How I Failed to Become an Early Riser
Everyone talks about how important for your success it is to wake up early, as it is supposed to make it easier to achieve more. For many people that don’t have to wake up early because of work or school, it is quite difficult to be able to wake up to the alarm. I guess the main problem is that there is no real motivation to wake up, so it is much more satisfying to just push the snooze button and continue the sleep in five to ten minute –intervals for the next hour or two.
People say that it is crucial to wake up early to be successful as an entrepreneur, but I don’t agree with this at all. I think that all that matters is how you spend your time when you are awake. Of course, if sleeping too long makes you lazier, then it is better for you to wake up earlier. But for me, for example, it is much harder to work if I feel tired because of not sleeping enough. I have tried to wake up earlier without any success, and I only feel good waking up early if there is a real reason and motivation behind it, such as an early flight that is going to take me to a vacation in a warm place or a sports tournament that takes place quite early. I really enjoy waking up early if it allows me to do something fun.
The only bad thing about sleeping long is that sometimes you miss the best part of the day, especially if it is summer and the weather is good. But isn’t the good weather a perfect reason to wake up early? For me it is, and that is why I change my sleeping pattern according to the weather outside. If the weather forecast predicts perfect weather for the next day, I’m just going to set the alarm to weak me up early so that I can go to the beach or walking around in the sunshine, and I will have no problems whatsoever with waking up early because I know that I can do something right away after waking up. Read the rest of this entry »
Achieve All Your Dreams by Overcoming Your Fears
I watched the movie Donnie Darko yesterday, which is a really good movie by the way and I suggest you to watch it too, if you haven’t already. There was a motivational speaker character in the movie called Jim Cunningham, who was talking about two main forces in life: Fear and Love. We were going to find out later in the movie that this guy was a pedophile (sorry for the spoiler) and a joke in every possible way, but still there was something in his teachings that got me thinking about how big impact fear actually has in our lives.
Most people are guided through their lives by their own fears and almost everything they do or decide not to do is based on their own fears. Many people for example are afraid of doing something that might make them famous and change their lives, and even more people are afraid of quitting their day job that they hate and starting to follow their own dreams. After all, it is quite frightening that you never know what people might think about it and you can never be sure that you won’t fail.
It is very obvious that most of our fears are not based on reality. Maybe it was good for our survival in the caveman-era to be afraid of everything unknown – it kept us alive back then. But in the present society we don’t have to be afraid of tigers that are going to eat us alive if we go out for a walk or someone beating us to death because we entered a wrong territory. We are too afraid of things that really won’t kill us if something goes wrong and one thing that is in common with all the successful people is that they all have the habit of being courageous and they know that their fears are limiting, so they know how to overcome their fears constantly. Actually they see their fears and other obstacles and setbacks in life as growing opportunities and nice challenges that make their lives worth living. Read the rest of this entry »
100 Reasons to Be Happy Today
After seeing a lot of different lists online, I began to wonder if I could make a list of 100 reasons that could be applicable for anyone to be happy today. At first it seemed to be a really hard task, if not impossible, but after really hard thinking I actually was able to come up with 100 things that can help us to remember to be happy every day. If you like this list, you can bookmark it and come back to it whenever you find it difficult the happiness in your life and want to find it from the small things again. Feel free to share this article with all your friends that are important to you if you would like to help them to be happier today as well. Here is the list, and remember to give yourself some time to read it:
1. Every new day is another chance to change your life.
If you have dreamed of some things that you would like to have in your life, today is a great opportunity to do even some small things that will take you to the path that will take you to your dreams.
