R.L. Adams's Blog, page 4

10 Methods for Reducing Stress in your Life

Learn How to Reduce your Daily Stress

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. — William James

 

We all experience stress on some level. We’re all subject to the torment of emotions that ensues when we’re under a great deal of stress, especially when we’re striving towards achieving our goals in life. But what is stress really and what are some ways that stress can be reduced in your life?

Well, stress is the body’s physical response to a stressor in its environment. This can happen on the macro level and even on the micro level. We’re all familiar with the macro-level stressors in our lives. They involve fears, worries, and anxieties. They test our fight-or-flight response and take us to that emotional brink.

And, we stress about all sorts of things from our relationships, our finances, our friends, our families, our jobs, our health, and so on. Sometimes, it seems like our stress is a ceaseless series of occurrences that keep repeating themselves like the patterns in an endless ream of fabric. So, how do we break this cycle? How do we overcome our tendencies to stress to extremes?

 

Can I Really Reduce the Stress I Experience?

Yes, stress can be considerably reduced.

Now, some stress is necessary for us to function on a normal level. When we know we have an important meeting to present at work, we become stressed. That stress helps to induce action in us to ensure that we’re prepared for that important meeting.

Stress also interweaves the pain-and-pleasure paradigm in the mind that forces us to take different actions by eliciting varying emotions from the self-talk that goes on in our heads on a daily basis. We’ll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure, so stress is a byproduct of this thought process.

For example, when you know that your taxes are due the following week, even though you had been putting it off for months, the pain of not doing your taxes becomes greater than the pleasure of putting it off for another day. So, we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure and as a result, we hurriedly get to doing our taxes and ensuring we get them in on time. The stress of the situation calls us to action.

 

How Much Stress is Too Much Stress to Have?

Well, getting your taxes done on time, and the stress of not doing them is one thing. However, some people stress over much more than their taxes, and that stress is a daily unending ritual. But, the stress itself isn’t the worst part; it’s the physiological affects that the stress has on our bodies that can be debilitating.

When we stress, we release stress hormones into the body such as cortisol and epinephrine that help to regulate the bodies energy resources. When we’re stressed out and our body is releasing stress hormones, energy and resources move away from certain systems such as digestion, reproduction, and immunity, and they move toward the muscles, heart, and other vital organs. This is part of the body’s innate defense-mechanism in full swing and it’s at the heart of our fight-or-flight response.

But, how much stress is too much stress to have? Well, some stress is okay to have; it makes the world go round. It makes us do things that we might not necessarily always want to do, such as cramming for an exam the night before. But having too much stress over a prolonged period can have so many harmful effects on the body. It can do things such as:

 

Slow down metabolic processes that affect digestion, which causes people that are constantly stressed out to gain more weight since their bodies’ digestive systems aren’t properly functioning. This, in turn, can also lead to things like ulcers and IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome).


Slow down reproductive processes that include a major decrease in testosterone for males and estrogen for females. This leads to things like irregular menstrual cycles in women and lower fertility in men.


Slow down in the growth process, leading to hampered growth or recovery from illness. Since the presence of stress hormones also has a major effect on immunity, not only can growth be stifled, but also the recovery or prevention of any disease, common cold, flu, or other health-related issue.

 

So, What are Some Ways to Stop Stressing?

Well, there are several methods that you can employ in order to reduce your tendency to stress so much. These methods don’t take a significant amount of work, but rather, more of an awareness towards the situation and the mental self-talk going on in the mind. It’s usually that mental self-talk that helps us to create an enormous amount of stress in our lives.

The mind often has a way of carefully conceiving the worst possible scenario, and manifesting that into stress, which in turn causes physiological effects on the body. But there are some ways you can overcome your tendencies to stress and interrupt the patterns that we all become accustomed to.

Here’s how you can stress less and enjoy your life more…

 

#1 – Motion Interrupts Emotion

One of the best ways to reduce your level of stress is by creating some motion. Motion will interrupt emotion. And, when we’re stressed, our body has a way of telling us about that stress by putting us into a down and depressive state; the stress hormones will help to do that to us. But, when we create motion, we can interrupt the emotions. We can break the habit of constant stress by working the body.

This can be done by simply going for a 15-minute power walk around your block, doing 5 minutes of jumping jacks, or anything else to get your body moving. When you move your body, you break the pattern and the negative self-talk has a more difficult time of affecting you. Also, exercise stimulates the blood flow, providing oxygen to the brain and delivering nutrients to the body. It’s an excellent way to reduce and relieve stress.

