Think Simple Now » motivation

How to Set Goals – To Create the Best Year

Tina Su — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:57:52 +0000

Editor’s Note: We’re giving away a $265 stunning energy necklace at the end of this post. Remember to leave a comment to enter. Don’t miss it. :)

By Tina Su

For New Year’s Eve 2011, Jeremy and I sat down and made our goals for the year. We made sure the goals were measurable, challenging, and lead us in the direction we wanted to go. After all, the experts say to set SMART goals. As diligent students, we complied.

Well, I accidentally opened up this document last week, for the first time since we created it (more than a year ago). I had completely forgotten about it. Reading through every line of the document, I felt a surge of guilt and disappointment.

You know that feeling in your stomach, almost ashamed that nothing on the list—of supposedly important items—were achieved. I didn’t end the year with 30K facebook fans, I didn’t do yoga everyday (In fact, not even once for the whole year), I didn’t become an early riser, and my living & working space is still messy.

In the same document, I looked up my husband’s list and email his weight training goals asking where he is compared to those targets. He replied with, “I was stronger when I set those goals than I am now.” I sensed disappointment in his words and instantly regretted sending him such a gloomy reminder.

And then I was thinking, isn’t this what we do to ourselves every year? We either set no goals or too many goals. If we fail to set goals, we’ll torture ourselves for feeling like a failure, because we have no goals. And if we do set goals, we’ll torture ourselves for feeling like a failure for not accomplishing the goals.

Year after year, we set long list of goals (if we actually set them) with arbitrary quantities to mark as targets. Then feeling disappointed when we review these goals some time down the road. We create the suffering. We bring it on to ourselves.

Let’s find a new way of setting goals and creating New Year resolutions that will actually make us feel good, and will actually help us.

Problem with Goals & Resolutions

Before diving into a better solution, let’s review some inherit problem with setting a bucket list of goals and why New Year resolutions doesn’t work.

1. Lack of Focus

Too many goals make it impossible to focus on any one.

The more diffused our awareness become the harder it is to focus. Without focus, we cannot achieve or produce or create anything.

Having too many things to focus on leaves us feeling overwhelmed and uncertain as to where we shall begin. Our brain, which naturally seeks the path of least resistance, will want to shut down, and will unconsciously start to avoid the goals all together.

For example, my goals for TSN last year (one of many categories) was the following list of random targets:

1,000,000 monthly pageviews
30,000 facebook fans
30,000 rss subscribers
Community features

I had completely forgotten about this list and thus failed to focus on any one item. My brain had gone into shutdown mode. There are simply too many things to focus on.

2. It’s Easy to Focus on Failure

We tend to focus on what we didn’t do than what we did do. When reviewing our goals, our eyes and hearts will gravitate towards all the things we didn’t do, and then we feel bad.

This is the problem with a list of any kind–even to-do lists. It’s far too easy to undervalue and thus fail to celebrate our achievements, because it’s just one item out of a long list of uncrossed, unachieved goals. When we review our goals and achievements in list form, it creates the illusion that we have failed, when in reality, we achieved all that we needed to do.

In my personal example, 2011 was one of the most transformative years of my life. I overcame my limited beliefs about money and had freed myself of the painful belief (from childhood) that “I didn’t deserve good things.” which significantly limited my ability to receive. My relationship with Jeremy became closer, as we had envisioned from our couple’s goal.

TSN‘s traffic have more than doubled compared to a year ago, and continues to grow. Additionally, we added more websites into our “Simple Life” network, and collectively exceeded over 6 million impressions each month. Almost overnight, our hobby sites became a business.

That’s a lot of blessing that deserves celebrating. But somehow, when reviewing my bucket list of goals from last New Year, I had forgotten about all the good that’s happened. Now I realized, I’m not such a failure. I’ve actually won. I’ve done all that I needed to do, and everything is as they should be. Everything is perfect just as it is.

3. We Experience Guilt

Since it’s so easy for us to notice and thus focus on what we’ve failed to achieve, we experience guilt, regret, and even shame. We forget that, after all, our list of goals is just an arbitrary list of “shoulds”.

No amount of guilt or disappointment will change the past. It becomes wasted energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

Big lists and many goals can make us feel bad, unnecessarily.

4. Failure to Review

Unless we review the goals regularly, we won’t make any progress. This is because our short term memory is limited to just a few bits of information.

We can keep track of one goal continuously. We cannot, however, keep track of 10 goals without reviewing it regularly. Our short term memory simply doesn’t have that kind of capacity.

I read somewhere that our short term memory can hold 5 (+/-) 2 pieces of information at a time. That means between 3 to 7 pieces of data (by the way, this is why phone numbers are 7 digits long broken up into 3 to 4 digit chunks).

5. Lack of Meaning

Sometimes, we set goals for the sake of setting goals. “It’s time to set goals!” we tell ourselves, and ends up doing a brain-dump of everything we’ve ever wanted. This usually includes an exhaustive list of things we think we should be doing, and things we think will make us happy.

And then we learn from productivity experts that we should set goals that are measurable (I know, I’ve been guilty of this), so we randomly invent a number and attach it as our target. As trivial as this may seem, this little number has the power to make us feel bad when we haven’t reached it at year’s end.

But the number is meaningless. It’s unimportant to us.

What we want is not the number, but rather to feel successful, attractive, happy, and fulfilled. And we think that if we reached this arbitrary target, then we will experience those positive emotions.

As time goes by, we start to forget why we set the goals to begin with. We forget why they were important. They become just another item written down on a list (that we don’t look at again).

When we forget why, it’s hard to feel motivated and inspired to take action on them. When we have many goals (ie. more than one goal), it’s easy to forget why.

A New Approach to Goals

Photo by Cari Wayman

Instead of setting a list of goals at the start of each year, I want to promote a new tradition: Setting a one-word theme for the year. I got this idea from Mari Smith. And it’s a powerful one.

You can remember one word throughout the year. It’s easy to think about and focus on just one theme. It’s also a lot easier to take action and make progress towards this one theme. Having one theme also makes it possible to set realistic follow up goals and milestones.

It’s like having a guiding light beaming in one direction (instead of several directions). All you have to do is to follow that light.

My one word theme for 2012 is Balance.

What this means to me is a general sense of personal wellness, fulfillment, and balance between work & life. It’s a feeling that cannot be objectively measured. I’ll know whether I feel balanced or not. Right now, I feel balanced (because I’ve been writing to you and all the while embodying and integrating the intention of “Balance” today).

Focusing on one word, which I have a positive association with, is so much easier and rewarding than focusing on something arbitrary like “Get 30,000 Facebook fans“. And because there is only one word, there is no struggle to recall what it is.

I think about it often, and carry the essence of it with me as I enter into each day. The result? No matter how rough or how ordinary the day is, I end the day (on most days) feeling good knowing that I had integrated the most important quality that I need into my day: Balance.

Whenever I feel like setting goals for the day, I just ask myself “What can I accomplish today that will help me feel balanced?” The answer may be tackling particular to-do items, or taking the afternoon off to play with my son, or de-cluttering the kitchen counter. I’ll do them, and will feel a great sense of inner fulfillment and wellness.

Having one theme allows me to laser focus on the one thing I need the most.

Last year, my theme was Abundance. And I entered each day with similar intentions. Suffice it to say, last year was complete magic filled with abundance in its various dances.

I also love the one word theme concept because a single word can be interpreted in several ways, thus I can always find a way to integrate the word into my day, without the heavy feeling of disappointment for not hitting a random goal.

For example, when I take care of my body–getting rest, drinking lots of water, eating well and exercising–I am living in accordance with my goal of “Balance”, because those acts promote personal wellness. As such, I feel happy from the act of taking care of my body.

On the other hand: If I had a traditional goal of say “losing 10 pounds in 30 days”, the experience will be different, because my happiness will be tied directly to the digits on a scale. Even though I exercised and ate well, I won’t feel satisfaction until a certain amount of weight loss is reflected from a scale. The former (one-word theme) approach is much more peaceful, gentle, encouraging and reinforcing.

How to Find Your Theme

Enough about me. Let’s work together to find a one-word theme for you. Okay?

When you ask yourself, “What do I want this year to be about?” you may instantly and intuitively feel an answer pop out. If not, try answer the following questions on a piece of paper (instead of just thinking about it) and see what words emerge for you:

What does your ideal life look like? What do you want? What do you want to be doing? How do you want to feel?
Complete the sentence: I want ____.
What one change can you make that will significantly improve the quality of your life experience?
If you had to pick just one thing? What do you want the most?
Does the word feel good? There are no wrong answers. What you pick is personal and meaningful to you. If it feels good, go with it.

Got it?

Don’t continue until you have your word. I’ll wait.

Using Your Theme

Once you have your one-word theme, here are some thoughts on integrating and using the word into your life.

1. Expand on the Word

One word can have many meaning. Clarify what your word means to you.

I mentioned earlier that the word Balance means (to me): a general sense of personal wellness, fulfillment and balance between work & place.

Ask yourself the following question:

What does this mean to me?

Additionally, you can dive deeper into what this picture looks like for you, by answering the following question:

What does “a life of [insert word]” look like?

When answering, write down each block of thought in bullet points, without editing. Keep writing until you have nothing else to say.

For example: for me, a life of “balance” looks like:

Consistent work schedule and productivity, from which I drawn in a sense of fulfillment.
Separation between work and home.
Being fully present with my family when I am home. Do not check work email.
Time for myself to reflect, read, write.
Taking care of my body and health.
Living and working in a clean, organized and uncluttered space.
Rising with the sun. Getting a beautiful early start to my day.
Feeling balanced and well on a daily basis.
Taking breaks. Allowing rest and play.

The more clear you can be in describing your picture, the easier it will be to further integrate the word into your experience (because you know what activities you can do to access this experience).

2. Symbolic Reminder

Photo by Karrah Kobus

One trick I started doing last year and found helpful was to get a piece of jewelry that I loved, and using it as a token—a physical representation—that served as a reminder for the word.

Energy Muse had sent me this beautiful necklace last year. When I received it, I named it “Abundance” and whispered a little prayer “You will remind me of possibilities and abunance in this Universe. I thank you in advanced.”

