10 Ways To Be Happy, On Purpose “He who depends on himself will attain the greatest happiness” ~Chinese Proverb I was at a Women’s Leadership Conference about a year ago and had an “ah-ha moment”. We were all introducing ourselves and asked to share a few things to help with the process. One question left me baffled and ultimately changed my life; “What do you do to make yourself happy?”. At the time I honestly didn’t know. It’s not been an easy road, but it’s been the most fulfilling adventure I’ve ever been on and I feel that I should now share what I’ve learned with others. 1. “Today you are you, that is truer than true. How many times have we heard “no one will love you until you learn to love yourself” or “nobody knows you the way you do”? So get to know the right-now-real you, both the good and the bad, and own it. The good news is that if you don’t like certain aspects of yourself right now, you have it in your control to change that. 2. “Open your eyes and look within. “You have brains in your head. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Do Things You Can Sustain In 1996, Southwest Airlines was faced with an interesting problem. During the previous decade, the airline company had methodically expanded from being a small regional carrier to one with a more national presence. And now, more than 100 cities were calling for Southwest to expand service to their location. At a time when many airline companies were losing money or going bankrupt, Southwest was overflowing with opportunity. So what did they do? Southwest turned down over 95% of the offers and began serving just 4 new locations in 1996. Why would a business turn down so much opportunity? What Is Your Upper Bound? Starting in the 1970s, Southwest was the only airline company that made a profit for nearly 30 consecutive years. Sure, Southwest executives wanted to grow the business each year. This is an approach that can be applied to nearly any goal, business or otherwise. We tend to focus only on the lower bound: the minimum threshold we want to hit. A Safety Margin for Growth
25 Body Hacks to Supercharge Yourself A body hack is a usable technique that can make an improvement to improve a person's life, health or mental state. These techniques are generally learned through real-life experience and are not necessarily medically recognized. Body hacks may work for some people and not for others and the only way to find out is to give them a try. Here are 24 body hacks we probably would be willing to try and one that we definitely wouldn't. Reset Your Body Clock Shift workers and travelers may be able to fast and successfully manipulate their body clocks. The SCN may be controlled through eating habits. Dr. Saper's research found that when animals were deprived of food, their body clocks adjusted to a new pattern so they could be awake when food became available. Sleep Less Developing a polyphasic sleep schedule means sleep is distributed in regularly scheduled blocks around the clock, with the sum of all periods of sleep being less than a regular night's sleep. Become an Early Riser Get Better Sleep
How Evernote can Help you Achieve Your Goals in 2015 If you are going to achieve your goals in 2015, you must have a way to track your progress, so you actually achieve it. There are a variety of tools for doing this. Author Michael Hyatt provides tips on how he uses Evernote to organize his life and focus on accomplishing business goals for the new year. Hyatt is the author of The New York Times bestseller, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. He is also the founder of Platform University and the massively popular course, 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever. Like millions of other people, I use Evernote as my “digital brain” to store ideas, notes, web clips, receipts, recipes, important documents, event details, and more. But, did you know you can also use it to help you achieve your most important goals for 2015? 1. 2. 3. You can use Evernote to track your goals by following these four simple steps. Step 1: Type all your goals into one summary note. Figure 1: Create a Goal Summary Note * Tag this note with two tags: “2015” and “goals.”
7 Morning Hacks to Jumpstart Your Day I’ll be the first to admit that I’m really not a morning person. I’ve tried to get myself going in the early hours of the morning, but I’ve always been more of a night owl – my creative juices seem to flow better in the later hours. So I’d be the last person to suggest that you need to force yourself out of bed before your body and mind are really ready to do so. But when you do get up, you may find that you’re pressed for time and have fallen behind the rest of the crowd in what you need to get done during the day. Just because you’re not up as the sun rises doesn’t mean that you can’t put yourself in a position to make sure that the day ahead will be a productive one. On that note, here are 10 “morning hacks” to jumpstart your day: 1. Rather than make your way to the kitchen for that cup of coffee, head to the bathroom and splash some cold water on your face. 2. 3. I keep my alarm clock across the room so that I have to actually get out of bed to turn it off. 4. 5. 6. 7.