 

#2 – Rest & Relaxation

Sometimes, just what we need to alleviate our stress is a little bit of rest and relaxation. If you can get away from the chaos that’s your life, try to do so for a day or two. Take some time for yourself. Go to your happy place, somewhere you love being more than anywhere else. Even if you can’t physically get away out of town, find a place nearby. Go on a “staycation” and recharge your batteries.

 

#3 – Cancel the Noise

A great deal of our stress stems from our desire to handle more things than we can at times. However, we don’t necessarily seem to notice this until it’s too late. If you have difficulty managing your time, interferences can be a huge source of stress. If you have a smartphone that’s constantly alerting you to work emails, or you’re frequently having to deal with problems that could be delegated to others, it may cause a huge amount of stress.

You have to cancel the noise. Turn off the television, wifi, cell phone, and all other distractions. Take some time to yourself to unwind and focus on what’s important. Make a list and prioritize what you need to focus on and realign yourself with what you truly desire. Sometimes, by taking a step back, we can see the bigger picture much clearer, and subsequently reduce the stress in our lives.

 

#4 – Music as a Muse

Sometimes, we all just need a little bit of music in our lives. Music can help reduce and alleviate your stress significantly. In fact, studies have shown that slow music such as classical music, can decrease blood pressure, reduce heart rates, and reduce the stress hormones in the body.

By listening to music, you can help to reduce your overall stress. And, music can be used to invoke certain emotions at certain times. If you have a playlist ready to go, you can easily select the song that will help you feel elated, energized, and a whole slew of other feelings.

 

#5 - Write like the Wind

Sometimes, it helps to write your thoughts out on paper. Our minds have a way of getting carried away on their own when left unchecked. But, by building awareness to the negative self-talk going on in the mind and writing out your thoughts and feelings, you can help to reduce stress.

How are you feeling? What in your life is stressing you out? Why is it stressing you out? See if you can look at your problems in a different light. Even if you’re going through a very difficult time right now, by finding the good in any situation you can help to reduce your stress and ensure that you push through those tough times. Writing can help you see all of that in front of you.

 

#6 - Stop and Breathe

An excellent stress reduction technique involves breathing exercises. An increased amount of breath equals an increased intake of oxygen, which is known to reduce cortisol levels. Furthermore, certain breathing exercises have been proven to reduce stress and anxiety levels. According to Dr. Weil, one excellent relaxation exercise with breathing involves the 4:7:8 method.

To implement the 4:7:8 method, bring your tongue to the upper ridge just behind your front teeth and hold it there. Breath in through your nose with a mental count to 4, hold your breath for a count to 7, then breath out through your mouth with a count to 8. When you breath out, you should make a “whooshing sound.” Repeat this cycle three additional times for a total of 4 cycles.

 

#7 - Laugh Until it Hurts

Laughing is an incredibly cathartic method for reducing stress and anxiety levels. Studies have shown that laughter not only reduces stress, but it also decreases memory loss, and increases the body’s immune system. And, laughing is simple and easy. All it takes is watching 20 or 30-minutes of comedy to get the laughter that you need.

 

#8 – Massage Therapy

Studies have shown that massages help to reduce stress and lower the body’s cortisol levels. Find a good massage therapist and treat yourself to a massage. Make sure that the masseuse knows what he or she is doing. The proper trained massage therapist can help to massage away the stress through proven methods that help to activate a part of the brain called the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, which is responsible for sensations of happiness and enjoyment.

 

#9 -Hugs & Kisses

Real human contact in a loving manner can help to not only reduce stress by lowering cortisol levels, but also to boost happiness levels by releasing endorphins in the brain. The happy endorphins can help to elevate mood and drown out depression. Find someone you can kiss or hug right now if you’re feeling stress.

Whether it’s a family member, a spouse, or a friend, ask them for a hug and tell them you’ve been really stressed out. And, make the hug last for more than 10 seconds. The longer you hug, the better you’ll feel. Try it today and watch your stress melt away.

 

#10 – Let the Creative Juices Flow

Whether you’re creative or not, embark upon an art project to help reduce cortisol levels and your overall amount of stress. It helps to activate certain parts of the brain that interrupt the flow of stress hormones in the body. It’s an excellent method for not only reducing your stress, but also for taking your mind off of things.

