Life can be described as follows:

Choose between this… this… and this.
Live consequences
Repeat Until you die

You work hard… you get the promotion or you earn a lot of money but you have to sacrifice time off or time with your family. You study hard at university you get your A+ but as a consequence you might put aside your relationship resulting in its degradation.

Life is like that. You are faced with a decision with a limited amount of options. With every option you choose, you will get benefits but you also get consequences. This makes decision making very important since our life takes shape depending on what decision we make. This leads us to the million dollar question.

How do you make the right choices in life?

Please allow me to suggest my brain dead simple method that I use when I am faced with a decision which is bigger than me. All it takes is a white blank sheet of paper, a pen and a clean desk. I split the paper into a series of columns depending on how many options I have available. After I list all the options at the top, one per column, I split the paper into two rows: in the top most row I list the pro and in the bottom row I write down the cons.

While doing this exercise you have to take care that you list everything down. Make sure that you think hard enough to see all the effects of the corresponding option. Don’t be biased and take some effects for granted. Be open minded and list every effect down. If you are biased in your decisions this will have severe effects on your future, since you might take the wrong decision.

I know that the decision making system that I use is very simple. But after all you need something simple, something that does not make you think since you are already overloaded with the decision that you are about to take. However, I would like to hear how you go about making decisions.

All right let’s play a game! As from now lets try to smile more at others. There are a lot of places where we can smile more, both at people who we know and at strangers. For instance, you can smile to the person serving you lunch, smile at your colleagues, and smile to walking by strangers while you are walking home.

It is incredible what effect a smile has on you and the person who receives it. First of all, the fact that you smile at someone makes you feel good. When giving a good honest smile, it makes you feel good because it seems like you are giving something very valuable to someone. Actually you are, you are sharing with them something priceless.

Can you remember the last time you got smiled at? How important you felt? If you receive a smile after you just handed a report to your boss, you will automatically feel that you did a great job. So why not make others share this great feeling? Why don’t you smile at the waitress who has done an excellent job in serving you a hot snack for your breakfast?

What is interesting about this game is that the more you smile at people, the more smiles you get back. A smile is reciprocated with another smile. Such attitude will help create a better place for living… a better world.

One of the problems that working from home has, is that it is very difficult to differentiate between your personal life and work. It is very easy to get distracted by other members of the family. People at home, look at you as if you are off from work or as if you are not busy. They will ask for a lift or maybe to help them out in cooking, doing the washing or do an errand for them.

On the other hand, working from home might mean that you go to the other extreme and work from early in the morning till very late. When working from home, your office is the room next to your bedroom. There are no opening and closing hours, no colleague to distract you… just working from very early till very late from Monday till Sunday. It’s not easy to strike a balance between the two extremes. The following are some points that might help you benefit from the advantages that working from home has to offer whilst making sure that you don’t over do it.

Define your workspace

This can be easily done, by setting up your office in a separate room. You can maybe stick up a note saying “Office” and maybe the opening and closing hours (joking apart). Such seperation helps you to make the difference between your personal life and your working life. It will help other members of the family to differentiate when you are working and when you are not.

Set schedule

As I have stated above, set the opening and closing hours. Don’t wake up late because there will be no grumbling from your boss. Make sure you stick to the opening hours of your office. This applies to the closing hours. Don’t over do it. Ok fine, if it is a hard day, you need to put some extra effort to help trash more stuff. But don’t do it everyday. You have got a life to live!

Have a comfortable environment

Having a comfortable environment will help you work better and be more productive. It will also make you want to spend time in the working environment. If you have an uncomfortable chair and desk, you will be very tempted to go and work in the next room where the comfortable sofas are waiting for you.

Listen to music

Since you are most of the time alone in a room you will feel like sleeping. Music can help you keep the vibe. I don’t personally listen to music all the time. When I need to concentrate I turn it off. But when I am doing stuff that doesn’t need 100% concentration, I switch on music to help me stay awake, especially in the mornings.

