“Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.”
— Elbert Hubbard

If you were to rate your mornings, how good would they be? Would your mornings be the great, motivating and inspiring part of the day, or the part which clutters your mind and makes you feel confused and powerless?

Of course, everyone wants their mornings to be joyous, but most people are doing things which can turn mornings into an experience with the opposite effect. And they end up starting the day with an uninspiring, gloomy feeling.

What degrades the mind from its morning freshness is reading the news. News filled with useless facts, badly written opinions and (sometimes seductive) advertising. There is plenty of time later in the day to load up with useless information that we must deal with in order to survive in this imperfect world. Why sacrifice a fresh mind for it.

In the morning all is cool, clean and quiet (at least relatively). If you wake up early enough, the world is asleep and the universe is yours. That feeling, the feeling of freshness, has a great potential to motivate, inspire, improve. It can result in great ideas, it can solve problems, it can teach you and give new meaning to things.

In the morning you should meditate, read a good book that stimulates you, have a delicious breakfast, enjoy the calmness of the world, listen to some good music that makes you feel good. Arrange your life to achieve the maximum quality of morning time, and you will be rewarded with a better future.

My morning was great. How did your morning make you feel?

photography by the  Happy Jumper!

“Handwriting is civilization’s casual encephalogram.”
— Lance Morrow

Graphology, the study of handwriting as an indicator of the writer’s disposition or character, examines loops, dotted “i’s” and crossed “t’s,” letter spacing, slant, height, ending strokes, etc.

Graphologists believe that such handwriting details are physical manifestations of  unconscious mental functions and that they can reveal as much about a person as astrology, palm reading,  psychometry,  rumpology, or the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator.

Whether you believe it produces accurate interpretations or not, I think you should try this one test. It’s real fun and you might learn a thing or two from it.

Take the test on this page. After you take it, feel free to return and share your conclusions.

photo by  itselea

“You can spend minutes, days, hours, or months over analyzing a situation, trying to justify what happened. Or you can leave the pieces on the floor and move the f— on.”

– Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971- Sept. 12, 1996)

What would you do if any of that happened to you?

Photo by: mint tea

Self-improvement is about helping people have a fuller appreciation of all the wonderful things in their lives, even when many things are bad. It’s really getting people to focus on the good things in life.

The good things in life are other people. And getting to really know other people is the process by which you’re getting to know yourself.

In the pronaos of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the “gnothi seauton” (latin “nosce te ipsum”) inscription stands as a reminder of this. It refers to the ideal of understanding human behavior, morals and thought, because ultimately to understand oneself is to understand other humans as well. But you can’t understand yourself if you don’t understand the others.

Very few people know themselves and we know other people even less well, because we spend a little slice of our lives with anybody but our parents. And even so, your parents don’t really know you. They spend very little time with you after you’ve been a child and you spend little time with them.

And even your best friends, who you may argue that you know, how many hours a week do you spend with them?

What do you talk about in those hours? In the “best friends” relationships, as in most others, there is a point in which you (and them) stop asking questions – like they are asked in the beginning. The relationship becomes superficial, you don’t work to really understand the other one. We’re somehow becoming afraid of asking them any serious questions about themselves, because we think that our questions might be interpreted as “what, you didn’t know that?”

We know so little about *anyone* in our lives and yet we assume to know so much. We know so little about the good things in life.

How can we create conditions in which we feel comfortable, conditions which would allow us to know each other? Asking questions, we can do that by asking questions.

Did you know that there is very little in our relationships that encourages people to ask questions? Shyness is the extreme, but try to remember when did you last ask your partner or best friend some serious questions about them. That’s probably a long time ago, at the beginning of the relationship. After that point, asking questions becomes somewhat of a taboo.

If you’ve been reading some blogs, or magazines, or if you’ve been watching TV, you may have noticed that interviews are not something unusual. But we don’t do that in our daily lives. Why? Why don’t we keep “interviewing” our friends and partners after we get past the initial phases of the relationship?

