Taming Monkey Number 10: Talk Less, Do More

Every once in a while, when I’m in the middle of a discussion, Bianca, my 5 year old daughter breaks in with a low voice, but very firmly: “dad, you talk too much!” And oh, she is right every time.

I don”t know from where she picked this up. It may be that at some point I said that to her. Or it may be that she simply believes that I do talk too much. And as much as I don’t want to admit it, it’s true. I have this tendency to over-verbalize stuff (I don’t even know if “over-verbalize” is a word, but it looked nice here). I have an obsession for putting things into words and writing them down. On the bright side, this created a blog with 100.000 unique visitors each month. Writing three times a week, for three years, well, that pays back big time.

But on the dark side, this has some surprising side effects. Introducing monkey number 10: “talk less, do more”. If you read my blog for a while, you know that for 2011 I ditched my new year resolutions in favor of a new approach: 12 monthly challenges, in which I will try to “tame an inner monkey”. If you want to know the full scoop, read the introductory post here. And if you want to know more about what an inner monkey is, read this.

The Challenge

When I refer to “talking too much”, the usual suspect is, of course, the blog. This is why I took a huge break in October. I barely wrote 3 articles for the entire month. Which is almost nothing for me. And since I got here, I want to thank to all of you who wrote me to ask if everything is ok. Yes, it is. Better than never actually.

But when I say “talking too much”, I also mean spending too much energy in putting my life into words each and every day, versus actually doing stuff and enjoying it. And that was the biggest challenge for October. There were moments during which I felt a bit lost and adrift. Because I was very much used to anchor myself daily in my own story. Like writing on the blog, engaging in social media, journaling and so on. It was a very secure approach. Gave me stability and a sense of purpose.

But clinging too much on your own story may take you away from other, possibly much more interesting stories. Introversion and self exploration is good, but the world, believe it or not, is also taking place outside. Like in the things you do. Decisions you take and implement. Relationships you start and manage. Waking up each day, doing stuff without writing it down and then going to sleep with that unspeakable sense of fulfilling, only to wake up refreshed and ready to start again next morning. And when you’re immersed in this ocean of events, talking about them may start to feel almost superfluous.

That was the biggest lesson I learned by taming the 10th monkey. I may have talked too much in the past, but I think I found a little bit of balance now. So do expect me to continue to write here, but not at the same pace as before. Or, to be more correct, not in an imposed, artificial pace. If I feel I have to write 3 posts per day, I’ll do it. If I feel I want to write only one post per month, I will write only one post per month.

Life Unfolding

Since the lesson is learned, I think it’s safe to make a short recap of what I actually did during October. And, as you will see, it’s a lot.

Moved out into a new apartment

During the process, I did some of the most empowering stuff I did lately. Namely, I got rid of some of the stuff I wrote as a teenager (among other stuff). When I moved out from the house I still own (rented it to somebody when I decided to move out) I had to get rid of an incredibly high amount of stuff. Literally there were hundreds of useless objects I had to throw away. And, among them, my teenage notebooks. I always thought of what I wrote in those notebooks like something that defined me. And by doing this, I was stuck in that definition of myself. Unable to move out, to change, to explore. Throwing away some of my notebooks (along with other garbage) was a liberating experience. Letting go is tough, but necessary.

Retook my position in WPSumo

I always was very fond of this project. So, when an opportunity to take over the entire WPSumo project from one of the founders emerged, I jumped on it. I’m still putting together the bits and pieces, reframing the strategy and taking care of the usual stuff that a business require, but all in all I’m really happy I’m on board again.

Went to an improv show for the first time

It may seem like a minor event, but for me was important. Also, proved that once you set up your vibration properly, necessary events are created into your life. Seeing this show – which made me laugh incessantly for almost two hours – made me realize that sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Improvise. Expect the unexpected. And, most important, learn to laugh at it, instead of controlling the outcome.

Signed my first independent publishing agreement

Two of my titles will be translated into Korean and sold as ebooks by an independent publisher. This is big. This is something so important for me, that I can barely put it into words. I don’t think it will be huge in terms of revenue – although my publisher said I was a pretty tough negotiator – but it is already very important in terms of personal choices. I do write books and they are needed by people. They are actually published. It’s hard to describe the feeling, believe me.

All in all, I think it was a very dense month.

The 11th Monkey

It will be about relationships. I am committed to strengthen my relationships on all levels: professionals, in the first place, and, most important, personal. I already did a few moves in this area and things are looking pretty good. Also, there are a few supporting events that will make this challenge even more interesting during November.

On 7th, I will be part of a panel at ZileleBiz, a national business event in Romania, where I will speak about digital nomading. On 22nd I’m invited to the biggest Internet event in Romania, NetCamp, and on 23rd I will be again part of VentureConnect, a very special business opportunity, which aims at connecting entrepreneurs with investors.

So, busy times ahead. Like I said: talk less and do more.

Alter Your Jacket – The Program

Today is a big day for my friend Steven Aitchison. He’s launching his long awaited self improvement program called “Alter Your Jacket”. But before diving too much into the program details, let me rewind a bit and tell you more about this guy, Steven.

I first met him more than a year ago, when I started my own blog. I met him online, that is. I just stumbled upon his blog and stayed there for more than a half an hour. Which is way above the average for me, to be honest. I really liked what he wrote. He was already ahead of me with several thousands of subscribers and he was already monetizing the whole blogging thing. Quite a successful guy, I said to myself.

I started to interact with him, promoting his articles and commenting on his blog. A few months later, without even knowing how that happened, I realized we’re already talking by email.  Some times he was asking for my opinion, some times I was asking for his. A nice and easy opinion ping-pong.

Common Blogging Ground

I remember that one time he was very excited about a viral blogging project. He described the project in details in one long email and at the end of it he was asking me what I think. I was instantly contaminated by the enthusiasm which was literally exhaling from the whole project and I immediately committed to it. The project involved the participation of several hundreds of bloggers and I was happy to be one of them. We never did that project, but the idea is still there. And that’s one of the reasons I’m not telling more about the project in itself, because Steven may want to do this at some point.

Fact is that I discovered a lot of common ground with Steven. Although my blog experienced a very steep growth, he was still ahead of me. Which made me push even harder, because I love competition. In case you didn’t realize this yet, after reading my blog, I’m quite a competitive person. Give me a challenge and you’ll “relax” me for good. I’m addicted to challenges.

Apparently, so is Steven, because in January we did one of the craziest challenges in my entire blogging (and, for what matters, business) career: we planned to write 4 books in one month. We both decided to use CreateSpace.com to publish some of our content directly to Amazon and we decided to make the whole process fun. So, here we are, tweeting our progress, emailing every other day to check out the status and being totally immersed in writing several tens of thousands of words in one month. Apart from what we’re normally writing as regular bloggers.

For some reason, I won the January challenge. We also had another one in February, which I gloriously lost. But then again, what I recall from those challenges is not the feeling of being a winner or a loser.  It’s the enthusiasm and thrill of doing something I loved to. It’s the energy and passion that exuded from the whole process. It’s the feeling of overcoming myself.

Awakenings

And with that comes one of the most important things that happened to me during this year, a thing which was actually generated by one of the Steven’s posts. On March 11th, Steven published one of his most controversial, yet incredibly useful (and by that I mean really useful) posts: The Night I Gave Up On Life. In that article, Steven told the story of his suicide attempt when he was younger. Yes, you read it right: one of the most successful personal development bloggers was on the verge of self indicted death.

That post really shook me up. And I mean really. I wasn’t on a bed of roses either during the last few months (personal relationships melting away and an overall dramatic change in my life circumstances) so reading that was like a punch in the face. Yes, my life as I knew it was melting away. Yes, it wasn’t fair. Yes, I didn’t deserve all that shit that was keep coming to my face. So what?

Reading that post made me realize two things. First: just because all that shit that was happening to me wasn’t right, it didn’t mean it wasn’t real too. So, I had to accept it. And second, I realized things could look much worse, if I don’t take immediate action to change the course of my life. So, a few minutes after I read that post I literally started to take immediate action to get in the flow again. I don’t think it’s relevant to get into real details about my problems, I may do this later on, in a few months, when everything will settle for good.

Fact is that now, two and a half months later from that article, things are already looking incredibly better for me. All that personal relationships melting was alchemically transformed from a painful process into the prologue of something wonderful. The best thing about it is that I don’t know what would come up next and I find this incredibly exciting. And my overall life conditions are taking a slow but steady growing course again.

Yes, one of Steven’s posts can do that to you .

Alter Your Jacket

And with that, I finally come up to the core of this article, which is to announce that Steven is launching a video training course. Yeap, not a blog post, not a series of articles, but 45 minutes of video training with one of the most popular personal development bloggers of the moment.

You can sign up here and I would suggest to do it as fast as possible. Not because the offer will expire or something. Nope, this isn’t one of those offers. It is a plain, simple video course that will help you change your life for good. Sign up as fast as possible to stop losing time, not because you’ll save some nickels. In the bigger picture of life, a few nickels are nothing, compared with how much you can win aside, just by doing the right thing at the right time.

That’s it. Nothing more. Just go on, sign up and let me know in the comments what you think. I’d love to hear your jacket altering stories.

Self Imposed Limits and How To Overcome Them

This is a guest post by Srinivas Rao, @skooloflife.

Everything that you know how to do today and you do effortlessly is something that you once didn’t know how to do. You weren’t born knowing how to walk, talk, or speak. You learned all of those things and the notion of limitations probably never existed when you were a kid. There was a point in my life where I thought I“d wake up one day and have super powers , like Superman.

As we get older however, our imagination seems to stop running riot and we start getting “realistic” about what we are capable of. As a result, we create self-imposed limitations and our full potential gets lost. Let’s look at a couple examples of how we create limitations in our lives.

Bigger Waves: When I started surfing, I remember telling a friend “yeah, I’ll never need waves more than 2-4 ft and that’s probably going to be my limit.” That limit keeps getting bigger. The first time I ever rode a bigger wave I came to the realization that I had become too attached to my success. But in that moment I also overcame the limitation of 2-4 ft. It was simply a matter of going for it and taking a risk. Every risk you take provides an opportunity to propel past your self imposed limitation. Will you always make it? NO. But, if you do, then you’ve moved to your next level. I’m never going to be a big wave rider (maybe my own self imposed limitation or wish for prolonged life). But, check out the video of this guy below who has more or less exemplified the idea of overcoming self imposed limits.

Musical Instruments: The first time you look at a piece of music that is really difficult, you might have the holy SH#$# reaction. That’s pretty normal if you ask me. But after going through it, one measure at a time, practicing every single day, the piece of music that you couldn’t play is something you are now doing almost effortlessly. You created the limitation when you started and you overcame it just through practice.

Out of My League: Dating is another place where I think we create a ton of self imposed limitations. It’s not uncommon for somebody to find a person of the opposite sex extremely attractive and then say “But, yeah I could never get that chick or dude.” Then we make a list of excuses for why this is not possible. “I don’t have enough money, I’m not good looking enough, blah, blah” and a whole bunch of bullshi#$# that you have told yourself over and over. Notice how you have created all of this.

Blogging: Annabel Candy at Get in the Hot Spot recently wrote an amazing post on success. One of the things she talked about was the amount of readers that she wanted subscribed to her blog. She decided to up the goal from 10,000 to 15,000. In all honesty, whether she reaches either goal doesn’t matter. Let’s say she gets to the 8000 readers, then she’s still a success. But think about where she set the bar. She set the bar really high. I set out with a goal of 1000 readers by April. I don’t have it, but maybe it’ because this was my self imposed limitation. Maybe I should have aimed higher. Maybe my focus should be 10,000 readers and I should work towards that and 1000 should just be a milestone in the bigger picture. In fact maybe that’s all overcoming a limitation is, a milestone on the path to your goal.

Overcoming your Limitation

Set a Higher Bar: If you are the one creating the limitation then maybe it’s as simple as setting a higher bar. Maybe the bar should be whatever your personal 6-8 foot wave is. Maybe the bar should be 10,000 dollars instead of 5000 dollars. The thing with setting the bar higher is you will come closer to what the goal you set even if you don’t necessarily accomplish your exact goal.

Mind Your Language: It’s no secret in the world of self help and personal development that the way we use language plays an integral role in our ability to accomplish things. When you use words like “I could never” or “impossible” you are using your language to create a limitation. Just remember everything that is possible today was once seen as “impossible.”

Examples of Possibility: Examples of what’s possible are everywhere and usually one example of possibility will set the wheels in motion. The best example of this that is cited throughout history seems to be Roger Banister’s 4 minute mile. Right after he did it, tons of other people did too. My favorite example from the world of blogging is Henri Junttila who grew his blog to over 1000 readers in 100 days. That was a paradigm shift and a model for what’s possible. For all you know somebody might grow to 1000 readers in 60 days next and that will give us the new model for what’s possible. Finding examples of possibility will actually help to shift your perception of what you can actually accomplish.