I wore it everyday, and when I touched it or saw it in the reflection of a mirror, it reminded me that I am an abundant person living in a incredible universe filled with goodness, good people, and of infinite possibilities. It made me happy.

Side Note: At the end of this post, Energy Muse is giving away this necklace to one of you reading this ($265 value). Make sure to leave a comment to enter.

Additionally, I found two other sources of “conscious jewelry ” which I also love: Zen by Karen Moore (Our soul sister Cat Li Stevenson swears by the hand made jewelry lovingly made by Karen Moore) and KA Gold Spirtual Jewlery (I loved this piece, and wore it until the chain broke from my son pulling on it).

Alternatively, if you have other jewelery or pieces of token that you already love, you can use them too. The point is to have some physical reminders of your “goal” that you can carry with you, and see regularly.

3. Create Goals From Your Theme

If you completed the above exercise on clarifying what the word means to you, you’ll notice that many of the items you wrote down can be converted into mini goals that contribute towards your one-word theme.

For my personality type, I still like to work with goals on a daily basis. But now I set short-term goals that will support my theme, instead of a list of random goals that I think I should be doing.

To find these mini goals, you can either expand on your word, like the exercise proposed from #1 above, or setting goals based on answering the following question:

“What can I do to integrate [insert your word] into my life?”

Allow whatever answers to show up, and write them down without judging or editing.

Please note that these are just ideas. Nothing is set in stone. You do not have to achieve every one of these ideas in order to feel satisfied. Anyone will do the trick. The point is to create a habit of goal setting based on your theme—what’s most important to you.

4. One Goal at a Time

If you did the above exercise or creating goals based on your theme, you will have a list of goals (once again). You will get overwhelmed if you try to work on all of these at once.

Pick just one sub goal, and focus on just that. Work on this goal everyday for at least 21 days, until it’s become a habit. Once the goal is reached or becomes a habit, you can move on to the next mini goal. You may dabble in other related goals if it feels good to you, but always have one as your highest priority.

For example, I’ve just completed the small goal of “separation between home and life” by moving my office completely outside of our home and not taking work home, and I’m currently working on “rising with the sun” by developing the habits of becoming an early riser. Once I develop the waking up early habit, I will focus on de-cluttering.

5. Be Gentle On Yourself

Through out the year, you will experience days where you feel like you are moving in the opposite direction of where you want to go.

Please remember, and commit to, be gentle on yourself.

Every one of us will encounter and experience such days. It’s completely normal and expected.

When these days occur, just give yourself the permission to have “off” days. It’s okay to feel depressed, sad, off-track and cranky. This, like all days shall pass. Everything will be okay. Tomorrow is a new day.

Before You Go …

I wish you a beautiful, productive and happy year from any starting point. Not just for this year, but for all years to come.

Now, before you go, spend a minute to share with me (in the comment below) what your one-word theme is for this year?

In leaving a comment below, you are being entered into a draw for this beautiful necklace (From EnergyMuse)—I used the same necklace last year to represent “Abundance” (a $265.00 Value). The entry for this divine goodie will close on March 31, 2012 at 8am PST. Please use a valid email address. Your email will only be seen my me (Tina) and you will never receive spam. And yes, you can enter as many times as you like *wink*.

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Dreams Come True: Story of Audacity

Tina Su — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:00:36 +0000

Photo by Kai Z Feng. Follow him on flickr.

By Tina Su

What are your dreams? What are you passionate about?

Around the time I graduated University I became fascinatedwith photography. It became my first passion. I dreamed of becoming a professional photographer.

I loved photography, and dove in head first determined to make my dreams come true. I read books, took countless images, invested in equipments, spent countless hours in Photoshop, attended gallery showings, and took classes on specialized subjects.

I loved photography so much that –at one point- I built a darkroom from scratch, rented a large loft space to have my ideal studio setup and eventually married a photographer – who I admired, because he was so confident with his craft and was among the few successful working photographers I’d met. Most other photographers I encountered all struggled to make ends meet.

The thing I loved about photography was that it gave me a tool with which to express myself emotionally, to do something from the heart, to capture moments of truth -powerful enough to bring me to tears. It increased my capacity to feel, and heightened my awareness and ability to connect with other people.

Some of the most blissful, spiritual, loving, heart-felt moments I’ve ever experienced, happened in the dark room, under the amber lights, by myself, as I witness an image come to life in the developer.

I wanted to share that with you, because it is a big part of where I came from, and my foundation for writing. Actually, I stopped taking pictures, after accidentally discovering that the same creative, powerful, spiritual experiences can be evoked through writing – as I do here (which is my other dream come true story).

I also wanted to share that with you, because I want to tell you what I learned through my experiences of going from amateur to semi-pro in the photography world in a short span of time.

I learned these things in making my photography dream a reality:

People will have confidence in you if you have confidence in yourself.
Persistence pays off.
Practice makes you better
You don’t need a formal education or years of experience to make it. Passion is more important.
It’s mostly about how you view yourself – that’s how the world will perceive you.
Re: Confidence. Fake it till you make it.
Audacity is important

I just want to spend a moment on Audacity, and the importance of it in seeing our dreams come true.

When you are trying to make it in any industry as a newbie, having the guts to approach people you don’t know –despite fear and insecurities- is probably your fastest route to success in that industry.

When I started pursuing photography. I didn’t have much technical knowledge, I didn’t have the experience, I didn’t have the pro cameras, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was a computer geek, who had a burning desire to photograph people.

My dream was to capture images that moved people, to capture a moment of truth, and to have my photos published. I knew it was going to happen, someday, but I didn’t know how. In the mean time, I did everything I could to get my self closer to my dream vision.

When Anthony Bourdain visited Seattle on a book/talk tour, I walked up to him and asked him if I could have 10 minutes of his time. And to my surprise, he said yes. Here’s the photo I took from that day:

I did the same with Douglas Coupland. Here’s his photo:

I did the same with Russell Simmons, but the room was too dark, and the photo didn’t come out.

Right after one of Joshua Roman’s concerts, I ran up on stage and asked if I could take his portrait sometime. I gave him my card and thanked him for considering it. I was so nervous, all I remember is my heart beating loudly, and feeling insecure as others watched me from off stage.

He showed up in my studio a few days later, we jammed it out and got some great photos. We became good friends. My husband and I ended up doing Josh’s publicity photos since 2007. And most recently, he hired me to document his wedding, knowing that I’d never done a wedding before. He trusted me more than I trusted myself.

Here are some photos with Joshua from our earlier sessions:

My goal at the time was to be published, and be taken seriously. And I was able to do that within my first year of shooting. The photos of Joshua were later published by over 50 publications and media outlets – they’ve been on the cover of magazines, used in newspapers, promotional materials and graced the center of concert posters.

One of my Tibet travel photos was published in the book “The Best of Photography 2007”. And an image from my Nepal collection was sold and published by the San Francisco Chronicles.

When you believe strongly in something, or some *seemingly* impossible dream, just go after it, and trust that it will become a reality soon. Your faith in yourself and your craft is vital.

Do everything you can now to get one step closer to your dream. Do it despite fear. Do it despite insecurities. Do it despite no one else believing in you. Do it despite a lack of education or experience. Do it despite not knowing how-to. Just start with baby steps.

When we follow our hearts, magic happens.

Do it, even if sometimes following our hearts mean doing uncomfortable things like walking up to strangers, or saying things that might make us look stupid, or potentially getting caught with our “pants down” for not knowing what we’re doing. We all have those insecurities.

From years of developing a thick skin and doing things that scared me, I do know one thing to be true: when you sincerely take steps towards your goal, regardless of what that goal is, the universe will reward you in unexpected ways which will propel you to surpass your original goal and to reach your dreams.

The trick is to keep going, despite not knowing exactly how we will arrive there, and despite all of these mental tricks we play on ourselves.

The only thing we know right now is the next baby step we can take. Don’t trivialize or demoralize the power of baby steps. It’s important.

It’s important, because baby steps in the direction of our dreams, can mean that we eventually get there. And along the road, someone may surprise us and give us a ride in their car, allowing us to get there faster than anticipated.

People tend to give too much credit to luck, and natural talent. And then we judge ourselves for lacking talent and luck, thus, justifying our lack of action and lack of focus.

I love the saying that luck is the intersection between preparation and opportunity. It truly is. Luck is certainly most kind to those who have actively taken large steps towards their desired destination.

