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48 Variables That Make the Biggest Difference in Your Life via reddit.com. 7 Simple Ways to Break Your Current Pattern. For better or worse, our lives are often dictated by our daily routines and patterns. If these patterns are mostly filled with positive thoughts, emotions, habits, and relationships, then you’ll continue to naturally experience happiness and success in your life. And if these patterns are mostly filled with negative thoughts, emotions, habits, and relationships, then you’ll continue to naturally experience depression and failure in your life.

The problem is that these routines can be incredibly sticky and really hard to change. So when they are negative, it feels like something we can never climb out of. We repeat our pattern so often that it becomes wired in our brains – every morning we wake up and our brains boot up the same “neural software” that motivates us to make the same exact choices day-in and day-out.

The truth is a lot of people don’t make many conscious choices throughout their day, they merely follow their current pattern – which doesn’t take any thinking or effort. The 20 Things You Need To Let Go To Be Happy. Everyone has one common goal in life: to achieve true happiness. The biggest factor holding us back from achieving our dreams is, simply and sadly, our own selves. We put limitations on ourselves everyday, whether intentionally or unintentionally. There are so many ways we can alleviate these restraints. Remember, life can either be something you embrace or something you hide from. Stop making things complicated and just live your life. It would be so much simpler and more enjoyable if we learned to just release certain limitations. Let's take a look at the things you need to let go of in order to become a happier person. 1. Who gives a sh*t what other people think? 2. Anger will eat at you from the inside.

“Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.” 3. There is only one person's opinion you should be concerned with when it comes to your body and that is you. 4. There is no such thing as a perfect partner, so throw your checklist out the window. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 20 Positive Habits to Free Yourself from Negativity. Emotions are habits formed through repetition. To change the way we feel, we must change our behaviors. For many of us, our default emotional responses are negative. We are easily annoyed. We always expect the worst. And we have become bitter towards the world and ourselves.

Those negative responses create an endless loop which further ingrains our negativity. This is why I’m passionate about the positive psychology movement. Be grateful every day. Cut down on the news. By practicing positive habits you’ll become… More attractive to higher quality people. “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.” – William James. 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.

That’s why I’ve given you 63 ways to grow your confidence so that you can become a giant. 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. The physiological effects will leave you feeling great.Go to a networking event and focus on how you can be helpful to other people rather than being nervous about your own stuff.Get crystal clear on the things that truly matter to you. Read full content. The Science of Self-Affirmations. Self-affirmations are a popular tool in self improvement.

The basic idea is that we can adopt healthy, positive, and productive beliefs if we recite a belief enough times to ourselves. For example, if we repeat a thought like “I’m a smart and happy person” 20 times every morning, then we may begin to actually believe that about ourselves, and thus act in ways that could make that belief a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reciting these beliefs is said to work because increased repetition of certain thought patterns (and neural pathways) is said to condition our brains to begin thinking in these new ways. It’s kind of like working a muscle: the more repetitions you do, the stronger the thought will become. This article is going to recap scientific evidence for the different ways self-affirmations have been shown to improve our lives.

Self-affirmations improve willpower and self-control However, using positive self-affirmations can help us push ourselves just a bit further. “I can do it!” What Do You Live For? A 5 Minute Exercise to Discover Your Most Important Values. We all have certain things that we value in life, whether they be our relationships, health, job, hobbies, material possessions, spirituality, or whatever. Our values play an important role in guiding our actions and choices. They are the things in life that we strive for on a daily basis and keep us going. They are what we live for. And the fulfillment of these values is ultimately what brings us our happiness and success. However, what we value in life can greatly depend on the individual person.

We don’t all live for all the same things, so knowing what you value most in your life is important in building a lifestyle that works for you. One of the first, most essential steps to improving your life is discovering the things in life that are your most important values. Here is a quick 5 minute exercise to help you discover your most important values.

Open up a word document or grab yourself a pen and paper. It would be helpful to re-visit an exercise like this once every few months. The Us vs. Them Mentality: How Group Thinking Can Irrationally Divide Us. The human mind has a tendency to categorize people into social groups. And often these social groups can create an “Us vs. Them” mentality toward people who may be different than us in some way, whether it’s race, gender, age, nationality, culture, religion, or socioeconomic status. In the early 1970s, British social psychologist Henri Tajfel explored a phenomenon he called the minimal group paradigm. The basic idea behind this concept was to investigate the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur within groups. Amazingly, studies on this approach have shown that people tend to favor a group bias even when they are categorized on relatively meaningless distinctions, for example: eye color, what kind of paintings they like, or even the flip of a coin.

This tells us that we can potentially separate ourselves from a certain group of people on any random and arbitrary characteristic. It’s not hard to see how this “Us vs. We see it all the time in politics (Republicans vs. 50 Quotes That Will Free Your Mind. Post written by: Angel Chernoff Email We are our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking. You have a train of thought on which you ride when you are alone and quietly thinking. The self-worth you feel, as well as the happiness your life brings, depends upon the direction in which this train is moving, the baggage it carries and the emotional space through which it travels. If you truly want to change your life, you must first change your mind. Here are 50 thought-provoking quotes gathered from our sister site, Everyday Life Lessons, and from our blog archive that will help tweak your thinking and set your mind free.

