By observing certain rules, or commandments, anyone can achieve success in life.

We all want to succeed. I’m sure the following is true for you, as it’s true for me:

• You yearn to fulfill your full potential.
• You want tomorrow to be better than today.
• You want to be the best version of yourself.
• You want to have a fulfilling and meaningful life.
• At the end of your life you want to be able to say, “I succeeded” (however you define success).

While there are no guarantees in life, there are guiding principles you can follow to greatly improve your odds of succeeding. I’ve identified what I consider to be the 10 rules which should be strictly followed in order to succeed. And, of course, I’m going to share with them with you.

Below you’ll find the 10 commandments for success in life.

1. Thou Shalt Know What You Want

A person who doesn’t know what they want is like a ship lost at sea, drifting aimlessly, being tossed back and forth by the waves, and being blown here and there by every wind. This shouldn’t be you.

Instead, you need to identify what it is you want, so that there’s a specific port you’re headed to. Knowing where you want to go gives your life a guiding or motivating purpose. It also allows you to marshal your resources efficiently and effectively so that you can arrive at your chosen destination.

The following was taken from The Business of Life (1916) by Frank Crane:

“Take a day off, a few hours at least, examine yourself, look carefully over all the objects which you think would make you happy if you gained them, and select the thing most worth while.

There must be some one goal which, more than all others, you desire to reach. Find out what it is, what the one thing is which is worth sacrificing all else for, and go after it.

Only so can you give unity, purpose, and continuity to your existence. The wretched are the aimless.”

The first of the 10 commandments of success is to know what you want.

2. Thou Shalt Be Proactive

Being proactive means that you take responsibility for yourself and your life. It means that you stop playing the role of victim, and feeling captive to the actions of others and life’s circumstances.

A proactive person is self-reliant. They hold a strong belief that they have the ability to create the outcomes that they want in life. Once a proactive person knows what they want, they start looking for ways to make it happen.

3. Thou Shalt Create a Plan

Once you know where you’re going, and you’ve taken responsibility for getting there, you need to create an action plan. That is, you have to plot out your route.

Look at the following:

• Having a life plan allows you to plan what you will do each year.
• Planning your year will allow you to plan each of the twelve months of the year.
• When you plan your month, you’ll be able to plan each week.
• Planning each week will allow you to plan your days.
• Having a plan for the day will allow you to plan the use of your hours.

Having a plan is vital for success.

4. Thou Shalt Be Action-Oriented

It’s not enough to have a plan. You have to work your plan. That is, you have to act. Every day take some step, however small, in the direction of your dreams. Do the following:

• Stop waiting for everything to be “just right”. Accept that the planets will never align, and that the best time to get started is now.
• Beware of analysis paralysis. Doing research is good, but getting stuck in the research stage is bad.
• Choose an action you can take which you believe will allow you to achieve the things you want, and go for it.
• Once you’ve acted, analyze the results you got, modify your approach accordingly, and then try again.

Keep moving in the direction you want to go, one step at a time. And remember: even if you take two steps forward and one step back, you’re still moving in the right direction. Act!

5. Thou Shalt Control Your Thoughts

Keep your thoughts in check. What you’re thinking will determine how you feel. How you feel, in turn, will create your attitude. Then, your attitude will determine your outcome.

In addition, keep your thoughts focused on what you want, and on how you’re going to get it. The moment you notice that your attention has wavered from the things you want, use your willpower to bring it back.

Continuously do the following:

• Become aware of what you’re thinking.
• Ask yourself if what you’re thinking is helping you to feel how you want to feel, and to get to where you want to go.
• If not, choose a better thought.

If you have trouble controlling your thoughts, you can get started with a 7-day mental detox.

6. Thou Shalt Care for Your Health

In order to succeed you need to have a healthy mind in a healthy body. After all, your health impacts every other aspect of your life. The 6th commandment of success is to make sure that you take good care of yourself emotionally, physically, and mentally.

7. Thou Shalt Budget Your Time and Money

Your time and your money are two of your most precious resources. Therefore, you should never spend them hap-hazardly. Instead, do the following:

• Budget your money so that you’ll be able to pay for what you need, and for the things you want most.
• Budget your time so that you can achieve the things which are most important to you.

Having a time and a money budget will help you to get what you want in life. That is, it will help you to succeed.

8. Thou Shalt Be a Life-Long Learner

Whatever it is that you want to achieve, there are certain skills or knowledge that you’ll need to achieve it. That’s where life-long learning comes in.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the necessary skills and knowledge right now. What matters is that you start taking action to learn those skills and to acquire that knowledge.

9. Thou Shalt Adopt Good Habits

A foundation of good habits will allow you to put on automatic pilot the actions that you need to take to be healthy, use your time and money wisely, and acquire the skills and knowledge that you’ll need to be able to get what you want in life.

Some examples of positive habits that will help you to succeed include the following:

• Exercise.
• Meditate.
• Eat healthy foods.
• Plan your day the night before.
• Do the most important things first each day.
• Each Sunday, review your week.
• Wake up early.
• Set aside time each day to learn new things.
• Take breaks.

Good habits are important for success because most of what we do is a habit.

10. Thou Shalt Follow Through

In order to succeed you need to have the grit and the gumption to keep going until you get to your chosen destination, regardless of how many obstacles and detours you come across along the way.

Look at the following:

• If you fall, get back up.
• If you make a mistake, learn from it, modify your approach, and try again.
• If you feel discouraged, and your enthusiasm and motivation are waning, look for ways to refuel.
• If you’re tired, rest. Then, get back up and continue on your journey.
• If you need to go slower, slow down. But don’t stop.

If you want to succeed, you have to be able to follow through.

Conclusion

The guidelines above are the ones that I follow in my quest to live my best life. That is, to succeed. Do you agree that these are the guidelines for success? If so, how do you plan to apply them in your own life?

Live your best life by following the 10 commandments for success in life explained above.

 

Related Posts:

• 10 Steps for Guaranteed Goal Achievement
• Five Things to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
• The 5-Second Rule and How It Can Change Your life
• Overcome Procrastination With These 18 Powerful Tips

Make better use of your time by keeping a time log.

Here’s a question you’ve probably asked yourself many times: “Where did the time go?” If this sounds like you, I’ve got a tool you can use to start keeping track of your time, so you can always answer this question. It’s the good old time log.

A time log can be used for all of the following:

• Determine how you’re spending your time.
• Identify time wasters.
• Become better at estimating how long a task will take you to complete.
• Identify how you’re procrastinating.
• Make better use of your leisure time so you can start setting aside an hour a day to achieve your dreams.
• Come up with strategies to make better use of your time.
• Measure the results of your efforts to become more productive.

Below you’ll discover how to keep a time log.

How to Keep a Time Log

Here’s the 8-step process you’re going to follow in order to start keeping a time log:

Time Tracking Period

1. Choose a Tracking Period. Decide for how long you’re going to keep a time log. The general consensus is that–in order to get an accurate picture of how you’re spending your time–you should track your time for 30 days.

That being said, you’ll probably get input you can use to start improving the use of your time from Day One.

Time Tracking Tool

2. Choose a Time Tracking Tool. You can choose to keep track of your time in analog–using paper and pen–, or digitally. If you choose to go analog, you can do any of the following:

• Create a form on a sheet of paper for the purposes of tracking time (I’ve created one which you can download at the end of this post).
• Use index cards.
• Use a notebook, such as a bullet journal.

If you choose to go the digital route, here are three tools you can use:

• Clockify. Clockify is a free time tracking software. When you start a new activity, type the the name of the activity and start the timer. When you’re done with the activity, stop the timer. The entry will get added to your time sheet.
• SlimTimer. SlimTimer is another free web application for tracking your time.
• Excel. If you already know how to use Excel, you can simply create an Excel spreadsheet and use it to track your time.

