5 Good Reasons To Share Your Goals. And One Powerful Reason Not To

Goals are great. They are like lights on your path, marking with clarity various milestones one your journey. And goal setting, believe me, is an art. The art of properly setting course to your closest destination, making the best of your resources and with the greatest chances of success.

One of the most important chapters in any goal setting book would be about sharing. About making your goals visible. Making them public, verifiable, open. And since this is a very important part of the whole goal setting artistry, let’s talk about 5 reasons you should share your goals (once you have them clearly defined, of course). But I’ll also talk (at the end, of course, so don’t peek) about one reason you shouldn’t do this. Confused? Good. Because that will – hopefully – make you read on.

Let’s go.

1. Accountability

Sharing your goals helps big time with this. If you’re telling to a friend: “you know what, I will travel to Thailand this summer”, you can bet that the next time you see each other, he’ll ask: “hey, buddy, how’s your trip to Thailand going?”. Or something along those lines.

Accountability is a measure of your “stick-to-it-ness“ (and please do not complain that this is not a word, I had enough from my spell checker already). So, if you bring other people in your goal picture, you can bet that your overall involvement in that project will be considerably higher.

2. Clarity

Every time you tell the world about some of your goals, you modify them. You take something from a discussion, something from another one, until, out of this ping-pong game of sharing your plans back and forth, your goal will emerge in a new form. Most of the time, this form will be a much clearer one.

In fact, many of our goals are shaped by our interactions, by our conversations or by our encounters. So, the more we’re out there, sharing our visions and implementing our plans, the more those visions and plans are getting clearer, bigger and more structured.

3. Progress Measurement

Progress measurement is not really about being accountable, but more about metrics. As you get closer to your goal, you’d want to measure how long do you have until you reach it. That information can be precious in many contexts. For instance, you may want to set up a new goal or to evaluate the resources you already used.

And sharing your goals will make progress measurement easier. Sometimes you may even deliberately use your peers as guides or supervisors. When you want to give up smoking, for instance. Ask them to cheer you every day you didn’t smoke or every week.

4. Motivation

Suppose you want to visit Italy this summer. And you start telling people about your goal. At some point, something interesting will happen. The mere fact that you tell to somebody else, will act like an incentive. It’s not about accountability, but about being pumped up and ready to act.

There are many ways of motivation, of course, some of them better than others. I think it’s ok to “use” other people like an enhancer of your own willpower, as long as you don’t become too dependent on these “help links”.

5. Connection

Sharing your goals with like minded people may help you grow your social circle. Goals aside, the mere fact that you take the time to share something, to give details, to bring updates and keep in touch with other people, all these tiny actions will create a connection.

And connection, as opposed to competition, is always a better way to advance. And if not better, at least not as tiresome as fighting each and every day for the first place.

***

But, as important as it may be, sharing goals can go just as far in helping you reaching them. In other words, there is a limit over which you shouldn’t trespass.

I don’t know if you’re going to find this in any goal setting book, but I know for sure it comes from a real life experience. My real life experience. And it’s about obfuscating your goals. Hiding them. Keeping them close to your heart, but far from the curious eyes.

Sometimes, in certain circumstances, the best way to go is to hide what you really want from anyone else, except you. And here’s why:

They Don’t Know Shit About You

Yeap, that’s the reason. Because, the moment you take out your goal, the moment you’re sharing it with the whole world, you create a loop. People will start to hold you accountable, (and, most of the time, that’s a good thing, as we saw right from the point one above). But it’s a good thing only to some extent. If you reach the goal, they’ll cheer at you. If you don’t, they’ll point fingers at you. Either way, you’re gonna create a reaction.

And that reaction is based not on who you are, but on what you want to do. Even more than that, the reaction is based on what other people perceive from what you want to do. And here’s how, based on just some assumptions and affirmations, they’ll start seeing in you a person that you’re certainly not. They will only see some stuff that has been done, in fact, not even a person.

But, in your attempt to really stick to your path, you take those cheers or fingers pointed at you quite seriously. You start to believe them. If you succeed, you’re a star, because they cheer at you. If you fail, you’re a loser, because they point fingers at you.

Now you see it? As important as it may be for your accountability, clarity and so on and so forth, this sharing thing may be handled with care. And you know why?

Because the most important person in the world is you. The universe turns round and round because of you. Each person that enters into your life, each achievement, each tiny thing you learn, all these are about you. There’s a whole world inside you, and what you do, feel and create in the outside world is a mirror of this inner world. And all your goals are part of you, not of them. You know better than anyone else what you should do with your life. Not your mother, not your wife, not some bright but shallow self-improvement guru, not me, the author of this blog.

So, if you found something important, really important, something that will define your entire life, some incredibly rewarding goal, keep it to yourself. Grow it like you grow a plant, with care and attention.

Follow this inner light each and every morning, hope that it will be there each and every day and, the moment you finally reach it, just breathe.

How To Catch A Bee

When I was a kid, one of my favorite distractions was catching bees. Before jumping to any conclusions, let me give you a little bit of the context around this sentence.

I grew up in a communist country, in a small city near the mountains. You didn’t have much to do in a small city from Romania, especially under a communist regime. All kids had to go to the same state kindergarten because their parents didn’t have any time to spend with them. And that was because they had to be away all day to build socialism, of course.

Although a very rough place to be for a kid, with not much affection or tenderness around, (not to mention the strict discipline and the terror of not saying what you want, by fear of the political police) the communist kindergarten helped me a lot. I’m sure that my will to become self-supported immediately after high-school had a lot to do with that. Also, my ability to survive in difficult conditions must have been built up during those years. But I’m getting a little bit ahead here. Let’s get back to our bees.

Playing Around

So, under this rather gray background, any activity that stood up as being different, or at least colorful, left a very deep mark. Catching bees was one of these activities.

We used to take an empty plastic tube, the ones that were used to keep small pills of C vitamin, took out the small plastic top (the tube was closed by applying a little bit of pressure on it) did a small hole in the top and then went out hunting.

The outside playgrounds on the state kindergarten were surrounded by small bushes. I suppose the initial intention was to have a “live fence” around the playgrounds, but they were just bushes. We were slowly approaching those bushes, sensing the vibration of hundreds of small insects, slowly and gently, trying to spot a bee.

When we spotted it, we were carefully approaching from one part the top and from the other part the tube, trying to catch the bee in the middle, right into the tube.

If our moves were smooth, if we were close enough, if we were fast enough and, of course, lucky enough, every once in a while we ended up with a bee caught in our small vitamin C tube.

That moment was magic. I still remember the thrill of it. That small insect was caught only by our actions. We did this. I couldn’t find any comparison for that. I know it sounds dumb, but in our little grey universe, that dumb activity was the only way to prove our assertiveness. And, as incredible as it may sound, our capacity of enjoying life.

Releasing The Bee

We weren’t into killing insects. Hence the small hole in the tube, to keep the air flowing in. We were into catching up something difficult to catch. And potentially dangerous.

The bees were buzzing inside the tubes for a few minutes, just enough for us to show them up to our colleagues. Oh, the moments we were finding out someone did catch a bee. The sudden aggregation of a human circle around you, the joy and admiration on the childish faces, the yelling and the joy. For milliseconds each bee catcher became a local hero.

After that, the bee had to be released back into the open. Releasing the bee was a very important part of the game. You couldn’t hold a bee forever in your vitamin C tube. You just couldn’t do this, it was against the rules. You had to go out and catch a new bee every day.

There were some kids who wouldn’t obey that rule. They were carrying their bees in their vitamin C tubes each and every day. In all honesty, those kids weren’t very popular. As a matter of fact, we used to make fun of them. “Is that the 100 year old bee in your tube?”. “Still sleeping together?”. “Are you married already?” Eventually, they had to release their bees too and get back into the game.