So what is it that you are dreaming about? What would make your dreams come true? What can you do this week, tomorrow, tonight that will take you one step closer? Remember, the step doesn’t have to be big; a tiny baby step will suffice. :)

~~~~

Want more articles than the blog posts on this site? I’m currently experimenting with more frequent writing that reflects on something I’ve learned each day, or something that made me happy. This article was extracted and then polished from the TSN Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe here to receive my “TSN Insider” emails.

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5 Essential Lessons on Success

Derek Walker — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:15:38 +0000

Photo by Aeschleah DeMartino

By Mr. Self Development

Today I want to talk about the ingredients that cause success. Why do some people succeed, while others fail? what separates the two. I’m constantly intrigued with the concepts involved in success and failure. I’ve dedicated my life to discovering and explaining what separates one from the other.

I spend my days learning about the laws and the principles of success. I believe if we learn these laws and principles we will succeed. In fact, if anyone learns these laws and principles, they will succeed.

The laws of success will move your life from the pit to the palace, from ordinary to extraordinary. With that, let’s take a look at five essential lessons on the causes of success.

5 Must Read Lessons on What Causes Success:

1. Understanding the Success Formula

“Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.”
–Earl Wilson

Success is usually the result of concentrated focus in an area where you have a natural advantage. Concentrated focus multiplies your effectiveness seven-fold. Concentrated focus makes the difference.

One man with discipline, determination, and focus will accomplish more than a 100 men who are merely interested.

The use of concentrated focus in an area where you are talented, will in time, grant you the opportunity to succeed. Success has almost nothing to do with luck. What people call luck is usually the offspring of concentrated focus. Success may appear to be the result of luck, but appearances are often deceiving.

2. Passionate Energy and Drive

“Success in almost any field depends more on
energy and drive than it does on intelligence.”
–Sloan Wilson

When we talk about concentrated effort, we’re talking about using our energy and drive in one area. Energy and drive will surely take you down the road of success. Energy and drive will cause you to climb the hurdles that keep others from succeeding.

Another word for “energy and drive” is passion. Are you passionate about your goal? If you’re going to succeed, you’re going to have to have an unprecedented passion to see your goal realized. You can’t do it for the money, you can’t do it for the fame; you must do it for the love. How passionate are you?

3. The Realization That Success is a Science

“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.”
–Oscar Wilde

Success is scientific, and it’s predictable. Its cause and effect; you do this, and you get this result. Don’t try to mystify success; this will only keep it out of your reach.

Success is a simple science; simple to understand that is.

Although success is quite simple to understand, it is usually very difficult to accomplish; difficult to accomplish, …but still worth the price.

It’s true that the price of “true success” is never too high. As the saying goes, “No journey is too great, when one finds what he seeks.” You see, “true success” is finding exactly what you seek, in every area of your life. True success, is balanced success.

4. Pure Enthusiasm

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
–Winston Churchill

To run you must first crawl, to succeed you must first fail. Failure is a part of success, you can’t separate the two. To say that you want success without failure is to say you want water, without the wet. It’s a package deal, you get them both.

Failure is the school that trains you for success; you can’t succeed without a degree from Failure State University (FSU). It’s through failure that you prepare to succeed. The secret is to never lose enthusiasm as you go from failure to failure.

If you learn from each failure, while working in an area where you’re passionate, you will make progress, and in time, you will succeed.

5. Effort, Effort, Effort

“Success is dependent on effort.”
–Sophocles

When it’s all said and done, the person who succeeds is usually the person who has put in the most effort in a particular field. Look at the successful people in the world, the great writers, have spent the most time writing, the great actors, have spent the most time acting, the great singers, have spent the most time singing; these individuals worked towards their natural gifts, and they allowed “effort” to carry them the rest of the journey.

Are you giving your best effort? Success requires all that you are. You won’t succeed on 20 percent effort; you are going to have to give your all. So let me encourage you to give your all today, and when you do, your life will never, ever, ever be the same.

Thank you for reading and please pass this article along!

About the Author: Mr. Self Development is an author who teaches a practical guide to success and wealth. Please visit him at Mr. Self Development.com. If you’ve enjoyed reading this article, then you may want to subscribe to his feed, follow him on Twitter, or read one of his most popular articles, “How I Manifested a Seven Bedroom Home at 24.”

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External Resources:

Book & CD: Money, and the Law of Attraction
Book: Think & Grow Rich
Book: The Science of Getting Rich

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Goal Setting Secret – How to Achieve Any Goal

Scott Young — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:03:23 +0000

Photo by Wynona Robison

By Scott Young

This article looks at how a deliberate shift in our views on goal setting can net drastic cumulative results in the long run.

Whether it’s career goals or personal goals, we’ve all been there – setting aggressive and sometimes overtly ambitious goals, chasing after it, hitting road bumps and eventually become de- motivated to never see the goal come to fruition.

Nobody likes to be stuck in a plateau. You might spend months working hard towards a goal without seeing any progress. It can be incredibly frustrating to feel your motivations go unrewarded.

How you react to a plateau will decide whether you’re going to eventually be successful. While many people react by burning themselves out or quitting, some people continue showing up, every day. The people that show up, through sheer patience, will eventually break through their plateau.

Why Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Fail

I see this as a blogger. A new writer will start a blog, often with great content, but after 8 months they stop blogging. Some expressed ideas that the blog would become their future business, so they can’t claim they weren’t committed. While they stopped writing, the soon-to-be successful bloggers continued to write, every day.

I see this as a gym-goer. Every January the gym is full. After a few weeks it’s quiet again. People purchased year-long memberships to use them for 3 weeks. Sure, they can claim they were too busy, or that they didn’t really need to exercise, but that’s a rationalization. While they quit, the truly healthy people continued to show up, every day.

I see this as a student. There are a lot more pre-med students than medical students. There are more people at the beginning of an academic program than at the end of it. While some people cram for exams the last minute, other people develop studying habits that last them their entire degree program.

Getting rich quick doesn’t just fail because the methods are scams. They fail because the people they attract were never interested in what it takes to succeed to begin with. They wanted an immediate solution to a problem that requires a lifetime of dedication.

The Secret to Goal Setting: Deliberate Slowness

Instead of offering the fastest path to success, I want to offer the opposite: the slowest path to success. Instead of promising you can get rich quickly, I’d like to suggest that you can get rich over several years or decades. Instead of promising to lose 14lbs in a week, I am suggesting that you can be healthy for a lifetime.

Deliberate slowness to goal setting isn’t a popular mantra these days. In a fast-paced world, everyone is looking for shortcuts. They want to know how the superstar managed to becoming incredibly successful in a few months. They don’t want to hear about the person who meticulously planned her success for a decade.

However, despite it’s lack of glamour, deliberate slowness with goal setting is a more effective mantra. It forces you to stop craving the immediate acquisition of your goal, focus on the process and get down to the doing. This focus on process makes it more likely you’ll keep your goals once you achieve them. More importantly, a focus on process allows you to actually enjoy the path to success instead of viewing everything as an obstacle towards it.

What Are You Going to Master in 10 Years?

Think about your plans in terms of the next decade, and not the next few months. When you think in terms of a decade, your strategy changes. Instead of trying to frantically push effort into the current moment, you focus on the continuous behaviors you need to succeed. Instead of trying to achieve a goal for the moment, you focus on how to sustain it for a lifetime.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his excellent book Outliers, proposes that it takes 10,000 hours to master any skill. Virtuosos and computer hackers alike all need to put 10,000 hours of work in before they reach true mastery of their craft. If you spent 3 hours a day, for almost every day of the year, it would take you a decade to master a skill.

Instead of looking for the quickest route, look for the most sustainable route. Don’t worry about what will get you there immediately, look at what will keep you there in five to ten years.

As a blogger, this means continually outputting content, on a regular schedule. My own website (ScottHYoung.com) has over 700 articles in the archive, most of which still gain traffic and comments to this day.

As a gym-goer, this means sustaining the exercise habit, rather than adopting radical workout strategies. I’ve been going to the gym 3-5 days per week for over four years. Instead of taking on every dieting fad, I try to maintain a simple diet that is both healthy and sustainable.

My goal setting aims for the long-term. I don’t subscribe to the motivational advice saying you should manufacture unlimited confidence in yourself so you can achieve any goal. I think the downside of this approach is that whenever your false confidence doesn’t meet reality (which often happens) you crash and find it more difficult to put in the effort. I’d rather set highly realistic goals and commit to investing the energy in them day after day, year after year.

Building the Foundation

Beneath any skyscraper there is a large foundation. In order to build upwards, you first need to dig downwards, otherwise you’re resting on uncertain ground. The same is true of life. Before you can try to radically shift your blogging strategy, experiment with your gym routine or juggle a double course load, you need to build a foundation.

That foundation is your habits. The things you do, regardless of your motivation or feedback, every day and every week. I write articles for my website twice per week, regardless of whether my traffic spiked or it crashed. Regardless of whether I made a thousand dollars or a dime. I write because writing is the foundation of my work, and it comes before everything else.

If you can build the proper foundation, you can build almost anything on top of it. Because your foundation will continue to put effort in for you, even when you’re stuck in a plateau, too busy or exhausted, it is the most valuable part of your goal setting strategy. With a foundation, you can then try all the experiments and tricks you want to use to speed your success.

Figure out what you would need to do, every day or every week, in order to sustain your goal. What’s the bare minimum output level you’d need to meet. Once you define this level, make it a habit. Commit to it for at least thirty days without stop. Then commit to continuing it for another ninety days.

Once your foundation is set, you are far less likely to quit out of exhaustion or frustration. You can experience virtually any setback, and continue to show up, every day.

Goal Setting Motives – Lifestyle? Or Means to an End?

One major difference between people who continue and those who quit, is the way they approach their goals. The people who continue see the path to their goal as part of a lifestyle. The people who quit see the path to their goal is just a means to reach their objective.

If you go to the gym, is that because going to the gym is part of your lifestyle, or only because you’re trying to lose thirty pounds? Are you blogging because writing every day is part of your life, or is it just a stepping-stone in order to become wealthy?

Integrate your goals into your lifestyle. While part of this is the same as setting habits, it’s also an attitude. Ask yourself whether you would continue to work this hard, once you’ve reached your goal? If the answer is no, then you probably won’t be able to continue in the long run. If you get stuck or your goal takes longer than you realized, you may never reach it.