 

Top 5 Ways to Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin. — Victor Klam

Debilitating. Defeating. Deadening. Disrupting. These are all words that can be used to describe procrastination. It can completely destroy your spirit, dull your senses, and mute your dreams by putting off for tomorrow what should be done today.

In effect, procrastination is a silent killer – it’s killing off dreams left and right every moment of the day.

Those goals we made yesterday are still sitting there waiting for us to tackle them, except it’s being blocked by one of the best deterrent mechanisms standing in the way of our hopes and our dreams: procrastination.

 

So, how do we stop procrastinating?

Well, it’s not that simple, especially when procrastination has become habitual. Since the mind operates on neural pathways that it carves out over the course of months and years of repetitious behavior, when procrastination is a habit, it’s hard to break. However, it’s not impossible. When a person is committed enough to do something, they can get over the proverbial hump, so to speak.

So how do you do it? How do you stop procrastinating and start making progress?

Well, there are several methods that work great for stopping procrastination, but the following five are my top ways for doing so. If procrastination has become a problem in your life, try applying the following methods and you’ll find yourself being more productive, and living a more meaningful life that doesn’t have you putting your dreams on the back burner.

 

Curing the Procrastination Disease…
#1 – Create Clearly Defined Goals and Milestones

In a recent post entitled, How to Achieve your Goals in Life, I talked about a three-part method to setting goals through active goal setting rather than passive goal setting. When you actively set your goals, and you write them out on paper or type them on a keyboard on some device somewhere, you send a visceral signal to your brain. You’re telling your brain clearly and concisely what you want, why you want it, and when you want it by.

This is one of the most important steps to setting goals that many people simply overlook. When you don’t write things down, and you merely leave your goals in your mind as some obscure abstracts, it tells your mind that you’re not only not serious about those goals, but that you haven’t envisioned them enough to put them on paper. When they’re on paper, they’re real. There’s a real date that you’re aiming to accomplish those goals, you understand exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and you know why you’re doing it.

So, the first way to stop procrastinating, is to understand exactly what you want and why you want it. Then, when you know what you’re aiming for, you can break those goals down into milestones. You can take your one-year goals, break them down into months, weeks, and even days. Then, things become more achievable. You know what you have to do today, and you don’t get overwhelmed with the enormity of a huge goal.

 

#2 - Use the Quadrant System for Time Management

Much of procrastination has a lot to do with poor time management. When you can’t manage your time properly, then it’s hard to get ahead. And, the more we fall behind, the harder it is to catch up. But it’s not only harder to catch up, procrastination becomes habitual, and the pattern becomes harder and harder to break. So, oftentimes, we need to institute some time management skills in order to stop our tendencies to procrastinate.

How is this done?

Well, this was originally introduced by our former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower and later popularized by Stephen D. Covey in 1994 in his widely-known book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Eisenhower was quoted as saying “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” And, from therein emerged his Urgent / Important matrix for time management. 

As you can see in the image, it’s broken down into urgency and importance. Things can either be important but not urgent (long-term goals), important and urgent (emergencies and crises), urgent but not important (interruptions), or not urgent and not important (distractions).

Most of us are stuck in the not urgent and not important quadrant of distractions.

When we’re stuck in this quadrant, procrastination takes center stage. We would much rather be watching the game on television on a Sunday instead of working towards our long-term goals.

So, how does time management apply to procrastinating. Well, when you look at your goals and your milestones, you can break your day out into activities. Now, this applies to your free time. If you work a full-time job, then that’s a block of time you can’t skip over. However, when you do have free time, you can break out what you do into any of these four quadrants. If you can plan your day, then you can write the quadrant that each activity you have to do falls under.

So, the way to tackle procrastination is to ensure that you do the not urgent and not important activities first. Block out the first bit of your free time towards these activities. This is also a great way to look back at your day to see just what quadrant all of your activities fell under. What did you do today? How much of what you did today falls under the not urgent but important quadrant of long-term goals. If you’re not doing a little bit each day towards your long-term goals, then you’re robbing yourself of your dreams.

 

#3 - Use the 15-Minute Rule

Grab a timer. Use your phone, a stop watch, or a clock that you have handy. It has to be something that can count down the time, and place it in front of you. Set the timer to 15 minutes. Then, start doing the activity that you’ve been putting off and commit to doing it for 15 minutes.

Why only do it for 15 minutes?

