The 7 Rules of Highly Effective Habits This is a guest post by Barrie Davenport of Live Bold & Bloom. I have a coaching client who weighed over 400 lbs. She never exercised and ate a poor diet consisting of a lot of junk food and sweets. She didn’t socialize much because she was embarrassed about her appearance. Although she longed to go to Europe, she wouldn’t travel by plane because she couldn’t fit in the seat. But over the course of the last two years, she has . . . lost over 200 lbs. So what does this woman know that the rest of us don’t? How was she able to essentially turn her entire life around to become fit, healthy, attractive, organized, and wildly successful? I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, let me mention that my client has given me permission to write about her. My client’s name is Stephanie, and she did these remarkable things all by herself. Think about it — just changing your diet alone involves a series of mini-habits. So what does Stephanie know? Creating sustainable habits actually requires a skill set.
How can you change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset? Step1. Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.” As you approach a challenge, that voice might say to you “Are you sure you can do it? Maybe you don’t have the talent.” “What if you fail—you’ll be a failure” “People will laugh at you for thinking you had talent.” As you hit a setback, the voice might say, “This would have been a snap if you really had talent.” As you face criticism, you might hear yourself say, “It’s not my fault. Step 2. How you interpret challenges, setbacks, and criticism is your choice. So as you face challenges, setbacks, and criticism, listen to the fixed mindset voice and... Step 3. As you approach a challenge: THE FIXED-MINDSET says “Are you sure you can do it? THE GROWTH-MINDSET answers, “I’m not sure I can do it now, but I think I can learn to with time and effort.” FIXED MINDSET: “What if you fail—you’ll be a failure” GROWTH MINDSET: “Most successful people had failures along the way.” GROWTH MINDSET: “If I don’t try, I automatically fail. As you hit a setback:
Rebalancing the Portfolio of Your Life | Innovation You Have you ever fantasized about your great escape? You know, the stressful job, the daily grind, the loveless marriage. What if you made a break for it and actually got all the way to the land of plenty only to find that it wasn’t what you really wanted? That’s exactly what I’ve done a couple times in my life before I learned that the same mindset that drives a person to have it all eventually stops them from having what they really want. I retired at twenty nine. I was exhausted. Seek: Creativity How: Aesthetic vision and artistic expressionExample: Keep a sketch book of creative ideas Seek: Discovery How: Psychological and spiritual explorationExample: Visit the holy places of a different religion Seek: Vitality How: Physical and emotional healthExample: Keep an appointment with yourself to meditate daily Seek: Prosperity How: Financial well beingExample: Actively manage your financial investments Seek: Capability Seek: Community Seek: Security Seek: Productivity
Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve,” Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: “Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…” Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) — an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality.
How Doing Nothing Can Help You Truly Live - Sharon Salzberg This article was originally published on The Huffington Post, May 4, 2010 When the retreat center I co-founded, the Insight Meditation Society, first opened, someone created a mock brochure describing a retreat there, with sayings like, “Come to IMS and have all the tea you could ever drink.” It also featured a wonderful made up motto for us: “It is better to do nothing than to waste your time.” Although that motto never made it into our official presentation, it actually was an accurate description of insight meditation, or mindfulness meditation. We come to meditation to learn how not to act out the habitual tendencies we generally live by, those actions that create suffering for ourselves and others, and get us into so much trouble. In our usual mind state, we are continually activating the process that in Buddhist terminology is known as “bhava,” which literally means “becoming.” Image from Flickr by jacme31, Creative Commons License
The Best 3 Ways to Deal With Failure (Plus 5 Painful Ones To Avoid) Are your ways of dealing with everyday failures helping or hindering? Acceptance, positive reframing and humour are the best three ways to deal with failure, according to psychological research. These three strategies make people feel the most satisfied at the end of the day. The study, published in the journal Anxiety, Stress & Coping, had 149 people keeping daily diaries for up to two weeks (Stoeber & Janssen, 2011). They reported the most irritating failure they had during the day, how they coped with it and how satisfied they felt at the end of the day. People spontaneously used all sorts of coping strategies. The results showed, though, that these three techniques left people feeling the most satisfied at the end of the day: Acceptance.Positive reframing – looking for the positives anywhere you can, perhaps by looking at what has been done rather than what hasn’t.Humour. In contrast, people who frequently used the following five common techniques felt worse at the end of the day:
13 Things to Remember When Life Gets Rough We’ve all gone through hard times. And we all get through them. However, some get through them better than others. So what is their secret? Most of it has to do with attitude. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. About the Author Carol Morgan has a Ph.D. in communication and is a professor at Wright State University. Credits: Life hack
5 Failures You Need to Experience If You Want to Succeed In Life If you are too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful. I fail far more than you might assume, especially given the fact that I’ve written hundreds of articles, coached thousands of people, and even written a book on forming productive habits, being mindful, and finding contentment despite our struggles. I fail at all of those things sometimes, and it feels just as dreadful for me as it does for anybody else. I come down hard on myself, feel guilty, try to avoid thinking about it, and would rather hide my failures from everyone I know. Yes, failing hurts! I still fail at getting to the gym sometimes, but I keep trying. I fail at being loving and compassionate to myself sometimes. I fail at being a patient and present dad and husband, especially when life gets busy. I’ve made three attempts at writing the article you’re reading now, and scrapped it entirely the first two times because it didn’t feel right. 1. Life is full of screw-ups. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Learning to Learn: leveraging your circadian rhythm There are a few distinct, precious moments of heightened sensory elation that we can achieve through unique actions; whether that be hitting the sweet spot on your driver from the tee box, tossing that crumpled up piece of paper that started out as a great idea and delivering it perfectly into the waste basket 10 feet away, or something as simple as arriving at the perfect adjective when telling a story to a friend. Achieving a greater sense of cognitive ability when interacting with either the external environment around you or the internal synapses of your own brain is an equally satisfying accomplishment that many believe would lead to immediate success. There is no special formula for arriving at a heightened rate of learning, enhanced memory, or sudden talent for verbiage; however there is a proven internal process that you can utilize in order to maximize your work output, in channeling your Circadian Rhythm. Spend a few days tracking your levels of focus, energy, and hunger.