The Adult Perspective

One day, our parents spotted this game.

“What are you doing there kids?”, they asked.

“We are catching bees”, we answered.

“Oh, I see that, but what is the benefit of this game? Are you building a house for those bees?”

“Nope, we’re just catching bees.”

“Are you killing the bees? Oh, you want to clean the fence from insects?”

“Nope, we’re just playing.”

After we went like this for like ten minutes, we realized that they just couldn’t understand the game. For them, that bee had to have a meaning. Do something with it. Use it somehow.

For us, just catching the bee and releasing it back into the open was enough.

Oh, the thrill when someone was catching a big one! The joy on our faces and then the smooth and necessary releasing of the bee back into the open. Those were magic moments. Did I say that already? Yes, I did. But that’s ok.

Today

I still catch bees these days. I still do things only for the thrill of it, without any immediate benefit. Or specific usage.

I support my friends if I can. I support other people if I can. I set up some goal and then reach it and then forget about it.

I make insane amounts of money and then release it back into the open, letting myself broke. And start again. And again.

Many of my friends don’t understand this. To be honest, I don’t really care. I may listen to their concerns, because, well, we’re friends, and that’s what friends are doing. But when it comes to that question: “So, you really don’t regret letting that bee fly away?”, I always answer “Nope, not a bit”.

Because I still have that thrill inside. I have my eagerness to pursue a new goal, I have the ability to reach it and the power to let it go after that.

Catching bees and releasing them back, as simple and dumb as it may seem, helped me not only to keep my mental health, but to act and react like any human being on this planet should.

Like a child.

My Top 7 Demotivating Habits

In the subtle fabric of our day to day routine, every now and again we allow some red stripes to mingle in. Sooner or later, those stripes will unweave the whole mechanism. I’m sure you’ve experienced it too: the day goes on fabulously, everything falls into its place, and then, apparently out of nowhere, something small happens which breaks the entire process. Suddenly, you feel down, you don’t have any desire to go on and all you want to do is to whine on somebody else’s shoulder about how pitiful your life is.

Those red stripes are demotivating habits. We all have them and, on a very unconscious level, we’re all allowing them to manifest every once in a while. The problem with those demotivating habits is that we’re not always seeing them as demotivating habits. Many of them are just downgraded versions of normal reactions or, to be more precise, just facts. But we tend to interpret those facts in a diminishing way.

On a regular day, I get around 3 or 4 of these. I somehow learned to identify them, but I’m not always 100% correct. Their ability to disguise into legitimate actions still amazes me. So, for the sake of putting a name on their face and covering them with shame, I decided to write a post on this topic. Namely, about my top 7 demotivating habits.

1. The “Look, Something Shiny” Syndrome

Every time you allow your focus to get trapped into an allegedly pleasurable activity, by interrupting what you were doing, you are experiencing this demotivating habit. If you’re into social media, you know what I mean. Twitter or Facebook are the most popular shiny things which are invading our territory.

But there are many other versions of it. Starting a conversation with your office colleague, for instance. Looking outside of your office window. Turning on the TV, if you’re working from home. Calling a friend in the middle of something you’re just doing, only to find out “how is he”. All of these are forms of the “look, something shiny syndrome”.

2. Overheating

Or doing too much too fast. I’m a very good candidate for this habit because I crave to see things happening. If things aren’t happening with the speed of light, I usually consider this to be a big problem. I want it now and I want it all. So, when I’m starting something, I’m totally immersing myself into it. Up to the point that I sometimes forget why I started it in the first place.

Overheating is a sign that you’re creating a lot of friction around you. Friction generates heat. And heat is a sure way to lose energy. There’s a certain time needed for each thing to come to fruition and if you’re trying to make it faster than it needs, then you’re setting yourself for failure. Demotivation, in this case, is just the first sign that you’re doing something wrong.

3. Fear Of Not Doing It Good Enough

I’m not doing this now because I’m not in the best shape for it. Or, I’m not having this meeting right now, because I’m not yet prepared. I’m not writing code, because I don’t master some inner workings of the app. Of course you should! You should have the meeting, you should write that code and you should adjust while you’re doing it.

Sometimes, things just have to be done. Not in a perfect way. Not even in a good way. Just done. But our need for recognition (which, at its core, is natural and legitimate) is tricking us into not doing them, because they will not be “good enough”. Of all these top 7 demotivating habits, this one is the most annoying (and the most common) to me.

4. Bad Physical Health

Luckily, I don’t have this problem anymore, because, in the last few years I paid close attention to my physical health. But there was a time when this was a major problem. For instance, smoking. It’s an addiction which creates a short wave of endorphins, followed by a much longer period of dumbness and lack of focus.

Overeating, drinking too much, or even exercising too much are also symptoms that you’re lowering your chances to get things done by simply ruining your physical health. And, believe it or not, having a good physical health is a matter of habits. Habits which will enforce a healthy lifestyle, that is.

5. Breaking It Into Meaningless Details

It’s the “analysis paralysis” syndrome. Or, in terms of Assess – Decide – Do, it’s about being stuck in the Assess realm for ever. The need to analyze your problem and making it actionable is fundamental. You can’t do something in a reliable way if you’re not having a clear image about how you’re going to do it.

But spending all your time dissecting your tasks, projects, goals or attitudes in smaller and smaller chunks of data will eventually paralyze you. One of my business partners had this habit and I had an incredibly hard time working with him because of that.

6. “It Doesn’t Really Matter”

If you set yourself for doing something, do it. During the day you may encounter contexts which can take you out of your normal state. You may be caught in something that seems to have a higher priority. Well, instead of avoiding doing what you planned, you should reschedule. Put a different priority on those tasks, but still commit to do them.

If you’re falling for this habit, you’re becoming a drifting, course-less ship on a lonely ocean. It’s true that priorities are changing during the day. Which means you should change your priorities too, but not get rid of the stuff you wanted to do just because now it “seems” unimportant.

7. Others Are Doing It Better Than Me

That’s the most common demotivating habit I’m seeing around myself in the last few years. People are not doing things because they like doing things, or because doing things will make them feel better. They’re doing things because of the competition. And when the other guys are doing those things better, there’s no reason to continue, right?

It’s a fundamental mistake. And it acts at a very deep level. Doesn’t matter if somebody is a better “put your desired quality here” than you. Because it’s not about them. It’s about you. Your experiences. Your days and nights. Your life.

Don’t hand it to somebody else.

The Ultimate Guide to Motivating Yourself

This is a guest post by my friend, Vlad Dolezal, @vladdolezal.

When I was 4 years old, my mum took me to have a vaccination.

Now, I had heard about needles, so I was scared and begging her not to take me there. I even started crying and screaming in the waiting room.

But my mum, being good and firm, insisted. So once it was my turn to have the vaccination, we went in the doctor’s office. The doctor sat me down on a chair, and disinfected my arm (I was still sobbing at this point). Then she gave me the vaccine. A small prick, a little bit of pressure, and it was over.

“That’s all?” I thought, “that was no big deal at all!”

When it was time to get another vaccine a couple months later, I was quiet and calm, because I knew it was no big deal.

The doctor commented at how calm and reasonable I was, even compared to many older boys. Which made me huff up with pride at what a big boy I was. . And I’ve never felt particularly worried about injections since.

…

Now, why am I telling you the above story?

The vaccination was pretty much the same in both cases. Yet my reaction was completely different. If I had had any say in the matter, I never would have gone for the first vaccination.

And that’s the essence of what I will share with you today. Motivation isn’t about the reality, it’s about what you imagine the reality will be like. (And by controlling your imagination, you can control your motivation.)

The pain and pleasure principle

What I’m about to say might seem very basic and obvious.