In order to be successful you need to know how to fail. You can find a lot of articles describing how you can be successful. Depending on what you are trying to achieve, you need to apply a particular plan. But irrespective of which area you are in, the following are the ways how you can fail.

Limiting yourself

Think that you can’t do it and guess what? You will not do it. If you limit yourself and you don’t believe in what you can achieve then what do you expect? A lot of pyschologists say “We are what we think!” Think that you are a failure and you will become one.

Losing focus

Everyone has a lot of ideas. Ideas come and go. We chose what we think is the best idea and focus on it. Focus is a key component to success. Hoping from one idea to another, without giving the chance for any of the ideas to grow and prosper is a very common way how people fail. It’s not because their ideas are wrong and there is nothing wrong with the way how they are executing them… it’s because succeeding needs time.

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A lot is said about how you can reach your goals. A common tip to reach your goals is to print your goals in a large font and stick them up to wall. This will make sure that every now and then you get reminded of your goals. It is also suggested that you read your goals everyday before you start working. This will remind you what are you aiming for and how does the work that you will do today help you in achieving the goals that you have just read.

Fine… the above are all good suggestions. But still doing the above religiously will not help you in reaching your goals if and only if you don’t own your goals. To own your goals means that the following two attributes must be present:

You have a say in the goal setting process.

Goals which have been imposed on you by an authority without even consulting you in the goal setting process tend to result in lack of ownership. It is vital to have a say in the goal setting process, since after all you are the person that is going to work towards that goal. The fact that you are allowed to state how difficult it is to reach a goal, propose ways and means how to reach a goal and define a deadline for a goal will make you work harder to reach what you have in the first place proposed.

You really want to reach a goal.

During the goal setting process, you have limited information on which you can decide on. Things sometimes do not go as planned and variables change, making it harder to meet deadlines and achieve goals. Having real desire in meeting goals means that you are flexible enough to accept changes and adapt yourself accordingly. While adapting yourself you might have to work extra hours, invest extra money or take extra risks.

Goal ownership really makes a difference. When you feel that you own something, you will push the limits and work hard for what you own. Now stop and think… look at the goals that you have stuck to your wall or monitor… be honest and say whether you really own them

I simply don’t have words to add to this story! I recommend that you first watch the video and then read the story of Dick and his disabled son Rick

It simply happens to everyone… we get bored of our everyday routine and we feel like not doing anything. Going through such a period in life is normal. The day seems to stretch itself and be longer than usual. But how do you go about to motivate yourself and get back that momentum that you used to have?

During such periods, instead of trying to force yourself in getting things done, I suggest that you be very selective in what you do. You should choose one item that you feel like doing but which has quite a high priority. The most important thing is that you feel like doing it. Make yourself think that the task that you have selected is the only thing that you aim to achieve that day. With that in mind you will get motivated to trash the task away so that you have the rest of the day off. From my experience, I can tell that after you finish off the task you will spend something like 10 to 20 minutes admiring the fact that you managed to break the chain and started moving again. Telling the truth, it is interesting that the above technique really works. What seems to be very difficult to get past, is so easy to beat with the right technique.I manage to get past tough periods of my life where I feel very bored and uninspired with the above technique. I would like to hear what you think of it. Have you ever tried it? Did it work? If not, what works for you?

If I asked to you to name the largest deciding factor in the success and social status of the world’s most affluent and happy people, what would you guess it was? Would you say it was being born into a good family? Would you say it was a good education or perhaps sheer, raw talent? But any way you guess it, you’d probably be wrong. In fact, the greatest contributing factor to an upwardly mobile social status or an ever-increasing bank account is the ability to plan your future in the long term. And long term doesn’t mean planning next year or even the next five years. Long term planning means projecting yourself twenty or even thirty and forty years into the future and planning your every day toward achieving those goals over all else. Think you’ve got what it takes?