Set Aggressive Goals, Realistic Deadlines

Set big, world-changing goals for your life. Just be patient with the deadline. I’d rather have world-changing goals for myself that I foresee taking decades, than minor goals I anticipate accomplishing well ahead of schedule.

Your deadline is more than just a motivational tool. It also frames how you view your goal. Setting longer deadlines forces you to pick sustainable, deliberately slow strategies for success. Setting unrealistically short deadlines forces you to cut corners, take shortcuts and scam your way to the top.

Goal Setting Sustainability

Sustainability is a popular word for the environment. It means choosing solutions that will continue to work in 50 years, just as they work today. But, sustainability also applies to your life and goal setting. If you take on paths that aren’t sustainable, you’re violating the principle of deliberate slowness.

Ask yourself how long you can continue this current path. When will you give up after not seeing any results? If the answer is less than “forever”, your strategy isn’t sustainable. If there is a clearly defined quitting time, you aren’t pursuing a sustainable strategy.

I’m not saying you need to continue the same strategy forever. But, if you have the potential to do so, then you greatly increase the odds that you won’t quit for the wrong reasons.

Don’t Pursue Half-Committed Ventures

The side-lesson of deliberate slowness is that you shouldn’t pursue half-committed ventures. If you want something, you should be committed to realizing it whether it takes only a month or a decade. If you aren’t willing to wait ten years to complete your goal, then you probably don’t have the persistence it takes to see it through to the end.

When Deliberately Slow is Surprisingly Fast

In my life, I’ve taken on goals from a deliberately slow perspective. When I started my business, I set my first important income goal for three years, not six months. When I started exercising my fitness targets were measured in months, not weeks. When I set out changing habits, I did so, one at a time, for at least one month each.

Talking to a short-term thinker, and my approach seems painfully slow. They will point out how I might be able to double my business in a few months, or increase my strength within a week.

But if you actually look at the track record, deliberate slowness is the faster approach. If you only focus on one habit change per month, you can completely rewrite the behaviors of your life in less than a year. Three years to build a business looks painfully long in the future, but after it’s done, people comment on how amazing your success is.

Just Do It. (Every Day)

The current motivational mantra is “get started.” Nike says, “Just do it.” Guy Kawasaki’s book focuses on the Art of the Start. But I think a better mantra than get started would be to “show up, every day.” Instead of just trying to get started, show up every day so that you have a chance to finish.

* What are your goal setting secrets to achieving your dreams? Share your thoughts and stories in the comment section. See you there!

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The Ultimate Guide to Personal Motivation

Annabel Candy — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:31 +0000

Photo by Edwin Stemp

By Annabel Candy

This is going to be the last blog post I ever write. That’s it. After this one you won’t be reading any more articles by me online. In fact, the only reason I’m writing this is because I promised Tina I would and I don’t want to let her down.

If I promise someone something I try to follow through, so even though I’ve decided to knock blogging on the head and give up writing for good I wanted to finish with this one post for Think Simply Now first.

Hence the ultimate guide to personal motivation. I like the sound of ultimate because it means final and implies it’s the only guide you’ll ever need. This should be the motivational guide to end all guides because that’s what lazy people need. Reading’s brilliant for entertainment or education yet it’s also a great escape and procrastination device but if you’re reading about personal motivation there’s something you want to achieve. You’re ready to stop procrastinating, spinning your wheels and being lazy because there’s something you want to get done.

What do you want to do or what should you be doing? Is it a long term task like writing your memoirs or something quick but unpleasant like booking a dental appointment or going to it? Why can’t you get motivated? Are you reluctant to vacuum and mop the floor because you know within six hours of completing the job a mob of hungry children will have sprinkled it evenly with bread and cookie crumbs then smeared mud and honey on top? Or is there something deeper holding you back like fear, lack of confidence or perfectionism?

It’s worth working out the answers to these questions for your own interest but in the end personal motivation still comes down to the old problem of getting started on something. I’m a lazy at heart yet I manage to achieve more than many other people do despite that. For example, I wrote over 130 articles for my blog over the last 15 months. I hope some of my tips will help kick start you into action.

Some people seem to have internal motivation which gets them moving and keeps them going when other people falter and fail to cross the start line. But you’re probably not like that or you wouldn’t need the ultimate guide to personal motivation would you?

Maybe you’re more like me. I respond well to deadlines, and although I sometimes start things well before they need to be completed, I never finish them until the last minute. I need a reason to do something. For example, if I need to lose weight it won’t happen unless I know that in four months I’ll be at a family reunion with aunties, uncles and cousins who haven’t seen me for five years.

You might tend to laziness and need a deadline, a carrot or a whip to get you in action but don’t despair, that doesn’t mean you’ll do any worse than someone with an internal drive to rival Bill Gates and his products. You can achieve just as much using external motivators to keep you on track.

If you’re a procrastinator and like to leave things until the last minute, you’ll just have to use a few tricks to get you going. Here are some that work for me:

1. Tell the world

Tell the world what you’re going to do. Announce it on Twitter, tell a friend, tell your boss, promise your cat. That should make you follow through.

2. Set a timer

How long does it take to clean the fridge, weed the front lawn or write a blog post if you put your mind to it? 20 minutes? An hour? Pick a reasonable time, set your alarm clock and go at it hammer and tongue until the bell rings.

3. Reward yourself

Of course everyone deserves to be rewarded for their hard work and no one should be a one-dimensional working machine. Promise yourself a small treat when the job’s done: a cup of tea, a quick call with a friend, a lie on the sofa with your eyes closed, or a walk.

4. Break big jobs down into small manageable chunks

All the above work best for short tasks. No lazy person could stay motivated to write an entire book but if you can work out a way to write 1000 words a day four days a week for a year then the book will have written itself.

5. Hang around with other motivated people.

Some people sap your energy, deplete your confidence, wear you down and depress you. Take note when it happens and avoid them or avoid talking about your pet project with them so they can’t deflate you.

6. Create an imaginary and urgent deadline.

Reporters and journalists thrive on deadlines. My friend Molly worked for Voice of America and she had to get out a report every hour on the hour. If she didn’t she’d be out of a job. Yes, it was stressful, especially at first but her writing got faster and better and she started to enjoy the challenge in the end.

Some of us aren’t lucky enough to be ruled by the iron fist of a stressed out newspaper editor, probably because we chose to work from home to get away from that type of office-based, fear-ruled work. But now we’re experiencing the joys of being our own boss and working for ourselves a deadline can still help. If there aren’t any, just make them up.

Pretend this is your last chance to make your business succeed and if it doesn’t happen at the end of a year you’ll have to go back to the office job you hated. Pretend that this one job is the last thing you’ll ever do, the thing that will leave a lasting impression, your final word. That’s what I did.

Imagining this was the last article I ever wrote created a sense of urgency and helped me get it down faster and without succumbing to the ever-increasing distractions around me.

No, it’s definitely not my last one. I’m on a roll now. Only 9.10 am and I’ve already got something down on paper. I’m going to have a ten-minute stretch now and then I’ll get back to it.

This time I’ll up the ante by promising myself I’m never eating again until the next job is done. I know it’s sad really but if you’re lazy like me you have to take desperate measures.

* How do you get yourself motivated when putting-it-off is an easier option? Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below. See you there!

About the Author: Annabel Candy writes about self improvement and small business Internet marketing at her blog Get In the Hot Spot. She helps people get the life they want and win business online. For free updates subscribe to her RSS feed.

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How to Wake Up Inspired …

Jonathan Mead — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:49:09 +0000

Photo by Simón Pais

By Jonathan Mead

Inspiration is typically viewed as something that comes and goes. Some days you “feel it” more than others.

But what if you could be deeply and unconditionally inspired everyday? I bet it would make a difference in the quality of your life. You would probably wake up excited to start your day. You’d get more done, be more creative and feel more of that elusive “flow.” Being inspired also means enjoying the process more, instead of feeling forced and unnatural.

The best part of persistent inspiration is that action tends to be effortless. There isn’t so much trying, rather you’re more simply being and allowing whatever action is natural to flow out from you.

Most of us just wait for inspiration though. We passively anticipate our muse, instead of actively seeking it out.

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.“
~Jack London

I’ve been experimenting with something different for a while, purposefully taking responsibility for being inspired. For a while I didn’t know if it would work. Inspiration is kind of an elusive phenomenon after all. And even if you choose to look for inspiration, does that mean it will come?

The answer is yes, and no.

Actively creating an inspired state doesn’t work 100% of the time. Sometimes instead you will feel calm, centered and relaxed instead of being filled with electric motivation. And that’s okay.

Here’s the thing though: deliberately choosing to be inspired tends to create a more consistent inspired state over time. That is, the more you flip the switch, the more it becomes automatic and spontaneous.

So the question is… How can you reinforce inspiration, so that it becomes automatic?

I’ve found a few ways to helps this along:

1. Eat inspiration for breakfast.

Who are some of the people that inspire you or have influenced your work? Who do you want to be like, who are some of your mentors? Take some time in the morning to read something they’ve written, or watch a video they’ve created.

2. Reflect on your reasons why.

We should all have deeply emotional reasons behind the goals we set (if you don’t, they might be the wrong goals). Reviewing the reasons behind our intentions help us to remember why we’re doing what we’re doing. Without that purpose, it can be hard to stay inspired.

3. Discard unwanted commitments.

We often say yes to too much. It’s much harder to deliberately choose our projects than to blindly accept whatever comes our way. Regularly reviewing your commitments to make sure that you’re only working on things that truly excite you is essential to being inspired. You can’t expect to be excited about things you didn’t consciously choose or desire.

4. Create an inspiring physical space.

What is it that you truly love to do? What gets your energy flowing and your blood rushing? Surround your physical space in things that will remind you of and reinforce your passion. If art is your passion, make sure your surroundings reflect that. Put up pictures from your favorite artists. Have an easel nearby with paint ready. If your passion is architecture, surround your space with pictures of your favorite buildings, or structures. Let your space be a constant inspirational reinforcement. It only takes a few hours to setup at the most, and after that it’s constantly working for you on autopilot.

5. Surround yourself with inspiring people.

The people you socialize and engage with will have a big impact on your level of inspiration. Choose to be selective about the people you let into your life, and what type of energy they bring to your circle of influence. You can start by following inspiring people on Twitter or keeping in touch with the work of leaders and innovators you admire.

6. Challenge yourself.

The more you move in the direction of things that challenge and make you a bit nervous, the more likely you will find inspiration. You can’t expect to be inspired by doing the same thing every day, following the same routine, working at the same boring job, watching the same boring television shows. You have to decide to follow your passions, engage in the world and choose paths that might make you feel a bit uncomfortable.