Time Tracking Methodology

3. Keep your time log with you at all times and record activities in real time. Don’t wait until the end of the day to try and reconstruct from memory what you were doing each hour of the day.

4. Record the time at which you start an activity, and the time at which you stop. Then jot down the total duration of the activity (how much time you spent on it). Notice that just by writing down what you’re doing this raises your awareness of how you’re spending your time.

5. The more details you write down, the more effective your time log will be. For example, don’t just write down “working”. Be more specific by writing down things such as the following:

• Answering emails from customers;
• Working on Project X;
• Meeting with my boss;
• Preparing for Monday’s presentation;
• Helping a colleague learn to use the new software; and so on.

6. Create Categories and Sub-Categories. Get a good overview of how you’re spending your time by creating categories and sub-categories. Categories can include things such as the following:

• Health and Wellness
• Work
• Family
• Social (Friends and Community)
• Home Maintenance
• Transportation

Then, break down each category into as many sub-categories as you need. For example, the Health and Wellness category can be broken down into the following sub-categories:

• Exercise
• Spiritual Nourishment
• Morning Ritual
• Night Ritual
• Reading
• Napping

In this way you can see the percentage of time that goes into each of your life categories and subcategories. This can help you determine which categories are taking up too much of your time, and which are being neglected.

Come up with the categories and subcateogies you’ll be using, and a symbol for each (e.g.: “W” for work, “M” for marketing, and so on).

7. Write down how you feel as you perform each task –happy, in the flow, resentful, stressed, guilty, bored, anxious, overwhelmed, high energy, low energy, distracted, and so on.

This step is optional, but as long as you’re tracking how much time you’re spending on different tasks, you might as well track how working on each task makes you feel.

8. Also, have a “Notes” section to keep track of things like the following:

• This took longer than expected because. . . (I wasn’t focusing; people kept interrupting me; I couldn’t find the tools I needed; and so on).
• This took less time than expected because. . .
• This wasn’t on my to-do list but I devoted time to it because. . .
• I could have made better use of my time by. . .

You can also include in your “notes” section whether the activity was a high, medium, or low impact activity.

Sample Time Log

Your time log should look something like the following:

Analyze Your Time Log

Once you’ve kept a time log for the amount of time you identified in step one of the process above, analyze the results. Ask yourself the following:

• Am I spending my time on the right things?
• Am I spending most of my time on low, medium, or high impact activities?
• What’s working well?
• What activities do I want to stop doing? Are there any tasks I can eliminate? Can I delegate or pay someone else to do the tasks I don’t enjoy doing or low impact tasks that need to get done?
• How am I wasting time?
• Where is there room for improvement?

Use your answers to these questions to come up with a strategy for making better use of your time.

Next Steps

Once you’ve analyzed how you’re using your time and you’ve come up with a strategy for making better use of it, implement your strategy. Then, track your time again to see if your strategy is working.

Ask yourself questions like the following:

• Are you making better use of your time?
• Are you happy with the amount of time that you’re spending in each of the time categories you came up with?
• Do you have a good work-life balance?
• Do you need to make more improvements?

Keep doing this–tracking your time, coming up with a strategy for improvement, implementing the strategy, and analyzing your results–until you’re happy with the way you’re spending your time.

Conclusion

If you track your time, the next time you’re wondering where all your time went, you can simply take a look at your time log and know the answer. Live your best life by keeping a time log.

And now, as promised, here’s a time log you can download:

 

Related Posts:

• Double Your Productivity with Personal Kanban
• How to Create Systems to Gain Back Time
• The 5-Second Rule and How It Can Change Your life
• Overcome Procrastination With These 18 Powerful Tips

Start your day right with 10 minutes of morning motivation.

Getting your mornings right will go a long way toward making you a happier, more productive, and more successful person. A great morning routine usually consists of a few stretches, some journaling, a good breakfast, and five minutes of meditation.

However, I recommend that you add something else to your mornings: motivation that will spill over into the rest of your day. That’s where the videos I’m going to share with you in this post come in.

Most people have little time to spare in the morning, but you can listen to these videos while you do other things, such as the following:

• While you get dressed;
• As you apply make-up;
• While you prepare your breakfast; or
• During your commute.

I watched a lot of morning motivation videos on YouTube and selected the very best ones to share with you (yes, I spoil you). Here’s a 10 minute morning motivation video for each day of the week:

Monday Morning Motivation

The video for your Monday morning motivation is by Earl Nightingale, a popular American radio host and motivational speaker from the 20th century. The video is almost 14 minutes long, but if you listen to it at 1.25x the normal speed you can comfortably get through it in 10 minutes.

The theme of this video is having the right attitude. In it, Nightingale explains that your attitude is the one thing that is most responsible for the results you get in life. In addition, your attitude is 100% under your control.

Here are a couple of quotes from the video:

“We shape our own lives. and the shapes of them will be determined by our own attitudes.” – Earl Nightingale

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter their life by altering their attitudes of mind.” – William James

Start your day with a positive attitude by watching this video:

Tuesday Morning Motivation

In Tuesday’s morning motivaton video, famous people–such as Oprah and Penelope Cruz–offer words of encouragement. Here’s some of the inspirational advice you’ll find in this video:

• Fill yourself up: always keep your cup full.
• If someone has treated you badly, move on. Don’t allow them to continue dragging you down.
• You can overcome the difficult times you’ve been through.
• Save yourself. No one’s coming to save you.

Here are ten minutes of inspirational advice for you:

Wednesday Morning Motivation

Wednesday’s morning motivation video is a reminder that you have to be happy first, and then good things will follow. Here’s some of the wisdom you’ll discover in this inspirational video:

• Change the stories that you tell yourself about what has happened to you,  who you are, and how much you can accomplish.
• Focus on what you have, instead of focusing on what you don’t have. Be grateful!
• If you don’t see yourself as valuable, no one else will.
• You will attract into your life what you are, not what you want.

This is a beautiful video:

Thursday Morning Motivation

For Thrusday’s morning motivation, I’ve chosen a video by Tony Robbins. He explains that he primes himself every morning in order to feel good throughout the day. By listening to this video, you’ll be priming yourself to have a great day.

Here it is:

Friday Morning Motivation

The morning motivation video for Friday will encourage you to retrain your mind. Here are some gems from Friday’s video:

• Your mind is designed to stop you from doing anything that might hurt you. It wants to keep you safe at all costs. But in order to be a great entrepreneur, athelete, artist, parent, or anything else, you have to step outside of your comfort zone and risk getting hurt.
• It’s your job to push yourself.
• The people who succeed aren’t necessarily the smartest. It’s the ones who procrastinate less, make fewer excuses, and take action toward their dreams every day.

Here’s the video:

Saturday Morning Motivation

The Saturday morning motivation video is a little New Agey, but it’s very inspiring. Here are some of the things you’ll be hearing in this video:

• Don’t waste time arguing for your limitations.
• You are a magnet that draws what you are toward you. If you’re negative, you will draw negative things toward you. And if you’re positive, you will draw positive things toward you.
• Change your thoughts and your beliefs, and you can change your life.

Here you go:

Sunday Morning Motivation

In Sunday’s morning motivation video, the emphasis is on the importance of the words “I am”, and what follows those two words. Look at the following:

• If you make a mistake, do you tell yourself: “I’m a failure”, or “I’m a work in progress”?
• Stop using the power of “I am” against you.
• Here’s the good news: you get to decide what follows the “I am”.

Watch the video:

Conclusion

I know what I’ll be listening to in the mornings as I get dressed. How about you? Live your best life by increasing your morning motivation. Spend 10 minutes each morning watching and/or listening to these videos.

