I'm the last person to say that life is easy. I don't think that's the case at all. But there's one thing I've learned in recent years that changed everything. The way you THINK determines the outcome of your life. But thinking is hard. That's why we don't do it often enough. Helen Keller said it best: "People don't like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant."

Change your life 

Remember this: A problem is nothing but an unanswered question. So stay calm. And figure out the answer. Here are some wrong reasons to be in a relationship: Money, fear of being alone, abuse, needing attention. If your relationship sucks, and you've tried to improve it multiple times, it's time to move on. Love has no opposite. When you love someone, you can't hate them at the same time. The foundation of all relationships should be based on: Love, respect, support, trust, patience, good company, laughter, sadness, and more support.

No matter how you spin it, you always pay for something with money, time (the most valuable thing you have), or other resources. Life is business. And smart business people spend their resources wisely. How? Be calculated. Never waste resources (especially time). You might think that making no decision at all can do no harm, but you're wrong. The worst thing about making decisions is when you don't pull the trigger. Waiting, postponing, doubting, researching too much - it's all not useful. Get your act together, and decide firmly whenever you have to make one. And when you made the wrong decision, apologize, and make another decision.

Sometimes you're a leader, sometimes you're a follower. You can be a leader at work, and a follower at home. There's nothing wrong with that. And being a leader also has nothing to do with your title. You know what is wrong? When everyone looks at each other because no one wants to take responsibility. Decide that you will take responsibility. There you go: You're a leader now. There's only one thing that helps you to go from nothing to something: Work. I don't care how smart you work, you still have to put in the work.

<a href="http://dariusforoux.com/know-thy-time/">Just make sure you value effectiveness over everything </a>. Results matter. Get things done and move on to the next thing. Everyone is a salesperson. When you're dating, you're selling yourself. Same is true when you're applying for a job. When you sell, be transparent, honest, and to the point. Don't waste your time on people who don't like you anyway. Sales is not about how many people don't want you or your product. It's about finding the people who do . If you don't believe in yourself, don't try to search for it in motivational posts, talks, or books.

<a href="http://dariusforoux.com/build-self-confidence-need-win-life/">You only improve your self-confidence by becoming good at something. </a>How do you get good? By learning, doing, seeing results, and repeating that process for years. Your confidence will grow slowly every day. We're social animals. When we're alone, we die early. You might think you don't need friends, but you do. So be nice to each other. And respect that your friends also have lives of their own. Especially when you grow older, and have more responsibilities (and less time). Things change. People also change. But the connection stays.

We live in a "Look at me! Look at me!" world. Everyone wants to be famous and they do everything to keep up appearances. Don't believe all the success stories you see everywhere. YouTubers, Instagram models, millionaire entrepreneurs: They seem perfect. But you only see the outside. You don't have to be a cynic. Just don't take appearances for facts. When someone takes the time to give you criticism, you should be thankful. Why? It's fuel for you.

You can use criticism to improve yourself, your product, or your service. Or, if the criticism makes no sense, it can make you angry, which is also a good thing. That type of anger is useful. "I'll show them!" Never be a wimp. Take criticism like a champ. Whether you like it or not, you don't fully control your health. You can only influence it by eating healthy, exercising, and not using your body as a toilet. Just get off your ass and get moving, you lazy mofo. And I'm not talking about keeping it up for a few days. No, do it every single day of your healthy life. Because if you can't do that, what can you do? See it as practice for the difficult times of life because the stronger you are, the better.

<a href="http://dariusforoux.com/stop-spending-time-in-your-head/">You control your thoughts. </a>That means you decide what you do with your life. If you're unsatisfied, angry, or frustrated, that's all you. I always thought: "I can never be happy. I need to be rich, own a fancy car, and buy a big house." But I was thinking all wrong. You can be happy with your current life. All it takes is a decision. And when it improves, you'll still be happy. When you create something (doesn't matter what it is), you're actively doing something. You either solve a problem or entertain people.

So instead of consuming so much information, products, and entertainment from others, spend a fraction of that time on creating something yourself. You don't have to create something by yourself, you can also do it with others. No matter what you do: Make yourself useful. So don't just sit there and read another article; go out and do something. What are you still doing here anyway? Go on already!

I'm the last person to say that life is easy. I don't think that's the case at all. But there's one thing I've learned in recent years that changed everything. The way you THINK determines the outcome of your life. But thinking is hard. That's why we don't do it often enough.

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Leadership & Management

I Have 15 ideas to Change Your Life-Do You Have Five Minutes?