Well, doing an activity for 15 minutes, and committing only to that block of time, helps you get over the hurdle of procrastination. Generally, when someone does something for 15 minutes, they continue doing it for much longer. And, by only committing to 15 minutes, you’re helping to overcome one of the biggest hurdles in your mind, which simply involves getting started.

So, commit to 15 minutes. Do something for 15 minutes right now that you’ve been putting off. Set aside a block of 15 minutes every single day, and over time, you’ll build better habits that will empower you rather than debilitate you. It all starts with 15 minutes. That’s all it takes.

 

#4 - Change your Environment

Sometimes, patterns are developed through environmental cues. Meaning, when we’re at home, we run a certain set of behaviors that our mind has become accustomed to running. But, when we can break that pattern and change our environment, we can change our behavior.

So, if you always find yourself jumping on the couch, grabbing the television remote, and turning on the television when you come home after a long day of work, change your environment. Take your laptop to a coffee shop. Or, grab a notepad and pencil and head out to a park and sit on a bench. You’ll find that changing your environment can be one of the best ways to break the habits that have formed over time.

If you find yourself stifled in a certain environment, then change the environment; go somewhere else. If you keep doing the same things, you can’t keep expecting different results. Pick yourself up right now and change your environment. Wherever you may be, if it’s not empowering you to work on your long-term goals, go somewhere else and do it.

 

#5 - Locate an Accomplice

The last method for eliminating procrastination in your life is to find an accomplice. What do I mean by this? Well, sometimes, what we really need is a friend or loved one helping to push us past that hump. If the goal involves getting to the gym 3 days a week, then having an accomplice can help to motivate one another. When you’re feeling down, they can help to push you. And when they’re feeling down, you can help to push them.

When you have an accomplice, you get to work as a team. It means that you’re not in it alone. It’s a great method for overcoming some of our natural tendencies to put things off. When we procrastinate, we send a signal to our mind saying that it’s okay to overlook something or put off for tomorrow what can be done today. The problem is that it’s not okay to put things off because that behavior becomes habitual.

Don’t allow the silent killer of procrastination to assassinate you. Get up right now and do something; do anything. The more you don’t act, the less likely you are to act in the future.

 

How to Develop Good Habits

Positive Habit Formation

Habit formation provides the basis for any activity from the macro to the micro-level. We develop habits – both good and bad – through the repetition of certain behaviors that result in the etching of neural pathways in the mind. These neural pathways are the mind’s way of reducing its overall workload; it’s the way the mind puts things into autopilot.

We’ve all had our fair share of experiences with good and bad habits. But, how are habits really formed and how do we go about creating good habits and eliminating bad habits?

 

Biting Off more than you can Chew

Sometimes, when we try to bite off more than we can chew, we get discouraged. What do I mean? Think about your past experiences and see if you can remember any times in your life where you set a goal, decided you would break a bad habit, or create a good habit, then got sidetracked and discouraged after multiple failed attempts.

Maybe you tried to lose weight and break the bad habit of stopping at a fast food restaurant on your way home from work. Or, maybe you tried to stop smoking cigarettes, stop overspending, stop over drinking, or anything else for that matter, and it didn’t work out.

Well, oftentimes, to develop good habits, we not only have to break bad habits, but we also have to override our natural urges to do or not do something. These urges are built into us and make overriding habitual behavior that’s built through years of repetition, incredibly difficult. It’s clear that breaking bad habits poses an enormous hurdle, but so does instilling good habits.

So, what are we supposed to do?

How are we supposed to overcome our natural tendencies to do things we know are detrimental to us, and not do things we know would help empower us?

 

Overriding our Internal Psychology

Part of what makes us who we are is the interaction that goes on in our minds. Interaction? Yes, our minds are a very complex system of interacting components and parts. One of the major interactions that occurs within the mind is within the Psychic Apparatus, a term coined by the late Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology.

The three parts of the Psychic Apparatus are the Id, Ego, and Superego. 

These three parts are working in conjunction with one another to help you make your daily decisions and they’re the basis for the thoughts that you have in both your subconscious and conscious mind. But, the interaction between the three involves some push-and-pull.

 

The Id

The Id operates on the pleasure principle and it’s a purely subconscious component of the mind. It’s the part that we’re born with. It’s basal; instinctual. It what makes us want to eat, defecate, and procreate. It gives us urges that are interlaced with our DNA. But, the Id, if left unchecked, is also the part of us that makes developing new and empowering habits very difficult. The Id tells us to indulge in whatever guilty pleasure we might want to indulge in.