You are only destined to become one person – the person you decide to be.Do good and feel good. Your turn… What’s one quote or personal thought that has helped free your mind from negativity and restrictive thinking? Photo by: Martin Gommel If you enjoyed this article, check out our new best-selling book. Focus – The Recipe for Success. Take the example of any person who has achieved success in his or her chosen field and you’ll find that they share certain traits. You’ll find strong motivation, clear goals, the will to overcome all odds and hard work. But there is one quality that distinguishes them from the rest. And it is their ability to concentrate all of their attention on the goals they have set. While effort is important to complete a given task, it is this ability to focus that is often the deciding factor that determines how well you do it. The Value of Focus Remember the school experiment in which we used a lens to cause the convergence of the sun’s rays and watched in awe as a scrap of paper placed underneath caught fire?

When the rays of the sun scatter everywhere, they do not have the capacity to generate enough heat but use a lens to focus the same rays and you get magical results. How to Develop Focus Compared to motivation or perseverance, focus is often easier to develop. 1. 2. 3. The Bottom Line. Mood and Persuasion. We live in a world of persuasion . Advertisements try to convince us to buy products. Stories on television and radio attempt to influence our opinion on a variety of topics. Politicians seek to influence our beliefs about laws and society. When faced with an attempt at persuasion, we generally expect that stronger arguments for a position should have a bigger influence on our attitudes than weaker arguments.

Yet, when we look around the world, we see all kinds of strategies to persuade. Many advertisements, for example, use celebrities to endorse the products. It is a rather weak argument that we should eat a particular food or wear a specific watch just because a celebrity has been paid to appear in an ad, yet advertisers continue to use celebrities, which suggests that these ads must work (at least to some degree). Under some circumstances, almost any argument seems to be effective. There are many potential influences of attitudes on mood. 5 Tips for Being Emotionally and Socially Stable | foreignly. The future, which holds uncertainty. The past, which brings mixed emotions. This life, turbulent, yet magical. It is difficult to be stable in this fast paced world where cruelty is more easily felt than warmth. Being emotionally and socially stable is a result of loving life, appreciating it, and working on it. The future, holds so many pleasant surprises.

The past holds precious memories. Here are some points that can help you to be more emotionally and socially stable. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Photo by: Yuumei. 10 Life Quotes and Lessons to Live By - Self Stairway. Spouting “profound” life quotes on a daily basis gets old, but you hear it everywhere. So why am I writing an article called “10 Life Quotes and Lessons to Live By?” , if I’m so anti-quote? The issue is the fact that some people just quote all day and repeat them without internalizing the message behind it. It doesn’t feel genuine when and I’m not convinced that they really believe in it. Instead, you need to use life quotes to internalize the ideas. Once you do that, you can move on from the quote and truly understand how to be happy.

To me, profound life quotes serve as a reminder when we’ve forgotten the concepts. Use the amazing quotes and live by the meaning, not just the words. With that said, here are some ideas and quotes to live by. Motivation “‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. This is perhaps my favorite life quote of them all. Everyone knows that the universe is vast, we’re like ants compared to blah blah blah blah. Think of it like this. Guess what? Inaction Insecurity Desires. If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong: The Surprisingly Relaxed Lives of Elite Achievers.

November 11th, 2011 · 275 comments The Berlin Study In the early 1990s, a trio of psychologists descended on the Universität der Künste, a historic arts academy in the heart of West Berlin. They came to study the violinists. As described in their subsequent publication in Psychological Review, the researchers asked the academy’s music professors to help them identify a set of stand out violin players — the students who the professors believed would go onto careers as professional performers.

We’ll call this group the elite players. For a point of comparison, they also selected a group of students from the school’s education department. These were students who were on track to become music teachers. We’ll call this group the average players. The three researchers subjected their subjects to a series of in-depth interviews. Flush with data, the researchers went to work trying to answer a fundamental question: Why are the elite players better than the average players?

Also consider relaxation. The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People. “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for contructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” ~Rollo May Post written by Leo Babauta. Creativity is a nebulous, murky topic that fascinates me endlessly — how does it work?

What habits to creative people do that makes them so successful at creativity? I’ve reflected on my own creative habits, but decided I’d look at the habits that others consider important to their creativity. I picked a handful of creatives, almost at random — there are so many that picking the best would be impossible, so I just picked some that I admire, who came to mind when I thought of the word “creative”. This was going to be a list of their creative habits … but in reviewing their lists, and my own habits, I found one that stood out. It’s the Most Important Habit when it comes to creativity. The No. 1 Creativity Habit In a word: solitude.

Creativity flourishes in solitude. I was honored with a response from Ali as well. Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls. Productivity is one of my pet topics, because it's always dogged me a bit, especially early in my career. I'd pull long days and nights and then realize I only actually worked (as in, typing in code, debugging stuff, and thinking about problems and their solutions) maybe 20% of the time.

Upon talking to coworkers, this seemed to be a part of the expected friction costs incurred working in an office environment. Meetings, shooting the shit with coworkers, lunch, email, and, er, . Eventually working around high-productivity professionals like John Carmack made me realize that if you want to excel, then you have to work hard and focus the whole time. I remember Carmack talking about productivity measurement. While working he would play a CD, and if he was not being productive, he'd pause the CD player.

You know what's pretty hardcore? (Sidenote: my memory is hazy on this since it was long ago -- CD PLAYERS yo). And sometimes I could, so, hey, validation! Trap of the Easy Task. 3 beliefs that are ruining your life | KickAss AcademyKickAss Academy. How To Rewire Your Brain for Positivity and Happiness The Buffer blog. 21 Inspiring Quotes On Focused Living.