Improving Yourself and Your Mindset

Why You Need to Let Go of Yourself to Become the Best Version of Yourself What is the thing that is most holding you back from being the best version of you? You might be tempted to say something along the lines of time, energy, money or opportunity. Perhaps you feel limited by other people? I have a hunch, which is that a big part of what's holding you back is your own sense of self. In other words: you might well be limited by your attachment to the old you and by your eagerness to be seen as consistent and reliable. Why Consistency is Over-Rated We all have an attachment to who we think we are. We all have a notion of ourselves and of who others think we are as well. For example: you may see yourself as someone lighthearted who is never serious. Or perhaps you see yourself as being a local at heart, who supports the local sports team and who would never leave home. We like the sense of continuity that this brings and other people like the fact that they know where they stand wit...

When Self-Help Becomes a Negative Thing The right self-help book or course can be a tremendously powerful tool. I have personally seen it transform peoples lives: I've seen people go from being nervous, shy and unconfident and become far more naturally attractive, confident and interesting. But I would also argue that things have been taken a little too far. There is so much self-help literature out there now and so much advice on how we can become better versions of who we are. But is it all constructive? Why Self-Help Can be Damaging While I've seen people who have been positively influenced by self-help texts, I've also seen people who have been damaged by them. One of the most common ways this can happen, is when self-help becomes a delay tactic. What I mean by this, is that people can use self-help as a means to delay the work they actually should be doing to improve themselves. In other words: people will buy a self-help book and then will instantly feel as though the...

Top Tricks for Killing Procrastination Procrastination is something that can ruin your day, damage your career and negatively impact on your relationships. Often, we laugh about procrastination as though it were an amusing habit and sometimes it can be. But that doesnít mean it isn't also incredibly destructive. Imagine it's 4pm and you have work you desperately need to finish by 5pm but you can't stop browsing Facebook or making trips to the kitchen for cups of coffee. What happens? One option is that you end up going home very late and lose out on time with your family. Another option is that you end up not finishing the work and starting the next day incredibly behind. Either way, this is a serious problem. So, what can you do about it? Here are a few tricks that can help. Start the Most Enjoyable Task First One effective way to reduce your proneness to procrastination is to take on the easiest/most enjoyable task first. Our natural inclination is very often to handle th...

Top Reasons Why You Should Start Meditating Are you on the fence about meditation? Then let's make things a little simpler for you: this is something that you absolutely should do.  Meditation is an incredibly useful skill and a form of brain training that can help to fortify your mind and make you more effective in a wide range of situations. In this post, we'll take a look at some of the most important reasons you should consider taking up meditation no matter who you are. It Thickens Your Brain Believe it or not, meditation can physically change the shape of your brain, making it thicker, stronger and better connected. Studies show that meditation increases the amount of white matter (cells that support the neurons) as well as cortical thickness in the all-important frontal regions. This correlates with improved attention, better memory and faster processing speeds. In short: meditation makes you smarter! It Helps You Deal With Stress Meditation is a tool that you can use wh...

Top Easy Ways to Feel, Look and be Healthier This Year Improving your health and fitness doesn't have to be hard work. Sure, building an athletic, cover-model body is not easy. But if your objective is simply to feel a little healthier, look a little better and put a bit of a spring in your step, then you have plenty of simple options.  And in fact, knowing these easy hacks to improve your wellbeing is actually crucial when it comes to getting that killer body too. Why? Because a making these changes can give you the energy and the ability you need to make the bigger changes. These are those first small steps that make everything else possible. Here are some good places to begin! Swap All Your Drinks for Water Recent studies suggest that swapping all your drinks for water can make huge differences to your energy levels, your weight loss and even your mental focus. The reason for this is not only that you'll be putting fewer empty calories into your body, but also that you'...

The Power of Flow and How to Access It In neuroscience, the concept of flow is currently all the rage. Flow describes a specific mental state that allows us to focus intensely on a single task or subject matter. In this state, time will actually appear to dilate and slow around us, giving us more time to react and improving our performance significantly. At the same time, we become faster at solving problems and reacting and we can completely block out all distracting thoughts and temptations. So, what is this flow exactly and how does it come about? Flow Explained Flow is a certain mental state in much the same way that the fight or flight puts us into a particular state of mind. In fact, a flow state is very similar to the fight or flight response with the primary difference being that fight or flight makes us more panicked and distracted whereas flow is slightly calmer and more positive. Both states though are triggered by a sense of danger and importance. When the body detects that...

The Best Brain Foods for Eating Your Way Smarter When you think of becoming smarter, you probably think about studying hard, doing lots of math and generally putting in time and effort. But what if I told you that you could get smarter by eating? We all love eating, so in theory this should be no hardship at all. But if you choose your foods wisely, you'll find it can make a significant difference to your brain function and overall mental performance! So, without further ado, here are some of the top brain foods: Oily Fish Oily fish is absolutely crucial for optimum brain health. Why? Because it contains omega 3 fatty acid. This benefits our brain in two ways. Firstly, omega 3 fatty acid can be used to build cell walls. It is incorporated into their formulation, which means that lesser materials get replaced. In turn, this results in brain cells that are more flexible, more fluid and less likely to become damaged. Better yet, this also increases cell membrane permeability. In simpl...