The Research

In the few years before 1970, Harvard University sociologist Edward Banfield conducted research into what behaviors and social factors could predict wealth, affluence and success. Banfield was using what we today would call “success modeling.” What he discovered, and would eventually publish in his controversial book “The Unheavenly City,” was that the only accurate predictor of success was what he referred to as “long-time perspective.” You see, Banfield studied education, race, family, upbringing, intelligence and behavior and found that the only thing that was held constant in those that succeeded was the ability and the habit of planning out their time not in the increments of hours, days or weeks, but in decades! 

That bears repeating: the only factor was how far into the future a person routinely planned.

Let that sink in for a second because it’s not a stretch to say that that information could change your life.

So how far into the future do you plan?

If you’re like most folks it’s usually to the next paycheck. We plan from pay period to pay period or, if we’re really on the ball, even a whole year in advance, but that’s where most of us stop. Think about all of the people you know who don’t even plan more than an hour into the future. Usually they make excuses like, “living in the moment” or “being spontaneous,” but never mistake good time management for being trapped, or stuffy. Learn how to use your time to its fullest and you’ll find you suddenly have more of it available to you. If you’re one of those people who rarely plans ahead, don’t feel bad because success is not out of your reach. The beauty of success modeling is that the information you receive from research like Banfield’s can be put to immediate, practical use.

The Steps You Can Take:

1. Discover Your Dream -  this is the hardest step on this list and there is just no getting around it. You have to find what it is that you love because that’s what you’re going to be working toward every single day. And don’t be afraid to plan big. Who wants to look thirty years into the future and imagine themselves still at a job they hate or retiring penniless? If you’re going to work your entire life for something, you might as well make it something that you actually want. Dream big or don’t dream at all.

I know some people might feel that planning that far ahead is all well and good for someone in their twenties, but what if you’re only a few year away from retirement? What if you feel you’re too old to start dreaming up something new? Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re never too old to start working toward your dreams and I’ve seen the proof of it. My father has worked in professional broadcasting all his life and one of the people he’s had the pleasure of becoming friends with is Rhubarb Jones, the most famous man in radio here in Atlanta and a man I have always known as Uncle Rhubarb. This man, well into his fifties and well over thirty years into an incredibly successful radio career decided to go back to college and in 2006 earned his Masters Degree in the hopes of becoming a college professor when he finally decides to hang up the headphones. Rhubarb was a smart enough man to look well into his golden years and find what it was he still had left in him. Don’t make the mistake of believing the myth that beyond forty or fifty is the backside of life. There is no hill. 

Start imagining the world you want. If you don’t know where you want to go you’ll never get there.

2. Get Over Your Fear of Disappointment - even more debilitating than a fear of failure is a fear of disappointment. We’re too afraid to plan ahead because we don’t want to face the disappointment if we fail to achieve our goals. We don’t want to write down a to-do list because we’re too afraid of not getting every item crossed off. Dreaming big isn’t a pleasurable experience because the thought of potential disappointments is always lingering. I know that, for me anyway, it wasn’t always like that. I know that when I was a kid, I used to dream big everyday. I fell asleep every night dreaming of the wonderful things I wanted to happen in my life. I spent many a school period daydreaming wondrous things that I could achieve and I always told myself that I would never loose that desire to imagine and dream. But I, like so many others, was ambushed by adulthood and somewhere along the line, my dreaming days fell by the wayside. I never knew it was gone until it was too late.

I lost my desire to dream because I was overwhelmed by the fear of never achieving those dreams. To never achieve my dreams was far better than trying and being disappointed by my own failure. I psyched myself out before I even had a chance to begin. But once I realized my loss, I took the necessary steps to regain it again. Now I can live with hope that my dreams may come to fruition instead of in the fear that they will ultimately fail. If the fear of disappointment has you, shake it off now and start looking toward hope, because that’s what your dreams are for.
 

3. Start Being Okay With Discomfort -  we have a great problem with discomfort in western society. We avoid it if at all possible, even if it could bring us the things we desire. We don’t want to exercise because it’s hot, sweaty and painful. We want the weight loss that the exercise could bring, but we don’t want to have to work for it. If you want to start developing a long-time perspective you have got to start being okay with discomfort. You must learn to face a little bit of pain and suffering in the short term so that you can find success and wellbeing in the long term. Once you have discovered what it is you want so far down the road, you must develop the courage to do anything to get it. You must learn to push through the discomfort of today, if that discomfort can bring you closer to your dreams.  