<ol><li>Sit for just two minutes . This will seem ridiculously easy, to just meditate for two minutes. That's perfect. Start with just two minutes a day for a week. If that goes well, increase by another two minutes and do that for a week. If all goes well, by increasing just a little at a time, you'll be meditating for 10 minutes a day in the 2nd month, which is amazing! But start small first. </li><li>Do it first thing each morning . It's easy to say, "I'll meditate every day," but then forget to do it. Instead, set a reminder for every morning when you get up, and put a note that says "meditate" somewhere where you'll see it. </li><li>Don't get caught up in the how - just do . Most people worry about where to sit, how to sit, what cushion to use ... this is all nice, but it's not that important to get started. Start just by sitting on a chair, or on your couch. Or on your bed. If you're comfortable on the ground, sit cross-legged. It's just for two minutes at first anyway, so just sit. Later you can worry about optimizing it so you'll be comfortable for longer, but in the beginning it doesn't matter much, just sit somewhere quiet and comfortable. </li><li>Check in with how you're feeling . As you first settle into your meditation session, simply check to see how you're feeling. How does your body feel? What is the quality of your mind? Busy? Tired? Anxious? See whatever you're bringing to this meditation session as completely OK. </li><li>Count your breaths . Now that you're settled in, turn your attention to your breath. Just place the attention on your breath as it comes in, and follow it through your nose all the way down to your lungs. Try counting "one" as you take in the first breath, then "two" as you breathe out. Repeat this to the count of 10, then start again at one. </li><li>Come back when you wander . Your mind will wander. This is an almost absolute certainty. There's no problem with that. When you notice your mind wandering, smile, and simply gently return to your breath. Count "one" again, and start over. You might feel a little frustration, but it's perfectly OK to not stay focused, we all do it. This is the practice, and you won't be good at it for a little while. </li><li>Develop a loving attitude . When you notice thoughts and feelings arising during meditation, as they will, look at them with a friendly attitude. See them as friends, not intruders or enemies. They are a part of you, though not all of you. Be friendly and not harsh. </li><li>Don't worry too much that you're doing it wrong . You will worry you're doing it wrong. That's OK, we all do. You're not doing it wrong. There's no perfect way to do it, just be happy you're doing it. </li><li>Don't worry about clearing the mind . Lots of people think meditation is about clearing your mind, or stopping all thoughts. It's not. This can sometimes happen, but it's not the "goal" of meditation. If you have thoughts, that's normal. We all do. Our brains are thought factories, and we can't just shut them down. Instead, just try to practice focusing your attention, and practice some more when your mind wanders. </li><li>Stay with whatever arises . When thoughts or feelings arise, and they will, you might try staying with them awhile. Yes, I know I said to return to the breath, but after you practice that for a week, you might also try staying with a thought or feeling that arises. We tend to want to avoid feelings like frustration, anger, anxiety ... but an amazingly useful meditation practice is to stay with the feeling for awhile. Just stay, and be curious. </li><li>Get to know yourself . This practice isn't just about focusing your attention, it's about learning how your mind works. What's going on inside there? It's murky, but by watching your mind wander, get frustrated, avoid difficult feelings ... you can start to understand yourself. </li><li>Become friends with yourself . As you get to know yourself, do it with a friendly attitude instead of one of criticism. You're getting to know a friend. Smile and give yourself love. </li><li>Do a body scan . Another thing you can do, once you become a little better at following your breath, is focus your attention on one body part at a time. Start at the soles of your feet - how do those feel? Slowly move to your toes, the tops of your feet, your ankles, all the way to the top of your head. </li><li>Notice the light, sounds, energy . Another place to put your attention, again, after you've practice with your breath for at least a week, is the light all around you. Just keep your eyes on one spot, and notice the light in the room you're in. Another day, just focus on noticing sounds. Another day, try to notice the energy in the room all around you (including light and sounds). </li><li>Really commit yourself . Don't just say, "Sure, I'll try this for a couple days." Really commit yourself to this. In your mind, be locked in, for at least a month. </li><li>You can do it anywhere . If you're traveling or something comes up in the morning, you can do meditation in your office. In the park. During your commute. As you walk somewhere. Sitting meditation is the best place to start, but in truth, you're practicing for this kind of mindfulness in your entire life. </li><li>Follow guided meditation . If it helps, you can try following guided meditations to start with. My wife is using <a href="https://www.tarabrach.com/guided-meditations/">Tara Brach's guided meditations </a>, and she finds them very helpful. </li><li>Check in with friends . While I like meditating alone, you can do it with your spouse or child or a friend. Or just make a commitment with a friend to check in every morning after meditation. It might help you stick with it for longer. </li><li>Find a community . Even better, find a community of people who are meditating and join them. This might be a Zen or Tibetan community near you (for example), where you go and meditate with them. Or find an online group and check in with them and ask questions, get support, encourage others. My <a href="http://seachange.zenhabits.net">Sea Change Program </a>has a community like that. </li><li>Smile when you're done . When you're finished with your two minutes, smile. Be grateful that you had this time to yourself, that you stuck with your commitment, that you showed yourself that you're trustworthy, where you took the time to get to know yourself and make friends with yourself. That's an amazing two minutes of your life. </li> </ol>

Meditation for beginners 

The most important habit I've formed in the last 10 years of forming habits is meditation. Hands down, bar none. Meditation has helped me to form all my other habits, it's helped me to become more peaceful, more focused, less worried about discomfort, more appreciative and attentive to everything in my life.