2. This day is an opportunity to be better than yesterday.
If you pursuit every day to be better than yesterday, your self esteem and happiness will increase. Don’t try to be perfect, just focus on being a little bit better person in every way, every day, and you will achieve great things and happiness in the long run. Read the rest of this entry »
How to Stop Procrastinating
I just love this topic as it is one of my own very personal problems – or at least was for a long time. When I was studying in the university, I always left everything for the last possible minute and I often even started to study for an exam only a couple of hours before the start of it. Of course I was then very efficient because I was in a small panic and didn’t have any choice but to learn quickly the crucial things I needed to learn in order to pass the exam. I am surprised how well this actually worked out – I only failed one test during the five years of my studies and my grades were slightly above average without really putting a lot of work into them. Anyway, this is something that I am not proud of and it has caused me additional stress during the years and it also made me underachieve. It is really worth thinking about the problem and trying to get rid of it. First of all, it’s good to realize that we procrastinators are not alone: college is something that actually seems to bring out the procrastination in people and up to 70 per cent of students regard themselves as procrastinators. The problem with this habit of letting everything for the last possible minute is that you always have a little bit of stress because you know that there is something that you should do but you still haven’t done. I often planned that this time I will not procrastinate, but do everything well in advance – it almost never happened. Let us dig a little bit deeper into this subject by finding out what procrastination really is and what could be done to avoid it. Read the rest of this entry »
How to Become More Assertive
We all know different types of people in our society. There are aggressive persons who are rude and willing to do anything to meet their needs by bullying other people. Then everyone probably knows people who are very passive and are so concerned about what other people think about them that they just go with the crowd without thinking or expressing too much of their own needs. The right balance in my opinion is somewhere in between these types, by being direct in an honest manner and expressing one’s needs and wants in a respectful way. This kind of behavior is called being assertive. A funny way to describe these types is to think about Goofy, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse – they remind us of different human personalities:(1) Aggressive: Donald Duck, (2) Passive: Goofy, and (3) Assertive: Mickey Mouse
What Does Being Assertive Mean?
An assertive person is able to express one’s feelings and assert one’s rights without being rude. Assertive communication means that a person respects the rights and feelings of other people but still is direct and honest, clarifying one’s needs to others. Some people are naturally assertive, but many of us are not and it is something that I think we all should learn because the skill of assertiveness helps us greatly reduce the level of interpersonal conflict in our lives which helps us to avoid a remarkable source of stress. Read the rest of this entry »
How to Get Over Someone
Did the relationship with someone you thought you would share the rest of your life with just come to an end? Doesn’t it feel miserable as you are trying to figure out how to get over someone you have loved and broke your heart? Do you feel that he or she was the one – your soul mate – and you feel like you will never be able to find anything like that again? The worst case scenario is if your boyfriend or girlfriend left you and has already someone new because of whom you might have been dumped. It is a really devastating experience when it happens for the first time but thankfully there are ways to cure the wounds and find meaning for life again.
Getting over someone you have loved is not going to be something that happens over night like you would suddenly feel perfect again – it will take time and effort – but if you do things right, the process of healing your broken heart will be much easier and faster. When one door closes, another one opens, but we are often looking so desperately upon the closed door that we can’t see the one that has just opened for us. One thing that you should not do is to keep regretting upon what has happened because that will prevent you from moving on. Although your feelings are really bad, you should always remember that there are so many people in the world waiting for you and the end of the relationship is actually only the beginning of a new life. Cry if you need to cry and don’t keep everything inside you, but once you have cried enough, start looking for new activities that will take your thoughts away of the old things and will give something new and exciting to your life.