How to Set and Achieve Your Goals Using Evernote We all have goals we want to achieve. The problem is many of us don’t have a system for tracking our progress. Today, I’m going to presents a simple, powerful, and effective system for setting and achieving goals – using Evernote. I originally learned this goal-setting system from Michael Hyatt on his popular course “Five Days to Your Best Year Ever”, but have since adapted it to suit my own personal preferences. Let’s look at each step. Step 1. Create a new tag and call it “2016 Goals.” Create a new note and call it “00. 2016 Goals” and tag it as “2016 Goals.” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Rearrange your goals into an order that makes sense to you. Step 2. Enter the actual goal as the title of your note and tag it “2016 Goals.” Step 2 is comprised of three parts: Key MotivationsSub-GoalsResources Let’s look at each part in detail. 1. Why is this goal important to you? Example: Goal: Lose 14 pounds. 1. “I want to feel attractive.” 2. “I want to have more self-confidence.” 3. 4. “I want find a partner.” 5. 2. 3.
Critical Thinking in Everyday Life: 9 Strategies Most of us are not what we could be. We are less. We have great capacity. But most of it is dormant; most is undeveloped. Development in thinking requires a gradual process requiring plateaus of learning and just plain hard work. How, then, can we develop as critical thinkers? First, we must understand that there are stages required for development as a critical thinker: Stage One: The Unreflective Thinker (we are unaware of significant problems in our thinking) Stage Two: The Challenged Thinker (we become aware of problems in our thinking) Stage Three: The Beginning Thinker (we try to improve but without regular practice) Stage Four: The Practicing Thinker (we recognize the necessity of regular practice) Stage Five: The Advanced Thinker (we advance in accordance with our practice) Stage Six: The Master Thinker (skilled & insightful thinking become second nature to us) We develop through these stages if we: There is nothing magical about our ideas. First Strategy: Use “Wasted” Time.
5 Major Goal-Setting Myths That Keep You Stuck Steve Mura was a Triple-A baseball pitcher. He was starting one night in an away game, but he almost lost before leaving the dugout. Why? Courtesy of iStock/SIphotography “I can never win on this mound,” he told his pitching coach and shook his head. When it comes to making progress towards what matters most in life, there are at least five major myths we need to avoid like quicksand. Over the years, I’ve seen these rob countless people of happiness, success, and significance—me included. Myth No. 1: Your Past Determines Your Future Almost 40 percent of people in their twenties achieve their New Year’s resolutions each year, but not even 15 percent of those over 50 do—even though they probably have far more resources to do so. My guess is that they’ve also got more failures under their belt and don’t believe they can win. Maybe it was a failure in business or marriage, and now you’re doubtful about succeeding again. Mura’s coach knew better. That starts by challenging the myth.
15 Big Life Insights I Wish I Knew at 18 One of the most popular posts of all time on HE is my 50 Life Secrets and Tips. However when I look back on that post, I see a fairly shallow and conventional list of recommendations. It shows me of how much I’ve grown in the years since it was published. This is the list that comes to mind now. I chose to give it a different name rather than ’50 Life Secrets & Tips: Part 3′ because this represents what I consider to be a new era of understanding in my life. 1) True pleasure and results come from mastery In this internet age, there are many of Jack of all trades: people who know a bit about MANY things, but have not mastered any one thing. The solution: “Take up one idea. 2) The best practices are those you discover for yourself The downside of having so much information available online is that it’s easy to get lost in spiral of trying out other people’s methods while never attempting to create on of your own. Instead, try a method that you think would feel good for you. 12) FOCUS!
The 2 Types of Growth: Which One of These Growth Curves Are You Following? We often assume that life works in a linear fashion. People will say, “You get out of life what you put into it.” The basic idea is that for each unit of effort you put into a given task, you get some unit of return. There is just one problem. Instead, most areas of life follow two different types of growth. Which one of these growth curves are you following? Type 1: Logarithmic Growth The first type of growth is logarithmic. Logarithmic growth increases quickly in the beginning, but the gains decrease and become more difficult as time goes on. There are many examples of logarithmic growth in daily life. Fitness and Strength Training: The “beginner gains” come quickly at first, but then it becomes more difficult to get stronger each week.Literacy: Children and young students make massive leaps as they learn how to read. There are thousands of other examples. Type 2: Exponential Growth The second type of growth is exponential. The Challenges of Each Growth Curve How to Accelerate Your Progress