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Meditation for Beginners: 20 Practical Tips for Understanding the Mind : zen habits

Feynman relied heavily on verbal communication, such as when he used cartoonish diagrams to explain highly scientific principles. Feynman could easily tap into complex ideas using shapes, lines, and drawings. This method helped him strip away confusing language and permitted the power of storytelling to take precedence.

As a student (or someone interested in lifelong learning), there are many things competing for your attention.

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The Feynman Technique: How to Learn Anything Faster and More Efficiently

Most people feel busy and distracted throughout the day - calm and focus and a feeling of purpose are fairly rare for most of us.

Monkey mind 

We're jumping from messages to social media to email to quick work tasks to a search for something we're curious about, from dozens of messages to dozens of posts to a couple doze browser tabs. All day long, one quick thing to the next, putting off anything that requires much more focus than that.

Monkey mind 


The term "monkey mind" captures this fairly well - our minds swinging from one branch to the next, jumping around without pause. It's not quite accurate (monkeys rests a lot of the time, and it's apes that swing from branches, not monkeys) ... but the image is vivid enough.

This is actually how our minds are much of the time, but it can feel stressful and unfocused. Many of us would like a calmer, more focused way of being, at least some of the time.

The first idea is that the monkey mind's activeness isn't an enemy to be slayed. We might not like the feeling of constant distractedness, but if we sit with the mind in meditation, we can see that this is just how the mind likes to behave. It's a habit, but also a big part of the nature of our mind.

So we can start to accept this jumping around nature of the mind, not as something to be battled, but as something to be befriended. Making friends with the monkey mind is bringing a sense of friendliness and warmth to our mind's nature. Being calm with it and not judging it. Gently encouraging it to come back to the matter at hand, not smacking it on the nose with a newspaper.

The second idea is that if we create a calm space for the monkey mind to jump around in, it will eventually settle down. Meditation is a good example of this - and in fact, providing a regular space for meditation is a good practice for being more settled and focused during the day. In meditation, we create a calm space - we sit still for a number of minutes, and let the mind settle down in the present moment. Of course, the mind jumps around in this space, but we don't necessarily engage it too much, and eventually it might settle down. Maybe not, but it tends to slow down a bit at least.

It's like a toddler throwing a tantrum - you can smack the baby on the butt, but that won't end the tantrum, it will only make it worse. If instead, we provide a calm, loving space for the toddler to scream and express their fears and pain, they will calm down and eventually just want a hug.

The third idea is that the fewer bright shiny things we give our monkey minds, the less jumpy the mind will be. Most of us feed into the jumpy habit of the monkey mind by giving it all kinds of shiny things to be distracted by:

<ul>
	<li>Email, text messages, messaging apps like Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Snapchat</li>
	<li>Videos on Youtube, Netflix, etc.</li>
	<li>Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc.</li>
	<li>News sites, blogs, other interesting websites we like to visit</li>
	<li>Games, phone apps, doing searches for things</li>
	<li>Jumping around to small, easy work tasks</li>
</ul>

Of course, there's nothing wrong with any of these. But you can see that we're giving our mind's jumpy nature so many things to be interested in. The modern world, and technology in particular, is designed to distract and engage the monkey mind.

The more of that we can hide, the better. The mind doesn't need all of that in front of it, all the time. So just putting the phone out of sight, closing tabs, not having notifications on ... these simple things can help calm things down.

The last idea is that we can slow down, and pause more often. That might seem like a simple idea, but how often do we do it? Go slower, not faster. Breathe and let your nervous system relax. Un-tense your muscles, soften the front of your body, soften the jaw and temples.

Pause in between doing things - in between messages and emails, in between tasks, in between appointments and errands. Pause, breathe, and think about what matters right now.

Most people feel busy and distracted throughout the day - calm and focus and a feeling of purpose are fairly rare for most of us. We're jumping from messages to social media to email to quick work tasks to a search for something we're curious about, from dozens of messages to dozens of posts to a couple doze browser tabs.