Don’t do the mistake of jumping right away to a new relationship just to cover your pains. This is the biggest mistake people make, because the reason for a relationship should never be bad feelings or insecurity. You should always try to recover first and learn to live and enjoy your life on your own before even thinking about a new relationship. Two persons should be together only because they want to even though they could be happy alone, too, not because they are insecure, wounded from the last breakup and can’t stand being alone. Read the rest of this entry »
Top 10 Superfoods
Superfoods are the most nutrient-rich foods available, promoting wellness, overall health and weight control. Eaten regularly they also lower the risk of getting cancer and help us satisfy the nutrient needs that we usually have if we eat like the average person nowadays eats – without thinking too much what the food actually does for us. I wanted to make a list of the 10 best superfoods that are easy to obtain, are clearly among the most nutrient-rich foods that exist and still taste good. I try to eat all of these regularly myself, although sometimes I slip and replace them with junk food but hey, no one is perfect. In my opinion you can’t go overboard with these best foods by eating them too much, because they are the most natural foods that can be found and the humankind has been eating them for ages. If you can, pick the organic version and eat it raw, because only then you can make sure that all the vitamins and other nutrients are still there, and remember to eat them along with a wide variety of other nutritious foods. Here’s my superfood top 10: Read the rest of this entry »The Nice Guy –Syndrome
This is something that we keep on hearing all the time: “So sad that she dumped him – he is such a nice guy”. It must be the biggest mystery of the universe, because it doesn’t seem to make any sense: Why would a woman want to be treated like shit? Everyone of us knows good guys that keep on failing in relationships over and over again and usually we think that it is the woman’s fault, society’s fault and everybody else’s fault but the man’s fault. Heck, I used to be a nice guy my self when I was younger. I kept wondering why the life is so unfair and what is it that girls see in asshole -type of guys, and it took me a few years to learn it. Like I wrote in the recent post “How to Be a Real Man”, our society in its many forms gives us norms and ideal gender models that not always have anything to do with the biological instincts and the reality that occurs in our lives. You can blame society, but if you start waiting or hoping for the society to change, you might end up waiting for your whole life. So why don’t you change instead and take things as they are, even though everything in this world is not perfect? Read the rest of this entry »
How to Be a Real Man
There are many ways to define a man and nowadays the male role model is anything but a clear and simple concept. More often men have lived their childhood without seeing their fathers every day and in the kindergarten and school most of the teachers are females, so the time spent with grown up men in the childhood is very small for many guys. The social environment gives us many different ideas of how to be a man, for example in the movies many times the supplicating good guy eventually gets the woman after bringing her enough flowers and waiting until she realizes how stupid it is to choose the bad guy who treats her badly. However, the message that women or the whole society tries to give us isn’t always aligned with the biological reality. Our society has only been like it is now for maybe one hundred years, whereas the biological instincts do not change that fast. Women and men are still wired like they were thousand years ago.
How should a real man be – the real man that has existed for thousands of years? I think it has nothing to do with how many women you have laid or how much money you have made. A real man must be able to make decisions and live with the consequences, it is necessary to accept responsibility for your own words and actions. Keeping promises is something that defines a real man. If something can’t be promised, the real man doesn’t give his word. Respect for other people is a self-evident thing as long as he is being respected and a real man never hurts people that are weaker than him. He is a leader of the pack and protects the members of his group, no matter what. He is ready to sacrifice himself for greater good and takes risks if they are necessary to accomplish something bigger and meaningful. Everything boils down to being able to take initiative. If a real man sees a woman that he likes, he takes the initiative and risk. If a real man feels that his financial situation is not good enough, he goes out and does something about it. If he sees someone being bullied on the street, he does something about it and takes responsibility. If he is in a group in which no one talks, it is the man’s duty to take the lead and start conversation. Read the rest of this entry »
Law of Attraction
Have you ever noticed that there are many people who seem to find themselves in bad relationships over and over again? What about people who seem to attract perfect opportunities in their lives all the time and end up being successful whereas other people keep on wondering what their secret is? The law of attraction is one thing that delivers people both what is wanted and unwanted. The main idea goes simply like this: “You attract to your life whatever you give your energy, focus, and attention to, whether wanted or unwanted”. Everything in the world is made up of energy and vibrates at a certain level. If somebody is sending bad vibes and negative energy around him, one will attract those kinds of things in the life.