What limitations have you self imposed? Which ones have you overcome? How did you overcome them?

Srinivas Rao is a blogger and avid surfer, and writes at The Skool of Life, where he obsesses about riding waves. He is also the host and co-founder of the BlogcastFM, a podcast for Bloggers.

The Day You’ll Start To Like Yourself

Yes, to like. Not to love, we don’t go there. At least not in this post. This post is not going to be heavy, profound and “really touching” stuff. This is going to be light stuff. Easy going. You know, when you just like somebody and want to hang out. Have a beer, chit chat, grab something to eat and watch the world unfolding in front of you, enjoyable second after enjoyable second.

I bet you don’t really like yourself. Maybe you like the whole package, but there are a few bits and pieces that could be corrected. Perhaps you could lose some weight. Maybe you could be a little more patient when you argue. Or maybe you could make some more money if you’d really start to use your full potential. Overall you’re good, don’t get me wrong. But you know, those bits and pieces…

The Subtle Disliking Process

Those bits and pieces are taking a lot more space and time than you think. Every time you’re stumbling upon some aspect of your being you don’t like, something happens. A subtle, most of the time invisible process is triggered. Unfortunately, as subtle as it can be, this process is also destructive and leaves deep marks.

Here’s how it works:

First: you identify the part that you don’t like. You do that by spotting differences. You carry around a mental model of what’s “average” or “acceptable” and whatever part of you which doesn’t fit the description is immediately identified, labeled and stored for further review.

Second: you start to feel bad about that part. Being different means most of the time being rejected. Surprisingly enough, this rejection feeling is not always triggered by somebody else, but, more often than you think, it’s an individual reaction. People are feeling alienated because they don’t fit in their own image of “acceptable”, although they may be accepted and valued by their peers.

Third: you activate some sort of rejection mechanism. This mechanism works in various ways. For instance, you start to completely ignore that different part of yourself, acting like you’re normal (although you know you’re different), which makes that difference even more visible. Or you amplify it to the point it takes over your entire behavior and becomes your main acting theme. The small part takes over the big part.

Let’s have an example: suppose you’re fat. Yeap, exactly, fat. Not chubby, not a little overweighted, fat. Your internal dislike process could be something like this:

1 Oh, I’m so fat, I’m bigger than most of the people I know.
2 I’m definitely different and that makes me feel alienated.
3 I gotta get rid of these alienation feelings, so I’m pretending I’m normal. I wear tight tee shirts, or I start acting like an elephant in a porcelain store, letting everyone know that I’m huge.

You see how this disliking process is taking over? You see how those perceived differences are changing the whole world around you? The dislike process is a reality modifier. It transforms the reality you know and understand in a twisted one, in which you try to cope with your own feelings of rejection.

Disliking yourself will ultimately extend unto others. You’ll start to gradually dislike other people because you became really good at the whole disliking process. You’re good at spotting differences and “unacceptable” parts in other people and start triggering the rejection mechanisms for those people too.

Now isn’t that an incredible waste of time? I mean really, you see how much energy is concentrated in this dislike process? And the worst part is that the dislike process is unnatural.

The Natural Liking Process

On the other hand, liking yourself is natural. Accepting your parts as a whole is your normal condition. You’re not made up by discrete pieces, conflicting with each other. You’re a complete and functional individual. Everything you have, you have it for a reason. Just because you didn’t find the reason yet, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. You can refine and enhance your current version of yourself, that’s true, but overall, everything you have within your being, your physical body, your emotional arsenal, your skills, everything is there for a reason.

Disliking parts of yourself will only break apart this monolithic entity, making you smaller and weaker, piece by piece. Liking yourself will glue the parts together,.

Here’s how “dislike” is translated into “like”:

I’m fat -> I’m taking the exact amount of space my body needs and I like that.

I’m shy -> I’m sensitive and have an enormous emotional potential, which I let out in small drops, because small is beautiful, and I really like beautiful.

I’m broke -> I don’t have any money and that gives me this incredible opportunity to start learning one of the most important lessons in my life: how to be an autonomous person.

I’m alone -> I feel better with myself than most of the people do. And I like that.

See a pattern here? See how liking yourself is making room for more stuff into your life? See how your entire personality is uncovered (like by like) and gives you the freedom to do whatever you feel like? Liking yourself is a reality enhancer. It activates every bit of your potential and boosts your life enjoying capacity way beyond what you thought you can have.

Liking yourself has also this contagious property of extending unto others. Have you noticed how people who are at ease with themselves are usually surrounded by more people than the others? It’s a trivial observation, by the way, anyone can see this.

The Day You’ll Start To Like Yourself

You wake up. Go the bathroom and look in the mirror. You like what you see. That face looks familiar, right? You smile at yourself. Oh, you notice a little wrinkle around your eyes. Instead of triggering that nasty, and oh, so familiar feeling of: “I’m getting old and I feel alienated” you realize those wrinkles are rather sexy. A mature, powerful man. Yeah, I kinda like that.

After you finish washing your face, you notice the mess in the living room or the kitchen. Maybe you had guests last night and didn’t want to clean up. Instead of activating that childhood conditioning about your pathological laziness, you start to mentally construct a walking path around that mess. Two degrees left after the table and a big step over the couch, and voila, you’re in the kitchen, starting to prepare coffee. In the process, you straighten up a chair, pick up some dirty dishes and improvise a salsa move. Oh yesss, dancing and cleaning up the kitchen at the same time. I kinda like this too.

Few minutes later, on the porch of your house, you notice you’re going to be late for work. Instead of triggering that guilt mechanism, you start to mentally allocate some extra time that you know you’ll need to actually finish your work and start concocting a beautiful story for your boss. Oh, those stories for your boos… He actually believes them. Maybe you should start thinking about writing those stories on a blog, or sending them to a fantasy magazine. No, you’re not a liar, as some of your colleagues are calling you, you just have an incredible imagination.

Once you have the story draft in your mind, you put  a big a smile on your face (that wrinkle is surely looking sexy), leave the garbage in the garbage can and breathe in.

Yes, this is going to be a really great day. The day you’ll really start to like yourself.

Chinese translation of this article: 那天你开始喜欢自己

Can You Solve The Puzzle Of Your Life?

As Bianca, my 4 year old daughter, started to better understand images and shapes, as she started to talk more and to understand more, we slowly started to play more complicated games. Lately, she seems to develop a rather strong appeal for puzzle games. We solve at least one puzzle almost every day. We started with very simple games, with bigger parts, but soon she got bored. We had to find bigger puzzle games, with smaller (and more) pieces.

The other day, after we finished one of those games, just before she had to go to sleep, I had a short… let’s call it moment. A moment of clarity. I saw a few similarities between the puzzle games we played and some more “serious” situations like goal achievement, personal development or difficult life situations. Somehow, the games we played activated a switch. A very interesting one. After she went to sleep, I decided to write about this. By the way, it’s not the first time when Bianca is shedding some light on my path. Less than a month ago she let me see through her book of life, for instance (don’t be shy, take a look too).

Now, lets’ talk about how solving puzzles can help with your goal achievement strategies.

You Got All You Need

Every goal, every endeavor, every important achievement is made out of hundreds of little separate pieces. Goal achievement is just a matter of putting those pieces together. You take each and every bit, look at it, try to find its place in the bigger picture and then do your best to fit it in. That’s all there is to it, nothing more. Just a puzzle game.

And yet, we seem to struggle with our goals more than we should, or more than we expect in the beginning. And the most common roadblock of all is the feeling of “lacking”. I lack resources to make my life better. I lack the good looks I need to attract a better partner. I lack money. I lack a positive attitude. I lack luck.

Fact is we have it all. We just don’t see it. We have all the parts just in front of us, but we’re so early in the game that we just can’t understand them. We do have the resources, the looks and all the luck we need, but we don’t see them in the big picture. I realize this every time I shuffle the pieces for a new puzzle. When I look at them, they all seem so unrelated and distant. Not part of the same game. Totally different.

But as the game progresses, each and every piece find its place. All I need is just a single matching point, and from that matching point everything starts to link it up until the final image is complete.

But You Have To Stick To A Plan

And that calls for the second thing about puzzle and goal achievement: a plan. If you really want to solve the riddle you need a strategy. A roadmap. Some structured approach to reduce confusion up to the point the world becomes manageable again. It doesn’t have to be downright solvable, just manageable. As a matter of fact, if a puzzle is so easy that I can see through it from the beginning, I don’t feel any drive to even try it out.

But if the puzzle is so huge, so difficult and so complicated that I can barely think it’s doable, I need a strategy. Something that will give me hope to walk through it. Something that will make me understand the big picture. We all have our own specific strategy. For instance, my puzzle strategy is to find the corners and the edges. If I have a physically delimited portion of the image, I can easily find my way from there. I build from the edges to the core of the puzzle, ring by ring.

Bianca’s strategy is different: she looks for the first match she can find, regardless of the type of the piece (corner or edge). Once she found a match, she looks for the next one, and so on. All she needs is a starting point. She builds from there, in whatever direction she can find. That’s all we need to get the thing moving on. Until then, the puzzle game is nothing but a mess. Without a strategy, things looks like they’re impossible. But once you decide to bring the smallest amount of order into the chaos, you’re in fact creating a small crack, letting the light shine through.

Your puzzle solving strategy may be different. But as long as you have one, your puzzle will be finished. Just stick to it. All the unrelated parts will eventually fall into pieces.

Yes, It’s Confusing

Sometimes you’re wrong. Sometimes you spend days or months or years thinking how to get over your current situation. In other words, your puzzle game is frozen. You can’t advance anymore. There are no matching pieces that you can find. And still, you have to go through it. If you stop, you will never solve it.

We have moments when we seem to have no way to advance, me and Bianca, when we play our puzzles. Although we have all the pieces in front of us, something prevents us from seeing their role. We have no vision. No clarity. Bianca, as a kid, gets bored much more easily than I do. So I have to perform some special tricks in order to keep her focused.

And those are the moments when I realize I have to do the same tricks (or even come up with some better ones) if I want to solve the puzzles I choose. I need to find ways to remain in my life game even if it seems hopeless. I need some ways to overcome those situations in which I think there’s nothing more I can do. Because I can. All the pieces are there, I just can’t see them yet. But it’s my abandon which will actually make it meaningless. If I leave, the game will never be finished.

The game of life is confusing at times. And I think it’s confusing for a very good reason: to test your ability to stay on the path. Every puzzle is solvable, even if it seems it isn’t. Every life situation is solvable. As long as you don’t leave the game.

Putting Your Own Pieces Together

One of the nicest feelings you can have is to see a puzzle solved. And I’m not talking about the games I play with Bianca, (although creating a nice scene from Kung Fu Panda, for instance, can be funny at times). I’m talking about your life situation. I’m talking about your goals. Your dreams.

Maybe you had a dream of becoming somebody. An actor, a writer, or just a happy husband. Maybe you wanted to change the world. Or just to travel around it, while witnessing its beauty. This is your puzzle. This is the riddle you have to solve.

Even if it seems like you don’t have the resources, all the pieces of the puzzle are there. You just don’t see the big picture yet.

All you need is to set up a little plan and bring some light in. Most of the times, this little plan means just going along with the flow. Follow your intuition. Trust your heart. Remember, it’s just a puzzle. You picked it up and you do have all the necessary pieces to complete it.

Just stick with it.

And let me know when you finish, I’ll come over with Bianca to enjoy it together.

How To Invest In Yourself (And Why)

Two years ago I sold my first company, a venture in which I invested all my energy and time for more than a decade. The assets I already owned combined with the value of the transaction put me in the position to be evaluated at over 1 million dollars. In our current society, focused so much on numbers and quantitative approaches, this is a reasonably big milestone. Being a millionaire, who doesn’t want to be that?

I confess I surrendered to this reality for a good two weeks, which is more than 10 days in a row. Really. During those two weeks, I wasn’t Dragos Roua anymore, I was a millionaire. Although at that time I didn’t imagine I will ever think something like this, now I’m pretty sure those were two of the worst weeks of my life. Not only because I can hardly remember what I did during those two weeks, but because what I remember feels disconnected and strange. Partly because it wasn’t me who did it (I was somebody else, just like I told you) partly because I was in a very euphoric state, floating like a prima-donna on a cheap soap opera.

Borrowing a ready made identity, like “being a millionaire” is a very dangerous thing for your mental health. Borrowing any social mask to hide your real nature is a very dangerous thing too, but among all the social personas you can choose, being a millionaire is one of the most wanted and toxic ones. I know that first hand. Been there, done that.