 

Related Posts:

• Nine Morning Habits to Start the Day Right
• How to Start Your Day The Right Way
• 6 Morning Habits that Will Change Your Life – The Miracle Morning
• Seven Things To Stop Doing To Become An Early Riser

Use the last 100 days of the year to declutter.

There’s something about a looming deadline that really pushes you to get things done, wouldn’t you agree? The deadline I’m referring to here is the end of the year. Yes, folks: there are 100 days left of 2018.

Longtime readers know that I like to come up with a post encouraging people–including myself–to use the last 100 days of the year productively. Well, this year, I’m going to encourage all of us to declutter, with a 100 day decluttering challenge.

After all, decluttering is one of those small things that can produce great results. By decluttering you’ll do all of the following:

• Bring order and harmony to your surroundings.
• Save time looking for things, cleaning and organizing items, and simply looking around in bafflement wondering how on earth you accumulated so much stuff.
• Discard all the things that are keeping you stuck in the past.
• Make room for new and better things to enter your life.

The 100 day decluttering challenge consists of the following: I’ve broken down the items that you usually find in a home into 100 different categories. Each day from now–September 23rd–to December 31st, you’ll be decluttering a different category.

Are you ready for the challenge? On your mark, get set, go! (There’s a free download at the end of the post you can print out.)

Declutter Your Home Office

• September 23 – Pens, Pencils, and Pencil Sharpeners
• September 24 – Highlighters, Markers, and Colored Pencils
• September 25 – Scissors, Tape Rolls (Clear, Masking Tape, etc.), and Tape Dispensers
• September 26 – Glue Sticks, Rubber Bands, Krazy Glue, and Gorilla Glue
• September 27 – Staplers, Staples, Hole Punchers, and Fasteners (Base and Prongs)
• September 28 – Sticky Notes, Sticky Flags and Tabs, Sticky Notes Pop-Up Dispensers
• September 29 – Mailing Envelopes, Catalog Envelopes, Coin and Small Parts Envelopes
• September 30 – Labels, Stamps, and Rubber Stamps
• October 1 – Printer Paper and Ink Cartridges
• October 2 – Manila File Folders, Hanging Folders, Folder Tabs, and Accordion Files
• October 3 – Binders and Dividers
• October 4 – Calendars and Planners
• October 5 – Bulletin Board/White Board and Supplies (Tacks, Markers, Erasers)
• October 6 – Notepads and Notebooks
• October 7 – Stationery, Greeting Cards, and Thank You Notes
• October 8 – Bullet Journal Supplies
• October 9 – Organizers – Pen Cups, Letter Tray, Drawer Organizers, and So On
• October 10 – Small Equipment – Scanner, Label Maker, USB Drives, External Hard Drive

Declutter Books and Magazines

• October 11 – Magazines, Catalogs, and Newspapers
• October 12 – Cookbooks, Food Books, Wine Books
• October 13 – Reference and Textbooks
• October 14 – Kids’ Books
• October 15 – Novels
• October 16 – Nonfiction Books
• October 17 – Comic Books
• October 18 – Phone Books
• October 19 – Coffee Table Books (Books You Use as Décor)

Declutter Clothing

• October 20 – Adult T-Shirts and Tank Tops
• October 21 – Adult Long-Sleeved Shirts, Dress Shirts, and Blouses
• October 22 – Adult Sweaters, Jackets, and Coats
• October 23 – Adult Shorts, Sweat Pants, Yoga Pants, and Other Workout Clothes
• October 24 – Adult Jeans, Dress Pants, and Skirts
• October 25 – Adult Dresses and Formal Wear
• October 26 – Adult Socks, Underwear, and Any Other Underclothing
• October 27 – Adult Robes, Pajamas, and Slippers
• October 28 – Adult Belts, Hats, Purses, Ties, Gloves, Scarves, and Other Accessories
• October 29 – Adult Shoes and Boots
• October 30 – Adult Jewelry
• October 31 – Adult Sports Equipment (Tennis Rackets, Softball Gear, Roller Blades, etc.)
• November 1 – Adult Miscellaneous (Swimsuits, Halloween Costumes, and So On)
• November 2 – Luggage, Duffel Bags, Backpacks, and Sports Bags
• November 3 – Kid T-Shirts and Tank Tops
• November 4 – Kid Long-Sleeved Shirts, Dress Shirts, and Blouses
• November 5 – Kid Sweaters, Jackets, and Coats
• November 6 – Kid Shorts, Sweat Pants, and Other Sports Clothes
• November 7 – Kid Jeans, Dress Pants, and Skirts
• November 8 – Kid Dresses and Formal Wear
• November 9 – Kid Socks, Underwear, and Any Other Underclothing
• November 10 – Kid Robes, Slippers, and Pajamas
• November 11 – Kid Belts, Hats, Purses, Gloves, Scarves, and Other Accessories
• November 12 – Kid Shoes and Boots
• November 13 – Kid Jewelry
• November 14 – Kids Sports Equipment (Tennis Rackets, Softball Gear, Roller Blades, etc.)
• November 15 – Kid Miscellaneous (Swimwear, Halloween Costumes, Uniforms, and So On)

Declutter the Bathroom

• November 16 – Medicine and First Aid Supplies (Band-Aids, Dressings, and Antiseptic)
• November 17 – Toiletries – Skincare and Shaving Products
• November 18 – Soaps (including hand soap), Body Washes, and Body Creams
• November 19 – Feminine Hygiene Products
• November 20 – Oral Hygiene Products (Toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, and so on)
• November 21 – Hair Products: Brushes, Combs, Styling Tools, Hair Clips, Rollers, etc.
• November 22 – Make-Up and Brushes
• November 23 – Towels and Wash Towels
• November 24 – Perfume and Colognes
• November 25 – Toilet Paper, Cotton Swabs, Cotton Balls, and So On
• November 26 – Tweezers, Clippers, and Other Manicure Supplies
• November 27 – Bathroom Organizers – Shower Caddy, Trays, Wire Baskets, and So On
• November 28 – Miscellaneous (loofah, body brush, bubble bath, shower cap, and so on)

There's 100 days left of 2018! Use them wisely. I'm taking a 100 day decluttering challenge. You can, too.Click To Tweet

Declutter the Kitchen

• November 29 – Cookware: Pots, Pans, Skillets, Dutch Oven, Pressure Cooker, and So On
• November 30 – Knives (Chef’s, Paring, Boning, Carving, Etc.) and Cutting Boards
• December 1 – Bakeware: Pans, Cookie Sheets, Pie Plate, Muffin Tins, and So On
• December 2 – Baking Equipment: Rolling Pin, Wire Rack, Mixing Bowls, Cookie Cutters, Whisk, and So On
• December 3 – Cooking Equipment: Measuring cups, Measuring Spoons, Graters, Peelers, Wooden Spoons, Colanders, Kitchen Shears, Spatulas, Tongs, Etc.
• December 4 – Small Appliances: Toaster, Blender, Food Processor, Slow Cooker, Waffle Maker, Can Opener, Kitchen Scale, Electric Hand Mixer, and So On
• December 5 – Cutlery, Silverware, and Flatware
• December 6 – Drinking Glasses, Wine Glasses, Cups, Mugs, and Other Drinkware
• December 7 – Serving Dishes, Plates (Dessert, Salad, Service Plate) and Bowls
• December 8 – Storage Containers: Canisters, Mason Jars, Tupperware, and So On
• December 9 – Miscellaneous – Water Pitcher, Aprons, Oven Mitts, Potholders, Teakettle, and so on.