 

The Superego

Opposite to the Id is the Superego. The superego is the part of us that acts as our moral compass. It’s what developed through our upbringing. Through the guidance of our parents or guardians, our Superegos develop into what helps keep us in check and not cross the line, helping to instill guilt into us when we do end up doing something wrong.

If you’ve ever indulged in something that you knew you shouldn’t have indulged in, it was your Superego that made you feel guilty afterwards. So, when the Id is urging us to do something based in pleasure, the Superego is urging us to be more cautious.

 

The Ego

The tug-of-war that goes on between these two components – the Id and the Superego – is refereed by the Ego. Yes, the Ego is what helps you to decide which way you’ll act. Will you indulge, succumbing to temptations, or will you play it safe and steady, keeping your pleasure instinct in check?

The Ego is also steeped in the reality principle. It wants to give you what you want, but it wants to do it within the confines of your reality. So, if it’s weight loss you’re after, the Ego seeks out some solution that will help you satisfy the instant pleasure of the Id while doing so within reality. This is why so many of us turn to fad weight-loss diets and get-rich-quick schemes. It’s the Ego trying to satisfy the urges of the Id while also giving us what we want.

 

Forming Good Habits by Overriding Our Internal Psychology

As you can see, there’s a lot going on in that mind of yours. It’s highly complex and the interaction is something that you can’t even understand because part of it goes on in that substrate that we can’t access called the subconscious mind.

As humans, we have 60,000 thoughts per day, and most of those are thoughts that we can’t access because they’re habitual in nature, carved deep into the neural pathways of our subconscious minds.  So, if we’re not careful, those thoughts can drive us in the wrong direction in life.

So, what are we supposed to do? How do we develop good habits and override our internal psychology?

Developing good habits involves first building an awareness towards the self-talk in your mind. Although you can’t hear what goes on in your subconscious mind, you can feel your emotions. Your emotions are the antenna to your mind. When we think of something, and that thought is prevalent and overpowering, we experience a certain set of emotions.

By paying close attention to our emotions we can access those prevalent thoughts. But the important thing to remember here is awareness. When we don’t have awareness, we’re simply a pawn to the chess game going on in our own minds. We’ll do things without even being aware of it. We’ll light a cigarette without knowing, reach for a candy bar without thinking, turn on the television without even being conscious of the actions, all because these acts are habitually carved into the neural pathways in the mind.

 

Forming Good Habits with Baby-Steps

When a baby is born, they begin to take baby-steps. They do things in small incremental doses. They learn to walk, slowly – they fall down many times. They learn to talk slowly – they fumble their words and leave out syllables. But the important thing is that they do things slowly; they start incrementally.

Why is this important?

Well, to develop good habits and override the internal psychology of the mind, you must take baby-steps. You have to start out by doing things in small but incremental doses. Scientific studies suggest that small incremental changes are the pathway to greater success in any area.

So, how do we take baby steps to form good habits?

Well, forming good habits through baby-steps is simple. The hardest part that most people have with developing new habits (or breaking old ones), is that they find it hard to get started. They procrastinate by making the task much bigger in their mind than it should be. So, you have to take baby-steps. Start out small, then progress, but focus on the baby-steps. These would also be considered Mini-Habits, a term used by Stephen Guise in his latest book, Mini-Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results.

When you can promise yourself, for example, to simply go for a walk around the block, once every day, then you’re taking baby-steps and building mini-habits. What you’ll come to find is that these baby-steps lead to much bigger actions that build incrementally. Like a baby, you start out small and you progress.

Having an enormous weight-loss goal in your mind of say, 100 pounds, is okay, but your mind will revert back to the internal psychology, and your outward desire to lose 100 pounds will be overridden by your inward desires for pleasure through your Id.

So, take baby-steps. That’s all it takes to start developing good habits… baby-steps.

 

How to Overcome Failure

Overcoming Failure…

Failure. Defeat. Destruction. Despair. These are just some of the words that we think about when our lives come crashing down in front of our eyes. Failure can be catastrophic. It can wreck havoc and take us on a mental and emotional trip that we would much rather not go on. But failure has a purpose. There’s a reason that we fail in life. When we’re in the midst of the pain, we oftentimes can’t see that reason. We can’t witness the bigger picture when we can only see the hurt in front of our eyes.