After those two weeks something happened. I would like to say that it was a sudden enlightenment, an internal breakthrough which led me to an epiphany, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was a rather slow process, which culminated with the book 30 Sentences For A Millionaire Mindset. For me, writing that book was a therapeutic process. It was my way of healing the strange illness I got by this foreign image which I glued on me, at the cost of my own authentic being. After I finished the book, I realized that being a millionaire is just an external image, it has nothing to do with me. But being able to create abundance, well, yes, that was something that was very precious, and the book talked exactly about that.

At the same time, another thing started to slowly grow until it became a very clear and sharp question: what to do with all that money? Suddenly, it became useless. If all I was chasing was a mirage, what’s the use for all that money anymore? And with that I finally reach the topic of this article, so please excuse the long introduction. Today I’m going to talk about investing. Specifically, about investing in yourself.

How To Invest In Yourself – A Primer

To make a long story short, after I realized I still have work to do, namely to take care of that money, I decided to invest it all in myself. It wasn’t an easy decision as some of the money was already invested in real estate, but in the long run it proved to be a very good one. I still congratulate myself every once in a while when I’m thinking about that.

Investing in yourself is very different from investing in external assets. It doesn’t follow the same pattern and it surely doesn’t offer you the same compensation. Whenever people are investing money they expect in return money. Well, it’s completely different when you invest in yourself. You don’t get back money. Usually, you get back an improved version of yourself.

Stage One: Assessment

Of course, as in any investment, you start by assessing your potential asset, in this case, yourself. Again, it’s not an easy task. We’re the byproduct of our own ideas about ourselves, rather than the facts. We think we can provide value in a certain area, but that’s not always true. Most of the time, we’re carrying away just an incomplete picture of what we would like to be rather than what we really are.

Here’s a 3 steps structure I used to make my first initial assessment. One important thing to note is that this assessment is not geared towards identifying your “value”, but your weaknesses. It’s not “how much do I value now?”, but rather “where’s my opportunity spot?”. Because that’s the spot where you’re going to invest.

1. Facts Analysis

When you analyze facts, you leave away the internal “fog”. Maybe you think you’re a brilliant negotiator, but that may be just an inconsistent cloud in your ego. Once you put this so-called quality of yours to strain, it may vanish in a second.

Facts analysis involves another person. Ideally, it should be a person you trust. You can either start asking questions right away about the facts you’re interested in, either just observe the other person reactions to some of your actions.

For instance, my team mate in facts analysis was Diana. She was always close to me and by observing her reaction to some of my actions I realized that some areas I thought I was strong in were not so strong, after all. At some point, she told me that “I lost my mojo”. I knew for sure that I didn’t lost my mojo, but she was right, something was missing. And what I did lose was the image of a successful entrepreneur. She always knew me by this public interface of a successful online business man. Now that the image was gone, she didn’t know how access my real part, or even if there was a real part behind that image. And that was a very strong indicator of an area in which I had work to do.

2. Accept and Avoid Wishful Thinking

Precisely: accept that you can generate wishful thinking and avoid those situations. You can’t always escape from this trap: wishful thinking is from the same family with dreaming. And without dreaming you can’t really function in this world.

The danger appears when you take wishful thinking for granted. That will make your assessment very difficult. One of the most common wishful thinking patterns I had was “I will move to New Zealand”. Of course I will, but before that I have to take care about a lot of stuff. It won’t happen by itself, that’s for sure.

If you plan to seriously invest in yourself you gotta accept the fact that you’re going to have unrealistic thoughts and expectations and take them away from your conclusions. Just accept the fact that sometimes you’re just fantasizing about the world you’re living in, rather than actually living in.

3. Interview With Yourself

But the most useful tools of all in the stage of assessment is the interview with yourself. I already wrote a (rather popular, as it seems) interview with yourself which you can use as a starting point for your own.

The conclusions you’ll draw from this interview won’t be appealing, that I can tell you. But they’ll be true, and having a real image of your asset in which you’re going to invest is fundamental.

Stage Two: Growing Skills and Sensors

After the assessment, you start to actually invest. You’re going to do this in two ways: you’re either growing and enhancing skills, either build new “reality sensors”. Let’s talk a little about those “reality sensors” (will get back to skills a little later).

You can perceive reality in many ways. You have pre-conceived opinions about it, you have your own experiences and memories. But some parts of reality are hidden because you’re not having the right tools to perceive them. You simply don’t know how to “look” at them. It’s like trying to see the infra-red light, which cannot be seen without the appropriate sensor.

Well, those new reality sensors are fundamental. Because they will help you measure the success of your investment. Without them you can’t evaluate your investment.

Let’s say you want to travel the world and you’re saving money for that. In the process, you’ll be so focused on saving money that your real objective will start to shrink more and more, until it will disappear. You may get the money and start traveling the world, but you’ll travel with this unspeakable feeling of “something is missing”. Well, you don’t have the sensor for it anymore. You became so immersed in your activity that you forgot the goal. You actually can’t feel the activity, because you don’t have the corresponding sensor.

One of the sensors I had to carefully grow was “enjoy reality”. I wasn’t a really big enjoyer while I was an entrepreneur. Partly because I didn’t have the time for it, partly because it seemed like a perpetual postponed activity: “I will feel good when I’ll grow my company revenue three times”. Or some other bullshit like this. When I decided I will invest in myself, I started to look around and see what are the things which are bringing me joy. And, little by little, I started to expose myself to them, practicing my “enjoying” sensors every day.

For instance, I practiced my long distance travel sensors, going to see Thailand, Japan or New Zealand. And the more I did it, the more I wanted to do it.

Protecting and Enhancing Your Skills

Now, let’s get back a little to the skills. If you’re going to really invest in yourself, your skills are not to be traded, but protected. Fundamental difference. You’re not going to acquire some new skill requested by your job, but you’re going to enhance and polish what you already have, to make it more in sync with your real self. It’s the inverse process: instead of going out buying a new skill (by giving your focus and time in exchange), you’re looking at what you already have and see how it fits in your general structure. Do you still need it? If yes, then make it even better. If not, then leave it away, move your focus from it.

As an entrepreneur I had to grow a lot of skills required by my “job”. I learned tons of stuff about project management, programming, getting things done, negotiation, financial planning and a lot more. When I decided to invest in myself I took each and every one of those skills and polished it. Tried to find every facet of it and look how it fits into my real personality. Do I really like programming? Of course I do. So why ditching it just because “I’m a millionaire”. Re-focus, shift to another direction and start programming again, if I really want to. For instance I just finished my first iPhone app (with iPad and Android versions following pretty soon). Nothing fancy, and I’m sure I won’t bring down the AppStore with it, but a very important milestone for me.

Your Highest Asset: Health

This is by far the easiest way to understand this whole “invest in yourself” approach. I’m sure everybody knows that you can’t properly function if you’re neglecting your health. But not everybody do something about it. Well, I made this one of my top priorities and it paid back tremendously. I started to exercise regularly (which was something completely unthinkable back when I was running my company) and I even embarked on a 9 and a half months raw food diet.

I won’t tell you again about the benefits of eating raw, you can do a search on my blog and read the related articles. But I will tell you that something changed for the good in my metabolism after those 9 months. I’m a regular vegetarian now but I can function way better that I was before. If you’re going to try this “invest in yourself” approach, I recommend to start with an investment in your health: improve your diet and start exercising. You’re going to see the results faster than in any other area and that will keep you pumped and motivated.

Building A Web Of Relationships

Surprisingly enough, investing in yourself involves creating better relationships. You’re not alone. You cannot function alone. You’re living in a sea of interactions, in an ocean of stimuli. Each of these stimuli will trigger a certain response in you. Although we’re not always admitting it, our behavior is hugely shaped by our environment, by the people we’re surrounding ourselves with.

Hence, it goes without any doubt that if you want to improve your overall activity, you should change the stimuli you’re exposed to. In other words, you should change your relationships. That’s also a very cheap and affordable investment and it also pays back really quick.

Initially, I wanted to name a few of my online friends here, but I won’t. They’re way too many and I wouldn’t have enough space even if you could read this blog until tomorrow morning. It’s a fantastic feeling to have so many supportive and empathic relationships, especially since they’re not baked up with a physical presence.

But it wasn’t only about my online friends. Although I’ve brutally cut out many of my old professional relationships, I moved fast and started to create new ones. And it worked. The moment I ignored the potential business benefit I was seeing in each person, everything changed. They were not potential clients, they were nice people to have around.

Why Investing In Yourself?

We talked so far about “how to invest in yourself” but we didn’t talk about the “why?”. So, here we go: why investing in yourself?

Because, in the end, you’re the only one controlling your reality. The more you invest in yourself, the more independence and power you gain. And the more independent you are, the faster you’ll be able to cope with any change in your reality.

In fact, we’re not doing much outside of trying to cope with changes in our life, if you think for a while. Our entire life is just a continuous race against change. All we’re doing is to adapt to it: day becomes night, night becomes day, we get to work, we get home. We’re floating from one environment to the the next one.

Sometimes, those changes in the environment are pretty hard. Those are what we call “the bad times”, or crisis. But almost always, after one of these crisis, when we look back at the situation, we think “well, it wasn’t THAT bad, all I had to do was to adapt and adjust”.

More often than not, changes are challenging our “weak links”, or areas in which we’re not performing well. A financial crisis may have something to do with our impulse spending. A relationship crisis may have something to do with our self-respect or obsessive control. For instance, my “millionaire crisis” was about my need for validation and approval. Thinking that being a “millionaire” will make me more “fit” or “appropriate” .The weak link was of course my authenticity, which was heavily under pressure.

Each and every area challenged by a crisis is in fact a weak link which needs hardening. And this hardening process becomes much easier and almost enjoyable, if you have more resources for it. And that’s the real reason why investing in yourself always pays back.

If you have more power and flexibility, a crisis will never feel like a crisis, but like an opportunity.

“Ok, I’m facing a crisis now: here is this big change in my life. I will just dive in and see where I’ll end up. I know I can get through it. Let’s do it.”

Putting The Pieces Together

Now, let’s talk a little bit about some real life examples. Following my introduction, you remember that part of my money was invested in real estate, just before I decided to redirect it into my own personal development. My real estate investment is now evaluated 75% less than it was 2 years ago. I’m sure you know the phenomenon. In my initial plan, 2 years was supposed to be the exit period for that investment. What exit? At 75% less? You kidding me, right?

And yet, I don’t face the associated stress with such a powerful slump. And you know why? Because I didn’t give away control. By investing in my self I created a lot of other alternative paths. I still manage to adjust and adapt to this change by providing value through other channels.

• I run a rather popular blog which manages to bring in a steady (and growing) revenue month by month
• I started a series of workshops about online business
• I started a series of workshops about blogging
• I launched a new branch of building iPhone apps in my New Zealand company

None of the above would have been possible if I wouldn’t take the time to carefully invest in my self. I couldn’t sustain a blog without a lot of discipline and implication, I couldn’t start a series of workshops if I wouldn’t have something to share in them and I couldn’t start building iPhone apps if I wouldn’t harden my programming skills.

Right now I’m doing absolutely ok and I’m also feeling fantastic in the process. You know, there’s this huge difference between watching a (dying) real estate market, waiting desperately for a buyer and, all in all, giving away control to outside circumstances, and this feeling of being in sync, of flowing an enjoying the benefits of a well thought investment: myself.

After going through this accelerated investment process, after having my new, hardened version, put under extreme pressure, I know I can handle any other challenge. To be honest, I was inclined to write something like: “Whatever it comes, I don’t care, I am ready for it.”

But somehow, by using my “enjoy life more” sensor, I will rephrase it like this: “Whatever it comes, I really look forward to it. And I’ll enjoy every second of it.”

The 6 Stages Of A Failure

I am always amazed by how people react when I’m telling them what I do for a living: “I run a personal development blog”. Aside the usual eye rolling when it comes to put “blog” and “make a living” on the same level, they’re all having a sort of a chill. And a little step back. Like they want to have a better look at me.

From now on, they’re either totally ignoring me, putting a permanent “idiot” label on my forehead, either start to treat me like I’m Superman or something. The total opposite of failure, if you know what I mean. (I can’t tell you the exact proportion, though. I’d lean more towards the Superman thing, but the “idiot” team is also pretty strong). Anyway, fact is that once they learn I’m running a personal development blog, they somehow treat me as some sort of a guru.

Which I’m so totally not.

You’re Really Not Superman?

You may be disappointed, but I’ll say it again: no, I’m not Superman. Wrong blog, sorry. I don’t have a magic wand, hitting your heads gracefully and healing your life, your relationships or your finances. I’m not the ultimate carrier of the universal truth. I’m not the last beholder of the light of knowledge. Not even the best productivity guy around.