Start getting yourself into the mindset of doing your important tasks first, before you can talk yourself out of them. It’s a universal rule that we will always procrastinate on those tasks that will bring us the most success. This being the case, you must learn to see past the short term discomfort of your work and to the long term benefits it will bring. Keep your eye on the prize and grit your teeth when you need to.

4. Have Courage Enough to Make Goals - let’s face it, goals are scary. For one thing, we generally don’t like making promises to yourself that we’re not sure we can keep. We don’t like getting our hopes up and most of the time we just really have no idea of what we could feasibly achieve. We sit down to make our goals, become too frightened to dream big and start aiming as low as possible. We’ve gotten so used to aiming low that we’re unaware that we can aim any higher. Start finding the courage to make big goals. Don’t say you want a 3% raise just because that’s all you think you could get. Goals aren’t meant to be the things you think you could settle for, goals are like sign posts to success.

Have the guts to stand up for what you really want. Put them in writing, in plain view, and look at them everyday. Tell yourself that no matter what happens, come hell or high water, you can and will achieve them. It takes more than a little courage. It takes more than a little perseverance, but just remember that when the going gets tough, refer to number three.

Never Again Be Bogged Down

You already know that time management is an indispensable skill. You already know that planning out your days and making the most of your time can present you with amazing rewards in both your personal and professional life but you might not be taking your skills as far as they can go. Remember that the only predicting factor for success has nothing to do with the school you went to or who you know, it has everything to do with how far into the future you can plan. Take what you already know about managing your time and your talents and project yourself twenty or even thirty years into the future and write down what you see. What kind of job do you have? What is your home like? Your family like? What is life for you going to be thirty years down the yellow brick road? 

However you see it, write it down and review those plans from time to time. Once you have this plan written down, you will never again be bogged down in indecision or prone to procrastination. When you come to a fork in the road, figure out which one leads you closer to those plans. When you find yourself in hard times, look toward your goals and know that once through this moment of discomfort you will be one step closer to where you want to stay. So knowing what you know now, you must ask yourself the big question: Right now, this instant, how far into the future have you planned?

Daniel Roach is dedicated to a no-nonsense view of personal development. Through his website and blog he is dedicated to helping people make lasting changes through lasting effort. If you enjoyed this post and are serious about your personal growth, consider subscribing to his RSS feed.

Tomorrow it’s Valentine’s Day! Many of you have most probably already bought a gift for their partner. If not, then consider yourselves lucky since this blog post is serving as a reminder.
Valentine’s Day is a great day in which we can all put aside any difficulties that we might be going through in our relationships. Here are three tips that will help you improve your relationship literally overnight and not just for Valentine’s Day.

Listen to what your partner says

When your better half speaks you should listen without interrupting. Listening means thinking about what your partner is saying, not thinking how to reply. Start applying this simple rule and you will see that your relationship will significantly improve. When you interrupt someone it simply means that you don’t care what the other person is saying. This often leads to argumentation since you reply back without understanding what your partner’s concern is. Listening carefully without interrupting is not easy. Do not confuse simple with easy. But trust me, listening carefully and calmly can do wonders to your relationship.

Involve your partner

Start from this Valentine’s Day. When you are in a relationship don’t act like a boss. Talk to your partner before committing yourself with friends, colleagues or relatives. Sharing ideas and talking with your partner means that you care about what your partner thinks. It also shows respect. These are all qualities that strengthen a relationship. 

Stop asking to be understood

Stop expecting your partner to understand you. Start understanding your partner. When you ask your partner to understand you, you are simply asking your partner to change his/her mind and start thinking the same way as you do… in other words compromising. Start compromising yourself and you will see that you partner will follow suit.

This list is not exhaustive but I think these three tips are fundamental if one wants to have a healthy, happy, and loving relationship. Till next time, happy St. Valentine’s Day to all