 

When We Fail We Ponder

If you’ve ever failed at something in your life in the past, it most likely forced you to think deeply about the situation and everything surrounding it. When we fail, we have a tendency to ponder, but when we succeed, we have a tendency to party. Yes, success should be celebrated, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with celebrating failure.

Why is that? 

Failure helps to build and breed a foundation for a future filled with success. It’s through our failures that we make deeper insights into life, that we expand our horizons, and we chip away at our egos little bit little. And, it’s our egos that tend to get in the way of our lives, pushing us to do things that we wouldn’t normally have done had it not forced us into an autonomous mode of impulsive and habitual behavior.

 

Understand that Failure Isn’t the End… It’s a New Beginning

Depending upon how you look at your situation and all that’s surrounding it, you should come to realize that failure isn’t the end. When Walt Disney was fired from his job at the Kansas City Star in 1919, he was told by the editor of the paper that he “Lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” But that wasn’t his last failure. Walt Disney later went on to purchase an animation studio named Laugh-O-Gram, which he later drove into bankruptcy. Failure most certainly wasn’t the end for Walt Disney, as we very well know today.

 

Countless Others Have Failed Also

So many notable individuals have failed in life more times than they have succeeded. People like Oprah Winfrey who was fired from her job at WJZ-TV by a Baltimore Producer who said that she was “Unfit for television news.” Of course, she later went on to create the most successful daytime talk show in history. However, at the time, she felt like the daytime talk show was a step-down for her. Could you imagine where she would be today had she decided to call it quits for good?

 

Failure can only Break you if you Let it

The only way that failure can break you is if you let it. What you have to understand is that everybody fails. But not everyone gets back up and tries again. All too often, we’re so interested in the instant satisfaction and immediate attainment of things that we’re usually unwilling to tough things out for the long term. However, by toughing it out and not giving up, failure can be used as a platform – it can be a launching-board towards something incredible.

 

How to Overcome Defeat in the Wake of Failure

Specifically speaking, there are a number of ways to overcome defeat in the wake failure. When you’re drowning in a sea of hopelessness, you’ve failed at something, and you feel like all your faith is lost, there are ways to recover.

 

#1 – Forget What Others Think of You

One of the biggest hurdles in overcoming failure is the potential for embarrassment that might ensue in the aftermath. When your whole world comes crashing down around you, you’re thinking “Oh, God, what are they going to think of me?” But, what others think of you is immaterial. It doesn’t matter what they think. And the sooner you can come to this realization, the better it will be for you in the long run.

When Sylvester Stallone was rejected over 1500 times by agents in New York City and didn’t have enough money to pay his $25 electricity bill so he had to sell his dog, how do you think he felt? What do you think his friends and family members were saying? And, where would Sylvester Stallone be today if he had given up hope on his dreams, caved in, and gotten a 9-to-5 job?

Who cares what other people think, right? 

You can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t be trying to. It doesn’t matter how you look in front of other people. What matters is that you don’t give up on your hopes and your dreams. Keep pushing through, and break through your present-day limitations.

 

#2 - Don’t Lament, Learn

What you have to take away from failure is the lesson that failure gives you. Anna Wintour, the famed Vogue Editor, was fired just 9 months on the job at Harper’s Bazaar because the editor thought she was too edgy. But, getting fired there helped her to dig deep and learn from that, taking away an important lesson that pushed her through the tough times.

When Jerry Seinfeld was fired from a small sitcom role on Benson, no one had even told him until he showed up for work one day and saw his part missing. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of his life. But, thereafter, he went right back to the comedy-club circuit. He didn’t give up. He was able to overcome his failure by learning and growing as a comedian.

 

#3 – Focus and Envision

One of the worst parts about failure is a total and complete loss of focus. When everything around you collapses, you, it’s hard to stay focused. When it seems like your whole world is crumbling, it takes an extraordinary amount of focus to regain your footing. But you have to be aware that failure is not the end of the world; it’s only as bad as you make it out to be in your mind. You have to focus and envision a bigger and brighter future. Understand why you’re pushing past the hurt and the pain. If you have a strong enough reason, you can overcome anything.

When J.K. Rowling, the famed writer of the Harry Potter series, was fired from her secretarial job for working on the book in her spare time, it wasn’t the end of the world for her. Although it took her 7 years to publish that first book, and suffering through government assistance, a divorce, and the death of her mother, she did it. She persevered. She focused and envisioned a bigger and better life. And you can too.