Then why the heck have I started a personal development blog?

Now take a deep breath and relax: the answer will puzzle you. Ready? Ok: I started a personal development blog because I know every imaginable thing about failure. I’ve been there so many times, I can’t even remember. I had failures in business, I had failures in personal and social relationships, in school, in my job (back when I had one) and, generally speaking, wherever you’ll find a consistent life niche, you can bet all your money that I had at least one major failure there. And you’ll win big time.

Yes, I had an online business for 10 years, but I’ve been on the verge of bankruptcy more than once. At some point, I had to sell my home (at that time a small studio I was living in) and move my entire company from the office I was renting to a small apartment, where I also had to sleep, just to pay my debt.

My first major personal relationship was also a complete fiasco. After my first child was born, I couldn’t manage to keep my relationship with his mother going on and had to split up. After that, I courageously entered a hasty marriage, only to end it up in a few years, with the same bitter taste in my mouth.

I can go on like this for hours. I mean, I really can.

But that’s not the point. The point is that all those failures, through a subtle but powerful process, made me stronger. And some of them made me even smarter, if you really wanna know.

The Anatomy Of A Failure

If you do something often enough, you’ll start to see some patterns. If you fail enough, you’ll start to discern the hidden structure of a failure. And this what I’m going to talk about for the rest of this post. In my experience, failure comes in 6 stages, each of equal importance.

1. The Experiment

That’s the first stage and also the most alive and most pleasant of all, so to speak. This is the part where you start something new, exciting, interesting. You take a risk. Start a business. Fall in love. Embark on an unexpected travel. This is the stage where you actually dive in without really knowing what’s going to happen. The experiment is the most intense part of a failure, because it releases our inner guardians. We act free of inhibitions, jumping around and being in the moment.

Unfortunately, this is also the stage we use to blame the most. We somehow associate the thrill, exhilaration and enthusiasm of this stage with the actual failure. Which is not entirely true.

For example, when you fall in love with the “wrong” person, this is the romantic phase. The phase in which you’re totally blind and helpless, enjoying every second with your new partner. You don’t really care if he or she is married, if he or she is an honest person. You just don’t want to know more, all you want is to feel more, to experiment more. I think we’ve all been there. And I think we’ll all be there too, at some point. But the fact that we felt good shouldn’t make us feel bad after we realize we did a mistake.

2. The Outcome

Something happens after this experiment: there is an outcome. Maybe your business idea wasn’t validated by reality (or, most likely, you did something wrong). Maybe your partner proved to be dishonest (or, most likely, you ignored some very obvious signs that he/she was actually flashing from the very beginning). Maybe the trip turned out to be a fiasco because the budget exploded and now you have to do the dishes in a restaurant to pay for your plane ticket home (or, most likely, you ignored some very common sense rule and it turned out that rule was for real).

The outcome is the part when we pay. When we realize we did something extremely wrong and we have to put up with the consequences. Sometimes we simply call this “the disaster”. If there’s something that could go wrong in the experiment, this is the stage when it actually explodes. Usually, in our faces.

Out of all 6 stages, this is the one we hate the most. This is the one which totally blows out the experiment, uncovering an ugly reality and making us feel miserable.

3. Denial

The first reaction is to deny the whole result. You avoid it altogether. Take refuge, step back, isolate, reject. The third stage is the stage of the blind man. You chose not to see the reality.

If the failure is about a business, you simply ignore the numbers. Act like you still have all the money you lost and their real absence is just a temporary glitch in the matrix. It will be fixed in a moment. Everything is ok. No worries.

Denial is more than often some kind of pain alleviation. The disaster was so big, that we simply couldn’t accept it. Our reality was so drastically challenged, that we can’t recognize it anymore, so we chose to run away and hide in a mental castle. Denial is also, more than often, the stage in which many of us are stuck for ever.

4. Excuses

Hopefully, at some point, you’ll get tired of living in denial. You’re going to realize you did a mistake. You’ll start to acknowledge the mess, but you won’t take responsibility. No, it wasn’t me: the market was tough. No, it wasn’t me: my partner lied. It’s the stage of excuses: somebody else did it.

As hard as it would be for you to accept this, I’m going to tell it anyway: this is the stage in which 90% of the people are stopping. They never get out of here. Accepting the mistake give them some sort of a relief, but they lack the power to take responsibility. Personal development is never possible if you blame others for your own failure. Never was and never will be.

What’s interesting at this stage is the enormous amount of creativity people are using in finding excuses. They’re ready to turn the world upside down and claim the rain is going from earth to the sky , just to avoid admitting that they turned on that stupid water hose.

5. Acceptance

Then, finally, you accept the outcome. Yes, you started that business, nobody forced you to. Yes, you entered that relationship, nobody forced you to. And it was a mistake. And you did it. And that caused a lot of a mess. And you still live in that mess, minute by minute.

That’s the most difficult stage of all. No wonder 90% of the people are stopping at the excuses layer. It’s so difficult to accept a failure. Because acceptance doesn’t only mean a verbal “yes”. It means a lot more. It means taking responsibility for what you’ve done. Accepting you did something that hurt somebody (most of the time, it’s you who is hurt, that’s true).

Acceptance makes things manageable again. When you were in denial, there wasn’t any handle to reality. Denial is a form of rejecting reality. And in the excuses layer, you were giving away your power to somebody else: you did it, not me, please solve it, so I can feel better. But now, if you made it to the acceptance stage, there’s hope.

6. Learning The Lesson

Which means taking some sort of real action. Acceptance in itself will only make you feel better on the inside, but will not change your external surroundings. If you did a major mistake and you accept it, that by itself won’t change the consequences of that mistake. You’re still on the same mess you created. Until you take action and get out.

And that’s the beauty of a lesson. You learn by doing. You see what you did wrong, when and how, and start to fix it. It’s like a DIY session, only it’s for the entire Universe. You broke something in your reality but now you know exactly how you did it. It’s like you have a map on how to re-assemble the pieces, so you pick your tools and start fixing that stuff.

The last stage is the stage in which you’re actually growing. It doesn’t really matter if you’re broke or alone, because now you’re doing stuff. You’re taking action. You’re exercising your powers again. The first and the last stage of a failure have something very subtle in common: enthusiasm. Only this time you’re not sleepwalking on the roof of your house, you’re fixing the roof  of your house.

Failure And Personal Development

Now, one may ask the following question (if nobody will do it, I’ll do it for you, I know you’re all thinking at it): if we know the anatomy of a failure so well, why aren’t we avoiding them altogether? Why do we keep making mistakes?

The short answer: because we can’t. The long answer: because this is how we learn. By experimenting, evaluating, accepting and taking action again. That’s the whole personal development process. As you can see, at the core of it it’s no secret of success, but rather the secret of failure. We grow up by identifying each stage of our failures and moving on.

One could argue that if we really know the anatomy of a failure, we could avoid it next time. Partially, this is true. But only partially. We may know a certain type of failure, but that wouldn’t prevent us from bumping into it again. On the contrary: have you noticed that we tend to make the same mistakes again and again?

Because it’s not about knowing the mistake and avoiding it. It’s about putting up with it. It’s about getting square. Learning the lesson. Once you learned the lesson, you won’t be attracted to that failure again. The glue to the failure is the fact that you didn’t consumed it entirely. There is still a very deep need for that specific lesson. You still need a cup of it to quench your thirst.

Once you’re not thirsty again, you’ll finally be free to try another lesson.

7 Personal Development Lessons – Kung Fu Panda Style

Personal development can be really fun, if you want to. I mean, it’s ok to write ambitious goals, to develop self-discipline and to embark on 30 days challenges. But all this can become really boring at some point. Being better doesn’t have to be all serious, grave and solemn. Life is also made of fun, relaxation and leisure. So, why don’t we try to mix some personal development with a little bit of cheerfulness?

Or, to borrow the words of a very close friend of mine: we can never have too much awesomeness in our lives. Yes, you got it right, this friend is no other than Kung Fu Panda (I know his name is in fact Po, but I will remember him for as long as I live as Kung Fu Panda).

Ladies and gents, fasten your seatbelt because we’re going to learn 7 personal development lessons from the master of all masters: Kung Fu Panda:

1. If You Can Dream About It, You’ll Eventually Get It

The lesson: no matter how unreal, huge or totally out of this Universe your dreams are, if you really trust them they’ll become reality at some point. Dreams do come true.

The plot: The very beginning of the movie pictures a mighty hero, saving the world from villains with outstanding kung-fu skills. There is no match for his art, and no worthy opponent. The shady world is breaking into a million pieces, under his skillful and magical hits. Alas, the morning reveals that the mighty hero  is just a huge Panda bear dreaming to become a Kung-Fu master. The rest of the story is in fact his journey towards fulfilling this great dream.

How many times you had the courage to dream something really big? A house in Toscana, maybe? An apartment in the middle of New York? Cruising the world with your own yacht?  Dating the most beautiful woman in the world? Come on, bring it on! Name your biggest dream! Don’t be shy, you can never have a dream too big. Just look at that Panda and how his dream is totally out of sync with his current reality.

And yet, by the end of the story, he fulfills it with magnificence. Not only he become a perfect warrior, but he also saves his village from Tai Lung, the darkest of the darkest kungu-fu warriors of all times. A lot of stuff happens between the dream and its fulfillment, that’s true, but that’s not the point here. The point is that your reality will always match your dreams. So you’d better dream something amazing.

2. Role Models Are Just Milestones

The lesson: role models are just milestones in our lives, their real purpose is to set us up for something bigger than we think and deliver. After that, a role model should disappear.

The plot: Kung-Fu Panda is a big admirer of the Furious Five, a pack of legendary warriors. Once he’s accepted under the training of Shi-Fu, and he’s allowed to practice with them, all he wants is to be accepted in their circle. Of course, the only thing he receive is rejection: they are way above him. But as time flies and Kung Fu Panda learn to look into his own soul and accept his own greatness, he totally overcome all his former heroes.

I’m sure you have a role model. Somebody who is inspiring and motivating. Somebody you look up to and thrive to become like him/her. That’s ok as long as you stop at the inspiration and motivation level. Going over this will be against the normal rules of evolution. You can’t become somebody else because you’re… you. Imitating somebody else to the bones will never make you better, on the contrary, will weaken your strength and ruin your authenticity.

A role model is just a catalyst, nothing more. Once you discover your own inner power, you will be amazed by how much you can do. And, most of all, you’ll be amazed by how small your ex-model will look from your new position. One of the biggest, yet subtlest, personal development roadblock is the “role model fixation”, a situation in which all you do is try to fit in the shoes of your guru. As sad as it may feel, at some point you’ll have to “kill” this image of success in order to make room for your own.

3. Your Biggest Fault Can Be Your Biggest Asset

The lesson: we’re too often trapped into “the proper way of doing things” forgetting that our uniqueness is the most precious gift we’re carrying. What we think it’s our biggest liability, is in fact our bigger asset.

The plot: despite the fact that he’s supposed to become the Dragon Warrior, the training of Kung-Fu Panda leads nowhere. Po is totally dumb and clumsy, not being able to perform not even the simplest exercise, to master Shi-Fu and Furious Five’s exasperation. But when master Shi-Fu discovers that Po is highly motivated by food (whenever he feels down, he usually fill himself with dumplings just to alleviate the pain) everything changes. By using a mental connection between food and exercises, Po is finally becoming a martial art master

What’s your biggest fear? What’s the thing that you want to avoid the most? What are you terrified by? Whatever this is, there lies the key to your transformation. Although Po was emotionally blocked by his looks (an obese bear obsessed with food) the moment he realizes that this liability is in fact the thing that motivates him the most, his life changes for good. And for the best.

Each and every one of your liabilities are in fact disguised opportunities. Facing them upward and accepting as part of your core being will eventually convert them to assets. It takes a lot of power and maybe some painful confrontation to get to accept them, but the reward will be unmeasurable. Whenever you feel down, defeated or just unfit, remember that the Dragon Warrior was just an obese, bulimic panda before he realized his true greatness.

4. Sometimes Things Just Go Wrong

The lesson: accept it and deal with it. Life is not always fair. In fact, life is never fair, we just happen to have the same opinion every now and then, that’s all. We can’t control anything, all we do is to adjust and adapt.

The plot: Tai Lung, the negative character with super kung-fu knowledge and mastery, escapes the high security prison using only a small feather.Despite the guardians, the gates, the chains, against all odds, he really manages to get out and to start pursuing his revenge. Apparently, the role of Po, our Panda, was to stop Tai Lung when he become the Dragon Warrior. Which, eventually, happens, but not without some very upsetting ups and downs. Especially downs.