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Creativity

Monkey Mind: Shifting the Habit of Feeling Distracted Throughout the Day : zen habits

Procrastination has been around since the start of modern civilization. Historical figures like Herodotus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and hundreds of others have <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/procrastination">talked about </a>how procrastination is the enemy of results. One of my favorite quotes about procrastination is from Abraham Lincoln: "You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

In the beginning of each semester, I was the coolest mofo on the planet. Relaxing, going out, enjoying myself. Big time. I experienced no stress whatsoever. However, about a week before my exams, I would freak out. "Dude, why didn't you begin earlier?" I would tell myself. And what would follow is an ugly sight of me, with a bunch of Red Bull cans, locked up in my room - freaking out while I was studying. And research shows exactly that: When you procrastinate, you might feel better on the short-term, but you will suffer in the long-term.

Pro cro

It doesn't really matter why you procrastinate. Some love the pressure of deadlines. Some are afraid to fail so they put it off until the very last moment. One thing that all procrastinators have in common is that procrastination has a price. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40063233?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">This highly cited study </a>, published in the American Psychological Society journal, by Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister discusses the cost of procrastination. It is related to: Procrastination is not innocent behavior. It's a sign of poor self-regulation. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Control-People-Fail-Self-Regulation/dp/0120831406">Researchers </a>even compare procrastination to alcohol and drug abuse.

Distractions, other ideas, other opportunities, failure, negative self-talk, etc, would get in the way. And the results are always the same: You never get anything done. To me, the key finding from the study by Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister is this: "The present evidence suggests that procrastinators enjoy themselves rather than working at assigned tasks, until the rising pressure of imminent deadlines forces them to get to work. In this view, procrastination may derive from a lack of self-regulation and hence a dependency on externally imposed forces to motivate work."

Distractions, other ideas, other opportunities, failure, negative self-talk, etc, would get in the way. And the results are always the same: You never get anything done. To me, the key finding from the study by Dianne Tice and Roy Baumeister is this: Self-regulation, self-control, willpower, are all things that we overestimate. We think:"Yeah sure, I will write a novel in 3 weeks." In our minds, we're all geniuses and mentally strong. But when the work comes, we cop out.

If you're a procrastinator, you can't help but delay work. And that's true for the small and big tasks. Sure, everybody fears to step outside of their comfort zone - that's why we call them comfort zones. It takes courage to make a bold move. But it sure doesn't take any courage to complete small tasks like paying bills, printing out something for your boss, doing taxes, etc. The truth is: Procrastination has nothing to do with what you're trying to do - small or big, it can wait until later. It can always wait, right?

For me, completing tasks, went like this: There comes a moment between the start and end of a task-I call it the slope of procrastination-when you give into one distraction. And that's exactly the moment you give up being productive. You start working on a task, you're excited, you're focused, but then, after some time, you think: Let's read the news for a second. It always starts with just one thing.

Then, you think: I might as well watch one episode of Game Of Thrones. Then, a video on YouTube-and then another one. Then, a little bit of Instagram browsing. And so forth. It always ends with a bang: "This is the last time I'm wasting my time! " Yeah, right. What you really need is a system for doing work. A lot of people shy away from routines, systems and frameworks because they want to have "freedom." I'm sorry to disappoint you: Freedom is your enemy.

The fact is that, if you want to get things done, you need rules. What are some things that research proved to be effective? <ul><li>Self-imposed deadlines. </li><li>Accountability systems (commitment with friends, or a coach). </li><li><a href="https://dariusforoux.com/takebreaks/">Working/studying in intervals. </a> </li><li>Exercising 30 minutes a day. </li><li>A healthy diet. </li><li>Eliminating distractions. </li><li>And most importantly: Internal motivation. </li> </ul>If you combine the right productivity tactics , you have a productivity system .

The deadlines create urgency, accountability will create responsibility, working in intervals improves your focus, exercising will give you more energy, so does a healthy diet, and eliminating distractions will take away the temptations. But there's no system that can help you if you don't have an inner drive. People overcomplicate that concept, but it's simple: Why do you do what you do? If you don't know. Make something up.

If you know why you're doing something, even the most annoying tasks become bearable. It will become a part of the bigger picture. So, instead of diving into work, take a step back, think about why you do what you do, and then rely on a system supports that. Not rocket science. Just science . I've made an eBook with 5 tips, exercises, and video training, that you can use to get immediate results. Curious?

Procrastination is the destroyer of our dreams. Every time we don't do the things we should or want, we're putting off our lives. It's not innocent behavior. In this article, I'll show you how to beat procrastination so you can live the life you desire.

I Have 15 ideas to Change Your Life-Do You Have Five Minutes?

Meditation for Beginners: 20 Practical Tips for Understanding the Mind : zen habits

The Feynman Technique: How to Learn Anything Faster and More Efficiently

Monkey Mind: Shifting the Habit of Feeling Distracted Throughout the Day : zen habits

How To Beat Procrastination (backed by science)

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