It is. But it’s precisely because this principle is stripped down to the bare basics that it’s so effective. Bear with me, and you will understand in a few moments.

Okay, ready? Here’s a shocker:

All human behavior is motivated by only two things – avoiding pain and seeking pleasure.

Now, I mean pain and pleasure in the broadest sense of the words. If you’re on a diet, not eating a cake might give you pleasure, because you reaffirm to yourself that you are strong-willed, and you feel good about the weight you lose.

Giving to charity gives you pleasure. A satisfying intellectual discussion is pleasure. Boredom is pain.

But despite all the different faces, it all boils down to seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. And like in my vaccination story, it’s not about the actual pain or pleasure you will experience, it’s about what you imagine it will be like.

Here’s a great quick exercise I got from Paul McKenna that demonstrates this:

You have been invited to a party. You’re still deciding whether or not you will go.

First imagine standing awkwardly in a corner, surrounded by people you don’t know and have nothing in common with. Your least favorite type of music is playing way too loud in the background. How much do you want to go to the party, on a scale from 1 to 10?

Now instead imagine standing there comfortably, surrounded by people who are interested in spending time with you. Your favorite type of music comes on in the background at just the right volume. How much do you want to go to the party now?

Go ahead, do the exercise now.

…

Did you feel a difference there?

If you felt any difference at all, you can see how the images you make in your head can influence your decisions. Even this simple 30-second exercise changed how you felt about going to a friend’s party. So imagine how much difference you could create if you understood this principle, and used it all the time!

Why motivation is so tricky

Please lift your hand if you struggle with motivation fairly regularly. Okay… I think that’s everyone with their hand up?

If it’s so simple, why do we all have so much trouble with motivation? Because while it’s simple and clear in principle, it’s quite tricky in practice unless you understand exactly what’s going on.

So to help you understand where motivation comes from and why we struggle with it so much, I’m going to introduce you to a little something called the triune brain theory.

(If you actually put your hand up while reading this, you can put it down now.)

…

The triune brain theory states that our brain evolved in three main stages:

• the reptilian brain, in charge of reflexes and instincts (like breathing or the fight-or-flight response)
• the mammalian brain, in charge of emotions
• the higher brain, in charge of logical thinking

And while your logical thinking and decisions reside in the higher brain, motivation comes strictly from your emotions. It’s all about pain and pleasure, remember?

So when you logically know something is a good thing for you to do, but subconsciously you feel afraid or nervous about it, you will find all sorts of ways to sabotage yourself and procrastinate, just so you don’t have to face the pain.

On top of that, when your different brains disagree, the older one always wins. This is a necessity, because when you are charged by an angry rhinoceros, it would be no use to stay around and ponder all the different options with your logical brain. Your reptilian brain needs to just kick in, take over, get you out of the immediate danger and then hand control back to your logical brain.

And while there’s a distinct lack of charging rhinoceroses in our modern society, the brain kicks up the exact same response towards public speaking, approaching someone you find attractive, or other situations you might be terrified of.

(You might remember a time when you managed to grit your teeth, and go through an uncomfortable situation. In that case, the imagined pain of not living up to your own standards was likely even worse than the imagined pain of the situation ahead. While this does occasionally work, it’s a very poor last-resort way of motivating yourself.)

So, with this bit out of the way, let’s answer the ultimate question – how do you motivate yourself?

How to get motivated – the ultimate answer

With all the preliminaries in place, it will now make sense when I tell you exactly how you can motivate yourself.

You can motivate yourself by speaking directly to your emotional brain, through the use of vivid imagery.

Remember the exercise where you imagined going to a friend’s party? Yeah, that’s the basic idea. No amount of logical reasoning will speak to your emotional brain. And yet a simple 30-second visualisation makes all the difference in the world! Now we’ll just add a few extra bits and bobs to make it even more effective.

You will understand this much better if you try it out as I go through the explanation, so please pick an area of your life where you would like to feel more motivated right now.

I will also give you an example of my own as I go along, to further clarify things. I will pick writing an e-book, because that’s something I have wanted to do for over 2 years now. And now, I finally have a great idea, a willing audience, and everything else I need. I just need to stay motivated to get the whole thing written and out there.

Choose an area of your life where you would like to get more motivated, right now.

…

Okay, ready? We’ll do this in a simple step-by-step recipe-like way, so you can easily replicate it in the future.

1. Get clear about what you want to get motivated for

In my case, that’s writing an e-book, and getting it out to people.

2. Make a mental list of all the awesome things that will happen if you achieve your goal

In my case, that would be earning some money, and spreading the knowledge among people who will truly benefit from it. Further, it will be my first step towards earning passive income. While I love working as a life coach, ultimately there’s a limit to how much time and energy I have, and I can only help a certain number of people.

This step will help you clarify exactly why you want to achieve your goal in the first place.

3. Picture a scene that sums up the biggest pleasure (in the pain-and-pleasure-principle sense) you will get from achieving your goal

In my case, it’s a collage of looking at my bank statement seeing enough monthly income to support myself comfortably, then being on the phone with life coaching clients, which is something I love doing, and then spending free time with my girlfriend, which I will be able to do if I earn enough money so that I don’t have to get a regular job.

Do note that this isn’t about being “realistic” about what impact your single action will have.

I assume that you have already decided with your logical brain what the best course of action is for you. I’m just helping you align your emotional brain with that, and yes, a bit of exaggeration helps with that.

4. Kick up the emotional intensity of that imagery

Now that you’ve decided what you want to imagine, we’ll just play a bit with how you imagine it. In NLP-speak, we’ll tweak the “submodalities”.

Go back to the visualization you did in the previous step, and try the following:

• see the scene through your own eyes, as opposed to seeing it from a third-person perspective
• make the picture bigger
• make the colors brighter
• if there are any sounds, make them louder. Try adding a soundtrack.

All of these serve to kick up the emotional intensity, and that’s exactly what we want!

5. Now for the pain part of motivation – imagine a really bad-case scenario if you don’t take your action

In my case, this would mean closing down the options for earning passive income online by not even taking the first step. Leading to not earning enough money, and having to get a day job to get by, leaving me tired and frustrated each day, drifting away from my girlfriend because we don’t really get quality time together anymore…

Now, sure, none of that is going to happen just because I don’t write an e-book. But that doesn’t matter, because remember – the emotional brain doesn’t respond to logic, only to vivid imagination.

Again, it’s about getting your emotional brain on board with what you have already decided is the best course of action. It doesn’t matter if you use a bit of exaggerated imagination to get there.

It’s up to you how realistic, or how exaggerated you want to make your imagination. Just remember – the bigger the stick and carrot you create for yourself, the stronger your motivation will drag you right towards the things you want.

6. Again, tweak the submodalities to make the movie in your mind even more vivid and emotionally intense

See step 4 above.

…

If you have gone through the above exercise as you were reading it, you now understand how much power you yield over your own motivation just through some simple visualisation.

By applying the above principles, you will turn from fighting against your motivation to a point where your emotions inevitably drag you towards where you want to be. You won’t be able to help being successful, just like you can’t help procrastinating and avoiding action when your logical brain and emotions are mis-aligned.

And now that you know exactly how to get yourself motivated for any action you want… you just need to figure out exactly what actions you want to take that will lead to a happy and fulfilling life.

But that’s a topic for another day

Vlad Dolezal is a life coach who helps people with motivation, confidence, busting through limiting beliefs, and yes, even figuring out what will lead to a happy satisfying life for them specifically. He also writes Fun Life Development, a blog about making personal development fun, and turning complicated ideas into simple step-by-step ways to improve your life. Click the link above and check it out!

How to Reach Your Dreams through Willpower

I think I finally understand this quote by Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate – our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

When I discovered my guest post on Mike King’s blog, Learnthis.ca, received over 1,000 hits on StumbleUpon on the day of its publication, I was ecstatic. I felt the usual celebratory emotions that come with reaching any milestone: happiness, excitement, and surprise, to name a few.