7. Create space.

Probably the most neglected of all ways to find inspiration is the most counterintuitive. Sometimes to be inspired, we have to step away… we have to create space and room for our passions to breathe. Spending time hiking and in nature is my favorite way to do this. It’s in the gaps that beauty is found. It’s the empty space that makes a cup useful.

These are all great ways to cultivate a more inspired life, but I think perhaps the most important thing to focus on is the feeling you want to create.

Feeling first, then action

Most of the time we look for the feeling we want to have from or as a result of the action we’re taking. We seek to feel a certain way through the pursuits we engage in. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this approach, it’s just that it can often lead to misjudgment on what goals are truly right for us.

On the other hand, if we focus on what we want to feel first – enjoyment, creativity, connection, excitement, etc. – then we set ourselves up for naturally engaging in action that supports those feelings. Our actions become a reflection of the way we feel, not the other way around.

Inspiration is a choice

Cultivating a life of sustainable inspiration is something that I’m working toward each day. I’m too impatient to wait around for inspiration to fall on my lap, or into my head.

I don’t think living an inspired life happens by accident.

I think inspiration is a choice.

About the author: Jonathan Mead is a limit-breaking coach, martial artist and trafficker of truth. He writes about self development and living on your own terms at Illuminated Mind.

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The Ups and Downs of Life + Personal News

Tina Su — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:19:42 +0000

Photo by Vadim Pacev

By Tina Su

Coming back from India, I was floating on a cloud of utter joy, blissfully unaware of the personal challenges and surprises that were about to hit me in the coming month.

While I had fantasized over the telling of what has happened over the past month, it quickly became obvious that the toughest part of my job is the potential of disclosing too much about my personal life, thus invading the privacy of those closes to me. Despite the juiciness of the story, I’ve decided to leave most of the details private.

I contemplated on why I wanted to write about it, and it became clear to me that the essence of the story is that we are forever riding the ups and downs of life, and that sometimes when the downs get really down, we lose touch with reality. In those moments, all we need is hope and a gentle nudge to remind us that it is only temporary, and that the highs are not far away.

My Personal Low

For the first few weeks after coming home from India, Jeremy and I were having some relationship problems caused by miscommunication and misunderstanding, amplified by the length of time that I was away.

Suddenly, my future became uncertain, and everything I had conjured up in my head of rainbows and sunshine had come crashing down. I felt like I was falling into a hole of darkness that I couldn’t crawl out of. I was confronted with loneliness, resentment and my own victim identity. It was a painful period for both of us.

We separated for two weeks and the uncertainty was killing me. I was bouncing up and down emotionally between feeling unconditional love, and seeing the dangerous shadows of depression peeking out from around the corner.

During this time, I observed as my mind wandered: images of self-pity, focusing on past negative events, clinging on to fantasies of an unhappy future, and seeking out more pain. It was cycle of self-destruction, unless I consciously intercepted it with the light of awareness. It was both disturbing and fascinating to witness.

Bringing In the Light

“…With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves,
and your true power emerges – the power of presence.
Instead of blaming the darkness you bring in the light.“
~ Ekhart Tolle, from A New Earth

In guiding me with a torch of bright shining light, my parents spent hours on the phone with me. One thing that made a lasting impression on me was what my dad kept repeating, “Ta-tha-ta” – something Buddha used to say, meaning “It is what it is.”, “If it isn’t this, it’ll be something else.”

He was right. I was reminded of the drama I went through a year ago, and it was clear that if not this problem, then there would have been some other problem in its place.

That’s what part of living is about – we are forever and consistently being presented with situations that challenge us, make us grow, teach us divine lessons about life, and make us into more conscious beings. Without challenges, life would be pretty dull, and we would never grow to become better people.

I was also reminded that there isn’t a challenge that we cannot surmount; otherwise it would not have presented itself to us. Even though challenges may appear impossible to conquer at times, trust that it is possible and that it wouldn’t be called a challenge if wasn’t challenging to us.

My friend Elizabeth Carman reminded me in an email that “everything is auspicious”, and indeed, it’s hard to realize this when we are going through the ups and downs, but after some time, in retrospect, “we can see how even the downs were times of positivity and spiritual transformation.”

And so, everyday, whenever I found my mind wondering, I would remind myself of two phrases, “Ta-tha-ta, it is what it is.”, and “Everything is auspicious. This too is auspicious, because it happened.”

Everyday, I focused on the good, I wrote in my journal often of what I learned, I focused on the blessings, I focused on the heart space of unconditional love, I focused on the now instead of an unknown future or past memories that no longer exist. I focused on forgiveness, understanding and healing. Eventually, I surrendered to that which I cannot control.

Here’s a blurb from my journal:

“… As for the future, I surrender to the higher intelligence of Life and trust with absolute clarity that only the best things are provided for me, that I am always cared for regardless of how things may appear now. I accept the now, by accepting the outer world for what it is, and taking responsibilities of my inner world.” (September 12, 2009)

When I finally surrendered, I stopped torturing myself.

A few days later, we peacefully got back together, and focused on nurturing the love and connection we had. It was beautiful.

My Personal High

As if reconnecting with the mate-to-my-soul wasn’t auspicious enough, shortly after we got back together as a closer union, we got the news that I was pregnant, very pregnant, specifically 5 months pregnant with a baby boy!

Within a span of 12 hours, we went from a space void of any thoughts of babies, to finding out that I was 5 months pregnant, to hearing his little heart beat in the morning, to seeing his heart beating in the afternoon at the ultrasound.

At the ultrasound, we witnessed with great amazement the miracle of another life blissfully resting inside me, quietly reminding us that life is beautiful, and while the down times may be inevitable, the ups are just around the corner.

The ultrasound technician patiently explained each body part to us as she gently maneuvered down the baby’s tiny body. I watched the monitor with mouth open, and eyes sparkling at the sight of any movement. Like seeing his complete set of fingers and toes, or seeing the little oval space that is his stomach. Jeremy held my left hand tightly and couldn’t stop shaking, I looked over at him, and his face was covered in tears.

How in the world did we not know for so long is still the subject of jokes to close friends. Turns out, I was pregnant prior to India, and there was a baby growing in me through out my 3-months of spiritual transformation at the ashram. I did not have any pregnancy sickness, and even had what I thought was a menstrual period while in India (I later learned that this happens to 22% of pregnant women – called spotting).

September 23, 2009 – Week 20 ultrasound

I thought I had put on a little weight because the food at the ashram was so good. While everyone else lost weight, I had gained a few pounds… ah! It all makes sense now! It wasn’t until after I’ve returned to my pre-India diet for a few weeks, that we noticed that only my stomach and boobs had gotten larger while the rest of me remained the same size. That was when we started suspecting.

On the bright side of things, at least we bypassed 5 months of pregnancy-related stress, and only have 4 months to go. We’re so under prepared that we don’t have time to stress, it’s just excitement and doing the necessary to best prepare. We’ve gotten over the initial shock of it all, Jeremy is no longer adamant about getting a large SUV to keep us safe, and after two weeks of reckless house shopping we decided to put house buying on hold until after the baby is born.

Ryan Ananda Sawatzky is expected to be born Feb 12, 2010; exactly one year to the date of our wedding in Kauai. Ananda means blissful in Sanskrit, and that describes him perfectly – a blissful baby.

(Side note: If you have any baby stuff that your child has outgrown, we’d love it if you would send it our way. Any used baby clothing, equipment or other necessities will be much appreciated by Ryan, Jeremy and I.)

What Did I Learn?

Photo by Edwin Stemp

An article isn’t complete without the lessons learned. The following is a selected set of lessons I’ve learned through my experience in the past six weeks:

Fluidity of Life – Life is always fluid. The unexpected and even unimaginable can and does happen at anytime. And all things, scenarios, events can shift their course at any time: from bad to good, from good to bad. There is no good or bad, there just is. Surrendering to whatever that happens, without placing unnecessary importance or investing excessive emotions holds the key to lasting happiness. At any moment, we have the choice to choose bliss, to see the light. Surrender to rigid thinking and choose to live a conflict free life.
Our Need to Blame – Blaming leads to nowhere, except temporary fulfillment for the ego. Yet, the ego does not stay fulfilled and will seek out more and more pain. Any kind of blaming thoughts, words, or accusations are ego-filling, unproductive and lead to our own suffering, even if they are “reasonably” justified.
Unconscious Actions – When we are in an unconscious state of mind (high TPS – thoughts per second), the survival instinct in our brain tells us to take unconscious actions with great urgency and conviction. These actions when taken, always lead to more unconsciousness and are rarely helpful.
The Mind’s Reality – Our mind always makes unknown situations worse than they actually are. Its goal is to dwell on pain and problems. Often when we find out the truth, we feel instantly relieved that the “reality” of events wasn’t as bad as what we had imagined.
Building Intensity – All my frustration and inner suffering really has a purpose and benefit: they build the intensity in me that further encourages me to break free from the inner conflicts, and to rise out a more conscious being established in Joy.
The Pain Body – When a person is established and reacts out of their pain body, they are no longer themselves, and we should not measure or judge their character based on when they are in this state. Recognize when they are in their pain body and detach from any painful feelings it may trigger in you. The pain body feeds on pain – its own pain and on other people’s pain. Whenever hurtful words are uttered and actions are taken, identify where they are coming from; likely, they will be coming from the pain body.
Seek to Understand, Drop Self Pity – When others behave in ways that you are not happy with, drop the self-pity story, bring in compassion, and try to understand why they are behaving in certain ways toward you. There is always a reason. Often times, we’re so wrapped up in defending ourselves and making our own side be understood that we fail to truly see things from other people’s perspective, and we miss the chance to heal others and ourselves.
Everything is Auspicious – No matter how bad things seem there is always a reason that contributes positively towards us. There always exists an incredible gift in any “bad” situation, trust that you are always being taken care of by the protective arms of Existence.

Parting Words

When things get low, do all that you can to come back to your center, and remember that you are a luminous and empowered being. You have the power and choice to bring the light into any situation that may appear dark.

No matter how unfair a situation may present itself, remaining in self-pity, blame and resentment will only hurt ourselves, and draws us deeper into that darkness. In fact, we only have two choices – to remain in darkness or to bring in the light. You have the choice to prolong the suffering, or to end it and move on.

Regardless of what is happening, the ups and downs of life will continue to prevail. And resisting to the down times will only delay the coming of the up times. Next time you hit a down time, remember that it is only temporary, focus on what can be learned, trust that it is the best thing that could happen to you right now, and know with certainty that the up time is just around the corner.

* Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below. See you there!

