everyone runs their own business. No matter how you make a living or who you think you work for, you only work for one person, yourself. So how can you simultaneously save your time and increase your profit? is a good read on this topic. And that’s okay. Photo by: Alemdag
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