Declutter Paper

• December 10 – Clippings Saved to Read Later
• December 11 – Materials from Courses or Seminars You’ve Taken
• December 12 – Warranties and Manuals
• December 13 – Insurance Policies
• December 14 – Credit Card Statements
• December 15 – Business Cards
• December 16 – Letters and Greeting Cards
• December 17 – Receipts
• December 18 – Tax-Related Documents
• December 19 – Medical Records
• December 20 – Kids’ Art Work and School Papers
• December 21 – Miscellaneous Papers

Declutter Electronics

• December 22 – Music Players, CDs, and DVDs
• December 23 – Computers and Accessories
• December 24 – Phones and Accessories
• December 25 – Tablets and Accessories
• December 26 – Cameras and Accessories
• December 27 – Video Game Consoles, Video Games, and Accessories
• December 28 – Miscellaneous – Adapters, Headphones, Cords, Power Strips

Declutter the Linen Closet

• December 29 – Sheets, Pillow Cases, Quilts, Duvets, and Blankets
• December 30 – Table Linens and Napkins
• December 31 – Miscellaneous – Other Things You Store In Your Linen Closet

Here’s your download:

 

Related Posts:

• How to Make the Most of the 100 Days Left of The Year
• 15 Ways to Salvage Your Resolutions in the Last 100 Days of the Year
• 60 Small Ways to Improve Your Life in the Next 100 Days
• 14 Reasons to Start a Passion Project

Enrich your life with a passion project.

A passion project is an activity or enterprise that you decide to take on—usually in your spare time–in order to gain some benefit for yourself.  That is, it’s a challenge that you willingly embrace because you hope to gain something from it.

The list of benefits that you can gain from starting a passion project is long, and in this blog post I’m going to share 14 of them with you. To give you a heads up, these benefits include things such as having more fun, increasing your zest for life, and making a contribution to the world. Here we go.

14 Reasons to Start a Passion Project

We’re all busy, so if we’re going to add something else to our to do list, it really needs to be worth it. Am I right? (I can see all of you nodding your heads in agreement.) Well, here are 14 reasons why starting a passion project is most definitely worthy of your time, energy, and other resources:

1. To Increase Your Happiness

Shawn Achor, PhD,  is a positive psychologist and author of The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life. He explains in his book that one way to increase your happiness is to increase your sense of control over your life.

Nonetheless, you may be currently going through a period of your life in which you feel you have little control over your daily activities. You can regain a feeling of control by starting a passion project.

After all, a passion project is something that you decide to do.  It’s not a school assignment, or something your parents or a boss told you to do. It’s something that you’re doing just because you want to. You’re 100% in charge.

Look at the following:

• You decide what the project will be.
• It’s up to you to set a goal (or goals) for your passion project.
• You decide how big or how small the scope of your project will be.
• The standards are set by you.
• All deadlines are up to you.
• You create the plan you’re going to execute in order to complete your passion project.
• It’s up to you to determine whether you want to work on your passion project alone, or if you’re going to ask other people to join you.
• You decide when your passion project is done.
• It’s up to you to determine what success looks like for your passion project.

You’re in control of your passion project. And when you feel that you’re in control, you’re happier.

2. To Have Fun

Niklas Göke writes in his article on starting a passion project, one day at a time, that passion projects start with a simple statement:

“That sounds like fun.”

Even if you hope to make money from your passion project at some point, at first the financial possibilities of a passion project should be secondary. The first consideration should always be having fun.

Here at Daring to Live Fully I write often about the importance of having more fun. Now I have something else to add to my ongoing list of ways to have more fun: starting a passion project.

3. To Add Creativity to Your Life

A passion project could simply be about indulging your need to create. I love this quote by Kurt Vonnegut:

“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

Give yourself permission to do something creative as your passion project. Draw, play an instrument, dance. . . it doesn’t matter if you do it badly. Just allow yourself to create.

4. To Add Entries to Your Portfolio

What if you want a job in tech–or a similar area– but you’re self-taught and haven’t landed any paying gigs yet? It’s very difficult to get a job if you don’t have a degree and previous work experience to show prospective employers. Nonetheless, all is not lost.

You can create a passion project that will allow you to add an entry to your portfolio. As an illustration, you can design a mock-up of a web site for your ideal client. Then, show prospective clients the mock-up (be upfront about the fact that it’s a mock-up and not something that you got paid for).

You can even create a whole branding package.

Likewise, if you’re an aspiring photographer you create a passion project that involves taking photos of all the lighthouses, abandoned buildings, or ice cream parlors in your town. Then, add the photographs to your portfolio.

You can do something similar for any creative medium. Build your portfolio through passion projects.

5. To Make Your Life More Meaningful

A while ago I wrote a blog post on the importance of having not just a happy life, but also a meaningful life. Right now you may feel that your life isn’t as meaningful as you would like for it to be. Your job pays the bills, but you’re not really doing anything that makes you feel as if you’re making a valuable contribution to the world.

If so, you can make your life more meaningful by starting a passion project. How do you want to make a difference in the world? Here are some ideas:

• Start a weekend workshop to help girls become more confident.
• Put up a free library for your community.
• Start a blog in which you teach others how to do something you’re good at.

And, who knows: your passion project may even become your legacy.

6. To Add Passion to Your Life

Here are some synonyms of the word “passion”: enthusiasm, motivation, and inspiration. Having a passion project can add all of these to your life. It will also do all of the following for you:

• Foster your well-being by doing something that lights you up.
• Give you a reason to jump out of bed each morning.
• It will make you feel good about yourself.
• It will nourish your spirit.

In addition, this passion, enthusiasm, motivation, and inspiration will spill over to other areas of your life. Having a passion project will add zest to your life.

A passion project can add fun, meaning, and zest to your life.Click To Tweet

7. To Apply Your Strengths and/or Talents.

Ideally, your primary occupation should allow you to apply your strengths and/or talents. However, this isn’t always the case. If you feel that you’re not currently getting the opportunity to showcase your strengths, you can do so through a passion project.

Pick something that you’re exceptionally good at—such as public speaking, visual thinking, or social intelligence—and come up with a passion project that will allow you to use those strengths.

8. To Create Your Own Opportunities

Instead of sitting there passively waiting for opportunity to knock on your door, get out there and create your own opportunity through a passion project. Look at the following:

• If you want to get into the cooking business—become a personal chef, own a restaurant, teach others to cook, and so on—start a pop-up restaurant in your home that serves dinner on Sundays.
• Suppose you want to be a mystery writer–write a mystery novel and publish it as a Kindle book on Amazon.
• Do you want to be a singer? Upload a video to YouTube of you singing every week for a year.

Ask yourself: how can I create my own opportunity? Then, turn that into a passion project.

9. To Learn New Skills

It’s difficult to learn a new skill in a vacuum. It’s much easier to learn a skill if you give yourself a project to work on. As an illustration, suppose you want to learn to draw. Ask yourself what project you could give yourself to make learning this skill more practical.

Here’s an example:

• If you want to learn to draw, create your own coloring book. Coloring books are all the rage these days — they help you unwind, de-stress, reconnect with your inner child, bladdy-bladdy-blah. Instead of buying a coloring book, ask yourself what you want to color. Then draw it, and color it! I’m doing this, by the way.

10. Set Out On A New Career Path

Perhaps you’ve been telling yourself that you’re ready to try a different career path. But you’re not sure which path to pick. That’s where the passion project comes in.

Make a list of all the careers you’ve been wondering about. Then, for each of them, create a project that will allow you to sample what it would like to be in that career.

11. Become More Interesting (and More Awesome)

As I explain in my post on how to be more interesting, interesting people have interesting things going on in their lives. If there’s nothing interesting going on in your life at the moment—we’ve all been there—make your life more interesting with a passion project.

Look at the following conversation:

• Friend: “So, what’s going on in your life?”
• You: “Not much. Same old, same old.”

Let’s face it, from the conversation above, you sound boring.