Editor’s Note: For those curious, the following is what I look like now (Jeremy’s been diligently documenting my weekly progress every sunday). Future progress photos will likely be posted on Simply Tina – Subscribe here for updates. Again, if you have any used baby things you no longer need, it’ll help us if you can donate, sell or lend to us. Mailing address is: Attn: Sawatzky, 2646 Rainier Ave. South, Seattle, WA 98144.

Photo by Jeremy Sawatzky

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Overcoming a Rough Week

Ralph Jean-Paul — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:59:10 +0000

Photo by Carlos Yepez (flickr stream).

By Ralph Jean-Paul

We all have bad days, but have you ever had one of those weeks when it seems everything is going wrong?

Monday, your alarm didn’t ring and you were late for work. Tuesday, your car broke down. Wednesday you lost your credit card. Thursday was your annual review and your employer informed you that, due to the economy, the company is not issuing raises this year. By the time Friday arrives and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you get a ticket for speeding. How do we handle a series of setbacks and bad news?

I recently had one of those weeks where it seemed that anything that could go wrong – did go wrong. The natural reaction most people have when the walls begin crumbling is to crumble right along with them.

I have developed a habit of not letting outside circumstances consume me. I have learned in the past that the events in your life do not determine the course of your life. Rather, it is your reaction to those events that will determine the quality of your life, and your life direction. In other words, it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to what happens to you.

Most of us can experience certain negative events and dismiss them. But when negative events seem to happen simultaneously – as they often do – they feel suffocating and impossible to overcome. This is when thoughts of giving in to that feeling of helplessness seem to evade the mind.

With the state of the economy and many people losing their jobs and homes, many of us feel powerless. But the truth is that there are many things we can do to help us cope with, and even change a bad situation.

My Story: “Did I Break a Mirror?”

I rolled out of bed Monday morning expecting my first week back at work to be a continuation of my everyday life. I had enjoyed my vacation week, but now, it was back to work. I spent the vacation reconnecting with friends, relaxing, and celebrating my 30th Birthday. I was refreshed and ready for a productive and fulfilling week.

I had a feeling that my week was going to be challenging when I opened my email on Monday and read that one of my employees will be out for a week; meaning that time sensitive assignments would not be completed until she got back. Also, because technical issues prevented me from updating my blog, my web traffic took a nose dive. Things began to get worse from there.

At the monthly staff meeting, we were asked to be patient during our merger with another company. We were also told to be prepared for some changes. We knew that “be patient” meant they didn’t know what was going on, and “changes” meant people were going to lose their jobs.

On top of that, a potential business partner suddenly stopped returning my emails. More bad news followed. A good friend and one of the nicest people I know, was moving out of the country.

To add insult to injury, someone dented the passenger side door on my car, my Blackberry started malfunctioning, and NBC cancelled My Name is Earl. All of this happened in one week!

“Did I break a mirror or offend a leprechaun last week?”, I thought.

After a brief pity party, I came to my senses and decided not to let those events determine my quality of life. I developed a plan to bounce back and regain control over my life.

Why We Must Bounce Back

There’s power in the overcoming of obstacles. Knowing that you have the ability to recover and survive the trials and tribulations of life, is a redemptive feeling. We must realize that we do not have to be victims of things that are happening around us. We are more likely to take more risk and act with courage tomorrow, if we are able to conquer the conditions of today.

Letting our circumstances consume us can lead to a false view of our life experience. Some who are unable to recover from the trying times of their lives begin to develop negative beliefs. I’ve heard people say “God just has it in for me” or “I’m just unlucky“. This mindset renders us helpless and unable to act in a way that changes our circumstances.

Being unable to cope with life’s obstacles can also affect our health. Depression and alcoholism can many times be rooted in a person’s inability to deal with the outside world. Since the outside world seems to deal multiple crushing blows, one after another, they look for an escape or close themselves off from the outside world.

Our relationships suffer also if we are unable to bounce back. We tend to isolate ourselves from the people around us. Some people carry anger and resentment inside and it reflects in their everyday dealings with people. I’m sure you’ve run it to a person who seems to be mad at the world all of the time. For these reasons and many more, it is important that we begin to face and conquer life’s tough conditions.

Bouncing Back

1. Find your foundation

The life we live should stand on a solid foundation. The mistake that many people make is to value their life based upon their possessions or social status. You are more than what you own, you are more than your worldly titles. For some people, it is their spiritual faith, or creative passion, or a strong relationship with family and friends that serves as the foundation for their life.

Finding your foundation means rediscovering the things that are truly important to you; the things that make your life worth living. You may have a passion for music or art. Use your current hardship to rediscover what drives you. Use those expressions of yourself to remind you that life can be enjoyable.

2. The Ant Philosophy

In some of his speeches, author Jim Rohn often talks about the ant philosophy. Ants are remarkably persistent. If an ant is on its way somewhere, and you place your thumb in its path, the ant instinctively tries to find another way. The ant will try to go over, around, and sometimes through any obstacle. Giving up is never an option.

Have you ever seen an ant come across an obstacle, stop and quit as to say, “Why are things always getting in my way”? Instead, the ant believes that there is a way to continue on the path and it works until it finds it.

When things get tough in our lives, we have to adopt the ant philosophy. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, and letting the obstacle win, we must attempt to find another way to get on the right path. We must be persistent until we reach our destination.

3. Verbalize It

Humans were not designed to be isolated. We need each other in so many ways. One of the major mistakes that I made when everything seemed to be going wrong was I began to isolate myself and suppressed my problems. I thought that if I threw myself into my work, eventually I would feel better. That may help to improve some circumstances, but I still felt a bit weighed down by everything that has happening.

During the week, a friend called me and asked, “How’s everything?“

“Everything is stupid!” I responded, unable to fully articulate my frustration.

He laughed knowing that I had been having a tough week. After talking for a few minutes, I realized how good it felt to verbalize how frustrated I was with how my week was going. I’m not one to dump my problems on other people, but I learned that sometimes it is better to express it in words than hold on to it.

4. Wake Up Call

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache
carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit“
~Napoleon Hill

Sometimes, it is the painful or frustrating circumstances that trigger us to learn and make positive changes in our lives. With one of my employees suddenly being out, I found major flaws in the way I managed my team. Even the way I distributed assignments left room for disastrous results in the event that one person was unable to work. During this week, I recognized and fixed several problems with my management system, which I would not have done otherwise.

During this week, I was reminded that that my day job may be in danger, this triggered me to review how I could recover from potential economic setbacks. It had been about 7 months since I reviewed my recovery plan. I realized that many things had changed with my monthly income and expenses, and it was time to revise the plan.

5. Dwell on the Good

For some strange reason, our minds tend to dwell on the negative things. That is one reason the news media usually broadcasts bad news; they know that negative happenings draw more ratings and attention.

Last year, at a gathering, I met two women who worked for the local news station as reporters. When we were being introduced, I confessed that I didn’t recognize them because I don’t watch the news. To my surprise, one of them responded, “Good, it’s all bad news“.

Even though it seemed as though my life was filled with the negative, there were many good things that happened. For example, I attended a banquet where I got to see some old friends who I miss. Also, someone gave me a certificate for a free massage at a local spa. But instead of being thankful for the good things, I made the mistake of choosing to see and dwelling on the bad.

We should take the time to be thankful and dwell on the good things that come into our lives, however small or intangible they may seem. I sat down and created a list of all the things I appreciated from the week, all the happenings that I enjoyed and all the non-tangible gifts I’d received. The list helped me put things in perspective. It also reminded me that the good times will return; in fact, they’re already here, if we choose to look for them.

Learn from the Seasons

Yes, the good times will return. Most failures and obstacles are temporary but feel as though they are going to last forever. We must be subscribers to the fact that, just like seasons, bad times come and go.

Good things will eventually happen again and good things may come from your bad experience, if you choose to see them. A possible benefit to your hardship may be the potential opportunity to help someone else through their trials. It is hard to see the possible good when you are in the thick of it, but all storms must come to an end.

Spring is often called the season of opportunity and it conveniently comes after winter which is known for being harsh and desolate. The tough times will pass and in their place will be growth, and potential for great things to happen.

So, how was your week?

* Tell us about what you’ve learned through your week? Share your thoughts and stories with us in the comment section. See you there.

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Design Your Life

Tina Su — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:56:43 +0000

Photo by the incredible Tom Palumbo of Anne St. Marie, 1959.

By Tina Su

Are you tired of setting New Year’s resolutions only to find yourself faced with the same resolutions a year later? Don’t you just hate that feeling of guilt rising in your stomach at the thought of lost time, lost opportunities and lack of self-discipline?

I was at the gym last night and was shocked to see 3 times as many people there than normal. Rushing out of a locker room filled, hip-to-hip, with half-clothed ladies I’ve never seen before, I hopped on the last of twelve treadmills and gazed around the room in amazement – nearly every machine was occupied, the personal trainers were fully engaged, and there were countless new faces.

This is what I call “New Year’s Resolution Syndrome”.

It is well-known that gyms will overbook annual memberships at the start of each year, banking on the fact that many people will not follow through and will eventually stop showing up. Over the next few weeks, the traffic will slowly die down and the gym will be back to its normal and quiet self again.

What’s the problem here? The problem is that resolutions do not work. Especially the socially coined, “New Year’s Resolutions”. It’s a cliché that only 12% of people actually take action on and resolve.

What we need is a different approach. We need a system of designing our lives to sustainably improve the quality of our daily experience.

This article details a step-by-step system that I personally use for creating and living a balanced and meaningful life. Throw away ‘them TO-DO lists, and resolutions, because they don’t work – at least, they don’t last long enough to make a sustainable impact. Let’s drill down and focus on what really matters.

The Old Ways

First, let’s have a peek at why the old ways don’t work in creating a lasting impact on our lives.

Problems with New Year’s Resolutions:

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the words “New Year’s Resolution”, my stomach tightens in angst. Through years of failed resolutions, my association with these words has become “empty goals I don’t look at until next New Year”.

What’s the point of setting these goals if we don’t plan on taking them seriously? They shouldn’t even be called “goals”, they should really be called “wishful thoughts” instead.

Here are some common reasons why resolutions are not effective:

We look at our list only once a year.
We do not review the goals throughout the year.
We don’t know why we want to achieve the goal.
Not enough passion or reasons to motivate us into action.