I’m sure most of us don’t even know what our parents want to be remembered for, even though most of our time spent with someone is with our parents. If we don’t know that important thing about our parents, what do we know about the rest of our friends? Very little, close to nothing… It may seem like we know a lot about them, but when we believe we know them best, we don’t know them at all.

Integrate the habit of asking questions in your life. Interview your friends, your family and your life partner. Ask them questions like:

• What do you want to be remembered for?
• What in your life are you most proud of?
• What in your life are you most ashamed of and wish you didn’t do it?
• What things you keep doing that you know you don’t want to do? Why do you keep doing them?

Ask them the sort of questions you would ask me. Ask them basic questions about humanity and psychology, about their opinions and beliefs. If you don’t ask that, you really can’t get to know them.

And you look around and everybody’s smiling and you smile; everybody pretends it’s all good and you pretend it’s all good; everybody looks happy and you try to look happy; everyone looks good and you want to look good… There’s not problem with these things, but that’s not living. That’s the superficial part of life.

I once met a lady who realized, after 75 years of life, that she wasted all her youth years without getting to know anybody. And she was sad because now it was too late for her to do that. Some of her friends have died and others moved away, and so it was impossible her to “fix” the situation. It’s never too late in theory, but in practice it is.

One thing that sometimes amuses me is when someone does something terribly wrong and those close to him say: “how could that happen? We knew him, he would never do such a thing.” Situations like these clearly show that we don’t know our parents, we don’t know our friends, we don’t know our sons, we don’t know our brothers, we don’t know our loved ones.

Now get a pen and a piece of paper and prepare an interview. Use the questions that I’ve suggested above, add some more of your own, and interview one of your parents, your loved one or your best friend. Interview them the same way you would interview a stranger: by starting from the assumption that you don’t really know anything about them.

Do it today! You don’t want to reach the stage of that 75 years old lady.

I don’t want you to miss the good things in life, nor do you.

Until next time,
be happy! :)

Armannd

While some of these lists provide interesting informations, there is one thing that no-one seems to want you to know: lists stop being useful the instant you’re finished reading them (i.e., when you leave the page).

All learning is brain-based and through the process of learning we are literally trying to change the brain. When learning, we create new connections between brain cells.

The brain is radiant, it thinks centrally and explodes out in all directions. It thinks by imagination and association. Lists are linear, rigid, similar and boring, and the brain gets unhappy very quickly because of that. Only a few minutes of such lecture can be tolerated before the brain seeks other stimuli.

The reason why traditional lists and lines don’t work and are actually counter-productive (!), is because they don’t have, nor they encourage, associations.

If you don’t have associations, you don’t have connection, if you don’t have connection, you don’t have memory and you don’t have thinking. But then again, maybe that is the purpose of some… :P

There are of course some subjects that work very well through writing by lists, but I am certain that self-improvement is not one of those.

Reading a self-improvement article or book that has it’s “meat” organized under a list won’t do you much good. It will only resonate with you while you’re reading it – because the ideas presented probably make sense – but that short pat on the back is all you’re gonna get. Your brain won’t form new solid connections, you won’t remember what you have read and you obviously won’t be able to use the ideas that you read about. More, your brain will be tired after the lecture.

Writing in lists is definitely good for the writer. It is very simple and easy to do and has virtually no downsides. Writing in lists is something that everyone can do! But for a reader, reading a list material is usually nothing but a waste of time – in disguise that is.

Next time you’re faced with a “how-to in x steps” type of article, think twice before reading it. Don’t let an attractive title and a nice introduction fool you.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Before I knew anything about it, I was attracted to the ideal of philosophy. I thought of it as a practical subject that could make a real difference, that might have wise things to say about everyday worries – like

failing in a job, not having any friends. Philosophy promised something that might sound a little naive, but was in fact rather profound: “the way to learn to be happy.”

And as I found out more, I discovered that there were a few ancient philosophers I was particularly interested in, because they had the wisest things to say about the areas of life that I thought were rather problematic.

Anger

Anger refers especially to that faculty of the mind which subsists between reason and desire and which seeks to direct the latter in accord with the former – a faculty which seeks to ordinate the self and its environment. It is part of the brain response to a perceived threat of pain – mental of physical.