But what I couldn’t quite understand was this other emotion I could feel coming from within me. It was like there was a fear inside me.

It seemed to say, “Was this power really inside me all this time?”

The short answer: yes

We all have the power to make our dreams real. And I mean ANY dreams real. Think about it. If you truly believe you will fail, then you have no doubt that you will. Every day of your life will be spent succumbing to the detrimental idea of reality you have created for yourself.

Soon, every instance of temporary failure you encounter will only solidify the dream you’ve made in your mind and will eventually come through in your actions.

Now, think about when you truly believe you will succeed. Remember that similarly, if you believe it, you will be more likely to follow the actions leading to your inevitable success, thus resulting in making your success real.

Change the way you perceive reality

Your reality is not set in stone. Although everyone will try and tell you how life will end up for you if you pursue your own dreams, you can rest assured that they are not 100% sure themselves.

They cannot tell you how your reality will end up because all they really know is their own reality.

When you confront other people’s “regular reality” with your idea of a remarkable one, they will criticize it because they do not understand it. People, in general, are naturally following skeptics. In other words, they are skeptical of what other people think is skeptical, rarely drawing from their own observations.

You can end this right now

Are you ready to bring about your own reality? For those of you who wish to continue on the conventional path, thank you. You are the ones that challenge the rest of us to make our dreams real.

And with these tips, you most certainly will:

Speak of your goals only once

This is a bit of an odd technique to start with, but trust me, it works. I got this idea from Derek Sivers, who says that announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them. That’s why we constantly hear of people who talk constantly of change and achieving their dreams, but ultimately fail at actually carry them out.

I suggest speaking of your intentions only once, just so people around you know your intentions, and then stop talking about them completely. Believe it or not, keeping your mouth shut will increase the actions you take towards your goals.

Instead of telling them, SHOW them.

Do not be afraid of your willpower

Our willpower is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Our will is what made man go to the moon. Will is what’s going to create the cure for cancer. Will is what made everything we have at our fingertips possible.

Humankind as a whole isn’t afraid of their willpower: don’t be afraid of yours. Realize that the power to get what you want is entirely within your control. You and you alone, are the master of your domain.

Realize that only willpower is not enough

Think of the way we use power in life. Electricity is utterly useless to us when if we let it remain in the atmosphere, but if we harness it, many things become possible. All we have to do is use electricity to power a microwave and we can reheat into our food.

This is the same way you should be thinking about willpower. Will unharnessed is energy put to waste. Use this fuel to power your actions and mover ever closer to the actualization of your dreams.

Do not stop short of the finish line

A common problem we have is stopping short right before we actually get to the end. This tends to happen when we become too frustrated to keep going, giving up before we’ve reached our true potential. I know that you sometimes feel that you’re trying crack a rock with a slipper when pursuing your dreams, but you have to understand something:

Everything worth anything takes effort. And this effort must be present all the way until the end.

With willpower, the wind is at your back

The potential that lies inside each of us is more powerful than many of us will ever know. Most of the world will still stand together as skeptics, forever questioning their will.

But in the end, the few who question their very skepticism are the ones who will be able to decide their own destiny.

About the author: John Anyasor is the creator of HiLife2B. There he gives advice on personal development, inspiration, and motivation. A second year undergrad, he seeks to one day break the cycle of entering the dreaded 9-5 by achieving the life he wants and helping others at the same time. Follow him on Twitter.

Dream Big, Act Bigger

This is a guest post by Maren Donovan, @marenkate.

The famous words “I have a dream” have been used countless times to encourage, motivate and move people. What many never consider though is what if no one had ever acted on Dr. King’s dream? Without action dreams are just that, dreams, they come to you in a flash and dissipate with the morning light. Instead of focusing on ‘living your dreams’ I like to focus on ‘acting out my dreams’ this is far more effective and what 99% of dreamers will never grasp.

6 Steps To Dreaming Big And Acting Even Bigger

1. What can’t be quantified can’t be qualified. This is nerd speak for regardless of your dreams if you don’t set up so type of ‘plan’ on how to execute them they will never become a reality. Think of it like this, if your child comes to you and says “Daddy I want to be a doctor” what would the steps be for them to reach that goal by age 30? No one in their right mind would imagine a parent responding “ok, well just sit there and in 20 years I am sure it’ll happen”. So why do people approach goals and dreams that way?

Instead of laying down a strategic plan people would prefer to complain, sigh and make excuses on why they’ll ‘never lose weight’, ‘never meet the man of their dreams’ or ‘never get out of this dead end job’. It is as simple as setting your goals up, on paper and then tracking the simple steps that will get you there. The smaller the steps the better, this makes it easier to follow through with. Then as you hit each little goal you cross it off and feel the warmth of accomplishment wash over them. Hopefully after months of training your mind to both qualify and quantify you’ll become an action taker who always looks for the steps to a goal instead of just desiring that goal to happen organically.

2. Learning baby steps. The follow up to the last step would be breaking down goals into bite sized pieces that you can over all ‘act on’ instead of just think about. Here is a real life example of the baby steps I set for myself to escape the 9 to 5 and be able to live life on my own terms through having entrepreneurial income streams:

1. Figure out my passion: I wrote down a list of things I loved doing and then did research on which would be most profitable, had a decent market size and which niches within I could dominate.
2. Build a basic blog to document my progress: This is where my blog Escapingthe9to5.com came into play, more than a way for me to express myself it was a means to ‘quantify’ my progress and it gave me the added incentive of not embarrassing myself by failing in front of the few readers I had at the time.
3. Decide on a product/service to sell
4. Setting up monetary goals for 3 weeks, 3 months, 6 months and a years time.
5. Celebrate EACH little achievement. It helps you have something to look forward to and encourages you to keep going towards acting out your dreams.

3. Dreams aren’t realistic, why should your goals be? If there is a will there is a way, this sentiment is something my Mom has always told me and it is 100% true. Whatever you dream for your life, sans like becoming a Unicorn, you have as much of a chance as you give yourself to achieve. Literally the world is full of stories of the most unlikely candidates overcoming ridiculous odds to succeed and live a fabulous life. What obstacles do you face? I doubt they are that big when you look at the sufferings of the rest of the world, so in reality you have it easy… and you shouldn’t waste your chance. So go for broke, make ridiculous goals, say you’ll have a house in Bora Bora and you’ll find the cure for cancer. The only thing holding you back is the actions to get to the point of fulfilling that dream, so if you map out the actions you CAN achieve the dream.

4. Actions generate response exponentially. I have noticed a crazy trend as I take more and more actions in my life to create the kind of destiny I want. The more I act the easier the actions get and the more productive they seem to be. So it would seem that actions multiply and compound the more you practice doing vs. just thinking about it.

5. Failure is still action. Is it better to have loved and lost? I don’t know, but I do know that it is much better to have acted and failed than to never have acted at all. I have failed at things a good number of times in my young life and some people would say that if I hadn’t taken so many leaps I wouldn’t have failed so much, this is true, but I also wouldn’t have succeeded ever, at all. Failure only makes the success at the end of the road that much sweeter!

6. Always bite off more than you can chew. This flies in the face of logic and goes against every authority figure I have ever had, but it is 100% true in my book. Every great success I’ve had comes after I got in over my head or bit off more than I could chew. The reason behind jumping off the deep end is simple, when you HAVE to make it work 9 times out of 10 you will. It is just how the world works. The problem is all too often people never try and go in over their head because they’ve heard a million warnings on how that is a bad idea, not realizing that all success – at some level – has been born out of taking a plunge into uncharted waters… just look at Columbus.