 

Failure is a Sign of Life

If you’ve never failed at something, then you haven’t pushed yourself past your comfort zone. We all fail. Failure is a sign of life. Don’t take failure as a sign of death. You can accomplish anything you put your mind to; literally anything. 

 

Top 5 Ways to Avoid Losing Hope in Life

Have a Little Hope…

I once lost hope in life. It was the result of a culmination of several devastating experiences that I had to endure. Yet, it was a period in my life that I would never want to take back. It helped me to realize just how much we ponder when we fail, and just how much those situations build a rock-solid foundation for success in the future.

 

And I’m not alone in the loss of hope. So many of us lose hope from time to time. When we’re pushing towards a goal and we hit a brick wall, we tend to lose sight of the bigger picture and seemingly lose all hope. But hope is defined as the expectation of good things to come. It’s steeped in a deeper belief and faith that things tend to work themselves out in the long run.

But what happens when you do lose hope in life?

What happens when your whole world collapses all around you? 

 

Things can and will go wrong in life…

Of course, so many things can and do go wrong in life. But, life isn’t and shouldn’t be about us being completely decimated during times of catastrophic failure and pain in life; life is about how we choose to react to things and what we decide to focus on. When we focus on the negative, we get negative. Like attracts like. And, when we focus on the positive, we reap positivity.

 

How to avoid losing hope…

Whether you’ve lost hope or you’re trying to avoid the loss of hope, there are certainly ways to bounce back from potentially catastrophic failures in your life that may lead you into a deep, dark, downward spiral.

 

#1 – Reassess the Situation

Sometimes, in order to avoid losing hope, it takes a reassessment of the situation. Although we might think we wanted a certain thing in life, if something prevents us from getting it, we tend to react in one of two ways. Either we give up and throw our hands in the air in silent resignation or we push through the hurt and the pain until we get what we want. However, not all of us can keep up the good fight all the time, and it’s easy to get discouraged.

So, sometimes we need to reassess the situation.

We need to see if that’s something we really wanted that badly in life. Because, when we set goals or we have some hope or dream that we’re driving towards, we have to ensure that we addressed the three W’s of goal setting: What, Why, and When. If we didn’t have a strong enough reason why we wanted to achieve something, then we might have subconsciously given up on that goal long before we consciously realized it.

Go back and reassess the situation.

Did you really want it that badly? If you did or you do, then what can you do towards the attainment of it?

Sometimes, what we don’t realize is that, we might fail to achieve something in order to open ourselves up to something even greater. So, be sure to look at the situation from a different light. You might end up seeing something you didn’t see before, even if it hurts right now.

 

#2 - Harbor Gratitude

The second way that you can avoid losing hope in life is to harbor gratitude. All too often, we look to those in life that have more than us rather than less than us. But, did you know that five children die every minute around the world due to starvation and hunger-related illnesses.

It’s easy to look to those with more, but far harder to look to those with less.  

Our society is very fixated on those with more, but we have to retrain ourselves to look to those with less rather than more. It’s something that can help to realign us with our hopes and our dreams in life. Even if we’ve failed at something or we’ve nearly lost all hope, when we can take things in perspective, we can begin to appreciate life on a far greater level.

 

#3 - Be Honest with Yourself

One of the best ways to avoid losing hope in a situation is to always be honest with yourself. No matter what it is that you hope or dream for in life, as long as you’re honest with yourself, you can avoid a catastrophic situation should whatever you hope for end failing on you. When you’re honest along the way, you’re not lying to yourself about the severity of a situation.

Honesty breeds awareness, which in turn breeds adjusting your approach…

When you can change your approach along the way, you can move towards your goals much quicker because you won’t find yourself surprised suddenly if things don’t end up working out. You can modify the way you tackle a situation to best deal with it. Always be honest in all situations… it will breed a much happier and healthier path towards your goals.

 

#4 – Look to Others for Support

Sometimes, the best way to take stock of the positives that we can gain from a situation that might seem bleak, is through the support of others. Whether it’s friends, family members, religious denominations, or support groups, other people can help us to look at things in perspective and offer us a guiding light towards the shores of hope.

Sometimes, the sea can be choppy, but one thing to keep in mind is that, whatever it is you’re going through, others have gone through it before you. 

The bigger picture can be hard to see sometimes, but through the support of others we can all find our way. Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, so keep that hope burning strong in your heart.