Now look at this conversation:

• Friend: “Hey, what’s new?”
• You: “I’m making scented soaps at night and selling them at the farmer’s market on Saturdays.”

Now you sound interesting (and awesome).

12. To Make Money

You don’t have to set a goal of making money from your passion project, but you most definitely can. In fact, you can choose to go from passion project, to side gig, to full-time.

If your passion project is going to make you money, you need to think like a business person:

• Create a business plan.
• Decide who your target market will be.
• How will you brand yourself?
• How will you find customers?
• What’s your marketing plan?
• What will you charge?
• Do you need financing?

Imagine making money by doing something you’re passionate about. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? A passion project can get you there.

13. As a 30-Day Challenge

I love giving myself 30-day challenges. You don’t have to devote a lot of time to them and, in just 30 days, you have something concrete to show for your efforts. A passion project can be a simple 30-day challenge.

As an illustration, Kasey Mahoney is a designer who wanted to help his nephew learn the alphabet. He challenged himself to draw a letter a day until the project was complete. It allowed him to combine his love of illustration and design, and help his nephew learn.

14. As a 365 Project

Your passion project can also take on the shape of a 365 Project. A 365 project is usually started at the beginning of a new year (but it doesn’t have to). It consists of achieving a goal by taking a small step toward the achievement of said goal every day for a year.

As an illustration, Brian E. Denton decided that he was going to blog about a chapter of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, War and Peace, every day for a year (the book has roughly 365 chapters). Then he took the end result and turned it into an eBook.

Now he can say that he’s written an eBook about his favorite book of all time. I’m not sure if he called it a passion project, but it certainly looks like a passion project to me.

Quick Overview of How to Start a Passion Project

Here’s a quick overview of the steps you need to take in order to start a passion project:

1. Decide On The Benefits – Which of the 14 benefits above do you want to derive from your passion project? List them.

2. Brainstorm Passion Project Ideas. Set a timer for 15 minutes and brainstorm all the possible passion project ideas you can come up with which would allow you to get the benefits you listed in Step 1 above.

3. Commit to One Passion Project. Take a look at all of the ideas that you came up with during your brainstorming session and commit to one.

4. Set a Goal. Notice the word “project” in the term “passion project”. A project has a goal that you want to achieve. Start by setting a small goal. Then, when you achieve it, you can set another, bigger goal.

5. Make Time for Your Passion Project. If you selected the right passion project, and you set a goal that excites you, coming up with the time to work on your passion project should be a lot more doable than you probably think that it is right now.

The best strategy I’ve found for making the time to work on my passion projects is to set aside one-hour-a-day. I recommend you do the same.

6. Create Accountability. One of the best ways to create accountability for your passion project is to start a blog which you use to document your journey. Then, share your blog posts on social media.

Having a community cheering you on to complete your passion project is a great way to make yourself accountable.

7. Just Start. There will never be a perfect time to begin your passion project, and there are no steps you can take to make sure that you will not make mistakes as you go along. So just start.

You’ll probably want to begin by doing research. That’s a good idea. However, make sure that you don’t get stuck at the research stage. Begin implementing what you learn during the research stage as fast as you can.

Conclusion

I hope I’ve convinced you to consider the idea of starting a passion project. Starting one has the potential to change your life. Live your best life by starting a passion project.

 

Related Posts:

• • 10 Ways to Make Your Day More Zen
  • Ten Ways to Tame Your Monkey Mind and Stop Mental Chatter
  • 10 Tips for Overcoming Perfectionism
  • 15 Self-Care Practices for Well-Being

Overwhelm is the feeling that you have too much to do, and too little time to do it.

Being overwhelmed is feeling that you have a million things to do, and that you’ll never be able to get them all done, no matter how fast you go. It’s like the cartoon of the dam that springs a leak. You know the one:

• The dam springs a leak, so the cartoon character plugs it up with his right hand’s index finger.
• But then the dam springs another leak, so the character plugs it up with his other index finger.
• That’s when a third leak appears, which is plugged up with the character’s right toe.
• Then the fourth leak is plugged up with the character’s left toe.
• And that’s when the sixth and the seventh leaks appear. But the character has no more hands or feet left to plug them up with.

Doesn’t life feel that way sometimes? I know mine does. However, I’ve collected strategies that I apply when I feel overwhelmed, which I’m going to share with you. Below you’ll find 6 things to do to deal with overwhelm.

1. Interrupt the Overwhelm

Ellen Hendriksen, PhD, is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. She recommends that, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you use your senses to ground yourself in the present moment. This will allow you to interrupt the overwhelm.

Hendricks indicates that you should use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method to work through your five senses. Do the following:

• Look around and name five things you can see. I see my silver bracelet, a box of Kleenex, my sunglasses, a jar filled with colored pencils, and my nephew’s photo pinned up on my bulletin board.
• Listen and name four things you can hear. I can hear construction sounds, the humming of my laptop, a car horn, and my neighbor whistling in the hallway.
• List three things you can touch. I can feel warmth when I touch my coffee mug, cold when I touch the glass of water sitting on my desk, and the feeling of my feet in my shoes.
• Notice two smells. I’m smelling an orange peel and witch hazel.
• Taste something. I just took a sip of coffee.

By grounding yourself in the present moment you interrupt the spinning thoughts that lead to overwhelm, and you give yourself a mini-moment of mindfulness. This is very helpful when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

2. Declutter Your Immediate Surroundings

If your immediate surroundings are cluttered you can be sure that this is contributing to your feelings of overwhelm. Clutter affects you negatively in the following ways:

• It bombards the senses with visual stimuli, even if you’re not consciously aware of it.
• Clutter distracts our focus from what we should be concentrating on.
• Being surrounded by clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally.
• Clutter creates an open loop in your mind, so you always have a vague feeling that there’s something important that you forgot to do.

By decluttering your immediate surroundings you’ll reduce your stress levels and feel calmer. That is, you’ll be less overwhelmed.

For me, decluttering my immediate surroundings often means tidying up my desk. I just took my empty coffee mug to the kitchen, filed a few papers, put some books back on the shelf, and stuck a couple of pens back in the pen jar. I’m feeling less overwhelmed already. 😊

3. Identify Your Major Stressors

Sit down, take out a piece of paper and a pen, and make a list of the top stressors in your life. Ask yourself: “What is making me feel overwhelmed right now?”

Once you have your list, assign each item on your list a percentage from 1 to 100 that reflects the degree to which that item is contributing to your feelings of overwhelm.

Here’s an illustration:

• Every time I walk into my home I feel stressed by the amount of stuff that I’ve accumulated and all the time and effort it takes to clean and take care of it. (25%)
• I lack the computer skills to be able to do my job well. (20%)
• I have to keep track of my kids’ many activities. (10%)
• The commute to and from work is horrendous (10%)
• My spouse and I have been disagreeing more than usual lately. (5%)
• My mom can’t take care of herself anymore and I have to find a way to help her with this. (30%).

Then, draw a pie chart that contains all the data above. This will quickly allow you to see what is making you feel overwhelmed. In addition, you’ll be able to identify what you need to tackle first. Here’s a pie chart of the situation I just described above:

As you can see from the pie chart, once you figure out how you can help your mother, almost a third of your feelings of overwhelm should be gone.

Then, you can focus on decluttering and organizing your home, and more than half of the stressors that are making you feel overwhelmed will have been taken care of. Continue going down the list until you feel that you have things under control.

4. Make Things Easier On Yourself

The other day I was going through my Twitter stream and I saw a tweet go by that caught my attention. It was by a lady named Susan Wright who had written a blog post explaining what reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes had taught her about achieving her goals.