Hopefully this has inspired you to take a look at your life and really go grab whatever it is you want the most by the horns. There is a great quote by the author of The Magic of Thinking Big that simply states it how it is: Action cures fear.

Author Bio: Maren Donovan writes at Escapingthe9to5.com about entrepreneurship, motivation and, of course, escaping the 9 to 5 race. You can subscribe to her blog here.

33 Ways To Overcome Frustration

I have a huge experience with frustration. I experienced it in so many ways, at so many times in my life, that I feel like I’m some kind of a specialist. If you wonder why I have this huge expertise, here’s the answer: growth never happens without it. The more frustration you are able to harvest, resolve and overcome, the more growth you’re experiencing. Avoiding it, hiding from it, deluding the game, none of these strategies will make you a better human being. On the contrary.

What follows is a list of tools and approaches I used to solve my own frustration and limitation episodes.

1. Accept Reality

Yes, something bad happened. Don’t spend your day imagining how beautiful life could be if it wasn’t for that stupid incident or mistake. This is it. It is frustrating, no doubt about it, but rejecting this reality will not lower the frustration, on the contrary, will make it stronger and stronger. Accept reality.

2. Shift Your Focus

It’s so easy to get caught in a spiral of anger and despair when you’re frustrated, and I know that first hand. Shift your focus by engaging in small but demanding activities. Get involved. Do take the necessary steps to get over the frustrating situation, but do not ignore everything else around you.

3. Talk About It With A Friend

Find somebody you trust and talk about it. Let it out. Don’t let it grow inside yourself until you explode. Most of the time, when you reach this point, it’s too late to make a meaningful change that will restore your reality. Let your worries and your tension fly. After all, this is what friends are for, right?

4. Journal It

If you don’t keep a journal, start now. Write down all your fears, all your sensations and describe them in great detail. Do it until you feel you can’t do it no more. You’re going to feel incredibly better. Writing has this side effect of lowering what you write about, making it more manageable. Just try it.

5. Write A Letter About It

Imagine you’re on a desert island. Sit down and write a letter to somebody who could potentially rescue you. Be verbose. Imagine how your life will be after you leave that desert island. Because if you can’t describe that, you will never leave the island. Then destroy the letter.

6. Write A Worse Case Scenario

What is the worst thing that may happen to you right now? List everything from physical loss to emotional imbalances. Try to foresee every little detail of a worst case scenario. What life will you live if everything will turn out as bad as possible? Then read it. It won’t look as bad as you thought.

7. Identify A List Of Possible Actions

What exactly will make the situation acceptable again? What are the things that you could actually do to improve your current status? Make a list. Try to identify every possible action, as improbable as it may seem, and put it on the list. At the end of this, you’ll feel much better: you have work to do.

8. Sleep Over It

Most of your unconscious life happens while you’re asleep. Try to go to bed with a clear thought of resolution. Don’t try to find a solution, just prepare yourself for getting out of that frustrating circle. During the night your unconscious mind will find resources to make you stronger.

9. Be Your Own Avatar

Try to look at yourself from “the outside”. Write on a piece of paper what an observer would see at you. How do you behave? How do you talk, how do you act? The more you’ll do this exercise, the more you’ll differentiate yourself from the frustrating persona and take control over it at the same time.

10. Read Something Funny

This will not solve your problem, most of the time it will only switch your focus to something else, giving you a temporary break. Do not mistake this technique with avoidance, just use it as a chillout session, then get back on track and solve whatever you have to solve.

11. Stop Blaming Yourself

Maybe you did something really wrong, and your current situation is the result of that mistake. Take responsibility but don’t blame yourself. It’s all in the past. You’re in the present now and you can do something about it. Blame will only put weight on that past and drag you down. Avoid it at all cost.

12. Take A Walk

Even on the wild side, if you like the wild side, but do take a walk. The mere action of moving will set you up for action and hopefully will make your mind a little clearer.  Walking always helps me put my thoughts in order and let off the steam a little bit. And it’s free of charge.

13. See It From The Future

This one goes hand in hand with number 6. Try to describe your current situation and look at it from the future. 1 year from now, your problem will be as  big as it is right now? How about 5 years? Or 10 years? Putting your frustration in a larger context will usually weaken it or at least make it manageable.

14. Cook A Delicious Meal

As simple and mundane as it may seem, cooking is an art. And every time you perform some sort of an art, you’ll see the world through your intuitive mind. You’ll summon your way out of frustration rather than find it through logical inference. And cooking is the cheapest – and tastiest – art one can afford.

15. Go To A Party

Not to be abused and transformed into some sort of escapism but extremely useful to lower your shirtiness. Go out, mingle and see if you can wipe out your frown from your face. You can get back to your problems later, when your body and mind will be more balanced. After the hangover, of course.

16. Write About Your Past Successes

You don’t have to keep a journal for it, you can just sit down at a table and remember all your breakthroughs. Or only the most important ones. Seeing yourself succeeding will definitely weaken all that frustration you feel right now and will also give you some hints about how to completely overcome it.

17. Borrow Some Enthusiasm

Stay around energetic people or get involved in active projects. Choose to be part of something that exhales a lot of energy. Get involved in fresh projects. Being around enthusiastic people will lower the frustration to the point where it can actually become manageable. And it will make you just feel better.

18. Soak and Dry

Let it flow through you until you’re completely overloaded. Just be sure not to do something during this stage. Isolate from the world and allow yourself to be frustrated. Then slowly wait for the frustration to dry out. Sometimes, this “all you can eat” approach is the only way to deal with it in a healthy way.

19. Go Watch A Comedy

As an alternative to number 10, “Read Something Funny”. Giving yourself permission to laugh will lower your anger and hopefully will make things easier to handle. Also, seeing people in strangely hilarious situations will make your own frustration seem awkward. Through a good laugh at it.

20. Attack It With The “Why?” Weapon

Another writing exercise, in which you start to find the root cause of your frustration by asking “why?” questions. “Why am I broke?” – Because I spent too much. “Why did I spent too much” – Because I’m feeling insecure. “Why?…” You got the idea. At some point, something will click inside.

21. Volunteer For Something

Frustration is closely related to your ego, or the part of your being that is concerned with those big phrases starting with “Me…”. If you volunteer to do work for somebody else, you’ll stop feeding your ego with energy. The weaker that part gets, the stronger your authentic and powerful part will be.

22. Stand Up And Fight

Be a soldier. Give yourself orders and follow them. Instill some rough and unquestionable discipline in your life. Get up early in the morning, do your work as if you’re on a battle field and then go to sleep. Repeat until your problems become just situations you can solve by following an easy sequence of new orders.

23. Stop Blaming Others

Similar to number 11, only this time your attitude will turn towards other people, in a desperate attempt to avoid feeling hurt. Just stop it. Although it may seem like a relief, blaming others it’s just a temporary hack, it won’t last. In 99% of the situations, what we experience is the direct result of our own actions.

24. Do Small, Repetitive Tasks

Borrow the behavior of a machine. Do those tiny little things you avoided so much because they seemed so boring. Now it’s the best time to start working on them. Slicing your time and focus will dissolve the pressure. Frustration will slowly dilute in this sea of tiny, repetitive tasks.

25. See It From The Past

Alternative to number 13, looking at your own frustration from the past will color it in a new, fresher light  Most of the time, the feeling triggered by this perspective is: “I’ve been through though times before, I can get over this”. And this is more often than you think true: we have a huge life experience, we just don’t trust it enough.

26. Read Similar Stories

You’re not alone. And even if you find it difficult tot talk to other people you can always do this by yourself: just scorch the Internet using descriptive keyphrases about your own frustration. You’ll discover that you’re not alone. Somebody else have been there too. And now he’s so over it.