Anger may be expressed actively or passively. When expressed actively, an angry person “lashes out” verbally or physically at a target. When expressed passively, it is often characterized by silent sulking, passive-aggressive behavior, hostility and tension.

Anger is usually magnified and lasts longer when a rational decision is made about the intent of the source of the disturbance. In other words, if one decides the pain infliction was intentional or deliberate, the emotion of anger that results is usually more intense. This also happens when one thinks he can do something to change an unchangeable painful situation.

Getting angry is not a hard thing to achieve. Is is sufficient for one to drive through a city, especially if it is a crowded one, to get very frustrated because of the careless drivers that seem to be everywhere.

The world we live in is a very frustrating one and most of us seem unable to respond very philosophically to it. Anger seems as much a part of our lives today as bad driving and traffic jams.

An interesting thing to know is that anger was even a greater problem in the ancient times than it is now.

Ancient thinking & solutions for anger | Seneca

An article on the benefits of travel that I had written not long ago had its opening quote by Seneca, the most famous and popular philosopher of his day. He authored more than 20 books of practical advice about all aspects of life.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often referred to simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger) was a Roman philosopher, statesman and dramatist. Born in Corduba, Hispania (today’s Spain), about 3 B.C., Seneca was the second son of Helvia and Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a wealthy rhetorician known as Seneca the Elder.

Tradition relates that Seneca he was a sickly child (suffering from tuberculosis) and that he was taken to Rome for schooling, where he was trained in rhetoric and was introduced into Stoic philosophy by Attalos and Sotion.

Around AD 37, Seneca was nearly killed as a result of a conflict with the Emperor Caligula who only spared him because he believed the sickly Seneca would not live long anyway. In AD 41, Messalina, wife of the Emperor Claudius, persuaded Claudius to have Seneca banished to Corsica on a charge of adultery with Julia Livilla (one of Caligula’s sisters). He spent his exile in philosophical and natural study and wrote the Consolations.

In AD 49, Claudius’ new wife Agrippina had Seneca recalled to Rome to tutor her son, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, the future emperor Nero.

Seneca acted as Nero’s advisor for eight years from 54 to 62. Seneca’s influence was said to be especially strong in the first year and many historians consider Nero’s early rule with Seneca and the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus to be quite competent. Over time however, Seneca and Burrus lost their influence over Nero.

With the death of Burrus in 62 and accusations of embezzlement, Seneca retired and devoted his time to more study and writing.

In AD 65, Seneca was charged with being a co-conspirator in the Pisonian conspiracy (a conspiration in which he probably wasn’t involved), a plot to kill the emperor Nero. Rather than face execution, Seneca chose to slit his wrists.

During his time as advisor of the emperor Nero, Seneca saw very much anger first hand. He even dedicated a whole book, titled “On Anger”, to the subject.

“The most hideous and frenzy of all emotions” he called it. But, crucially, he refused to see it as an irrational outburst, something over which we have no control.

Seneca thought anger was a philosophical problem and that it should be treated with philosophical arguments.

Anger arises from certain rationally held ideas about the world. And the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic.

In Seneca’s analysis, people get angry because they’re too hopeful, too optimistic.

Optimism is an outlook on life such that one maintains a view of the world as a positive place. An optimistic view of life is the overarching mental state wherein people believe that things will more likely go well for them than go badly.

Whenever we get angry there’s an element of surprise of self pity and injustice. When we expect things to go our way and they don’t, we tend to get angry. What Seneca would say is that “bad” things (in the optimistic perception) are neither unfair or surprising. They are predictable features of life. The person who gets angry about them simply has the wrong expectations of the world.

Seneca’s first piece of advice: be more pessimistic, adjust your view of the world so is to be less surprised when reversals occur.

He urges us to bear something else in mind too: if we can accept there’s often nothing we can do about our frustrations, we will be less likely to lose our peace of mind when we encounter them.