In the blog post she explains that she had set the goal of reading Don Quixote from cover to cover, in Spanish. However, she was procrastinating on the goal because it made her feel overwhelmed. Here’s why:

• She lived in Puerto Rico for a few years as a child and spoke some Spanish, but Don Quixote is a very difficult novel written in the 17th century, and it would take a lot of work for her to read it in Spanish.
• Don Quixote is a very long book—in fact, it’s two books—and she didn’t feel that she could devote that much time to reading.

What she ended up doing was to re-write her goal in order to make things easier on herself. Here’s what she did:

• First, she decided she would read the book in English.
• And, second, she would set aside some time to read the book each day, but she would also listen to parts of the book while she was running errands or commuting to and from work. That would allow her to get through the book faster.

By doing these two things the goal of reading Don Quixote no longer seemed so overwhelming, and she was able to achieve her goal.

While doing the research for this post I came across a YouTube video by author Tim Ferriss, in which he explains that we have a tendency to think that anything worth doing has to be hard. In addition, we’re usually trying to impress others with our amazing feats of prowess.

However, life doesn’t have to be so hard. The next time you’re working on a task, ask yourself the question Ferriss always asks himself: “What would this look like if it where easy?” Once you’ve identified how you can make things easier for yourself, do it.

Lessen your feelings of overwhelm by asking yourself how you can make your tasks more doable and your goals easier to achieve.Click To Tweet

5. Take Things One Tiny Step At a Time

Once you’ve re-written your to do list in a way that makes things easier for yourself, start tackling your list one item at a time. Just take it tiny task by tiny task. When your brain starts thinking of all the things that you have to do and feelings of overwhelm once again wash over you, bring your focus back to the task at hand.

Right now, that tiny little task is all there is. How can you possibly feel overwhelmed by such a small task?

6. Take Steps to Lessen Anxiety

Your brain may be contributing to your feelings of overwhelm. Some personality types are more likely to feel overwhelmed than others, and anxious people are at the top of that list.

After all, the brains of anxious people release more cortisol and adrenaline than the brains of people who tend to remain calm, even when they have lots to do.

I’m an anxious person, and I’ve discovered that by taking steps to reduce my anxiety I can better deal with anything that may be going on in my life at any given moment. That is, I can control the feelings of overwhelm.

Here are the three steps I take to reduce my anxiety fast:

• I put some jojoba oil in the palm of my hand, I add a few drops of lavender oil, and then I rub the oil on my arms. There are studies that show that lavender essential oil helps to lessen feelings of anxiety.
• Green tea contains L-theanine, an amino acid that helps reduce stress and relaxes your mind and body. When I feel anxious I make myself some Yogi Tea Kombucha Green Tea with honey and lemon. It always helps me feel better.
• I blow bubbles (yes, you read that right). Why? Because when you’re anxious your heart beat speeds up. But you can slow it down with your breath by making your exhale longer and slower than your inhale. Also, you can imagine that your anxiety is floating away with the bubbles.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, dealing with anxiety will go a long way toward helping you to feel calmer and more serene.

Conclusion

Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t have to be your default state. There are lots of things you can do to feel more calm and relaxed– start with the six strategies I explain above. Live your best life by dealing effectively with feelings of overwhelm.

 

Related Posts:

• • 10 Ways to Make Your Day More Zen
  • Ten Ways to Tame Your Monkey Mind and Stop Mental Chatter
  • 10 Tips for Overcoming Perfectionism
  • 15 Self-Care Practices for Well-Being

Use the 5 second rule to achieve your goals and get anything you want.

A few years ago, Mel Robbins was going through a really difficult time. She and her husband were mired in financial trouble, and their relationship was strained. Every night she would tell herself that the next day she would get up early and get started on pulling her life back together.

Nonetheless, every morning the same thing would happen. The alarm would ring, and Robbins would roll over, turn it off, and go back to sleep. She would wake up late, feel like a failure, and get little done throughout the day.

Then, one day, she heard the countdown to a rocket launch on TV. Something clicked for her at that moment. She told herself that when the alarm went off the next morning, she would count down from 5 to 1 and then “launch” herself into the new day.

The next morning when she tried her new idea, it worked like magic. She was able to get up early and start her day off right. In addition, she started applying the idea of counting down from 5 to 1 and then acting every time throughout the day when there was an important task that she needed to get done but which she felt like putting off.

The concept worked so well for her that she gave it a name—the 5 second rule. Robbins started doing research to try to understand why the rule was working so well for her.

She found tons of scientific evidence which backed up her belief that the rule was a life changer. So much so that she wrote a book about it: The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage.

In this post I’m going to explain the 5 second rule to you in more detail, and I’m going to give you tips on how to  apply it in your own life.

The 5 Second Rule In a Nutshell

In a nutshell, here’s the 5 second rule (in Robbins’ own words): “If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it.”

Robbins explains that when you feel an urge to work on a goal, your heart is trying to tell you that there’s something you need to do. You then have a 5 second window to get started on that goal before your brain talks you out of it.

Use that 5 second window to do the following:

• Start counting backwards to yourself from 5 to 1: 5-4-3-2-1.
• As soon as you hit “1”, push yourself to move. You have to take physical action!

As you count down from 5 to 1 you’ll be distracting your brain from coming up with reasons why you should do something else instead –like watch cat videos or reorganize your book shelves.

In addition, you’ll be placing all your focus on the goal that you’re trying to get yourself to work on. Finally, counting down from 5 to 1 is a starting ritual. It will interrupt old behavior patterns and trigger new ones.

The 5 second rule is a brain hack. It’s a form of metacognition which allows you to trick your brain so it can’t sabotage your efforts. There’s more on this in the next section.

Why the 5 Second Rule Works

Robbins explains that when you have an instinct to work on a goal, in 5 seconds the following can happen:

• Doubt can take over.
• Fear can take over.
• Overanalyzing can take over.

All of these things can prevent you from acting. And the reason that doubt, fear, and overanalyzing occur is because your brain is designed to stop you from changing. This is because change is uncertain, scary, and new, and your brain’s main function is to keep you safe.

However, the opposite is also true. In 5 seconds you can get yourself to act by using the 5 second rule.

The 5 second rule works because of many principles rooted in neuroscience and psychology. In this post, we’re going to discuss three of them:

• The Do Good, Be Good Principle;
• The Progress Principle; and
• The Feelings are Just Suggestions Principle.

Let’s look at each of these in more depth.

The Do Good, Be Good Principle

The Do Good, Be Good principle is based on research done by Timothy D. Wilson, Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. The principle states that you can’t think your way toward being happy or successful. Instead, if you want to be happy and successful, you must act.

The 5 second rule pulls you out of your head and gets you to take action.  After all, it’s not 5-4-3-2-1, think. It’s 5-4-3-2-1, act. At the same time, the more that you act, the more that you create a bias toward action. That is, you’re turning action into a habit.

The Progress Principle

In her book, “The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work”, Teresa Amabile—a Director of Research at Harvard Business School—states that the power of progress is fundamental to human nature. Making progress, even in small ways, is key to our productivity and happiness.

The 5 second rule allows you to make progress every time you use it. And, according to the Progress Principle, every small step forward improves your mood and increases your intrinsic motivation. Both of these things, in turn, encourage you to make even more progress.

The Feelings Are Just Suggestions Principle

In the book, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and The Human Brain, world-renowned neuroscientist Antonio Damasio indicates that his research suggests that 95% of our decisions are made based on feelings, not facts. He therefore calls us “feeling machines that think, not thinking machines that feel”.

This is why we can have a list of great reasons why we should act, but then we fail to act because we simply don’t feel like it. To solve this problem, Robbins recommends that we use the strategy applied by professional athletes.  They treat feelings as simple suggestions.

If a feeling is simply a suggestion, it can be overruled—for example, with the 5 second rule. In addition, when you act you’ll be using behavior to impact how you feel, instead of hoping that your feelings will encourage you act.