27. Assess Progress

Every second of your life changes something. Look for the small steps you’re doing and assess them. The first item on this assessment list may be: “I’m starting to assess my progress and this is in itself a huge step forward”. The more you write, the bigger your progress will seem.

28. Disguise It

Put a mask on it, make it look like something else: “I’m feeling frustration right now, but this is a mask for…” and replace with whatever quality you want to build: discipline, personal power, endurance. Transform it. I usually use the caterpillar – butterfly image: it’s bad now but look what it can become.

29. Contrast It With A Worse Situation

Try to identify a related situation but with a significantly higher degree of damage. If you’re in debt, imagine how it will be to be bankrupt. If you’re having a relationship hickup, try to imagine how it would be to live on a desert island for the rest of your life. Be grateful for what you experience, because it can be worse.

30. Dilute It With Meditation

I don’t preach meditation as an all-in-one cure, but from my personal experience, it does help. Meditation will not only shift your focus from your current situation, but it will also clean your thoughts and help your body regain a subtle energetic balance. Remember you’ll still have to take action, meditation will only dilute it.

31. Get Physical

Start an aggressive exercising routine. Getting physical will make it easier to embrace action and to do it with vigor and determination. A side effect of exercising is the “endorphin effect”: the induction of a well-being state generated by your own body.

32. This Too Shall Pass

Impermanence is at the core of our human nature, is our curse and escape: we’re prisoners of time and everything we experience is bound to it. Laughter and sadness, joy and depression, everything will fade away in time. The same will happen to this frustrating period too: it will pass.

33. Write A List Of 33 Ways To Overcome Frustration

This is an incredible exercise. As funny as it may seem in this context, it’s actually a very powerful standalone approach. Just sit back and try to imagine 33 ways to get over your current frustration. I bet that around number 20 your problem will seem smaller than you thought it was.

27 Ways You Can Develop Bounce Back Muscles In Difficult Times

This is a guest post by my friend Tess Marshall, @theboldlife.

Loss, suffering and tragedy are painful, unavoidable experiences, and part of the human condition. We can’t prevent them, but we can approach life’s biggest challenges with openness and optimism.

Prior to a personal tragedy, we may not know who we are, what we feel, or what we want. After a personal tragedy, our divorce, addiction or bankruptcy can become our greatest gift.

When life falls apart we can stay stuck and miserable or piece our lives back together and discover a clear sense of purpose or a new passion for life.

The following methods will help you develop resiliency. When practiced, you can discover strengths and abilities you didn’t believe possible.

1. Take Risks. Dedicate yourself to being the best. Say yes. Go for new experiences. Show up and be seen. The more risks you take the more success you’ll experience and celebrate.

2. Plan Ahead. Envision a bright outlook for your future. Be enthusiastic about life. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm.” Throw yourself enthusiastically and wholeheartedly into what you need to do.

3.  Become 100% Responsible. You may not be responsible for what happens to you yet, you are responsible for how you handle it. Make good choices and remain flexible and open to change. Decide you’re going to make it to the top, no matter what it takes. Go where the opportunity is.

4. Read Books. Read biographies about people who are doing what you want to do and understand what helped them get to where they are now. This information becomes a map for your journey.

5. Take Control. Spend time and energy taking care of things you’ve neglected. Spend time with your children or parents. Clean your garage and get organized. You will feel better mentally and emotionally.

6. Gather Data. Learn from your situation. Why didn’t I get the job? Why did the accident happen? How has this changed me? Ask for feedback. What do I want to do next? Discover what you can do different next time.

7. Keep An Inner Glow. Nurture yourself. Eat right, exercise, drink water and get enough sleep. The perception we have about ourselves is so much smaller than who we really are. Taking care of yourself allows you to be prepared and ready for new opportunities.

8. Brainstorm Solutions. Step back and analyze the situation. Think of new ways to tackle problems. Be open to new ideas. Confident and strong you will move forward.

9. Increase Your Creativity. Develop a hunger for new things. Take different routes, enjoy unique foods, listen to unusual music, and learn a new language. Stop reading self- help blogs and read about photography or art. Break out of your routine and old way of doing things.

10. Laugh. Bring a playful attitude and humor to your life. Visit a comedy club and rent funny DVDs. Play your part with gusto, creativeness, passion and juice.

11. Cultivate Appreciation and Gratitude. Lift yourself out of a dark mood. Acknowledge the wonder and beauty in your life. Appreciate the goodness of others and the world and trust that things will work out.

12. Believe In Yourself. It is critical for your success. Accept who you are today. See yourself in a positive light. Never give in to someone else’s interpretation, advice or experience, unless they are where you want to be. If they have accomplished it, they can show you how, but you must do your own work.

13. Take A Break. Do nothing. Remove yourself physically and mentally from your situation. Go to a movie, visit out of town friends, attend a sporting event or rock concert. Time away creates space for a new perceptions and new solutions.

14. Hold A Vision. What do you want for your future? Keep moving forward.  Build the future you desire to experience. Keep your focus on the finish line.

15. Take Action. Don’t sit back waiting for opportunities. Be aggressive in pursuit of your goals. Kick yourself out of your comfort zone. Work like you have to make it.

16. Get On The Pity Pot. Just don’t set up camp on it. After losing his freedom to move, Christopher Reeve gave himself two hours on the pity pot each morning. During that time, he cried, felt sorry for himself and wallowed in his pain. Then, he continued his day juggling his physical therapy, directing careers, political activism, building his foundation and his role as a husband and father.

17. Experience Positive Emotions. Break out of negative thinking patterns. Find little things to enjoy in the daily tasks of life. Be kind and loving Healthy emotions will motivate you to learn new things and build new connections.

18. Discover Meaning. Everything that happens offers you an opportunity to grow. Ask yourself, “What do I need to learn from this situation to change or transform my life?” It’s possible to walk away with wisdom, insight and compassion.

19. Remain Calm Under Pressure. Learn how to manage strong feelings and impulses. Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” speaks of resiliency: If you can keep your head about you, when all are losing theirs…

20. Optimize Your Health And Energy. Eat right, drink plenty of water, exercise regularly, and spend time in nature. Meditate, journal and learn to relax. Spend time volunteering. When you help others feel good you feel good.

21. Learn To Problem Solve. Tap into your personal strengths, coping skills, resources, social networks and close connections. Self-disclose your troubles, to people close to you and ask for their insights and guidance.

22. Go With The Flow. It’s impossible to be in the zone by clutching, grabbing, and white knuckling your desires. Release urgency. Let go. Decide life is good. Watch it unfold.

23. Attend A Support Group. The path to resilience lies in working through your grief, sadness and the effects of stressful and painful events. Dealing with issues and dropping your story is crucial for your mental health. Support groups offer information, mutual support and practical suggestions.

24. Experience Serendipity. In tough times, we have the option of choosing fear, addiction and despair or hope, meaning and joy. Seeing “The glass half full” allows you to discover a talent for serendipity, the act of finding something valuable or delightful when you aren’t looking for it.

25. Build Your Community. Stay connected with family and close friends. Surround yourself with people you can’t get enough of, those who will listen and be there for you.

26. Have A Positive Outlook. Live. Laugh. Face the world boldly. Seize every second of life. If you believe things will work out there’s a greater chance that they will.

27. Listen To Steve Jobs, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Author Bio: Tess Marshall is the mover and shaker, at  www.TheBoldLife.com, where she’ll hold you accountable for being the boldest you’ve ever been in every area of your life! What would you do if you were 10 times bolder? You can sign up for her RSS feed and receive her updates or follow her on Twitter.

Brute Force or A Gentle Touch

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

Photo Credit

Sometimes it seems that the harder you try to chase something, the further it moves away from you. This occurs in all walks of life: with money, relationships or success. Maybe it is because of the fact that you are scared that you will lose something you care about or that you will never get it at all. You start to focus so much on losing it and what life would be like if you lose it that it makes you needy and desperate (which is exactly what pushes you even further away from the thing you want).

