We make excuses for the following key reasons:

• Fear of Failure
• Fear of Embarrassment
• Fear of Success
• Fear of Change
• Fear of Uncertainty
• Fear of Responsibility
• Fear of Making Mistakes
• Perceived lack of confidence or resources

Feeling too much passion and attachment towards something can skew our perception of it.

And that's risky because it can make us unwilling to see the flaws in our plan.

• Put aside your feelings so that you can concentrate only on the other person’s perspective.
• Use open ended questions that can help you draw out the interests and motivation that the person may not be verbalizing.
• Be clear about your own position and the weaknesses it has.
• Remove any personal intentions you may have, so as not to project them on to the other person.
• Using what you know about the person, their background, their mood, their intentions and expectations,  imagine how they are seeing the current situation.
• Validate their position by paraphrasing back to them what you think their position is.

When you break it down, almost every aspect of business involves an element of negotiation. 

By honing your perspective taking skills, you are much more likely to come up with solutions that are acceptable to all parties.

A great way to remove a large portion of fear is to practice hard, studying the topic well. You can research all questions that the audience may ask, and practice the speech in front of a mirror or in front of friends.

Practicing soothes our nerves, making us ready for the final audience.

“If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?”

Consider how you’re doing in the following areas:

• Finances. Are you feeling financial pressure in your life? Do you have all the things you need or really want? How much money do you have in savings? Do you have the income you desire? Is that income secure?
• Relationships. Are your relationships satisfying? 
• Health. Are you taking good care of yourself? 
• Fun & Adventure. Are you doing the things you really want to do?
• Any other aspect of your life in which you’re experiencing dissatisfaction. 

If you’re not pleased with your life, a limiting belief could be the cause.

A conversation is not like a game of chess where you constantly plan three moves ahead.

Keep your mind focused and stop thinking about what you want to say next. There's no point in solving a problem that doesn't exist yet, so focusing attention on doing so is only harming the actual conversation that's happening.

Some spend a lot of time going back through their conversations of the day to find some type of hidden meaning in them. Even if someone was very direct, they assume they meant something else. 

The only thing you can do about this is to stop, move on, and simply accept that people often say what they mean. Paying attention will allow you to have a better grasp of how people are communicating with you. 

Parents' frame of mind impacts their children. Parents should not blame themselves when their children struggle.

Since parents lead by example, treating themselves with compassion and without judgment can help their children to do the same.

Many parents stop meditating once they have children. But new research suggests that even brief interventions can be helpful.

• Take two breaths of kindness wherever you are.
• Find moments of newness while engaged in your daily tasks of living.
• Bring awareness and gratitude to the everyday things you take for granted.

The way we define the concept of "productivity" really influences our perception.

For a lot of people, this word suggests something cold and corporate, that speaks about efficiency and becoming a robot.

It has to do with focus and allows us to accomplish everything we want to do in a smaller amount of time, so we have more time for what’s actually meaningful to us.

Because being able to focus on things, we see more meaning in them.

You can’t please everybody that you meet in life.

Critics are not all bad. You can learn things about yourself from them too. The solution is to learn from criticism, not be afraid of it.

See career challenges for what they are: an opportunity to try something different. 

If your career never got messed up, then you’d probably stay in your comfort-zone for your entire life and never try something different.

Our working memory is what allows us to focus on the information we need to get things done at the moment we’re doing them. It is also in limited supply. You can think of it like our brain’s computer memory. Once it’s used up, nothing more can fit in.

When you overanalyze a situation, the repetitive thoughts, anxiety, and self-doubt decrease the amount of working memory you have available to complete challenging tasks, causing your productivity to plummet.

A recent Stanford study suggests that over-thinking not only impedes our ability to perform cognitive tasks but keeps us from reaching our creative potential as well.