We’re not living in a fairy tale. We’re living in a highly unpredictable environment, filled with unexpected challenges and sudden turnarounds. The real point is not to avoid them but to manage them. Because, in fact, we can’t avoid them. Not only because we have limited control, but because it’s in our nature to be exposed to challenges and pressure in order to grow an evolve.

Living a life of total security is a paradox. The mere act of being born is a very dangerous one: separating two living creatures and pushing the youngest into a hostile environment is a highly traumatic event. And yet, we forget that and expect things to “go right”. Just because every now and then things are going right, we can’t expect this to happen on a regular basis. Sometimes, life only needs a small feather to turn the whole universe against us.

5.  Have Hope, You’ll Eventually Get In

The lesson: even if you’re in the worst possible circumstances, something unexpected may happen, which will literally make you jump over the obstacles. No matter how difficult life seems now, it can always turn the other way around in one second.

The plot: the show of the Furious Five, in which master Oogway (the turtle) wants to select the Dragon Warrior, is held on a very high mountain. Our Kung Fu Panda had a little bit of trouble getting in. He got there the last one and despite his desperate efforts, he just couldn’t get in. Until some unexpected coincidence actually make him fly over the walls and fall from the sky just in the middle of his future destiny.

This lesson is a mirror of the last one: life can go unexpectedly well the same way it can go unexpectedly wrong. The circumstances can change in a second. Whenever you think you hit the bottom, something incredible may happe and you’re suddenly projected right in the middle of your dream life. Provided you don’t quit, of course.

From a personal development perspective the lesson can be read as: be prepared, even if your current environment won’t give you much. Now. But you never know what the next second will bring into your life. Embrace possibilities. Summon the potential of the next second. Just be prepared for something magic to happen.

6. The Magic Power Lies Within

The lesson: your power is in yourself, not in outside circumstances. Don’t you ever give your power away to circumstances like luck, magic gizmos or other people. Everything you need to know and have is already inside you.

The plot: all Kung-Fu fighters, Tai Lung included, are searching for some powerful Dragon Scroll, which will allegedly give infinite power to its owner. In the end, Po finds it but, surprise, the Dragon Scroll is empty, there’s nothing in it. At the same time, Kung Fu Panda learns from his father that the secret of his famous family soup was… nothing. In fact, he realize, the Scroll it’s not empty, it’s a mirror of yourself. All the power lies within.

Too often we give our power away to circumstances: we imagine that we will be more powerful if we would have access to some external tools. We think we’d be happier with more money. We think we could solve all our problems with some magic touch or a lucky strike. And, while waiting for these external circumstances to manifest, we ignore the only real source of power: ourselves.

The pursuit of the perfect tool for drastically improve your lfie will always end with the same result: at the end of the race, there’s only you. The Magic Scroll is empty. And it always was. Because all the real power is within you, not outside. You are the master of your own circumstances. You don’t really need something to prove your power. All you need is to trust that you have power, and you”ll manifest.

7. You Can’t Have Enough Awesomeness

The lesson: there isn’t any, really. That’s just a fact

The plot: In Kung Fu Panda’s dream, there is this line which already became folklore: “You can’t have enough awesomeness”.

And you know what? What he dreamed about was right: you can’t really have enough awesomeness in your life.

Dream your biggest dream and have faith it will come true. If Kung Fu Panda did it, you’ll do it too.

Isn’t this awesome?

Are You The Best Version Of Yourself?

As a converted geek I’m always keen on keeping my digital tools updated. You know the drill: backups and upgrades, cleaning up unneeded files and keep it slim. I’m almost always up to date and thoroughly enjoy it. Oh, the secret bliss of running the latest version of my operating system! The subtle satisfaction of watching how smoothly my laptop makes its apps literally flying over the carefully chosen desktop background image!

Alas, that’s not always the case with my real self. Unfortunately, my mental operating system is more  than often obsolete. I sometimes feel like I lack some crucial features or don’t know how to handle specific events. In some specific cases, this unstable behavior goes for years. I run into the same patterns, like hitting the same keyboard combination, and always get the same result: a frozen screen, for instance. Or, if it’s a major crisis, even a “blue screen of death”, followed by a brutal reboot.

I’m sure you’ve been there too. We all did. This happens because we’re not updated to our latest version of ourselves. We didn’t upgrade. We’re still running an old and clumsy command line interface, we can’t address more physical memory to incorporate new experiences and we really don’t know how to handle new devices in our life, because we’re missing some important drivers.

Joke aside, our behavior as human beings can be comfortably described as an operating system metaphor. Introducing the converted geek 5 steps guide to upgrade to your best version of yourself:

1. Balance Your Core Features

Any operating system has a set of core features. Any human being has a unique set of qualities. Be sure to keep a close balance between all parts. An equilibrium in motion. Too much of something will make the rest seem unfit. An imbalanced structure of qualities will make your mental operating system crash without warning on the weak spots.

For example, some operating systems are better at networking, but they really suck at graphics. Some other are good at office productivity but they lack a proper driver integration and so on. What makes your presence so valuable is not personal excellence on a single topic, but rather a stable load under high pressure. A well balanced mix of qualities.

2. Defrag Your Mind

We have a virtually unlimited capacity of information storage. What makes us feel like we don’t is the narrow channel used to access it. Our conscious mind can process only 5-7 stimuli form the environment, but the unconscious mind is capable of much more. It’s like a having huge, actually infinite, hard-drive but a very slow access protocol to it.

Until we will be able to broaden this channel, we can try to improve some other parts. We can take care of our mental clutter by defragmenting it every now and then. GTD addicted will call this mental defragmentation “emptying the mind” while other people may simply call it meditation. While even others call it: “keep my things in good order”.

Read more about how to defrag your mind in 5 easy steps.

3. Update Your Drivers

Every now and then we attach some new piece of hardware to our computers. Like a printer or a nice camera. But this new equipment will not function unless there is a driver, a way to communicate with the computer operating system. This is exactly what happens when we incorporate something new in our lives: from a new car to a new relationship or job.

Unless we will strive to update our drivers to really understand how to talk with those new entities, we will not function properly. We may look like we have a printer (or a wife, or a luxury car) attached, but it will not really work until we build a new communication protocol to it. We can’t expect to have something new in our lives without changing ourselves to fully integrate it.

Read more about how to manage and upgrade your life device drivers.

4. Stay Virus Free

If you expose your operating system to untrusted sources, you may experience a very bad situation called “virus”. These things are basically independent entities which are taking control over your system and make it their own toy. For fun or for profit. The same thing can happen to your mind. More often than you think, your mind is actually controlled by somebody else.

Staying virus free is much more difficult for your mental operating system than for your computer operating system. Especially the cleaning action is quite tedious. Sometimes, your mind will remain partially infected for ever. So, the best way to avoid a mental virus infection is prevention: trust your own mind, make your own judgment and take everything with a little bit of salt.

Read more about how to keep your mind virus free.

5. Enjoy An Unexpected Shutdown Every Now And Then

No operating system is perfect. There are (and there will always be) minor memory leaks, open loops and untested functions which will, in time, make your computer unstable. This is why is recommended to push the shutdown button every now and then, the same way you take an unexpected 15 minutes nap with the head on the desktop, when your boss is known to be in his lunch break.

At a higher level, this translates in a more relaxed way to look at the world. Keeping yourself too focused can sometimes do more harm and good. Too much tension will eventually break something around you, if not you. Cease to believe you are in control and give your powers away every once in a while. Trust that everything will be good in the end. If it’s not ok, then it is not the end.

The Undocumented Feature

Every geek knows that all operating systems have some deeply hidden treasures, also known as undocumented features. Sometimes those features are just simple Easter Eggs, plain and useless pieces of information, only hidden. But sometimes, those undocumented features are really valuable tools, precious improvements which are giving you more time and computing power.

In  your mental operation system, those undocumented features are in fact your personal power. Your hidden, undercover potential waiting to be unleashed. Those features are secret weapons you can use to do things nobody think you can do. It’s your identity. Your uniqueness, your singularity, your own personal gift to the world.

Nobody really knows what your undocumented feature is, except you. You are the carrier of this fantastic energy, of this unique feature which made you so necessary and needed that the world couldn’t properly function without you. That’s right, you’re here for a reason. The world called for you and you have to deliver. You really have to.

So, you’d better pull yourself together and, for starters, go find a mirror and ask this to yourself: am I really running the best version of myself? Really, really?

Translations of this post: Spanish.

33 Personal Development Blogs To Read in 2010

It’s been an incredible 2009 for me and I’m sure for many of us. I’ve done more than I could ever imagine in 2009 and the time has come to give proper credit to my inspiration sources. I was never alone in this journey. On the contrary, I’ve been honored with warm, strong and continuous support from my friends. This post is to spread the word about their wonderful work.

1. Change Your Thoughts

Energetic, precise and supportive, Steven, from Change Your Thoughts, was one of the closest online friends during 2009. His blog is one of the fastest growing self-improvement blogs in the world right now. Subscribe, read and enjoy, if you are even remotely thinking to improve your life, this is the spot to start.

Blog Address: StevenAitchison.co.uk | Twitter account: @StevenAitchison

2. AdvanceLifeSkills.com

Jonathan, from Advanced Life Skills, was an incredible support for me during this year. His blog is one of the most balanced and well written in the self-improvement niche. Not only he was updating it like clockwork, but the quality of the articles was steadily growing up. Check out his ebook, by the way, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Blog Address: AdvancedLifeSkills.com | Twitter Account: @mrjWells

3. QuantumLearning.pl

Ian Peatey, from Quantum Learning, was one of the first self improvement bloggers I met in real life. And we started a very fulfilling real life friendship. His writing has the rare quality of being both healing and motivating at the same time. If you’re looking for the best source of nonviolent communication, his blog is THE blog.

Blog Address: QuantumLearning.pl | Twitter Account: @IanPeatey

4. RatRaceTrap.com

Stephen, from Rat Race Trap, is another constant and reliable online friend of mine, He writes about self-improvement, brain improvement techniques, achieving success and goal setting. And not only. I highly recommend reading his blog, if only to escape from our daily rat race trap every once in a while.

Blog Address: RatRaceTrap.com | Twitter Account: @ratracetrap

5. SidSavara.com

Sid is one of the first online friends with whom I agreed to disagree. Although we were quite opinionated on a specific topic, and none of us would quit their position, we found a way to keep a very solid online friendship. His blog is neat, clean and filled with well thought information. A must read in self improvement.

Blog Address: SidSavra.com | Twitter Account: @sidsavara

6. LearnThis.ca

Mike, from Learn This, owns one of the first blogs I started to read this year and it paid a lot. He was behind my first huge list post – which started as a challenge from him – and he as also one of the top commenters in my blog. He writes about leadership and self improvement. And he writes very well about that.

Blog Address: LearnThis.ca | Twitter Account: @Mike_King

7. NakedInEden.com

Robin, from Naked in Eden, is an incredibly warm, authentic and powerful woman. Her writing is so powerful that I seldom spend less than 30 minutes on her blog. Recently, she got a book publishing deal, which means we’re all fortunated: we’re going to read even more from her.

Blog Address: NakedInEden.com | Twitter Account: @RobinEaston

8. TimelessInformation.com

Armen, from Timeless Information, writes about personal development, leadership and a lot of other self-improvement related topics. I was attracted by his boldness and lack of inhibition as well as by his alert and well-documented writing style. Be sure to take your daily dose of mental energy.

Blog Address: TimelessInformation.com | Twitter Account: @Armen

9. FreeStyleMind.com

Oscar is relatively new in my circle of online friends, it was only in the last few months that I started to follow his blog. Not only we share the fact that English is not our primary language (his primary being Italian, mine being Romanian) but we do share a lot of common ideas about self-improvement.

Blog Address: FreeStyleMind.com | Twitter Account: @OscarDelBen

10. LiteMind.com

Luciano, from Lite Mind, was such an inspiration this year. His structured blog helped me to better organize my ideas and also made me ponder a lot. Thought provoking and neat, this is how you could describe his very popular blog. Not to mention his crazy challenges, like crafting lists of 100 items.

Blog Address: LiteMind.com | Twitter Account: @LucianoP

11. MyWifeQuitHerJob.com

Steven, from My Wife Quit Her Job, is one of the most honest successful online entrepreneurs I ever met. He writes about the adventures of his online business, as well as about how to start, maintain and grow your own online business. First hand information, updated often, a must read resource.

Blog Address: MyWifeQuitHerJob.com | Twitter Account: @mywifequit

12. CelestineChua.com

Celes, from The Personal Excellence Blog, was one of my biggest discoveries in the first half of the year. With an elaborate style and a clean perspective, her writing is extremely motivating. She recently started a series of workshops but she keeps updating the blog constantly.