The 5 Second Rule and Procrastination

Most of us tend to procrastinate every now and then. Especially when it comes to things which require a lot of physical, emotional, and/or intellectual energy.

Procrastination can cause small problems, such as having to pay a late fee for an overdue library book. However, if left unchecked, procrastination can cause serious damage to your health, career, relationships, and overall well-being.

As I explain in my eBook, “Make It Happen! A Workbook for Overcoming Procrastination and Getting the Right Things Done”, procrastination isn’t about being lazy or having a poor work ethic. In addition, poor time management skills are only partly to blame. Procrastination, at its core, is about negative thoughts and emotions.

When you think about getting to work on your online course, or taking the steps necessary to learn to code, your brain starts with the negative self-talk:

• “That sounds really hard to do.”
• “What if I fail?”
• “I’ve tried this before and didn’t follow through. What makes me think I’ll follow through this time?”
• “It’s going to take a lot of work.”
• “Maybe I’m not smart enough to do this.”
• “What if I make a fool of myself?”

These negative thoughts lead to avoidance. What you need to do is to bypass those negative thoughts. That’s where the 5 second rule comes in.

When you count backward– 5 4 3 2 1 – the brain stops thinking (because it’s concentrating on counting backwards), just for a few seconds. But those few seconds are enough to start acting.

Remember, if you hesitate you give your brain the opportunity to talk you out of acting. But if you count backward and start acting as soon as you hit “1”, by the time your brain figures out what’s happening, you’re already on your way. That is, you’ve overcome procrastination.

More Ways to Apply the 5 Second Rule

Here area some more ways you can start applying the 5 second rule in your life right away:

1. The best way to use the 5 second rule is to combine it with other strategies that will allow you to get more done. Sign up for my free email course, The One-Hour Goal Strategy. Then, when it comes time to act on your one-hour goal, use the 5 second rule along with all the other things you’ll learn in the course to get to work on your one-hour goal. Or, you can really get things done with my eBook, “The One-Hour-A-Day Formula: How to Achieve Your Dreams In Just One Hour A Day“.

2. There’s something called the habit loop. It consists of a cue, a routine that’s triggered by the cue, and a reward. If you want to change a habit, what you have to do is change the routine that follows the cue. The next time you’re cued to engage in a bad habit, use the 5 second rule to carry out a different routine, instead.

3. If you have to make a simple decision, instead of overthinking, use the 5 second rule and simply decide.

Conclusion

The 5 second rule is a simple rule you can start using right away. In addition, the more you use it, the better it works. Soon you’ll start associating the countdown from 5 to 1 with taking action, and it will become automatic. Live your best life by applying the 5 second rule.

 

Related Posts:

• • 18 Powerful Tips For Overcoming Procrastination
  • 12 Tips for Defeating Procrastination and Gearing Up For Action
  • Stop Procrastinating Tip: Practice Discomfort
  • 65 Procrastination Tips That Will Shift You Into Action Mode

Making lists is a great way to lift your mood.

Most people love lists—and I’m definitely one of those people. Lists can help you create order out of chaos, de-stress, and focus on the positive. They’re also good for remembering the good things from the past and planning a great future.

For all of these reasons, making lists is one of the things I do as part of my self-care ritual when I’m having one of those not-so-good days. I recommend you do the same.

What are the rules when writing your lists? The rules are, there are are no rules:

• Make your lists as long or as short as necessary.
• Add details if you like (for example, instead of just listing your favorite books, write down why you love each book).
• If you’d rather, make each item on your list just one word long.
• Share your lists with others or keep them to yourself.
• Use a notebook and pen, or simply type your lists on your laptop.
• Write in your mother tongue or try using the second language you were taught in high school.
• If you’re the creative type, draw your lists.
• Light a candle while you write your lists, or don’t light a candle.
• Listen to Bach Cello Suite No. 1 as you write, or not.
• Ignore some of the lists I suggest.
• Come up with some of your own list ideas.

Here, then, are 60 lists to make when you’re feeling down:

1. List your favorite books.

2. List the books you want to read.

3. List your favorite movies.

4. List the movies you want to watch.

5. List all the adventures you’ve been on.

6. List all the adventures you want to go on.

7. List all the countries/cities you’ve been to.

8. List all the countries/cities you want to go to.

9. List your favorite songs.

10. List your favorite people.

11. List people who have helped you.

12. List people you have helped.

13. List your favorite summer activities.

14. List your favorite winter activities.

15. List your favorite autumn activities.

16. List your favorite spring activities.

17. List your best childhood memories.

18. List all the things you know how to do well.

19. List the skills you’d like to learn.

20. List the problems you’ve solved and the challenges you’ve overcome.

21. List the things you loved to do as a child.

22. List your favorite meals and desserts.

23. List all the foods you would like to try.

24. List your best qualities –your best physical and character traits.

25. List all your hobbies (past and present).

26. List the hobbies you would like to try.

27. List ways to de-stress and practice self-care.

28. List ways you can step out of your comfort zone.

29. List all the goals you’ve achieved.

30. List the goals you want to achieve.

31. List the things you’ve done that you’re most proud of.

32. List the things you love about your significant other.

33. List things you would like to do with your significant other.

34. List the things you love most about your kids.

35. List things you would like to do with your kids.

36. List your favorite affirmations.

37. List what you love to do when it’s time to play.

38. List playful activities you would like to try.

39. List your favorite things in nature.

40. List the natural wonders you would like to visit.

41. List money-making ideas.

42. List things you worried about in the past that never happened.

43. List things you need to stop worrying about.

44. List the best compliments you’ve received.

45. List 100 things you’re grateful for.

46. List the elements of your ideal day.

47. List the simple pleasures that make you happy.

48. List gifts you would like to receive (in case anyone asks).

49. List gifts you would like to give to others.

50. List your favorite smells.

51. List random acts of kindness you can do for others.

52. List people you admire.

53. List the most important life lessons you’ve learned.

54. List Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) would like to take.

55. List your strengths.

56. List your weaknesses and ways to deal with those weaknesses.

57. List ways you’re awesome.

58. List all the things you would like to improve about yourself (because we’re all works-in-progress).

59. List your positive habits.

60. List positive habits you would like to adopt.

Conclusion

I hope making the lists above lifts your mood if you’re having an off day. Live your best life by making lists.

I created a PDF of the list for you to download. Download it, print it, and put it somewhere you can grab it when you feel like making mood uplifting lists. Just fill in your name and email in the form below.

 

Why settle for good, when you could be awesome?

I’m going to define “awesome” as an adjective used to describe something or someone that’s worthy of respect and admiration. Something awesome makes us stop and take notice, even if it’s just for a moment. It raises our spirits and makes us feel a sense of possibility.

The word awesome can also be understood by thinking of it in relative terms. There’s good, there’s great, and then there’s awesome.

We all know awesome when we see it. Here are some examples:

• The Malian immigrant in Paris who climbed up four stories to save a young boy who was dangling from the balcony — awesome!
• Famous restaurateur Chef José Andrés going to Puerto Rico to help feed thousands of people who lost everything to Hurricane Maria–awesome!
• Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé singing “Barcelona”–awesome!
• Bansky’s street art — awesome!
• The Nicholas Brothers’ Jumpin Jive dance number — awesome!

But being awesome doesn’t have to be at such a grand scale. There’s a joke about a street in New York City that had several pizza places on it. One was called, “Best Pizza In the US”; another was “Best Pizza In the World”; and yet a third had named itself, “Best Pizza In the Universe”.

However, the fourth pizza place was modestly called, “Best Pizza On the Block”. Get it? 🙂

To be awesome you just have to be you, and do your thing, but do it in a way that will push you up the awesomeness scale. How? Below you’ll find 13 things you can do to make yourself more awesome.