Seneca believed that one of the reasons we get so angry is because we imagine that things should basically always go our way. This is more of a problem these days as there is an explosion of “advice” sources that urge people to be overoptimistic and believe that things can always go their way, that they should be able to make the world conform to their wishes.

The reality is that we can’t do that. There are many things that we just have to accept. To make us understand this, Seneca came up with an unusual idea. He said that all of us are esentially rather like dogs, tied to the back of a moving chariot, and the leash is just about long enough to give us some freedom, but not long enough to allow us to move wherever we want. The best way for the dog to have a good life with this constraint is to follow in the direction where he doesn’t want to go than to kick against something that he can’t change. That is because if he kicks against it, he will end up not only going where he doesn’t want to go, but he will also get strangled.

However, we have one advantage over animals: we have reason. And it is reason that gives us the advantage to see what we can change and what we can’t. We may be unable to alter certain events but we’re always able to change our attitude towards them. And its this ability that Seneca believed gave us this distinctive form of freedom.

Seneca’s philosophy isn’t just useful for times when we’re feeling furious, it offers us a way to stay calm and collected whatever life may throw at us.

Being a wealthy person, Seneca noticed a surprising thing in the world around him: being rich tends to make people angrier, not calmer.

Seneca knew of a man, Vedius Pollio, who once hosted a party at which a cup-bearer tripped on a piece of marble, fell, and broke a crystal glass. Vedius was so angered at this that he ordered him thrown to the lampreys.

In Seneca’s analysis, Vedius Pollio believed in a world in which crystal glasses simply don’t get broken. And in a way, all of us are like that.

Seneca believed that the problem with rich people, like Vedius, was that their expectations were absurdly high. If this seems absurd to you, go to an airport and look at the 1st class and the economic class counter; what you will notice is that people tend to shout more at the 1st class counter.

The reason is that the rich believe that money will insulate them from setbacks and frustrations; and that is one of the absurdest expectations of us all.

Seneca’s second piece of advice: lower your expectations.

Another interesting piece of advice coming from Seneca is to meditate. The meditation that he refers to isn’t for relaxation, but for preparation.

We usually tend to reassure people by saying: “don’t worry, it will be fine.” Seneca believed that this cozy advice can potentially be very cruel, because it leaves the target person unprepared if things won’t be fine. So he suggested an opposite strategy.

Seneca’s third piece of advice: every morning, make time for a calm meditation on all the things that might go wrong that day.

Be careful not to start believing that you shouldn’t ever expect things to go to plan. You can expect them to go to plan, but at the same time you must be prepared for the day they don’t.

Balancing the optimistic and the pessimistic sides of our moral, as well as meditating to be prepared for when things don’t go our way, are key elements to living a peaceful life, a life free of frustration and anger.

source: Alain de Botton, Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness – Part 3

Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind. - Seneca

You are tired, you have to drag yourself out of bed each morning and your life seems to be somehow spiraling downwards… your enthusiasm for work gets lower each day and so does the interest in your hobbies and social life. You’ve got some vacation time banked but you’re thinking that you don’t have enough money to travel. You are wondering if going away, even for a little while, is worth the effort…

If you are in the above situation, then you really cannot afford not to travel.

If you are not in that situation: travel anyway, it will benefit you more than you can imagine; you might even achieve success because you did!

In this modern and busy life of ours, planning a getaway is not always an easy job. Most people have budgets to keep, schedules to follow, children to take care of… But the time when travel is most necessary is the time when you think you don’t have enough time / money to do it.

Getting away, even if for a short period and to a nearby destination, can do wonders for your well-being. As the opening quote beautifully puts it, it will “impart new vigor to the mind.”

I’ll share a little secret with you now (shh, don’t tell anyone): the inspiration to start this blog, the motivation and enthusiasm to keep working on it, the strong desire to help others, the power to start thinking and to seeing life in perspective would not have been possible without travel.

However, an important note must be made: by travel I’m referring to wandering (go someplace see everything) and not to tourism (go there see that).