Blog Address: CelestineChua.com | Twitter Account: @CelestineChua

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13. TheDiscomfortZone.com

Tim, from The Discomfort Zone, has a rare talent: to write comfortably about the discomfort zone. Don’t expect to find the usual paths in his blog, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, be prepared to find new approaches, surprising angles and sometimes upsetting situations. It’s the discomfort zone, after all.

Blog Address: TheDiscomfortZone.com | Twitter Account: @TimBrownson

14. AbundanceTapestry.com

Evelyn, from Abundance Tapestry, was a big surprise for me. Not only she writes about abundance in the most simple way I saw, but she is also a qualified Akashic Secret reader. Although brief, our direct interaction was powerful and enlightening. Her writing is simple, but extremely inspiring.

Blog Address: AbundanceTapestry.com | Twitter Account: @evelynlim

15. SomedaySyndrome.com

Alex, from Someday Syndrome, is a very gifted writer and also quite a disciplined one. His blog theme, the syndrome of “Someday” is very close to me. As a chronic procrastinator, I suffered a lot from it in my younger days. Highly recommend his blog if you think your life will become better only “someday”. As opposed to “right now”.

Blog Address: SomedaySyndrome.com | Twitter Account: @AlexFayle

16. PluginId.com

One of the best personal development blogs around during this year. It was often an inspiration for me and definitely one of the blogs I read without skipping any posts. What stands out is the “no bullshit” personal development approach.

Blog Address: PluginId.com | Twitter Account: @pluginid

17. Porsidan.com

One of the latest entries in RSS feed, Jay Schyrer’s Porsidan.com is an enlightening experience. The clean and clear blog interface is letting the powerful message to flow away unobstructed. Jay is compassionate, warm and inspiring.

Blog Address: Porsidan.com | Twitter Account: @JayScyrer

18. ManvsDebt.com

I met Adam Baker, from ManvsDebt.com during one of mu trips to New Zealand. Energetic and passionate, extremely confident, I count the days until he will be wildly acclaimed as an A-list blogger in the personal finance niche. If you want to know where your money is, read his blog.

Blog Address: ManVsDebt.com | Twitter Account: @manvsdebt

19. Prolificliving.com

Farnoosh, from ProlificLiving.com is an incredible person: she writes about living life to the fullest, traveling the world and learning to tango. An amazing and refreshing blog. Be sure to check out her yoga videos.

Blog Address: ProlificLiving.com | TwitterAccount: @prolificliving

20. JungleOfLife.com

Lance, from Jungle Of Life, was also an early discovery this year. I was a little bit of a lurker, not engaging too much in the wonderful community he created around his blog, but this didn’t stop me to take full advantage from what he writes, especially his Sunday Thought for the Day.

Blog Address: JungleOfLife.com | Twitter Account: @lance02

21. IlluminatedMind.com

Again, one of the latest additions to my RSS reader, Jonathan Mead, from Illuminated Mind, is an incredible energetic writer. Adept of “no bullshit” personal development he’s spreading one of the most authentic self improvement messages. Check him out and be amazed.

Blog Address: Illuminated Mind.com | Twitter Account: @jonathanmead

22. ZeenatSyal.wordpress.com

Zeenat Merchant-Syal, from Positive Provocation, literally exploded a few months ago in the personal development niche. She’s an incredibly warm and passionate woman, with a touching message. The more you read her blog, the more you want to open your heart.

Blog Address: ZeenatSyal.wordpress.com | Twitter Account: @zeenatsyal

23. QuestforBalance.com

Lisis, from Quest For Balance, is a distinct voice. The name of the blog says almost everything about what she is writing about. But there is one thing you would find out only by reading the blog: and that’s the fact that she is truly passionate about you. Yes, you.

Blog Address: QuestForBalance.com | Twitter Account: @Serene_Balance

24. Kikolani.com

Kristi, from Kikolani.com, writes about the art of blogging and all that comes with it. I was inspired by her series called Fetching Friday, in which she shares tons of interesting links from a variety of topics, from SEO to personal development. You better check this out.

Blog Address: Kikolani.com | Twitter Account: @kikolani

25. LifeToolkit.net

Maria Galca, a fellow Romanian coach, shares at Life Toolkit her life experiences. Although the blog is pretty young, I can tell that, if a certain amount of constant work will go into it (and from what I saw, it will go) we will all witness a new bright star in the personal development niche pretty soon.

Blog Address: LifeToolkit.net | Twitter Account: @mariagalca

26. Bunnygotblog.com

Sophia, from Bunny got Blog, was one of the most interesting bloggers I met this year. He writes about famous people, about her life and her challenges. And she does it in a very honest way. By far one of the most authentic voices I heard last year.

Blog Address: BunnyGotBlog.com | Twitter Account: @bunnygotblog

27. JennyMannion.com

I first met Jenny when I was searching for some health related information. She writes about healing, reconnection and law of attraction in the most sincere and warm way you can imagine. Every time I read her blog I am inspired.

Blog Address: JennyMannion.com | Twitter Account: @jennymannion

28. Upgraderality.com

I met Diggy, from Upgrade Reality, through Glenn Allsop. They both share the same passion for life and they both write in the same persuasive and direct way. From what I saw so far, his blog is made upon a very successful recipe. Keep an eye on it.

Blog Address: Upgradereality.com | Twitter Account: @upgradereality

29. Smallbizbee.com

Matt, from Small Biz Bee, was one of my partners in my first massive guest posting project. He makes a big deal out of small business, as he often likes to say it, and he’s doing this very well. If interested in small business trends and info, do check it out.

Blog Address: SmallBizBee.com | Twitter Account: @smallbizbee

30 Inspiredmag.com

That was a very nice surprise. I’m not a fan of online magazines, but this one proved to be quite different from what I knew. It’s a source of daily inspiration mainly for graphic designers but also for many human creatives, as they say. Highly recommend, refreshing reading and interface.

Blog Address: Inspiredm.com | Twitter Account: @inspiredmag

A -Listers

We all know them and we read them for years. They helped me quite a lot during 2009 and I felt the need to mention their work here.

StevePavlina.com

I met Steve personally during his live workshop in Vegas, in October last year. The workshop was a great experience. Combine this with Steve’s inspiring writing and you’ll find out why I still follow him, although his days as a role model for me are over for a long time.

Blog Address: StevePavlina.com | Twitter Account: @stevepavlina

ZenHabits.net

I was quite surprised when Leo from ZenHabits left a comment on my blog this year. It took me a while then to realize that even A-listers are just people, like any of us. Leo made me understand with that comment that success is something from within, regardless of outside validation.

Blog Address: ZenHabits.net | Twitter Account: @zenhabits

FourHourWorkWeek.com

Tim Ferris continues to be an inspiration to me. Things that still made me read his blog: diversity, travel and self-improvement. Not necessarily in this exact order.

Blog Address: ForHourWorkWeek.com | Twitter Account: @tferris

***

Incredible things happens when you apply courage to get out of your comfort zone, initiating interaction with other people. A subtle yet powerful energy transfer starts. I’ve been exposed to all of the people I mentioned above and I’ve become better because of them. Most of what I did in 2009 is a direct or indirect result of being in touch with those energy sources.

All I can say now is: follow them. And watch your life changing as well.

100 Ways To Screw Up Your Life

A couple of months ago I wrote a blog post about 100 Ways To Live A Better Life. The post got featured almost instantly on Delicious, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Since then, it gets a few hundreds hits every day and a new comment every once in while (although it’s more than 2 months old now). But re-reading it the other day I spotted a slight imbalance. Couldn’t tell at first what it was, but it was an imbalance. Like a picture with too much pink.

Then it hit me: life is not pink. It’s rough and challenging and filled with tests and temptations. And this is what makes it beautiful, after all. Living a better life stems most of the time from making a lot of mistakes and learning from them, rather than from avoiding challenges. Better try and fail than isolate yourself in a sea of delusion and non-action. As pink as that sea might be.

So, I realized I know at least 100 ways to screw up your life too. And I also realized that this list would make an honest companion to the first blog post. Like a mirror or something. Oh, and if you wonder, the following 100 ways to screw up your life were personally verified at some point in my life by yours truly. And now I’m pretty happy about that .

[Update: There is an ebook based on this. Go to the downloads to get a free preview, or scroll to the end of it for more info. Korean translation of the ebook. ]

Without further ado, let’s start:

1. Regret Stuff

Feel sorry about what happened to you. Spend time and energy on things that aren’t even there, but you feel are “unsolved yet”. Keep your focus on the past and ignore the present. This is what regrets do: they tie you down to things in the past that doesn’t matter anymore. Well, you can’t do anything about them anyway: accept and move on.

2. Accept to Be Lied To

Even if you know you’re lied. Accept to be told lies in the name of something “bigger” than you: a family, a career, anything. Eat it up every day while knowing the truth and still accepting that other, twisted reality, hoping at some point things will go better. They won’t. And there is no such thing as something bigger than you.

3. Stay in the Wrong Partnership

Wrong partnerships may be both personal or professional. You may think it’s just temporary or even “it might be good for you” but you’re just deluding yourself. Wrong partnerships are nothing but swamps: they’ll slowly drag you down. If you don’t get out of them the moment you realize they’re wrong for you, you’ll become one with the swamp.

4. Succumb to Addictions

Make them “bigger” than you. Call it alcohol or just an addiction to fight. Call it work, as in workaholic, or eating much more than you need. Call it drugs or just an addiction to a person (co-dependence). Giving in to addictions is a conscious act of surrender. You accept to lose a battle. And then another one. Slowly, you’ll going to lose the war.

5. Dream Without Taking Action

Daydreaming is good. It opens your heart to new universes and goals. But daydreaming without action is useless. Sitting on your fat ass while waiting for all your intentions to manifest, without taking the smallest action for moving things forward, won’t change anything. Oh, sorry, it will change something: you ass will be fatter.

6. Sleep More Than You Need

Because you’re too tired of doing the same stupid things again while you’re awake. Or because you’re avoiding your real life, searching for a shallow refuge under the pillow. And, of course, lose all the opportunities you could embrace while you’re sleeping. Becoming an early riser, on the other hand, is more than often priceless.

7. Play The Guilt Card

If you did something wrong, instead of a) assessing what was really wrong, b) learn the lesson and c) move on, play the guilt card. Feel guilty for all the bad things you did, until you start feeling guilty for all the things you did. Playing the guilt card is closely related to religion, but it can occur outside religion too. Just get over it. Guilt can’t pay your rent.

8. Victimize Yourself

If you lost something, act like you’ve lost everything. Be a victim. Ask for other people’s compassion. Play like every people you meet makes whatever omelet he wants from you. Victimizing yourself in exchange of compassion is far more common than you think. It’s contagious too. Just remember you may lose a battle, but that’s not making you a victim.

9. Avoid Introspection

As difficult as it seems, every once in a while you should step back and interview yourself. Bite the bullet and ask yourself a bunch of tough questions. Better give a wrong answer now to a difficult question, but move on with your life, than ignoring what’s going on with you and remain stuck. Introspection always pays forward.

10. Work Harder Than You Can

And ruin your health while pretending you’re sacrificing for the good of the … (fill in the blanks: family, friends, boss, career, planet). You have physical limits and usually that’s a good thing. Breaking up your physical limits in the name of a stupid cause will screw up your life faster than you think. And for a long time. Work smarter, not harder.

11. Don’t Play

Because it’s stupid, it wastes your time and energy and it doesn’t give you any measurable results. Don’t play and lose the only divine thing that you get for free. Don’t play and let your inner child become a gray adult with heavy topics to discuss every minute. Don’t play and watch how your life gets seriously screwed up.

12. Stop Learning

Because you already know too much or because what you will learn will not give you any competitive advantage in the narrow niche you’re playing now. Stop learning because there’s so much to discover that you won’t cover it even in a dozen lifetimes. Stop learning because it gets so difficult and it takes you out of your comfort zone. Yeah, why bother? Screw it!

13. Gossip

Talk bad about other people. That’s a 100% sure way to screw up your relationships, your social credibility, your personal values. The way you talk about people often determines the way you act towards them. Gossip is a heavy weapon and, no matter how skilled you get at using it, it always destroys its owner. Do it often. It will accelerate the decay process.

14. Aim To Be Famous

And do all the stupid things other people expect from famous people in the process. Beg for attention, hunt the hype, dress like a douche. Cheat your friends for the sake of some media visibility or discard your personal life. Being famous is not at all a guarantee that you will automatically live a fulfilling life. Most of the time, the opposite is true.

15. Follow The Money

While this could be a very precious advice for an entrepreneur, living your entire life in a continuous chase of money will most likely screw you up. Hunting money is difficult because money is a very volatile concept. A big part of it lives only in your mind. And money can only buy things. See what you can do with a bank check in a morgue. Pretty much nothing.