1. Set Big, Daring, Audacious Goals.

There’s a saying that states that you’re as awesome as your goals. Well, no there isn’t. But there should be. After all, in order to be awesome you need to do awesome things.

To increase your levels of awesomeness, set a big,daring, audacious goal–or revisit one which you’ve pretty much given up on–and start acting to make it happen. With each step you take in the direction of that big, daring, audacious goal, you’ll become more awesome.

In fact, I have something to help you get started with this. Subscribe to my free course, The One-Hour Goal Strategy. It will take you from identifying a big, daring, audacious goal, to taking that first awesome step to make it happen.

2. Get a Mojo Upgrade.

People with mojo strut their stuff, take healthy risks, and put themselves out there. They feel lucky, which makes them more aware of opportunities and of the good that surrounds them. And that’s awesome.

Here are three ways to increase your mojo:

• Set yourself up for small, frequent wins.
• Be true to yourself.
• Feed your soul – listen to music you love, go to a museum, or fill a vase with your favorite flowers.

Mojo will give you the boldness and confidence you need to be awesome. If you want more ways to be awesome by getting a mojo upgrade, visit my post, 24 Surefire Ways to Get Your Mojo Back.

3. Be Awesome – Increase Your Gumption.

Gumption is a close friend of mojo. It’s the friend who keeps getting dealt hard blows, but nonetheless keeps summoning the motivation, positivity, hope, enthusiasm, and courage to get up back up and try again.

Awesome people have gumption in spades. And if they feel their gumption being depleted, they look for ways to refuel it. This includes doing things like the following:

• Giving your motivation a boost by reminding yourself why you wanted to achieve something in the first place.
• Engaging in creative problem-solving to get over obstacles and overcome setbacks.
• Reminding yourself of all the goals you’ve already achieved to put yourself back in a go-getter frame of mind.

Gumption is the fuel that will take you to 100% awesome.

4. Don’t Give In to Self-Doubt.

Everyone has self-doubts. You know that really cool guy who looks like he’s never doubted himself for a minute in his life? Well, he has. In fact, odds are high that he feels some self-doubt on a regular basis.

However, he doesn’t give in to those self-doubts. Instead, he shakes ’em off and gets on with his cool, awesome life. The next time you feel self-doubt creeping up on you, be awesome and tell yourself: “I’ve got this”. Listen to Michael Jackson’s “Bad” if you need to.

5. Add More Skills to Your Life Resume.

Awesome people can do stuff. They can create landing pages for their awesome digital products, cook a gourmet meal from scratch, organize a closet as well as Martha Stewart, and take great photographs. Well, maybe not those skills specifically, but you get the idea.

What awesome skill have you been wanting to learn? Up your awesomeness factor by learning it.

6. Do One Thing Really Well.

Awesome people are really good at what they do, whatever that may be. They don’t just get “good enough” at their craft and then leave it at that. Instead, they practice continous improvement.

In my blog post on 10 Must-Watch TED Talks for Lifelong Learners I mention Eduardo Briceño’s talk in which he indicates that there’s a performance zone–in which you execute your job duties–and a learning zone in which you improve them.

If you want to be awesome, spend some time each week in the learning zone so you can get better at your job and do amazing things when you’re in the performance zone.

7. Know Stuff.

As I said above, awesome people have an area of an expertise that they hone in on and become great in. At the same time, they don’t live in a bubble. They also have general knowledge about a lot of other things.

On Saturday I was at the gym and the World Cup soccer match between Russia and Croatia was on the television set. A group of people–including me–were gathered around the TV watching the match. As I watched the Croatians I thought to myself: “Was Croatia part of the former Soviet Union?” I asked a gentleman standing to my right.

He explained to me that Croatia was part of the former Yugoslavia. Then he spoke a little about Tito–the Communist leader who was the Marshal of Yugoslavia from 1943 until his death in 1980–, and of his relationship with the USSR. Stalin tried to assassinate Tito several times and failed. He stopped when Tito sent him a note saying the following:

Stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle. (…) If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send a second.

— Josip Broz Tito

The gentleman added that the six other present day countries which once comprised Yugoslavia are Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

I thought it was awesome that he knew all that. And now, because I was curious and I asked–I know too. And because you read this blog, so do you! See, you’re more awesome already.

Be more awesome by learning new things. I recommend the following 8:2 ratio. For every ten books you read, read eight books about your field, and two books about something that’s completely unrelated. That way, you’ll be well-informed in your area of expertise, and also well-rounded.

8. Be Physically Active.

Awesome people run (or walk fast), they go for bike rides, they play tennis, they golf, they swim, and they’re just generally out there enjoying their bodies and being in nature doing stuff.

To be awesome, get up off the couch and shake your booty. Or at least walk around the block a few times. And do it with attitude.

9. Have a Passion.

Passion is awesome. Ideally, you should be passionate about your job/career/ calling. However, you can be passionate about anything: comic books, a certain area of the law, the US Civil War, whales, Shakespere’s sonnets, LEGOs, baseball, flags. . . the possibilities are endless.

One way to bring more passion into your life is with a passion project. A passion project is something you work on–usually outside of your chosen career path–which makes you happy and puts you in the state of flow. Here are some ideas:

• Start a blog about a topic that you’re really interested in.
• Put together a weekend workshop on something you would like to teach others.
• Invent something — invent a board game, come up with a prototype for a product you wish existed, or create an app.

Be awesome by adding more passion to your life.

10. Be Kind to Others.

When have you seen someone being rude to someone else–either through action or omission–and you’ve thought to yourself: “That person is really awesome”? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the answer to that question is “Never”.

On the other hand, the other day I witnessed a young man go out of his way to patiently help an elderly gentleman climb up the staircase of an elevated pedestrian bridge, walk across the bridge, and then go back down on the other side. I immediately thought: “This guy is just plain awesome”.

If you want to be awesome, be kind to others.

11. Be Playful.

Playful people are fun. They enjoy themselves, and they share that joy with others. And that’s awesome.

In his book, On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck, philosopher Nick Riggle defines being awesome as creating social openings. It’s finding ways to express yourself, thereby giving others an opening to express themselves as well. Being this way creates good vibes all around.

One example Riggle gives in his book is from a Celtics baskeball game. The Bon Jovi song “Living On a Prayer” was playing during halftime, and the fan cam was going around projecting people’s faces onto the jumbo screen.

One person stood up and started enacting the role of Bon Jovi in a music video. He roamed around the audience inviting others to join him in the pretense, and many did. Most of the stadium was cheering and clapping. It was awesome.

Being playful is awesome.

12. Hang Out with Other Awesome People.

I once heard the following saying: “If you want to soar with the eagles, don’t party with the turkeys.” In the same vein, if you want to be awesome, don’t party with the dullards. Instead, do the following: stop and think of what your life would be like if you were humming on all cylinders.

• What would your habits be?
• How would you behave?
• What would you do after work?
• What would you do during the weekends?

Then, identify a group of people who are already doing those things and join them. But be cool about it.

13. Gradually Become More Awesome.

I have an eleven year-old nephew who’s naturally awesome. Other kids–and even adults–are drawn to him like moths to a flame. Some people are born under an awesomeness star.

But most aren’t. Most people have to work at being awesome. But that’s OK. I just gave you several ways to work on becoming more awesome. Be awesome by working at it and gradually becoming more awesome.

Conclusion

How awesome are you right now? Whatever your awesomeness factor may be at the moment, you can become more awesome. Do it for yourself, and for others. Live your best life by increasing your awesomeness factor.

Related Posts

• 16 Ways to Become a Better Person
• How to Be More Daring, Bold, and Audacious
• 16 Ways to Create a Life That Rocks
• 10 Exercises to Help You Seize the Day: Carpe Diem!