The goal is not specific. Too vague.
The goal seems too large and overwhelming, so we never start it.
We don’t actually want it.
We do not come up with a plan to make it a reality.

Problems with To-Do lists:

Don’t get me wrong, I love to-do lists more than the average gal. However, due to their never ending nature (seriously, they never end), they are not the most effective way to manage our lives in a meaningful and balanced way.

When we feel unbalanced, it is truly helpful to list out the tasks that are weighing on us, in a to-do list, and categorize them on paper. Getting these things out of our heads and onto paper frees up mental capacity. Indeed, we can get a lot of stuff done with to-do lists, and they are a very helpful tool, but using the lists alone will leave us feeling unfulfilled because we end up chasing after a never ending to-do list and forget to live our lives.

Here are some common issues with using to-do lists alone to manage our lives:

The sheer number of tasks can seem overwhelming.
The list never ends and you will always have more items to add.
Every item on the list appears to have the same sense of urgency. In reality, some tasks will bring more value and impact to your life than others.
The purpose and motivation behind a given task is not clear.
Selecting what to focus on becomes arbitrary, and we usually default to doing whichever’s easiest.

Live By Design, Not By Default

In trying to make the most out of our hectic lives, we may get caught up in the enthusiasm of crossing tasks off our to-do lists, and we disconnect from the knowingness that life is not about living by a to-do list, or ‘Getting Things Done’.

Chasing after tasks on our list can fulfill us temporarily, because it makes us feel busy and productive. It can also make us feel nervous, anxious and stressed.

We may be speeding through our list of tasks and feeling productive during the day, but when we get home at night, we realize that we are tired and unfulfilled. This is because we worked on arbitrary tasks that had no significance and meaning to us, and we focused on doing more and staying busy, instead of generating results that matter to us.

Assess Categories of Fulfillment

Before diving into setting goals, let’s gain some clarity on where we stand right now. On a blank sheet of paper, try this:

1. List out major areas of your life that are the most important to you. Come up with 4 to 8 areas. These are your major life categories. List them in no particular order.

Example 1, here are my categories:

Relationship & Family
Professional
Financial
Personal Development
Physical Health
Emotional Wellbeing
Spiritual Growth
Household & Living Environment

Example 2, categories of a friend:

Family & Intimate Relationship
Emotional & Spiritual Wellbeing
Intellectual Development
Time Management / Daily Routine
Friendships
Physical Development
Financial Health
Career Development

2. Do it quickly. You don’t need to over think this. You can always come back and redo this step.

3. Draw a large circle. Divide the circle up like a pie chart, where the number of pie pieces is equal to the number of life categories from above. (Alternatively, print out a blank chart with 8 categories: Image | Word Doc | PDF )

4. In each piece of the pie, write the name of one life category.

5. For each of the life categories on the circle, assign a rating out of 100% based on where you are today and where you want to ultimately be for that life area. How do you feel about it, versus how you want to feel in an ideal scenario. A 100% rating means you are completely satisfied, and 0% means you are completely dissatisfied. Write the percentage number down within each piece of the pie.

6. Draw a line within the pie to represent the percentage number in relation to how much of the piece of the pie has been filled up. The center of the circle is 0 and outer edge is 100.

7. Shade in the areas. This gives you a picture of where you stand in each of the life areas that are important to you.

As an example, here’s one I created for myself a month ago (Click on it for larger image):

Again, you can print blank pie charts with 8 categories here:
Image | Word Doc | PDF

Having this picture in front of us, we can clearly see the life areas we need to focus on in order to feel balanced. In reality, we can’t abandon any of these life areas for long without feeling imbalanced and unwell.

Now imagine that this is a wheel. How well will it roll? If it isn’t round, or close to being round, it will tip over, right?

What I love about drawing this picture is that we can capture and visualize the stress and psychological imbalance we’ve been feeling and carrying around with us. Having a visual representation helps to release some of that energy we’ve been grasping onto.

Pick one life area that makes you cringe. Alternatively, pretend you have this picture on the wall for all your friends to see. Which one makes you want to tear the picture off the wall? This is the area you should focus on first.

Step 1: Brainstorm Feelings

Let’s first connect with the feelings you want to experience this year.

On a blank sheet of paper, start jotting down all the feelings and personal impacts you want to experience this year. List them as they come to mind. Write them down without editing. Don’t worry about completeness or grammatical correctness, the main purpose of this step is to capture feelings in alignment with our desires.

Photo by Melissa Webb (See more images at her flickr stream)

You can use these questions to guide yourself:

How do I want to feel?
What do I want to experience?

Here is a blurb from my own brainstorm:

Clarity, organization, inner peace, improving the lives of others, authenticity, stress-free financial abundance, joy, living my passion, love, intimacy, laughter, changing lives for the better, connecting with my higher-self daily, tranquility, fulfillment, dancing, compassion, emotional mastery, simplicity, to help others, to surrender to the moment.

In writing down these feelings, not only are we glazing the stages of our lives with positive intentions, but we are also inadvertently creating visions for how we want the year to go.

Step 2: Select an Emotional Driving Force

Review your list from step 1, and underline 1-3 words that you connect with the most. You can either string them together or write a statement that includes these words (or feelings they imply) – the shorter, the better.

You can use these questions to help you:

If I could choose one feeling or state of mind for the entire year, what would that be?
What is the most important state of mind I would like to have regularly?

For example, I had, “Clarity & Inner Peace”.

Write this statement at the top of a new page. This is the most important state of mind you are after. Having identified this helps us focus on the emotions most important to us. Seeing this, also makes it convenient for planning and creating outcomes that provide these feelings.

Step 3: Capture Outcomes for the Year

Next, in bullet points, list outcomes, results, and achievements you would like to experience for the next year. We’re just capturing them on paper. Don’t worry about making it perfect.

Here are some of my personal outcomes for the year:

To give engaging and captivating speeches in front of people. Training for public speaking.
To feel connected with my inner self and live consciously on a daily bases.
Become an early riser – starting the day feeling refreshed at 6am or earlier.
To participate in a triathlon or similar event.
To establish a productive, effective and healthy daily routine.

I recommend breaking up personal and professional outcomes into separate exercises.

Step 4: Planning Each Outcome

Let’s drill down into each outcome, and how we can make it a reality. Go through the outcomes from step 3 and for each outcome, fill out the following on a new page.

Number it - Title it with an outcome number. ie. “outcome 1″
Outcome Statement – Write the outcome next to the number. You can either copy what you had from step 3, or rephrase it using less words, or words that better capture what you want.
Purpose – The reasons why realizing this outcome is important. List as many as you can in bullet points. Use words and phrases that excite you, that move you, and that inspire you.
Categories of Fulfillment – From the wheel of life exercise above, we identified some major life categories. If this outcome was realized, which of these life categories will it contribute towards? Which category’s tank will it fill up? Feel free to list additional categories, even if it wasn’t identified on your wheel of life.
Actions – List action-able items you must do to make the outcome a reality. Break these actions into smaller chunks or steps if necessary. Ideally, each item should take less than 1-2 hours to complete.

Please note that if your outcome is too vague or too big, it will be difficult to measure or remain motivated. Be specific and measurable (if possible). Use numbers and measurements.

If your outcome is big, or consists of many categories of to-dos, then we must break each sub-outcome into its own outcome block. For example, if you are planning a large wedding, you may have many areas that need to get done, and each area needs to be grouped as an individual outcome: booking a beautiful location, finding a flattering outfit, perfect accommodations for guests, etc. Similarly, if you are planning to elope, your may not have that many to-dos, and they can all be grouped under one outcome: An incredibly intimate and memorable wedding.

Photo: Thomas Hawk

Here is an example of an outcome planning block for myself:

Outcome 3: Continuous Learning & Intellectual Development
Purpose:
- To expand my horizon, to pickup new tools for my emotional toolbox, and to enhance my understanding of human transformation to better serve my readers.
- To be regularly motivated, inspired and challenged.
- To live a rich and fulfilling life with growth, contribution and purpose.
Categories of Fulfillment: Emotional Wellbeing, Personal Development, Professional Growth.
Actions:
- To read something for at least 30 minutes, everyday.
- Come up with a list of books I want to finish for the year.
- Organize my book shelf.
- Schedule tentative books I want to read each month in my calendar.
- Write down at the end of each day, what I learned or improved upon or contributed towards in that day.

Step 5: The Most Important Outcome

Give yourself a pat on the back for making it past step 4!! I’m so proud of you. And if you haven’t done it, take some time, go back and do it for yourself. Trust me, you will benefit from it.

Review each of your outcome blocks, especially each purpose and category of fulfillment. Pick the top 3 outcomes you really want to work on. Pick ones that will give you the biggest rewards for your efforts. Pick ones that contribute towards the life categories that need to be filled up the most.

These are the most important outcomes for the year – if you just got these outcomes done, you would feel like a complete rock star! Make these outcomes a priority.

That’s it! You’re done with the designing phase!

Tips for Following Through

Now that you have a beautiful year ahead of you, a plan for achieving the outcomes you want most, and reasons for why each outcome is important, the rest lies in your ability to follow-through and take consistent action towards results that mean the most to you.

Photo: Kevin Russ

Here are some tips:

Weekly Review and Planning – Spend a set amount of time to review which outcomes you will work on this week. Evaluate your results from previous weeks. I will cover the weekly planning process in more detail in another article.
Momentum – Take action every week (everyday if you can) regardless of how small, to keep momentum.
One Outcome – Focus on just one outcome at a time. You can have other outcomes, but only work on them when you’ve completed tasks for the most important outcome.
Review Often – Read over your written outcome blocks as often as you can in a day, in a week. Especially review the purpose, to be reminded of why each outcome is important to you.
Visualize Outcomes – Before doing something, it helps to close your eyes for a moment to visualize the end result. When the outcome is a reality, how will you feel? How will you celebrate it? How big will you smile? Feel the feelings of excitement in your Being.
Tell People About It – We are more likely to do something when we feel accountable for it. Let other people know what your up to, and you’re outcomes.
Visual Reminders - Post your outcome and its purpose up where you can see them – walls, bathroom mirror, on your desk, etc.
Find a Buddy - Find a buddy who is also working on something important to them. Become each other’s best support and motivator. Tell each other what you are currently focused on, why it is important and the actions you plan to take. On a regular basis, review your results with each other.
Divide Annual Goals - Where would you need to be in 6 months, in order to achieve a particular outcome in a year? Where would you need to be in 3 months? In a month? Keep dividing annual goals, until you have a more realistic target to shoot for in the short term.
Reward Yourself & Celebrate Successes – When you’ve succeeded in taking action or you’ve completed your outcome, don’t rush to work on the next outcome. Jump up and down! Treat yourself to something you enjoy (web surfing time, a snack, a stretch, a movie). Celebrate and give gratitude for your wins!

Parting Words

The art and act of designing your life is not just limited to the start of each year, nor is it set in stone. You are in control of your destiny. Instead of living in constant reaction and drifting between urgent demands on our to-do list, we have a choice to design and create a life with meaning and purpose.