16. Don’t Make Friends

Stay alone. Don’t connect. Because you’re ashamed of something in your behavior or look. Or because you think you’re too good for them. Whatever the reason, just stay away for people, and, by all means, don’t make new friends. And you will get the most exquisite place at your own drama movie, in which, you guessed, your life eventually gets screwed.

17. Fight Your Enemies

Which comes down to first make and then keep some enemies. Which is all round stupid. Enemies are a mental construct. You can’t have enemies unless you’re ready to give away your power to somebody else. Nobody can really hurt you unless you allow this to happen. Fighting your enemies is in fact feeding your enemies.

18. Be Lazy

Like in not doing any type of work. Totally avoiding responsibilities. Waiting for others to do stuff for you. Staying away from anything that might remotely put you in the position to actually do something helpful for other people. Laziness is a disease in itself. Allowing it to spread into your life is like inviting an illness to take over your body.

19. Don’t Take Risks

Live a cozy life and always keep it into your comfort zone. Don’t get out of there. Taking risks is… well, risky. You can get hurt. You can lose your money. You can fail. But taking risks is also the only way you can grow. There is no real growth without risk. There is no victory without even starting a battle. There is no better life without challenges.

20. Be Selfish

Do things for yourself and for yourself only. Act like you’re the only one in the Universe. Don’t share anything. Aim to be the richest, most powerful and influential person in the world. Selfishness is an incredibly effective limitation factor. You will become the richest person in the world, if you really want to, only your world will become incredibly small: you’ll be its only inhabitant.

21. Gamble

Start fighting with randomness. Hope that one lucky hit will end up all your troubles. Gambling is really funny as an entertainment activity, but once you make it the core of your life, you’re sinking into a swamp of despair. You can’t use gambling to solve your problems, you’re simply not designed like this. You’re designed to create and enjoy the process.

22. Be Stuck in a Job You Hate

Because it pays well. Or because you’re too scared to look for another one. Or because somebody told you when you were a kid that you have to have a job. You spend more than half of your lifetime at your job so if you chose to stay in a job you hate, you’ll surely end up hating your entire life. In my experience, it happens rather sooner than later.

23. Don’t Listen

Pretend you know everything. Or act like you don’t need any advice, suggestion or feed-back. Don’t listen to your partner, to your friends, to your intuition. And lose all the new perspectives you can get, all the fresh answers you never thought of and all the opportunities that could arise. Don’t listen and be prepared to face failure really fast.

24. Lie To People

Because you want to get something from them. Because you find pleasure in deceiving them. Because you think it’s just an innocent play. Or because you can’t stand telling the truth. Lying to other people is an addiction because it gives you a temporary feeling of relief: you passed this challenge, now you can move on. Only you can’t, really.

25. Lie To Yourself

Don’t believe what you’re feeling or experiencing. Avoid facing the truth and delude yourself. Live in a land of fantasies and hope everything will be great (or worse, if you’re a pessimistic by nature). Just don’t listen to your inner voice and succumb to social pressure, bad habits or negative emotions. Lying to yourself is a suicidal activity.

26. Don’t Ask For Help

And live like on a desert island, isolated and alone. It’s ok to ask for help every once in a while. It’s ok to be taken care of every once in a while. Just don’t make a habit out of it and you’ll be fine. But remember: you won’t be able to cope with everything in your life just by yourself. You’ll get by with a little help from your friends.

27. Don’t Exercise

No need to become an athlete but if you’re not taking care of your physical body, it won’t take care of you either. Avoiding physical activities, as small or insignificant they may seem, it will slowly degrade your physical performance and make you prone to illness. And if you just think how easy it is to take a walk in the park…

28. Eat Junk

From the same category as the one above: feed yourself crap and you’ll produce crap. And I’m not talking about the residual crap we’re all producing in the process, I’m talking about the direct result of the process. We’re very much influenced by what we eat and any imbalance in this area will be visible instantly. Junk food creates junk life.

29. Don’t Spend Time in Nature

We’re pretty far from creating a perfectly balanced artificial living environment. Our cities are sucking up our power instead of feeding us energy. We’re still children of the nature. Avoiding nature in the name of a super-civilized lifestyle will subtly deprive us from one of the most forceful sources of energy, slowly weakening our strengths.

30. Don’t Clean Up Your House

How not cleaning up your house can screw up your life? Well, it will not screw you directly, unless you chose to have a date with the love of your life in your messy house, in which case your chances will dramatically decrease. But, generally speaking, it will set up the field for other bad things to happen, like procrastination or just plain, old laziness.

31. Procrastinate

Postpone tasks. Avoid doing stuff. Daydream. Procrastinate and delay everything you have to do. That will surely help screw up your professional relationships, your personal life and your self esteem. If you want to became a master in procrastination, here’s a small tutorial which will even help you procrastinate in a more productive way.

32. Spend More Than You Can Afford

Because you don’t have any idea what money is or just because you want to keep up with the Joneses. Spending more than you can afford will not only sink you in debt, but it will make it really difficult to get out of there. It’s not how much you have but how much you are. Not to mention that spending more than you have will never make you rich.

33. Limit Your Social Life

Stop going out. Isolate yourself in the safety of a job, a limited family life or a perpetual and meaningless daydreaming. We’re social animals, even though sometimes we’re not that good at it. If you stop going out you’re cutting up your feed-back loop, slowly going down in a spiral of self-sufficiency and mediocrity. Get out, see people!

34. Chose a Career Instead of a Lifestyle

Too often we’re planning our life career-centric. We’re making all the necessary steps for acquiring skills, titles and diplomas. We try to fit in a more or less guaranteed career. What we forget in the process is that a career is not identical with our life. At the end of the day we often ask ourselves who was the person who talked with our mouth…

35. Treat People Like Assets

Instead of treating them like human beings, with their own lives and expectations. This is especially true if you live by the one above, judging your own life expectations in business terms. People are not assets, like a computer. They have lives and hopes and ups and downs. Assets are dead, people are alive, with all the good or bad that comes with being alive.

36. Chose (And Stay In) The Wrong Friendships

You know they’re the wrong ones when you have to do things you don’t really want, just to be accepted in their circle. You know, drinking your life every night or just dressing up in a certain way. A real friend will never put any condition on your relationship. If you don’t have the courage to step out of this bad circle, expect the circle to eat you.

37. Reject Criticism

You don’t know everything in the world. So, instead of rejecting criticism, you should accept it. Maybe they won’t be always right about you, but at least you’ll have a feed-back loop. Many people fear criticism but in my experience this fear is not justified. Be thankful for your critics, it means you’re still worth something. And it also means you’re improvable.

38. Buy Your Relationships

Substitute the warmness of a normal relationship with the practical coldness of money. While this will certainly ease your day to day living, it will deeply affect your emotional level. Many marriages are putting so much strain on this aspect that they succeed in destroying any trace of true emotional bond between the partners. Just live and let live.

39. Follow The Rules

Eat everything they feed you, talk like they teach you and, by all means, don’t swear when you feel like. Just don’t exercise your own choosing abilities and you’ll soon become a perfect social puppet, ready to be manipulated with invisible strings by the first puppeteer who finds you. Following rules should always be backed up with your own judgment.

40. Don’t Manage Your Money

We still live in a world where money plays an important role. Several generations from now maybe money won’t be necessary, but, until then, you should be able to manage it now. That means making day to day living up to investing or building a lifestyle. Just pay attention to it and manage it, that enough will save you from some nasty troubles.

41. Promise More Than You Can Do

Because you’re ashamed to admit you can’t do more, or because you hope things will magically get better. Promising more than you can cope with is often perceived as a way to push the destiny to obey your wishes. I think it’s the other way around. The more your promise without cover, the more you piss off your fate.

42. Don’t Keep Your Promises

Not keeping promises is another way to say to the world: “I’m not a reliable person, please go away from me. I may be very good at promises and make you believe I can offer a lot, but instead, I’m just lying to you.” Better not promise at all than not keeping your promises.

43. Overdo

Improve where there’s no improvement needed. Strive to do things nobody really wants. Do more than you have to just to show off. Many people think that going way over what they are expecting to, in order to impress or just hunt for a promotion, will make their life easier. Too bad that when you get that promotion you’ll be too dried out to enjoy.

44. Quit

Quit doing what you’re doing best. Quit your friends when they need you. Quit your partner because you got bored. Just quit. Instead of staying there and do what you have to do, just run away, cover your eyes and pretend it never happened. Being a quitter is one of the most relaxing ways of living. It’s also the safest way to screw up your life too.

45. Say Only Yes

Be submissive even if you don’t agree. Accept others around just because you’re too scared to tell them they are annoying.. And, by all means, don’t you upset anyone. Saying only “yes” it’s incredibly disempowering. You can’t say “yes” to anything in your life. At some point you’ll have to disagree. Be happy about it: it’s a healthy thing.

46. Say Only No

Be a naysayer. Disagree no matter what. Tell them you know better. Or just don’t accept anything around you because you have such “high” standards. Playing the “No” card every time will create higher and higher walls around you. Being a naysayer will be as bad as being a yes-man. Balance your “No”’s and “Yes”’s with your own judgment.

47. Be A Control Freak

Try to control everything in your life. Your happiness. Other people happiness. Your colleagues or employees. Your emotions. The weather. Being a control freak will eliminate any trace of authenticity in your life. It could drastically improve your discipline and self-awareness, but without authenticity you’re as screwed as a robot.

48. Walk Your Life In Somebody Else’s Shoes

Be somebody else. Chose a role model and stick with it until the boundaries of your own personality are melting and you don’t know who you really are. When you answer you will speak his answer. When you chose, you will make his choices. Chose to be somebody else and leave your true life behind. While totally screwing it, of course.

49. Be Cheap

Try to bargain everything in your life. Negotiate while shopping up to the point every salesman will be pissed off and give you stuff for free. Do this for your relationships too. And, in the end, without even noticing, you’ll become cheap too. Things of value requires value. Looking only for cheap relationships will lower your market value too.

50. Abuse Others

Overuse. Dry out. Obtain things by twisting people arms. If possible, make it in the name of a higher cause. Take other people resources. Doesn’t make any difference if the resources are emotional or material, just take them without asking. Only because you can. And before you’ll know it you’ll become the first target of your own abusive behavior.

51. Accept To Be Abused

Be somebody else’s toy. Because you “can’t do better”. Or because “you deserve it”. Or because “this is how it is and it can’t be changed”. I know you won’t agree but accepting abuse is on the same vibration with abusing. Although in certain contexts it seems you can’t escape being abused, you always have a choice. Always.

52. Try To Please Everybody

And lose every single trace of authenticity and originality you have. There are billions of people on this Earth and during your lifetime you will meet several dozens of thousands. How can you possibly imagine you will be able to please each and every one of them? Unless all you need from this life is a perfectly numb mediocrity.

53. Feed The Trolls

At some point in your life you will meet the trolls. People who live to disagree no matter what. People who make a living by talking bad about other people. If you’re up to something in your life, they will spot you. The biggest mistake you can do is to feed them, to talk to them and make them believe they’re important. Don’t. Let them talk and starve.

54. Don’t Look People In The Eyes

Eye contact is fundamental for relationships. How do you feel about people who are talking to you while looking in a completely different direction? Well, this is exactly how they feel too about you, without eye contact. Without looking in the eyes of your conversation partner, you’re talking to the ghosts in your head. Sooner than you think, you’ll talk only to them.

55. Don’t Believe In Signs

The universe is giving you hints. All the time. With patience and trust you can learn how to read them. It’s nothing supernatural, just a way of living in the flow, instead of feeling disconnected and powerless. Ignoring the “signs” it’s like going to a live concert with your ears clogged. You may not get a cold, but you’re also going to miss all the fun.

56. Don’t Travel

Stay at home. Don’t leave your city, your country, your continent. Don’t expose yourself to new situations, to new cultures, to new people. Don’t experience the thrills of discovery, don’t risk your life among perfect strangers. Without traveling, you’re limiting your possibilities and completely screw your life by total and undeniable boredom.

57. Don’t Read Books

No. They’re evil. They can open your mind, challenge your creativity and feed your curiosity. Don’t touch them. Reading books can be extremely dangerous for anyone settling for a boring, limited and tasteless life. So, if you plan to totally screw up your life, stay away from books. In some occasions, they alone can change your life completely.

58. Live by Assumptions

Don’t verify what they tell you or what you think it’s true. Just assume it’s right. Living by assumptions is a sign of weakness and lack of courage. Have the courage to face the things and find out the truth. If you don’t do that, your reality will be affected the same way a house is affected by a faulty row of bricks. At the next earthquake, it will crumble.

