Focus on the art of being

• Identify your most challenging assignment
• Get through the tough assignment. Start working on the project at the end of the workday. But don't finish.
• Sleep. Let the brain do his thing.
• Wake up and dump your thoughts onto paper.

Writing morning pages is supposed to be simple.

To make sure you stick to your writing ritual, wake up and don’t do anything else. Grab a notebook and write the pages.

Self-destructive behaviors can become habits and can continually undermine your success and happiness.

Self-sabotage is when we want something, but somehow we never accomplish it, because somewhere deep in our subconscious we’re fighting against that goal:

• Our disorganization distracts us.
• We’re constantly overthinking all of our decisions.

• Procrastination. Start setting deadlines and mini-deadlines to work toward your objective.
• Negative self-talk/negative thinking. Be patient with yourself; be kind to yourself. Work to build yourself up.
• Perfectionism. It is an impossible standard that keeps you from moving forward.

Unless you have clinical depression, pessimism is just a bad habit. Many adopt pessimism from childhood models or from a painful event and end up making it a part of their life.

Consume inspiring content, or record your achievements and things you are grateful for, and routinely look through these lists to remind yourself of your abilities in difficult moments.

Feeling sorry for yourself, procrastinating and adopting a binary or pessimistic world view are common ways of self-limitation.

Work on your priorities and attitudes to find untapped opportunities. Being ready to face something new opens doors for you.

You might not be in a position to choose your workspace, but there are quick fixes: look for a spot with natural light from a window or skylight, take a walk outside when you feel stuck, or simply explore a new location. 

A new environment can quite literally lead to new ideas.

It's when your brain knows that when you’re in a certain place, you’re taking a certain action.

Take advantage of the way different locations affect you. Our brains love habits, and if we can associate certain qualities with different places, it can help us get into a better working flow. 

This technique requires 2 steps:

• Deep immersion into a subject matter without specifically looking for an answer to your problem.
• Letting go completely while you process that information (actually walking away from it), to allow good ideas to bubble up from the subconscious and into clear view.

This is the ability to reach beyond a specific field of expertise and create new uses for an older thing. It’s about taking one thing and using it for a different purpose than intended.

For example: Apply a cooking recipe to a marketing strategy or use a spreadsheet program to organize words for your poetry.

• It gives you structure, builds forward-moving habits, and creates momentum that will carry you on the days when you feel like you don't have the strength to carry yourself.
• Following a daily routine can help you establish priorities, limit procrastination, keep track of goals, and even make you healthier. 
• It lowers your reliance on willpower and motivation.

... to get you into a positive mood for the day ahead. Put your mind in a good state right away, because left unchecked it will try to tell you the things that are wrong.

Pick a phrase or question that resonates with you. It could be as simple as smiling and saying "thank you" out loud, acknowledging that you have been gifted with another day.

Our gut instinct or intuition can come in many forms, like detecting patterns in places where other people only see randomness or having a sudden flash of brilliance which goes against the grain but feels right.

Gathering enough data to make a rational decision also takes up a lot of time, and in today's fast-paced world, by the time one procures all data, the decision becomes antiquated.

Our subconsious mind continuously processes information, even when we sleep, which our conscious mind finally learns or infers, lighting a bulb inside us.

We know the gut feeling is true because our 'right brain'(intuition and emotion-based) already knew the revelation that our left brain (logic and consciousness-based) now has come to know.

Music has a real impact on human emotions and perception. Music activates different areas of the brain in different people, but there are general brain and mood patterns revealed by music research.

For the most part, research suggests that listening to music can improve your efficiency, creativity and happiness in terms of work-related tasks. 

"Keeping a personal journal a daily in-depth analysis and evaluation of your experiences is a high-leverage activity that increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them."

• Increases focus;
• Deeper level of learning, order, action, and release;
• Holding thoughts still so they can be changed and integrated;
• Releasing pent-up thoughts and emotions;
• Empowerment;
• Bridging inner thinking with outer events;
• Detaching and letting go of the past;
• Allowing you to re-experience the past with today’s adult mind.

That’s the minimum required for a mini-mediation.

Just focus on your sense. You don’t need to close your eyes. You don’t even need to be sitting down.

You can use interruptions as hooks to make you more mindful.

Every time your phone rings, take a mindful breath. Every time you hear the ping of a text message, pause to be mindful of your surroundings rather than immediately reacting by checking the message.