Sometimes this universal law is described with words and phrases like Serendipity, Synchronicity, Fate, Karma, Luck and Meant to be. The law of attraction will give you more of what you vibrate everyday. We humans vibrate our energy through feelings. When we have feelings like loving, confident, content and enthusiastic, we vibrate positively, whereas feelings such as sadness, stress, angriness or ashamedness make us vibrate negatively. If we see bad and negative events in our lives, they make us feel bad, like witnessing beauty or kind acts makes us feel good and happy. Regardless of whether or not we are doing it intentionally, we draw circumstances and people towards us that match our present feelings and vibration. Our thoughts that we constantly have in our minds are the cause for our feelings, so it is possible to deliberately attract more of those things we really want to have in our lives and at the same time avoid attracting the bad things. Read the rest of this entry »
You Are What You Eat
I have spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what really is the healthiest way of eating. We are confronted all the time with different kinds of information regarding nutrition, so it is not always easy to know where the truth lies. Here’s my point of view:
I believe that the two main reasons for modern diseases are the invention of agriculture some 10 000 years ago and big food companies that try to make more money by altering normal foods so that they for example last longer on the shelf and are cheaper to produce. Ten thousand years is very short time for human’s genetics to adapt to a completely new diet, although the introduction of grains into the diet surely made the genetic change much faster by killing gradually people with genes that could not tolerate much of carbohydrates in the diet at all. The hunter-gatherers used to eat mostly raw foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fish and meat and never heard of sugar or grains. Nowadays the average human eats mostly carbs, not too many raw foods (cooking lowers the nutritional value significantly) and the food contains lots of preservatives and other ingredients that have nothing to do with nutrition. It is still observable when we study the indigenous people in the most remote areas of the world: When they are on their indigenous diets, they have minimal tooth decay, less obesity and less coronary diseases etc. compared to the situation not too long after they have been introduced to the modernized diet. One interesting book well worth reading about studies of indigenous people, their diets and health is “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
How to Get Rid of Addictions
Some people seem to be more prone to addictions than others. There can be various causes for this, such as environmental influence and genetics, and addiction is probably caused by a combination of these. An addictive personality may be addicted to different things, which affects the treatment of addiction importantly. Recovery is based on getting to know one’s addictive personality and taking the steps that are needed to get rid of addictive attitudes, beliefs, values and behavior. For example, if someone is addicted to alcohol, it is not enough to quit drinking alcohol but one has to realize at the same time the need for monitoring the whole addictive part of themselves – otherwise it is possible that the original addiction is just replaced with another addiction, such as food.
It seems quite obvious that there is something in our modern society that makes it easy to get addicted. The capitalist system is based on consuming and constant growth. People are competing with each other by shopping different material things to enhance their social status. Trying to get more and more money and buying things that a person doesn’t genuinely need are fine examples of an addiction and our society seems to push people towards this kind of behavior. Also it is very common for young people to escape the reality quite often by using different substances, which probably is a sign of something.
Read the rest of this entry »
How to Replace Your Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs are one of the major things preventing us from succeeding in our lives and doing all the things that we are capable of doing and would enjoy the most. They are even more important than concepts like self-confidence, effective time management or effective goal setting because we will never be able to even get to these ideas if our limiting beliefs are stopping us before we get started.
Our belief system stands behind it all and determines every move we make in our lives. They guide our thoughts, behavior, goals and even our relationships with others. The fastest single way to change your life and start accomplishing things you never thought were possible (because of your limiting beliefs) is to change your beliefs. If you find yourself thinking that “I don’t have this problem, my belief system is perfectly OK”, you definitely have limiting beliefs that don’t allow you to change and that makes it impossible for you to really turn into the happy human being you could potentially be.
All the problems in our lives can usually be traced back on our limiting beliefs. If you have for example unsolved problems with your financial situation, relationships or health, it is very likely that your current belief system stands in the way and prevents you from improving the situation. The good news here is that by changing your belief system you can improve every situation you want – and changing your belief system is really not too hard.
First thing and most important thing to accept is that belief is a choice. Belief is something that one believes to be true without necessarily being able to adequately prove its main contention. This means that not all of our beliefs are true but rather believing in them is what makes them true for us. Read the rest of this entry »
What If You Die Tomorrow?
It is very common in our society that you might be financially well off but still are not satisfied with your life.Reason for this is that money or stuff you can buy does not fulfill the deepest need inside of us which is to live according to our passions. In reality, a career and lots of money is worth nothing if the cost is your own fulfillment and happiness. It is just a huge illusion and we are taught by advertisers that all the material we own is something valuable that we should protect, but in reality, without internal fulfillment we have nothing.
