50 Things You Can Control Right Now “Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown CNN reports that psychic businesses are thriving in this challenging economy, and the clientele has expanded to include more business professionals who are worried about their financial future. According to Columbia Business School’s Professor Gita Johar, who studies consumer behavior, the greatest motivation for visiting a psychic is to feel a sense of control. Sure, there are lots of things we can’t control: businesses may fold, stocks may plummet, relationships may end—the list is infinite, really. Right now, you can control: 1. Odds are, some of these resonate with you more than others; so what? When I start fixating on something I can’t control, I pick just one of these to think about instead. Photo by Steve Dean See a typo, an inaccuracy, or something offensive?
Expanded Consciousness - Awaken Your Inner Awareness The Neon Life Society – Allow Yourself to Shine Playlist: 5 Mindshifting talks on happiness (TED is on its annual two-week vacation. During the break, we’re posting playlists from the TEDTalks archive. We’ll be back with new talks on August 29th.) Happiness seems simple, yet the more we look into it, the more layers and complexities we find. Here are five TEDTalks that will transform how you view happiness, and how to achieve it. 1) Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. 2) Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently. 3) Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, “What makes a life worth living?” 4) Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. 5) Martin Seligman talks about psychology — as a field of study and as it works one-on-one with each patient and each practitioner. .
You Don’t Owe Anyone An Interaction Have you ever beat yourself up over not responding to every message you received in a day? Me too. I know how it goes. On one hand, you’re tired and overwhelmed. But on the other hand, there are emails! Texts! If we check in with ourselves, we can sense which messages require our attention. If someone writes, we must write back. If someone starts talking, we must converse. If someone moves in for a hug, we must embrace. It doesn’t matter if we feel uncomfortable, exhausted, or just plain unwilling. In the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt pilot episode,reporters interview women who spent 15 years underground in a doomsday cult’s bunker. One woman shares the story of her involvement: “I had waited on [the cult leader] at a York Steak House … and one night he invited me out to his car to see some baby rabbits, and I didn’t want to be rude, so … here we are.” It’s a searing example of how the fear of being rude and impolite can put us in real danger. What if I hurt this person’s feelings?
Motivational Jiu-Jitsu: Staying Positive in the Face of Negativity & Indifference It’s easy to stay motivated when you are on the receiving end of a lot of positive feedback. When your boss, your clients, and your coworkers are giving you high fives and telling you what great work you are doing, you can glide from day to day, churning out more and more great work. Unfortunately, most of us are not riding a tidal wave of high-fives through our workday. If anything, the more demanding your job is, the more likely it is that you are having to field negative criticism on a regular basis. Or, maybe you work alone, and you just don’t get that much feedback — negative or positive — from anyone. So how can we stay motivated in the face of negativity or just plain indifference? I have a simple activity that I do to identify the problem areas, and think about how I can counteract them. The more demanding your job is, the more likely it is that you are having to field negative criticism on a regular basis. Start with the people that give you no feedback. –What’s Your Approach?
10 Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less By Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D. It usually takes us much longer to change our moods than we’d like it to take. Here are ten things you can do in ten minutes or less that will have a positive emotional effect on you and those you love. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Sadly, many people measure happiness by how long the experience lasts. Dr. 51 Things That Will Make You Smile Some days, it’s easy to smile. You wake up to the sounds of birds chirping, with the warm glow of the morning sun cradling your face. You take several deep, cleansing breaths standing beneath a perfectly cascading shower, just before drawing a smiley face on the steamed-up glass with your index finger. Your roommate or significant other makes your coffee, just the way you like it. But not every day starts this way. You struggle, you fight yourself and other people, and you find yourself wishing you could stop the world so you could get off for a while. But there is an alternative. 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. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. Video Credits: Editing/Song: “Moving Towards Love” by Cheryl B. Readers who contributed: Thank you to everyone who contributed!
7 Habits of Highly Frugal People EmailEmail One of the most direct way to change your life, you need to change your attitude. No one else is responsible for what happens to you but you, so you can either complain about the things you don’t like in your life or you can set about changing them. If you’re tired of living paycheck to paycheck, having your phone regularly cut off, or making excuses to skip dinners with your friends, then you can use these seven habits to take control of your money situation and live a happier and more frugal lifestyle. Habit One: Be Proactive The first habit to develop is to take responsibility; if you fail, you have no one to blame but yourself. [Here are 6 action steps to take when you feel financially vulnerable.] What most people forget is that though you can’t control the stimulus, you can control your response. How to be proactive for effective frugality: Take the first step. Habit Two: Begin with the End in Mind How to visualize effective frugality: Define your goal. Habit Six: Synergize
New Tab Developing good habits is the basic of personal development and growth. Everything we do is the result of a habit that was previously taught to us. Unfortunately, not all the habits that we have are good, that’s why we are constantly trying to improve. The following is a list of 30 practical habits that can make a huge difference in your life. You should treat this list as a reference, and implement just one habit per month. Health habits Exercise 30 minutes every day. Productivity habits Use an inbox system. Personal Development habits Read 1 book per week. Career habits Start a blog. What do you think? Update: A reader put together a downloadable copy of all these habits.