59. Be Shy

Don’t express yourself because you fear other people reactions. Shyness is a social disease. And, as any other disease, it may be cured. If you think this is how you are and you can’t be changed, you’re letting your shyness to control your life, your opportunities, your relationships. It takes courage to use courage, so all you have to do is the first step.

60. Live By Habit

Spend your life on autopilot. Don’t get out of routine. Create a new habit for everything in your life, from eating to making love. And then give your consciousness away to those habits. Live outside new challenges. Sleepwalk from the second you wake up to the moment you go to bed. And you won’t even recognize how screwed you are.

61. Avoid Mistakes

Chose the fool proof way. Don’t try something that could potentially lead to a mistake. Because, you know, your position may be compromised, or your career could suffer from it. Mistakes are in fact disguised opportunities. It feels bad when you’re wrong, I know, but it feels even worse to realize that you didn’t learn anything from it.

62. Pay Yourself Last

Sacrifice your time, money and energy in a totally screwed altruism. Ignore your own needs and try to fulfill others needs just to receive some appreciation. You can’t really give something unless you have it first. Becoming an altruist when you don’t even have your own house or income is a sign of delusion. Pay yourself first.

63. Hate

Use all your energy to hate others. Because they have a different skin color, a different religion or just more resources than you. Hating uses the same process as love: it connects you with somebody else. But at the end of the connection hates puts destruction, while love puts union. Whenever you’re hating, you’re using your own power against you.

64. Be A Perfectionist

Try to reach perfection instead of just being better. In the process, screw up everybody around, including yourself. Perfection is a mind concept, it doesn’t exist in real life. Perfection has everything you have, minus real life. All perfect things are dead things. So, aiming to be perfect in what you do or want to become is a dead end too.

65. Sabotage Yourself

Self-sabotage is more powerful than you think. It works in such a subtle way that you may even take it as a normal act of thinking. Whenever you’re close to a big achievement, watch your self-sabotaging reactions: are you ashamed of success? Afraid of it? Do you think successful people are bad? Congratulations, you’re sabotaging yourself.

66. Waste Your Power On Useless Stuff

Ok, you gathered enough power to do something great, but instead, you waste it on meaningless stuff. Welcome to the world of shallowness. Having power is not enough, you got to double it with consciousness and vision. Without these ingredients, your power will most likely diverge and decay, aimlessly pointed at things with no meaning.

67. Be Ungrateful

Like in just avoiding saying “thank you”, or “I’m glad we did this”. Gratitude is a magnet, it attracts a lot of what you’re associating it with. When you don’t use gratitude, you let things floating away in a Brownian motion, totally random and out of your control. On the contrary, when you experiment gratitude, you let things you’re grateful for flow your way. Is that simple.

68. Think Bad About Yourself

Instead of repeating to yourself that you are unable to do this or that, you may as well shoot yourself in the foot. Just by thinking you’re no good, you’ll actually become a person who is not good. You literally are what you think about you. The good news is you can dissolve those negative opinions. All you have to do is to first admit you have them.

69. Fake It Till You Make It

There is this advice of “being in sync” with what you want, largely based on the Law of Attraction. While this is certainly a valuable approach, faking your desired goal will not bring it closer, on the contrary. What you should do is to try to feel comfortable in the skin of you new “you”, not to pretend you’re the new “you”. The Universe always knows when you’re lying.

70. Don’t Manage Your Time

Time is the only non-renewable resource you have. Not managing your time is almost as bad as not managing your money. Only worse . You can make more money later, but you can’t create more time. Each and every second you have is a new chance. But if you don’t stay on top of your schedule, somebody else will use your chances.

71. Solve The Wrong Problems

Keep your focus on the wrong side of the problem. Like in how much you can save, instead of how much you can really gain. Inverse evaluation is one of the trickiest things in our life. We tend to evaluate a thing by its opposite. Like being happy when we eliminate 2 kilos of trash from our house, instead of just keeping it clean day by day.

72. Be Judgmental

Criticize constantly. Focus on the bad stuff. Don’t even think to bring in the bright side of the things. Disapprove, be negative, hypercritical and deprecating. Reject any trace of appreciation or balance. In just a few weeks, your life will be totally screwed. Who wants around a guy who is never, ever able to see the full half of the glass? Nobody.

73. Complain

About everything, everywhere, every time you get a chance. Complaining is another powerful magnet, just like gratitude. But instead of attracting the good stuff, it attracts its subject. Basically, the more you complain about something, the more of that something you are getting. If you want to fail at something, start by complaining about it.

74. Accept Crap

Instead of just rejecting the thing you don’t want, take it up. Instead of making your point, expressing your desires and throwing away everything you don’t really want, accept crap. And you’ll get it. Most of the time the only reason we get crap in our lives is our express authorization: please, give me more. Sometimes, all you have to do is to say “stop it”.

75. Take It Personally

Like you are the center of the Universe and everybody has something against you. Take it personally at the weather, at the politics, at the economical crisis, at everything. Just move forward with this mindset and everything around you will actually start to have something against you. Don’t take more pun than you’re expected to.

76. Don’t Laugh

Be serious. Grave and sober. Don’t smile and, by all means, don’t allow yourself to laugh. Because laughing will bring down your walls, it will crush your entire black edifice of a stony-faced, serious person, preoccupied with important issues. Not laughing is the stupidest thing you can do to yourself. Laugh is for free, everything else in life is not.

77. Envy

Look up to everything other people have and feel bad you don’t have it too. Envy their lifestyle, their richness, their freedom. If possible let them know that as often as you can. Envy is a form of worship: only instead of praising its object it’s diminishing its performer. Every time you envy somebody you’re in fact lowering yourself.

78. Leave The Passion Out

Don’t put your heart in your life. Leave it away and try to get on with cold calculus or with bare logic. Leave the passion out of your life and become an empty carcass, walking only by the law of physics. Passion is the only thing that can completely shift your life. Leaving passion out of your life is living a life of a walking dead man.

79. Be A Follower

Don’t start anything by yourself. Don’t do anything without asking permission. Be a follower and always look for somebody ready to carry your responsibility too. That’s a perfect way to live a dull, gray and futureless life. Being a follower will amputate your bravery and guts, leaving you at the mercy of some mediocre role model.

80. React Instead Of Act On Things

Be always a second late. Don’t initiate. Don’t start. React instead of acting. This attitude, although providing a little bit of safety, will put you at the mercy of events. Too often, people who are acting instead of reacting are successful people. And those who are barely responding to stimulus, instead of jumping ahead, are the self-proclaimed victims.

81. Live Outside The Present Moment

In the past or in the future, doesn’t really matter. Just stay away from the present moment. That will be enough to live a life of no meaning, always in search of something that doesn’t really exists. The present is the only time we got. The past is just a mark in the sand and the future an uncertain promise. All you have is now. Don’t waste it.

82. Be Averagish

Not too much, not too little. Not too talkative, not too silent. Be in the middle. Talk in the middle. Live in the middle. An averagish life is a wasted life. You don’t really live, you’re barely acknowledging a statistical model of the reality. There’s not such thing like the average in real life. You’re either up to something, either not. Chose to be exceptional.

83. Be Revengeful

Wait for the “right” moment and pay back that insult. Carefully plan and implement your revenge. And you’ll soon become a predictable and much too easy to manipulate machine, ready to be used by anyone smart enough to push the right buttons. Revenge will never make things even. It will make things worse. Forgive and forget.

84. Be Resentful

Even if you don’t use revenge, keep some bad vibe about that person who insulted you. Resentment is like drinking poison while waiting for your enemies to die, Nelson Mandela said. And I totally agree with it. No matter at whom your negative emotion is directed, holding it long enough inside yourself will eventually screw up your life.

85. Don’t Create Value

Do something that is either repeating somebody else’s work, either of no use for anyone. Do things that are not valuable. Be a copy cat or a useless clerk. Creating genuine value is at the core of our life purpose. If you chose to create value for others, as small as that value might be, you managed to be in for something. You’re not screwed yet.

86. Avoid Confrontation

Don’t you ever confront your fears, your opponents or your critics. Leave, run, hide and don’t face your phobias. Avoid your rivals. That’s one way to lose the most valuable feed-back you can get. Confrontation requires courage, that’s right, but without it, you’ll never really know what are you up to. Living only in “potential” means not living at all.

87. When Going Through Hell, Stop Walking

And you’ll get stuck forever. Every time you bump into some hard times, just keep going, as Winston Churchill said. If you stop, you’ll get sucked. Every hard time you encounter is a test, as undeserved at it might seem. The only way to get out from it is to keep going, otherwise you’ll get burned. Even hell can be passed, if only you keep going and don’t stop.

88. Don’t Clean Up Your Lenses

Your life could be blurred at times. Happens. Your life lenses got stuck or you have some dirt on them. If you keep them dirty, you won’t change your perspective and will keep stumble until you fall. Cleaning up your lenses should be a habit for anyone who really wants to adapt to change. Because the only real thing we have in this life is change.

89. Fall For “Free Stuff”

There is no such thing as a free lunch, they say, and they say that for a reason. Nothing really worth having is free in this world. We tend to value things based on how much we “spend” for them. Hence, a freebie will be worthless. Anything presented as “free” is in fact a trap, a trap which will require more from you than you are willing to pay.

90. Race Against Others

The only real competition is with you. The others may serve as a comparison at times, but you can only win against yourself. Chasing your goals the same way dogs are chasing mechanical rabbits at a dog race is just stupid. Once the race is over, what would you chase next? Do you really want to live a life of a racing dog?

91. Be An Information Junkie

Live by the news, sleep by the news, wake up by the news. Information is supposed to be useful. How much are you really going to use out of what you’re exposing yourself to? Being an information junkie will give you the illusion of control. You’ll be much better if you master the art of ignoring, instead of practicing information overload.

92. Talk More Than You Have To

And piss off everyone else in the process. Talking should be a way to connect, to express your feelings and creativity. Talking too much, as harmless as it can seem, could really cut off from your social circle, not to mention that it will shift your focus from what you’re doing to what you’re … talking about, of course. Do more, talk less.

93. Be Late

At your job. At your social gatherings. At informal meetings. Show up later and you’ll slowly get out of touch with everything else around you. Being punctual is an art. It’s not too much about reliability and respect, as it is for spotting and grabbing opportunities. A belated person will never catch an opportunity: he’ll be there too late, of course.

94. Accept Frustration

Yes, life can be a bitch. Yes, it can make you want to cry out loud. But there’s no need to give in to frustration. If something went bad, acknowledge and move on. Frustration is from the same family with regret and share one very nasty family trait: it will dry you up and puts you in a no man’s land territory. Don’t be frustrated it went wrong, be happy it happened.

95. Reject Joy

Don’t enjoy because joy is a silly way to behave. There are people who are making a living out of rejecting joy. Because it’s a useless emotion. Because it could make you vulnerable. Yes, it will make you vulnerable. But being vulnerable is the only way to really experiment life in all its dimensions. Life is not safe. But it’s full of joy.

96. Give In To Pain

At some point in your life, you’re going to be hit hard. We all do. Pain is unavoidable. But suffering is optional. If you give in to pain, you’re creating an attachment and from this attachment suffering will grow. I know it’s way more difficult to do this than it is to write about it. I’ve been there too. And I really know that suffering is just another choice.

97. Be Jealous

Do like many other people and think jealousy is a form of love. And totally screw up your life in the process. Jealousy is a variation of the “control freak” syndrome, with a little bit of panic disorder. Controlling the one you love or limiting his or her choices by constantly nagging him or her, will have only one possible end: you’ll get dumped.

98. Think Happiness Is A Goal

Happiness is never a goal. It can’t be your new car, your new house, your new career. It can’t be your family, your kids, your friends. Happiness is a process. It’s a continuous state of mind. Whenever you step out of this state of mind, you transform happiness into an object. And objects are inconsistent, fluctuant and unstable. Happiness is the journey, not the destination.

99. Panic

Give your power to circumstances. Whenever something is out of your normal routine, just panic. Lose your head, follow the crowd and think the world will collapse. Panic is the ultimate form of submission. You let some unexpected events to control your response. Yes, unexpected stuff can happen. Be happy: every unpredicted event in your life it’s an opportunity.

100. Don’t Love

Turn your soul into a stone. Frost your heart. Don’t allow any feeling of love to reach to you. You won’t need months to screw up your life when you do this. You won’t need weeks, or even days. The moment you forbid love to reach to you, your life will be useless.

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Update: After more than 70.000 people have read this post, after it has been shared on all major media outlets and passed on via email or instant messaging countless times, I decided to take it even further: I wrote an ebook based on it. Click on the cover for more info, or just get it instantly by following one of the links below. Thank you!

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