This is especially true about relationships and dealing with other people. You have no control over the feelings and emotions of others. Everyone is unique and free, and thus have the liberty to make their own choices.

In relationships that have gone on for a long time (with family,friends or lovers) it happens that you start to grow apart. It may be because you develop different interests or because of some external event that had a big impact on your life. Either way, it is noticeable and rather unpleasant. Day by day the other person becomes more distant and less talkative. Every day you are aware of the fact that things are no longer the way they used to be and that you have no control over it.

When you feel that someone you care about is slipping away from you, then becoming needy is the last thing you want to do.

The more you try to keep them with you (by restricting them or telling what to do and how to feel), the harder they are going to repel you. I think that the best solution is to be yourself and be the person that caused your friends to give you your friendship in the first place. If their love and friendship is real and true, then it will find a way to shine and return to its best state. If you give the other person space and the freedom to walk away, they will come back to you if they truly care about you.

“You can bring the horse to the water but you can’t force the horse to drink.”

If you apply brute force to something mechanical that you are trying to construct or repair, then it will often cause more damage than before, if not irripairable damage. If something does not fit and you take a big hammer and smash it in to force it to fit, the object is likely to break. Gently does it, even with conflict. Punching someone in the face is usually not the best solution to conflict in contrast to having a discussion and coming up with a solution. There are of course exceptions where the use of brute force is the most effective solution but this is usually not the case.

Take retail for example…
You can hire the most brutal salesmen, have ads on every corner screaming at people to buy and do crazy give-away promotions but if your customer doesn’t have money or absolutely does not want to buy anything from you, you can’t force him to. Often a gentle and more under-the-radar approach takes you a lot further in getting someone to buy something from you. The best ways is actually not to force anything upon your customer at all, but rather provide immense value to them. That way they will feel respect and loyalty for you and out of reciprocity for the value you provide to them, they will want to support you and your business.

Take Control of What You Can

While you can’t force something to happen, you can do everything in your power to put yourself in the situation that is most likely to get you what you want. Let’s take the following as a practical example:

If you want to meet a girl or get more dates, you can’t force it to happen.

There is no way that you can go out and force someone to want to be with you. However, in this situation there are two possible situations that can occur and you are in control of which one you experience:

1-) You sit at home every night of the week feeling sorry for yourself and wishing a pretty girl came knocking on your door looking for a place to stay. You hope that for some magiccal reason the most beautiful girl in the club comes up to you and buys you a drink and stays with you the whole night.

2-) You take control of what you can. You decide to go out a few nights of the week to clubs/bars and approach 20 different girls a night. You join extra-mural classes like dancing, the gym or other social settings that have a lot of like-minded people attending.

Which of the above two situations do you think is more likely to get you to where you want to be?

The second one of course! It’s like that with any situation where you do not really have control of the ultimate outcome. While you may not have full control, you certainly have the control of yourself to go out and do everything you can to stack the odds in your favor. Put yourself in the crosshairs of what you are tyring to achieve. If you work hard and consistenly at something every single day, the chances are very big that you will reach your goal.

The more you focus on what you love (and less on what you fear), the more you will actually achieve what you want. The less you focus on picking up girls in a club (and instead focus on having fun), the more interactions with girls you will have. The less you focus on large sums of money overnight (and the more you focus on building up a business/site and giving value), the more money will come your way.

The Bottom Line

I think that the key of getting more of what you want is to focus on the things you love doing instead of focusing on your greed and fears. Do what you love every day and trust that the things you want will come to you eventually. They will come a lot sooner than you think.

Diggy writes all about self improvement at his blog UpgradeReality.com. If you are looking for motivation, inspiration or useful tips to live a better life, subscribe to his articles via RSS FEED or EMAIL

Don’t Hit It Big! Unless You’re Ready For It…

So, you want to hit it big with your blog? Go on, do it! Just don’t fantasize too much about how it’s going to be when you’ll do it. And you know why? Because it’s going to be completely different from what you think it would. Let me tell you a story about how success can become your worst nightmare.

The Story

Everything started a week ago. I published an article about how you can run the best version of yourself, based on a sketchy parallel between human beings and computers. The post was immediately featured on lifehacker.com, to my surprise (and delight, to be honest).

The reaction from the commenters was so nice, that I decided to go on and write a sequel. More precisely, I started to detail on some of the main points in the initial article. One of my commenters actually asked me to write a sequel and I’m always happy when I receive suggestions from my readers.

Here we are, with the second article from that series, now about How To Defrag Your Mind In 5 Easy Steps. To my surprise, the article got featured again on lifehackaer.com. Two articles in less than 10 days. Ouch!

Featured In LifeHacker

I assume that among my readers are people living outside the Solar system and I’ll just make a short description of what Lifehacker is, just for them (the rest of you already know everything about it, I’m sure). Lifehacker is one of the most visited places on the Internet today. According to quantcast, it glues together more than 250k unique visitors each day. If you get a link from a site like this, expect some serious traffic. And by serious, I mean very serious.

To make a long story short, after a few hours from the mention on lifehacker, my server was receiving a steady and healthy flow of 300 concurrent users. Or so I thought, it was healthy. It wasn’t, but at that time I had no idea. I host my blog on a dedicated server and I have total control over it (sometimes, this is bad and you’ll see why shortly).

The Glitch In The Matrix

While I was happily enjoying the traffic and watching for new comments, I briefly fired up Woopra to monitor things a little bit closer. In a few minutes I started to focus on other tasks. And after a while I saw the visitors number starting to decrease (by watching the badge on my Woopra icon on the dock).

Well, that’s it, I said to myself, what goes up must go down. It was a nice spike, now let’s get back to work. At its best, the spike was about 350 concurrent visitors. And rapidly going down. 200 in just 2 minutes. 100 in the next 2 minutes. Hmm, something looks fishy. It shouldn’t go down that fast.

I reloaded the most visited page on the blog and argghhhhh, the infamous message: “Errors establishing database connection” literally stabbed in my eyes. For a few seconds I didn’t know what to do. What database? Who? Where am I? Then I realized something is terribly wrong.

Fixing The Good Thing

I ssh-ed immediately and saw a horrendous 50% load on my server. 50%!!! I tried to do a restart to the database server, but it took like forever. Of course, my phone was closer than my good judgement so I immediately called my hosting company and asked for a reboot. “Can you please restart my server?”. “Ok, it’s your server, sir, button pushed”.

In minutes I was back again, with all the setup running smoothly. For like 15 minutes. Then again an increase in the processor load. Man, that was nasty. I googled immediately for a cache plugin, found wp-super-cache and installed it. Took me like 3 minutes.

I activated wp-super-cache only to remain completely baffled at its options page. Didn’t understand a thing. Never used it. Meanwhile, the traffic was steadily growing. After a few dozens of minutes which felt like days, I finally tweaked the plugin and my server, although puffing and steaming, was serving pages again.

I went to bed at around 1:30 and woke up normally at 6:00 AM. First thing: let’s check how’s the server doing. Apparently, the hardware part of the server was doing great, since the database mysql server was down again, so not too much stress on the CPU!!! In a few minutes I uninstalled the wp-super-cache plugin, restarted the server, replaced the configuration files for both mysql and http (simple fix to cope with bigger traffic that I should do in the first place) and the things finally came back to normal.

And by normal I mean around 60 concurrent visitors. Huh.

The Lessons

That was a big hit! Right? Being featured on Lifehacker, receiving as much as 2000 unique visitors per hour and all the hype on social media (I forgot to tell you that at some point I was also on the home page of delicious and receiving quite a lot of traffic from digg too). Yes, that was a big hit.