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sight-seeing.” – Daniel J. Boorstin

Let’s see how travel will change your life

Traveling alone, or solo travel, is the quickest and easiest way for you to grow your independence and confidence. Most of the traveling that I’ve done has been solo travel, and one of the main things I’ve noticed upon returning from each getaway is the fact that I felt like I have accomplished a certain something. It’s an indescribable feeling that makes you feel like you’re on top of the world and everything is possible. That feeling is triggered by the fact that traveling alone allows you to do a lot of things about which you previously thought that you can’t do without name_someone_close_here.

Independence and confidence help you in both your professional and personal life.

Being alone and away from it all gives you time to think. It regroups your thoughts and allows you see life from a whole different perspective. It is always during long train rides that I find myself having the deepest thoughts about my life, and that is the time when the opportunity windows get clearer. After all, only from the outside can we look back in.

Also, traveling alone has certainly made me more organized – in both thinking and living.

Travel reduces stress and decreases burnout. Even if traveling can sometimes be stressful, travel stress is a good type of stress, because it is not the kind of anxiety caused by work or tension related to home life. Stress reduction, however you accomplish it, is always healthy.

Being stuck in one place for too long can make your mind stagnate and turn everything there is in your daily routine into a suffocating chore. Any kind of trip provides you with a break from the norm and that alone can fill you up with a vibrating energy.

Another thing which traveling does is it teaches you one really big thing that was never learned in school: expect the unknown. Dealing with unknown people in unknown places makes traveling an unforgettable and fascinating experience. And as new connections are created inside the brain, all your mental abilities are improved – so you’ll return home both relaxed and smarter.

Mark Twain said that he had found out that “there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them”. And that is as true as it can be. However, the best part about it is that it also brings out the real person in you. Your likes and dislikes, qualities and weaknesses, it all becomes evident. Knowing more about yourself while having a fresh perspective on your life can only have good results.

Seeing other people in their own surroundings also makes you more tolerant to their beliefs and ways of life. That enables you, after returning home, to better understand all the different cultures surrounding you in your daily life.

Traveling makes it easier to be grateful. It gives you a chance to look with new eyes on familiar things. You will begin to appreciate all that you have in your life at its true value. Lin Yutang, a Chinese writer and inventor, said that “no one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” I now realize that what I treasure most about travel is not that it gives me a chance to see novel things, but the fact that it gives me new eyes to see the old ones. In this aspect, traveling boosts your creativity like nothing else. Peter Gabriel, an English musician, writer and video maker, believes that “traveling is good for lyrics. Sitting in a room with a blank sheet of paper is tough.”

You can see that traveling has tons of exceptionally positive benefits. It cleanses the mind, touches the spirit, lightens the heart and reconnects you with that old one, yourself.

As a tip for having a uniquely wonderful travel experience: go to a railway station and take a train eighteen hours in one direction or another. I know it sounds silly and anyone with a brain would call this to be an insane idea, but the things you will learn this way are priceless – trust me on this one.

Another tip: if possible, forget the car and the airplane; travel by train. You will have a stress-free journey gazing out of the window, plenty of leg room and air at atmospheric pressure. On top of that you will reduce the environmental impact of traveling and won’t be stuck in those horrid traffic jams.

So, go out, meet some fascinating people, see your country, visit the world. I can almost guarantee you that by traveling more your universe will infinitely improve, without any effort!

Half the fun of the travel is the aesthetic of lostness. – Ray Bradbury

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited. – Albert Einstein

In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for safely running programs that is often used to execute untested code or programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers and untrusted users.

In a similar fashion, the psychological sandbox is the space within your mind which allows you to safely exercise ideas, concepts, issues and solutions, without any direct external consequences. You may not be aware that you have this psychological sandbox, but if you ever thought about something that “it can’t work”, you have used it.

The advantages of becoming aware of and consciously using the psychological sandbox are numerous. Here are some of them:

• You can solve difficult or painful situations that may appear in life more easily;
• You can test-run outlandish concepts more thoroughly;
• You can use it in brainstorming sessions to improve your changes of finding new practical ideas;
• You can thoroughly test-run any idea before applying it in your life;
• It is a very powerful imagination exercise;

As you see, the psychological sandbox is a very powerful tool that can assist you in improving yourself.