 

#5 - Have a Little Faith

No matter what you believe in: God, Allah, Buda, or the Singular Universal Oneness that binds us all, by having faith, you can learn to understand that nothing is impossible to overcome. No situation, no matter how dire or bleak, can defeat you if you don’t let it. We are all a product of the lens of focus from our mind’s eyes. So, don’t allow things to defeat you. Instead, use your situation to fuel you.

Having faith is something that comes from within. Everyone has what it takes within them to get past any situation. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and countless people have failed more times than they’ve succeeded.

 

 

 

How to Achieve your Goals in Life

Achieving your Goals

We all want to achieve something in our lives. We all have goals that we set, yet oftentimes forget. But what does it take to really achieve anything? How can you go about accomplishing a goal that you’ve always wanted to accomplish? Well, in the past, if you’ve set some goals and you didn’t follow through, there’s a reason for that. There’s a reason that we throw up our hands in silent resignation. Most of us simply want something and we want it now; we don’t want to have to work tirelessly for it.

So, how do we go from simply saying we want something, to actually following through and achieving anything we put our minds to? How do we push through when all we want to do is give up? Well, it boils down to a simple three-part formula that you can implement to accomplish any goal that you set to achieve. No matter how big or small that goal is, it can be achieved through the simple application of this formula. But, all too often, people simply get caught up and they stop pushing towards their hopes and their dreams.

 

So, what’s the formula to achieving anything you want in life?

There are no huge secrets to success in life. Succeeding with your goals takes the simple application of consistent action, adjusting your approach when necessary, and not giving up. However, at the outset, most of us set goals without thinking too much about them. We might have some notion in our mind of what we want to achieve, but when it comes time to making that goal a reality, we don’t actually follow through with it. We get sidetracked by life and we revert back to old emotion-numbing behaviors. But it’s high-time to break those self-defeating patterns.

 

The Three W’s to Goal Setting

To push through your present day limitations, make a breakthrough, and achieve your dreams, you have to follow the three W’s when it comes to goal setting. If you can clearly tackle the three W’s, then you can achieve just about anything. The important part is to make a clear definition of each of the three W’s in your life. You actually have to put pen to paper or words to a screen. This isn’t something that can be done passively.

 

#1 – What?

The first “W” is the “What?” You have to know what your goal is. It has to be very specific. And you have to write it out or type it out. This isn’t passive goal setting. This involves creating a detailed account of what goal you want to achieve in your life and it has to involve some precise details. Why should it be so specific? Because, there’s a mental shift that occurs in your mind when you specifically lay out what goal you want to achieve.

When you actively set goals with detail like this, you go from some arbitrary target to one that’s very real and in front of you. You can see it and you should be able to visualize it. Instead of saying you want a lot of money, how much money do you want? There has to be an exact figure. Instead of saying you want to be thin, exactly how much do you want to weigh? What type of clothes will you be wearing? What type of food will you be eating?

 

#2 – When?

The second “W” in goal setting its he “When?” You have to know when you want to achieve your goal and it should be realistic. If you’ve never lost more than 20 pounds in your life, don’t say that you’ll lose 100 pounds in 3 months. When you’re realistic and the goal is attainable, you’re much more likely to build momentum and strive for those more lofty long-term goals.

This should also help you in breaking your goal out into milestones. If you do want to lose 100 pounds, give yourself a year, then break that goal down into milestones. If you want to lose 100 pounds in one year, then that’s 8.33 pounds per month or 2.08 pounds per week. Can you see how this is much more attainable now? And since there are 3500 calories in one pound of fat, you can go about doing the calculations of just how much you have to eat and exercise each day to reach that goal.

 

#3 – Why?

The last, but certainly not least, “W” to goal achievement is the “Why?” If your reasons for wanting a goal are merely superficial, you’ll find yourself giving up when the going gets tough. On the other hand, if the reason you want to accomplish your goals are so important to you in life, then you’ll find yourself following through; you’ll find yourself succeeding. But, too many of us don’t have strong enough “Whys” in life. We don’t have a strong enough reason why we want what we want.

So, you have to make a clear definition of not only what you want and when you want it by, but also why you want it. Write it out and be specific. Don’t leave this in your mind. Remember, passive goal setting won’t get you anywhere. On the other hand, if you engage in active goal setting, and you really set out to do the work, then you can achieve anything you put your mind to in life. So, why do you want what you want in life?