People often notice that something is wrong because they feel empty inside but there are too many fears that prevent us from making the seemingly big decisions. It is much easier to get a prescription for antidepressants or get wasted every weekend to forget the miseries for a couple of hours. Still I wonder how it is possible that people are feared of living without a new car or a huge mortgage. For me those things are more like a burden.
It was an eye opening experience to leave everything I own for a couple of months and go traveling only with a backpack. At least I found out that I am myself even without all my stuff. I am a perfect human being without all the material things – the things I own are not me.
One of the reasons that prevent people from changing their normal unsatisfying careers to a different lifestyle is that then they would have to admit that everything that they have achieved in their lives has been insignificant. That is sometimes too much to handle, especially when you are older. Another reason that we often hear is that people who have family and children cannot afford to quit their day jobs in order to reach for their real goals in life.
It is just a matter of will and patience. It should be still possible to save some money while working and start doing the things you feel passionate about in little increments at first. You can start your new business or habits slowly. You don’t have to change everything in one night.
Besides, children definitely need more parents that are perfectly happy with their own lives and can give their offspring all the time and affection they need, compared to parents who are always in bad mood, have no time and try to compensate it with material things.
On the other hand, if you live in urban area, is it really that bad to live without a car for one or two years if that is what it takes to reach your dreams? Is saving money in advance, eating less often in restaurants or buying more affordable stuff really that horrible?
Material possessions are the worst thing to base one’s life on. When you die, you will not get them with you, other people will start using them or they will slowly become dust. I studied in a university for many years and most of the time I didn’t have money to buy all the things that advertisers try to sell us, but I was much happier then than I have been while I’ve worked for others and had more money.
Why is that? I think it was like that because I was free to choose how I live, which courses I want to study and when I want to study. I had more time for myself, my hobbies and for other people.
Many jobless people, after they have learned to cut their expenses to minimum, find out to be happier than in the jobs that they didn’t like, because they have more time for their families and they have time to enjoy of all the precious things in life that are free. Most of the really meaningful things actually are free.
The question that resonates with me the most is why are we here? People seem to forget that no one has promised us that we will live like 80 years. No one knows when we are going to die. What if I will die tomorrow? Have I done everything in my life so that I don’t have to regret anything? Have I treated all the people in my life so that I and others can be proud of myself? What if I knew that I will die after one year? What would I do then?
I am pretty sure that I would not focus on working in order to get a bigger car or a bigger house if I knew that my time to go would come soon. I am positive that I would not spend eight hours a day in an office working for a big corporation. Why would I do it now – it is 100% sure that I will not live forever and I will not get my money and my stuff with me when I die.
Many people that have got cancer have told that becoming seriously ill has actually been one of the best things that has happened to them. This is mainly because it makes them to realize how limited our time on earth is and it enables them to start living every day like it would be the last one.
There is much to learn from this. What if you had one year left in your life? What are the things that you really would like to do? Why wouldn’t you start doing them now?
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Never Get a Job!
“Getting a good job is the best and safest way to make money”
This is what I have heard all my life. This is something that our parents want us to do, probably because they feel it is the safest option for us. Of course a job is a way to make money, but it definitely isn’t the best one and not even the safest one. And for sure it is not the most motivating one. I have wondered why they don’t teach us this thing in schools and the only reason that I can come up with is that loyal and modest worker bees are the easiest people to build companies and societies on. They have their over sized mortgages that keep them loyal and they are always in constant fear of losing their jobs, which makes them work hard. Nowadays they can’t even be sure about their governmental pension plans. This doesn’t sound too safe to me. The best way to make living is to create assets for yourself. Something that you invest in and which then creates automatic and constant income also when you are not working for it.
Real Estate and Rental Income
I know many people who have saved money and invested it in real estate patiently and earn rental income which has helped them to quit working before 50 years of age. It just takes some basic mathematics to count how much rent you can get compared to the total costs of a property over time and then let the tenants pay your loans. After 10-15 years the properties should be loan free if you have invested wisely, after which you can watch how profits run on the property that the tenant paid. Read the rest of this entry »