Setting up the sandbox

The psychological sandbox is basically a skill that everyone is born with. Because of its “skill” state, it can be subject to improvement. And in this case, improvement means learning to set it up correctly and then developing it through exercise.

The installation process is very simple:

Imagine an actual sandbox that has a border around it, to keep the sand in. No matter what one builds or tears down in this sandbox, it all stays inside. Anything that is in the sandbox is provisionally accepted as being real and is subject to the physical laws of the universe – and the moral laws of society, depending on the case.

Using the sandbox

Let’s consider that you face a very difficult situation in your life.

First, bring up in your mind the sandbox that you installed earlier. Now imagine that the sand in it represents the problems you are facing. As you know, you can build up anything or tear down what is already there without actually doing it. Thus, with emotional distance, intelligently use all the options you have and notice their consequences. In order for the results to be accurate, for the duration of the exercise you must accept the environment build inside the sandbox as being real, but untrustworthy – until proven otherwise.

When one idea has a valid beneficial outcome, step outside the psychological sandbox and replicate the process in the real life.

Let’s have another example.

During brainstorming sessions, the habit of thinking “it can’t work” is an abhorrant action that interferes with the process that creates new ideas. Most of us are hardwired to act this way. But an idea shouldn’t be subject to brutal attack in the instant it first comes to our mind. New ideas are delicate, their survival ability is not properly tested by beating them with wooden clubs, but by placing them in our psychological sandbox.

Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis – which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism – especially rejection of new ideas before they have been adequately tested – and you’re not only unpleasantly grumpy, but also closed to the advance of science. – Carl Sagan

The solution is to place the new idea in the psychological sandbox – a place which is carefully kept separate from where you keep your certain knowledge. In this sandbox all the untested ideas are constantly seen as untrustworthy yet they’re all provisionally accepted as being real. So build the environment for properly testing the idea and then play with it while paying attention to the effects. Does it work, is it valid? If it does, congratulations! your brainstorming has created a new idea.

In a nutshell, the point of the psychological sandbox is to encourage thinking and imagination, while discouraging laziness of thought – saying “I can’t do that” or “that’s not possible” without proper testing.

But I was already doing this!

Congratulations then!

This is a very basic and simple concept, but the fact of the matter is that many of us only imagine that we imagine. Imagining that you imagine and believing what you imagine to imagine is a bad habit to keep.

Bringing the sandbox process of imagination in the awareness spectrum of your mind can only have great positive results. Start using it right away.

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. - H.L. Mencken

The Socratic method is a very valuable tool in building self-confidence, as it makes people think.

Born 2500 years ago, Socrates is seen by many as the greatest of ancient philosophers. Noted for his ugliness, he never wore sandals or washed his cloak. An individual by today’s standards, but an annoying and frustrating man according to most who encountered him in his lifetime. Socrates taught his students in a manner that was beyond some of the conventions of the time. The Socratic method derives from the Socratic Dialogues of Plato, in which Socrates made people jump through intellectual hoops trying to defend a “truth.” He would ask a progression of seemingly innocent questions that ultimately led the respondent to a logical conclusion that was incompatible with that person’s originally stated belief.

Even though Socrates used his method more to shred people than to educate them, we can apply this technique in a kinder, gentler way, in order to build self-confidence.

These are the 5 steps of the Socratic method of inquiry:

1. Wonder. Pose a question.
2. Hypothesis. Suggest a plausible answer (a definition or definiens) from which some conceptually testable hypothetical propositions can be deduced.
3. Elenchus; “testing,” “refutation,” or “cross-examination.” Perform a thought experiment by imagining a case which conforms to the definiens but clearly fails to exemplify the definiendum, or vice versa. Such cases, if successful, are called counterexamples. If a counterexample is generated, return to step 2, otherwise go to step 4.
4. Accept the hypothesis as provisionally true. Return to step 3 if you can conceive any other case which may show the answer to be defective.
5. Act accordingly.