With the only simple mention that I almost completely screw it up!

And you know why? Because I wasn’t really prepared for that. I was dreaming about it but just assumed things will be fine, if not “the same”, when I’ll receive that huge exposure. Nope, it doesn’t work like this. Things weren’t even remotely the same as they were before. It was a completely different situation.

Every time we envision success we see it by our current lenses. We create it based on our current evolution level. Which is inherently wrong. The most intrinsic quality of success is “difference”. It’s something completely different from our normal state. We almost always forget that. I certainly did.

Here are the 3 lessons I learned by spending 10 hours tweaking a server instead of enjoying every second of my huge blog exposure:

1 Be Prepared

Totally. Always. Completely. Act like you are already there. If you’re expecting a traffic of 300 concurrent users, be sure you can cope with. If you’re expecting one million dollar in the bank, be sure you can cope with it. If you expect to have a family and a reliable partner, be sure you can cope with it.

Otherwise you will experience the most oxymoronic state of mind: being successful because you did it and miserable because you don’t have what it takes to enjoy it. It’s like eating ice-cream without knowing the difference between cold and hot.

If you work constantly, if you trust yourself and provide enough value, at some point you will hit big. The biggest lesson of this incident was that I shouldn’t focus on that part. That part is natural. Being successful if you do your job is the expected behavior of this huge application called The Universe.

You should focus instead of being prepared for what it’s going to hit you.

2 Don’t Fix It, It’s Working!

Don’t try to mess up your success. Don’t try to patch up yourself to cope with the new status or pretend everything is normal. Because it really isn’t. It’s something else, completely. It’s a new state of yourself and trying to remain the same will totally screw up things.

Trying to fix the server meltdown by installing a plugin I never heard of, not to mention never tested it, proved to do much more harm than good. Why fixing something that works? Ok, part of it was broken down, but all I needed was to put the system in its initial state.

If you’re “too” successful don’t try to impersonate somebody else. If you missed lesson number one, which is “I was not prepared for that”, just acknowledge and move on. You will only make things worse if you’re trying to fix things on the go.

3. You Asked For It

During the peak of that traffic flood, I surprised myself thinking something almost unthinkable. Unconsciously, I was hoping the traffic will scale down, at least for a while. Guys, can you give me a break just for 5 minutes, please, I want to make things work again.

Stupidest thing I could ever want. I spent months of work to reach this traffic and when it finally came, all I want is a break. Come on, I asked for it! How could I reverse it while it’s happening? What stupid mixed behavior is that?

If you’re in the whirl of your own success, always remember you asked for it. As difficult to endure as it seem, that huge success, that exposure, that wealth, happiness, or lifestyle, each of every one of those things are what you wanted in the first place.

You asked for it. For everything you receive in your life.

14 Ways To Say Yes

Mastering the art of saying “No” is compulsory in many cases. We do have to learn how to say it without offending the other person and still getting what we want. Appropriately saying “No” can really save our butt from a tricky situation and that’s why mastering our “No”’s is so important.

And still, the real power lies not in saying “No”, but in saying “Yes”. If mastering the “No”’s will activate an invisible safety belt, a good, plain and timely “Yes” will push us higher than we think we can. If “No” is the savior, “Yes” is the creator. “No” is defensive, “Yes” is empowering.

Let’s play a little with the art of saying “Yes”.

1. I Do!

If you ever asked somebody to marry you, than you know what I mean: “I do” is a very interesting form of total submission and commitment. You say “I do” with almost your last breathe, still thinking the other person would never ask. You are almost shouting, raising your voice in an effort of being heard and accepted. Can you hear me? I’m here! I do!

2. Let’s Do It!

The practical approach of starting stuff together. You use “Let’s do it” when you’re eager to start, have almost everything it takes, the only extra piece being saying it out loud so the other part can hear it. “Let’s do it” is the ultimate involvement answer, it’s so enabling that it barely qualify for a plain “Yes”, it’s more of an informal affiliation statement:.

3. What Are We Waiting For?

The standard “Yes” of the impatient (and maybe of the compulsive one, but I’m not quite sure about that). This answer literally bury the question and move the focus on the physical action. If you get this type of “Yes” it means the question was superfluous. Instead, you should just move on and start doing things.

4. Hell, Yes

Enthusiastic and passionate, this answer always reminds me of a long dusty road in the desert and a nice bike under the rider. It’s the ultimate expression of freedom, of leaving behind the old version of you and starting over. Every time I hear this answer, I know something fundamentally new will happen.

5. I’m In It

Business-like expression of a partnership. This “Yes” is wearing a suit and it’s quite disciplined. If your question involves some long term plan, receiving this “Yes” could be a very good sign. It shows commitment and strictness. The tricky part is that the other person is looking forward for the same things in you, so be careful.

6. I Was Born For It

“I’m waiting for this question since I was born, dude. Of course, it’s yes. How can it be the other way around?“ This ”Yes“ is always making me smile. Makes me actually visualize the whole process: well, I think I would like to be born for…. that thing! Can we do it? Please? Wow, great, now let’s find some guys to spread the word about it.

7. Of Course

Chilling and kinda polite. This ”Yes“ goes well with a cup of the and some biscuits. Maybe a little break in the afternoon, around five o’clock, but let’s not push it. Whenever I hear this ”Yes“ I’m also prepared to hear a ”but“. I think this ”Yes“ is the most ”but“-prone from all. Nevertheless, hearing it makes me feel like I’m having some very important negotiation.

8. My Thoughts Exactly

Confirming and validating, this ”Yes“ is almost a confession. It’s so powerful that I’m sometimes afraid I actually penetrated into the other guy’s mind. I mean, are those really his thoughts? Wow. Whenever I use it, I do it because I really trust the other person or I try to build a more intimate connection. Which is always happening after this type of ”Yes“.

9. Are We There Yet?

And that would be actually the “Yes” of the compulsive. I admit I get the shivers when I hear it, although I do know it’s funny. But the confirmation level is so high and the triggered energy seems so available, that I’m almost feeling guilty for not going “there” yet. I also think this is the more validating “Yes” from all.

10. You’ll Lead, I’ll Follow

Any “Yes” expressed in this form will show total trust and confidence from the other part. When it does not show a fine sense of irony too, of course. It’s the most uncertain “Yes” from all. If I hear this, I know that although I’m getting followed, I somehow keep all the responsibility. This “Yes” comes with a little bit of extra caution.

11. Aye, Aye, Sir!

Military-like acceptance. You can’t mistake this one as a disguised “No”, in my opinion. I almost always respond to this “Yes” with a relieving “Dismissed!”, just for the fun of it. And every time I hear it, I’m compelled to continue the discussion in short but strong sentences, also know as orders. The nice thins with orders is that you expect them to be followed, most of the time.

12. Undoubtedly

In case you’re having any doubt, I mean. If you’re hearing this, you’re taking off the veil from a possibly foggy situation and acknowledge total confidence. This “Yes” is coming with the sound of a hammer hitting a nail right in the head. If you know what I mean. I think this “Yes” is the most relieving of all.

13. Always!

You know I do, why are you still asking? It’s also a form of past, present and future commitment. If you hear this, your next question may not be necessary at all. This “Yes” is more than often the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

14. Totally!

Unreserved immersion and acceptance. That “yes” is my favorite, but if you ask me why, I’m not sure I know the answer. Maybe because I am that kind of guy: if I’m in it for something, I simply don’t know the meaning of half, I do it all the way up to the end.

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What’s your preferred way to say “Yes”? Doesn’t necessarily have to be from the list above, surprise me . When do you say it? To whom do you say it? Leave a comment and let me know, I’m really curious.

And if you wonder why I chose exactly 14 ways to say “Yes”, well, it’s because I think for every “No” in our lives we should be able to come up with at least two “Yes”.