It’s never too late to start drafting your life based on the areas that matter most to you. And you are free to adjust the sail at anytime as you navigate to sea. Instead of working off a big list of action items and arriving at an unpredictable outcome, start with a clear vision of the outcome you want, understand why it’s important to you, and then list the actions necessary to get that result.

Your destiny is in your hands. How will you design it?

** What are some of your most important outcomes for the year? Share your thoughts in the comment section. See you there!

[01/11/2009 Update]: The “wheel of life” technique came from the Tony Robbins UPW live seminar and the OPA (Outcome Purpose Action) planning technique came from Tony Robbins’ The Time of Your Life audio program on time management. The author does not claim credit for these concepts, but is merely iterating what has been helpful in her own life. Step 1 and 2 of this article are original concepts from the author.

Other Articles You May Like:

External Resources:

Audio: The Time of Your Life
Blog: The Single Secret to Making 2009 Your Best Year Ever
Book: The Power of Less

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13 Tips to Building Self Esteem

Tina Su — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:00:04 +0000

Photo: Kevin Russ

“People with high self-esteem are the most desired,
and desirable people in society.”
~ Brian Tracy

By Jae Song & Tina Su

Can you recall the last time you were in an emotional slump, such that your beliefs in yourself and your abilities were slipping away? How can we maintain the beliefs we have in ourselves, such that we can live with less anxiety and more joy?

Just imagine the things we would accomplish if we had the belief that we could do absolutely anything, especially if we could maintain a level of self-esteem that no circumstance could shake. What would you be doing?

Self-esteem comes from positive self-imaging, and it is something that we proactively build for ourselves. Self-esteem doesn’t happen while we wait passively. When we leave it up to external factors, we build our self-esteem on sandy ground. What we want is a rock-solid foundation, and this only comes from building it within.

Throughout our daily routines, our minds are very good at picking up all the things we’ve done wrong, and it makes sure we are aware of them. With such a counter-productive force at work, we can benefit greatly by regularly working towards establishing and building our own self image.

I’ve learned that the way we view ourselves directly affects everything we do. People with high self-esteem get along easily with others, rarely get sick, and seem to have high energy reserves. Also, their high level of self-esteem corresponds with their high level of productivity, capacity of happiness and state of well-being.

A Personal Story…

As a style coach, I (Jae) am my own boss – which is a blessing and a curse. Without a manager to report to, deadlines, or set schedules, I am responsible for enforcing these on myself – intrinsically. I must do these things if I want to achieve my professional goals, even though it can feel like a burden at times.

Last month, after several previous hectic months of intense work, I had fallen into a lull. Maybe you can relate with me… It started with a few missed to-do items, then failure to deliver on a few commitments. I could feel the self disappointment building inside. I felt stressed.

I woke up each morning with the thought of making up for the previous day’s failures, only to find myself failing once again. Iin this vicious cycle my work started to accumulate, and for days I needed to push back on obligations and commitments.

I felt the grip on my self-esteem slipping, and was now scrambling to hang on to the remaining scraps of what was left of it. I kept making excuses and rationalizations for why I wasn’t getting stuff done, and as my integrity waned, I started to lose faith in myself and procrastinate even more.

This was me a month ago.

It has been a beautiful learning experience being able to observe myself in this state of mind, and ultimately learning how I overcame it.

A Closer Look

Self-esteem = how much we like ourselves.

How much we like ourselves = level of self-dominion.

What is self-dominion? It is our ability to get ourselves to actually do, what we want ourselves to do; in other words, self-discipline and self-trust.

A person who has dominion over themselves has self-integrity – staying true to their words and commitments.

Every time we fail to listen to our inner voice, and do not take action in something that we need to, we lose trust with ourselves and our abilities. This lack of self faith continues to spiral downwardly as we flounder to fulfill more commitments.

Turning Point: How to Start Building Self-Esteem

Photo: Mike Bailey-Gates

Most of us are familiar with the concept of momentum. When we do something well, regardless of how small the task, we build positive energy and momentum, which can fuel other tasks on our list.

For example, if you have just washed all the dishes, mowed the lawn, and made calls to all of your clients, it will be easier for you – psychologically – to quickly move on to and complete the next task. You will have built the momentum necessary to getting things done, and you are simply riding on that energy and building on previous successes.

On the flip side, when we put off what we want to do or know we should do, we lose momentum, and more importantly, we lose trust in ourselves.

Another way to view this is to pretend we have a personal assistant. The better they perform on the tasks assigned to them, the more confident we will feel towards their abilities to handle responsibility. Gradually, we will assign more important tasks to them as trust is established. We now have faith in their abilities to follow through. We trust them.

Conversely, if our assistant procrastinates and misses deadlines regularly, we will lose faith in their abilities to follow through. We stop trusting them. We stop giving them tasks (at least the important ones), and we start to look for a replacement assistant.

Now, think of ourselves as our own assistant. The more we follow through with actions, the more confidence and trust we’ll establish with ourselves. We will then gain faith in our ability to take on more tasks.

The small wins with ourselves, directly affect how much we like ourselves. Each time we successfully follow through, the experience becomes a building block towards a more positive self image.

13 Tips to Building Self-Esteem

In order to build your self-esteem, you must establish yourself as the master of your own life. Every single minute of your life is a moment you can change for the better.

If you’ve been delaying some action for half the day, don’t dwell on it or beat yourself up for it, shift your focus to the present moment and what you can do right now. Start with the smallest or the most important task.

Photo: Vanessa Paxton

The following are tips to help build continuous upward momentum towards higher self esteem.

1. Start Small

Start with something you can do immediately and easily. When we start with small successes, we build momentum to gain more confidence in our abilities. Each completed task, regardless of how small, is a building block towards a more confident you. What are some small actions you can take immediately to demonstrate that you are capable of achieving goals you’ve set for yourself? For example, clean your desk, organize your papers, or pay all your bills.

2. Create a Compelling Vision

Use the power of your imagination. Create an image of yourself as the confident and self-assured person you aspire to become. When you are this person, how will you feel? How will others perceive you? What does your body language look like? How will you talk? See these clearly in your mind’s eye, with your eyes closed. Feel the feelings, experience being and seeing things from that person’s perspective. Practice doing this for 10 minutes every morning. Put on music in the background that either relaxes you, or excites you. When you are done, write a description of this person and all the attributes you’ve observed.

3. Socialize

Get out of the house or setup a lunch date with a friend. Socializing with others will give us opportunities to connect with other people, and practice our communication and interpersonal skills.

4. Do Something that Scares You

As with all skills, we get better with practice and repetition. The more often we proactively do things that scare us, the less scary these situations will seem, and eventually will be rid of that fear.

5. Do Something You Are Good At

What are you especially good at or enjoy doing? Regularly doing things that you are good at reinforces your belief in your abilities and strengths. I (Tina) can be very efficient with completing errands or administrative work. Whenever I have a few hours filled with ways in which I’ve maximized my time, I feel highly productive and this boosts the confidence have in my abilities as an organized and efficient person.

6. Set Goals

According to a study done at Virginia Tech, 80% of Americans say they don’t have goals. And the people who regularly write down their goals earn nine times as much over their lifetime as people who don’t. By setting goals that are clear and actionable, you have a clear target of where you want to be. When you take action towards that goal, you’ll build more confidence and self-esteem in your abilities to follow through.

7. Help Others Feel Good About Themselves

Help somebody or teach them something. When you help other people feel better about themselves and like themselves more, it will make you feel good about yourself. See what you can do to make others feel good or trigger them to smile. Maybe giving them a genuine compliment, helping them with something or telling them what you admire about them.

8. Get Clarity on Life Areas

Get clarity on the life area that needs the most attention. Your self-esteem is the average of your self-concept in all the major areas of your life. Write down all the major categories of your life, e.g., health, relationships, finance, etc. Then rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in each area. Work on the lowest numbered category first, unless they are all even. Each area affects the other areas. The more you build up each area of your life, the higher your overall self-esteem.

9. Create a Plan

Having a goal alone won’t do much. Get clarity on your action items. One of the biggest reasons people get lazy is because they don’t have a plan to achieve their goals. They don’t know what the next step is and start to wander off randomly. When you’re baking a cake, it’s a lot easier to follow a set of clear instructions, than randomly throwing ingredients together.

10. Get Motivated

Read something inspirational, listen to something empowering, talk to someone who can uplift our spirits, who can motivate us to become a better person, to live more consciously, and to take proactive steps towards creating a better life for ourselves and our families.

11. Get External Compliments

As funny as this point suggests, go find a friend or family member and ask them “What do you like about me?” “What are my strengths?” or “What do you love about me?” We will often value other people’s opinions more than our own. We are the best at beating ourselves up for things not done well, and we are the worst at recognizing what we’ve done well in. Hearing from another person our strengths and positive qualities helps to build a more positive image of ourselves.

12. Affirmations & Introspection

Use affirmations, but in the right way. Some people think that when they’re in a slump, using positive affirmations will help them get out of it. I love affirmations, but I’ve realized you have to use them in the right way. Sitting on your couch and saying “I am highly motivated and productive” does nothing. Say something like “I am sitting here being very unproductive right now, is this the ideal me? What would be my best self?” Your affirmations have to be the TRUTH. Once you’re honest, take the first step towards doing the thing, no matter how small.

13. No More Comparisons

Stop comparing yourself to other people. Low-self esteem stems from the feeling of being inferior. For example, if you were the only person in the world, do you think you could have low-self esteem? Self-esteem only comes into the picture when there are other people around us and we perceive that we are inferior. Don’t worry about what your neighbor is doing. Accept that it’ll serve you more to just go down your own path at your own pace rather than to compare yourself. Pretend you’re starting over and begin immediately with the smallest step forward.

Self-esteem comes from self-dominion. The more power you have in getting yourself to take the right actions, the more self-esteem you will have. Your level of self-esteem affects your happiness and everything you do.

** What did you do the last time you fell into a slump? What has been affective for you in developing your self-esteem? Share your thoughts and stories in the comment section. See you there!

Jae Song is a men’s style consultant who writes articles for kinowear.com, a men’s style development company. He also does 1-on-1 image consultations, contact him via his website for any style-related needs. To read more articles by Jae, subscribe to his blog.

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Think Simple Now » motivation

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