Before taking in any concept, belief or idea, filter them using the Socratic method.

What is self-confidence?

Self-confidence is an attitude which allows individuals to have positive yet realistic views of themselves and their situations. Self-confident people trust their own abilities, have a general sense of control in their lives, and believe that, within reason, they will be able to do what they wish, plan, and expect.

Having self-confidence does not mean that individuals will be able to do everything. Self-confident people have expectations that are realistic. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.

People who are not self-confident depend excessively on the approval of others in order to feel good about themselves. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They generally do not expect to be successful. They often put themselves down and tend to discount or ignore compliments paid to them. By contrast, self-confident people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally trust their own abilities. They tend to accept themselves; they don’t feel they have to conform in order to be accepted.

Avoid the group instinct

One of the biggest confidence shredders is the group instinct, the feeling that others have to approve to our beliefs. In this aspect, whether we like it or not, most of us are sheep in clothing.

Sheep are animals that are without exception dominated by a group instinct. They do everything together: when one eats they all eat, when one drinks they all drink , when one lays down to chew its cud they all do, when the head of the herd jumps over a cliff the whole flock probably follows. Sheep follow each other blindly, never thinking for themselves and always trusting the reasoning of the group leader.

We humans also have the habit of blindly following what an authority figure says, and we do things in a certain way just because that’s the way things have always been done before.

Most people are afraid to break free from the group and put themselves in a state of potential vulnerability, to then wonder why they don’t have any self-confidence…

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. - Soren Kierkegaard

What is the key to self-confidence? The four steps of building self-confidence

Let’s see what our ancient teachers have to say:

The Bible quotes King Solomon: “As a man thinketh, so shall he be.”

The Buddhist text, The Dhammapada, states: “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.”

The Greek philosopher Socrates said: “To find yourself, think for yourself.”

The truth is that you are neither a sheep or a robot, you are a human being. So you can intentionally choose how to think and you have the responsibility of thinking for yourself.

The space in which self-confidence is build is a space within you, the space of your own thoughts. And just like you can’t build your house on the foundation of your neighbor, you can’t build self-confidence on the thoughts and ideas of others.

The first step in building step-confidence: don’t think for a second that the ones in front of the group, the authority figures, know what they are doing. If you were to ask them simple questions – even about their field of work – you would be stunned to discover that they are often the most confused individuals of the entire group.

The second step in building self-confidence: think for yourself. Do not accept any belief or concept that has not passed the test of your own reasoning.

The third step in building self-confidence: break free from the flock. Do not be afraid to move against the majority. If the majority of the world’s population believes that the United States are fighting a war against some Middle-East terrorists, it doesn’t mean that their belief is correct.

The fourth step in building self-confidence: take risks. To think for yourself and to move against the popular thinking, you must question authority and dare put yourself in a vulnerable, chaotic, and sometimes confused position. Remember that Socrates died for his beliefs. Even if most people today won’t die for defending their beliefs, risks must be taken.

Now, before leaving this page, I suggest you question and ponder on everything you just read.

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. - Edmund Burke

“Start doing the thing to have energy to do the thing” – Bob Proctor

All of us have goals and dreams. And most of us even have full intentions of achieving them.

Why did I say “most of us” and not “all of us?” Because on the path that leads towards our dreams, we all reach a certain place where it becomes incredibly easy to do “the tradeoff” – trading what we want for what we already have. That is where only the ones with full intentions manage to keep their dreams.

For the ones with partial intentions, after doing the tradeoff, the dreams fade into the background, life moves on, and all of a sudden they find themselves saying “I wish I would have…”

And that is really sad when you think about it. A person loaded with potential, a story people want to hear, information people will pay for and benefit from, skills that could have made a difference… all that gone to waste.

How to safely pass the tradeoff spot without doing the tradeoff: the 40-second rule

When people are close to the “tradeoff spot” they see things out of perspective. All of a sudden the dreams they were after don’t seem to worth the effort and their current situation is seen as very comfortable.

Of course that these sudden shifts in perspective are nothing but dangerous, temporary illusions that should be dealt with carefully. The best way out of them: act on one of the things that doesn’t seem to be worth it, for 40 seconds. The short time limit will make the apparent sacrifice appear to be doable and acceptable, and chances are that by the time those 40 seconds are up you’ll be enjoying what you started and get it done!

I, for example, love reading. But there are days when my mind wanders off in some other places and the thought of reading a book isn’t so attractive anymore… In situations like that I simply pick up a book and read through it for 40 seconds (sometimes I even time that period on the clock). In more than 90% of the cases that I do so, I continue reading after the time limit expires. What’s more, in most cases the reason why I was avoiding it in the first place appears to have been very irrational afterwards.

Trading 40 seconds in exchange for a better future is probably the best deal you’ll ever make! And the best part: you can do it right now. Just get out there and for 40 seconds do something that can take you closer to your dream. Don’t worry if after the first try you stop… it doesn’t mean that you failed. Follow the 40-seconds rule again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and so on… because:

“It’s the little things you do that can make a big difference. What are you attempting to accomplish? What little thing can you do today that will make you more effective? You are probably only one step away from greatness.” – Bob Proctor

More generally, although in your quest for improvement you will stumble upon many independent content areas, you must come to see that all those topics are interwoven. In a very real sense, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

One of the most important aspects of self improvement is the effort to connect ideas and procedures from different topics to your life.

The essential question

One essential thing that everyone wants to learn these days is this: how to find peace and be happy. The essential answer to that question: start from where you are.

The shifting of focus

The 1960s were the “Swinging Sixties”, a period of social activism, cultural revolution, irresponsible excess, a period of optimism and hedonism. Rampant drug use has become a synecdoche for the counter-culture of the era, as exemplified by Jefferson Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner: “If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren’t really there.”

Then the 1970s came. In the Western world, the focus shifted from social activism to social activities for one’s own pleasure (eg sex, cocaine, hedonistic all-night parties at discotheques and swinging parties). That is why the seventies were considered by Tom Wolfe as the “Me Decade.”

The following decade, the 1980s, is often referred to as “the Greed Decade,” reflecting the economic and social climate of the period. During this time the word “yuppie” entered the lexicon in the United States and UK to refer to the well-publicized rise of a new middle class. College graduates in their late 20s, early 30s were entering the workplace in prestigious office professions, holding more purchasing power with which they purchased trendy, luxurious goods. The decade witnessed a religious revival and the rise of conservatism, which began with a backlash against disco music late in 1979.

Today, we look back on a century of growing self-preoccupation. Freud published his first major work, “The Interpretation of Dreams”, right at the birth of the twentieth century. And from that point on, we have been increasingly fascinated with ourselves and our world.

Peace and happiness: still unavailable…

Even if our efforts in finding happiness and peace have been stronger than ever before, not only that we haven’t found any consistent happiness or peace, but our anxieties have only increased. For these efforts have made us more estranged from both ourselves and our world. The reasons for that are doubtless complex.

However, part of the solution is simple: we have been looking in the wrong place and we’ve failed to build the necessary connections. In examining this, it is useful to recall the tale of the drunk looking for his car keys under a streetlight. The drunk is asked why he’s looking under the streetlight when he lost the keys over in the parking lot. He replies: “But this is where I can see.”

Spirituality can help, science can help, psychology can help, philosophy can help, but as long as our searching is rooted in self-distrust, we will always be trying on someone else’s answer. Workshops, seminars, blogs, books, retreats and other tools can only be helpful if we use them to help us connect with where we are.

Connect with where you are | DIY

Right now: Where are you? Come back from your worries and plans to where you are now as you read. How are you breathing? How are you sitting? How do you feel? Where are your thoughts at this moment? Don’t criticize or change any of this. Just spend a few minutes being quietly aware, without judgment.

This is it. This is your life. Move forward from this point. Start by finding connections between where you are and the knowledge that is available to you.

All the the knowledge you need to improve your life is already here. You just have to find a way to connect it to where you are. It is the only way to make self improvement work.