Think Faster and Multitask Better If you want to upgrade your brain like Eddie Mora from Limitless, then unfortunately you won't find it to be as easy as taking a single pill. Instead, you're going to have to look at more arduous and lengthy strategies, including such things as brain training or improving your overall health. If you choose to go the brain-training route though, there is one especially effective and easy method that you may find helps you to see the kinds of results you're looking for. That method is to focus your training on working memory. But what does that actually mean? What is Working Memory? The traditional view of memory split out capacity for storing information into three separate categories. Those were: working memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory was described as containing all the information that you remember for a while, but that would ultimately be sent to trash. This includes such things as people names, or what ...

Increase Your Confidence and Get What You Want This might sound like the cheesy-kind of advice your parents might have given you, but it really is true that confidence can get you pretty much whatever you want. That and being yourself.  If you want to get a date, succeed in your career or otherwise take any aspect of your life to the next level, then boosting your confidence is one of the best ways to accomplish that.  What Confidence Really Means If you have ever met an alpha male, or a woman who just seems to have everything under control, then you might have noticed that they are usually very confident. The truth is that the whole reason they appear so successful is that confidence. That is because confidence sends a powerful signal and it says ''I consider myself to be a catch''. Speaking in evolutionary terms, confidence suggests that you are a good potential mate, or a superior competitor. Even if someone is short, poorly dressed and unappealing and if they are su...

Four Things That Can Make Your Life More Meaningful When we spend our lives merely surviving, life can start to seem a little empty and pointless. Nevertheless, this is exactly how many of us live: we work for eight hours or more a day and then we come home feeling too tired and exhausted to do much of anything with our time. So, we sit and watch TV. The same thing repeats and repeats and the most excitement we have is a holiday once a year to look forward to. Is that really living? Here are four simple changes that can make your life more meaningful: Learning Constantly learning is a great way to give life more meaning and direction. Ultimately, one of the things that the brain craves most is growth. If it isn't challenged to learn and grow, then it will shrink and we will become set in our ways. Make it your job to constantly be learning new skills and pursuits. That can be related to your career, a hobby, or even a new language! Relationships Likewise, relationships are one of t...

A Step in Building Your Self Confidence Everything has to start somewhere. Unless you start revamping your self confidence, you will have to agonize endlessly with the very thing you are fearful of- low self confidence. Our self confidence is the accumulation of all our reactions to the experiences that life brought us, the manner by which we were guided by the older people in our environment and how we and the society view us. Many factors are contributors to our personal understanding of confidence. One determining factor is how well we expect ourselves and the circumstances of our lives should be. Many tend to fall into the trap of creating unrealistic expectations. In the process, their losses are becoming too painful that they eventually suffer the effects of creating lower self confidence. Others, on the other hand, lean more on playing safe and thus create more achievable goals that are easier to attain. And because achievements add largely to the development of self confidence,...

Start Believing in Yourself Low self confidence only boils down from low belief in one self. Now, the obvious cure would be to inculcate faith in yourself, enough to make you believe that things don't happen out of course but because "you" make things happen. Believing in oneself however, stems down from our childhood experiences. With lack of poor models or lack of encouragement from those we have learned to associate respect and trust on, it would be likely that our maturity would be marked by ambiguity of self image. We know for a fact that parents only act according to what they deem appropriate or best for their children. However, doing the best don't necessarily mean that they qualify to the universal standard of being the best. In fact, there are so many cases when their bests may have been a mediocre standard for others and in some cases, their best is no good at all. Nonetheless, they still perform them because they know nothing better. No one could be blamed...

How the Inner Critic Affects Your Self Confidence It is strange how many of us fail to listen to that tiny voice inside ourselves. There is no biological and scientific explanations to this ever present voice but you see, we all hear them. For some the voice is the all-commanding mentor. It is sad though that for some, this little voice has become their inner critic, or worse has for a long time muted. It is an innate murmuring voice that we hear. If we would all remember, this tiny voice has been with us throughout our lives, guiding us to make the proper decisions. But during the course of life, when we have become too jaded and have forgotten the beliefs we once had, this voice becomes silent that we no can no longer remember how good it feels to listen to its guidance. It was intended to help us but our negative thoughts turn that voice into an inner critic. This inner critic is the nagging voice that tells you how deficient you are, how ugly you are, how weak and useless you are a...

Best Tips on Overcoming Your Lack of Self Confidence Self confidence is one thing that most people think other people have except for themselves. All of us were endowed with special attributes though we rarely recognize these gifts. We may see that men were not created equal but there surely must be a universal stuff that balances all things.   We are all capable of being self confident. It not a thing that we can touch nor see. It not something that was given to the person sitting next to you while you may not share the blessings it might result to. It is not something that we don't all have. You may not posses it now yet this does not imply that you are deprived of the capacity to develop it. Everyone is entitled to self confidence and luckily, all opportunities are laid in our front, only we have to recognize them. We cannot afford to lose the value of one lifetime just because we missed too much of good life in exchange for not having been able to live our dreams. Dreams that w...

Build Self Confidence Through Introspection Nobody knows himself better than him.  This seem incredibly true for those who can actually handle themselves and those who can actually benefit from the knowledge they can derive and use from knowing who they truly are. Introspection is the habit of looking inward. Like most human activities, this would either assert positive or negative effects. There are times that reflection of one's image may create healthy products in the person. That is, when he is focused on his entire being and in return, considers this whole picture as an effective juncture to find where and what is missing and lacking. That way, he would find means of compensating for such. However, introspection may also turn against a person when it has become too focused on the negative aspects of one's personality. This then is called thought rumination. Thought rumination is somewhat similar to that of a caged hamster. This is a way to run in tight circles by obsessing...

Consider Spirituality in Developing Self Confidence Our development is continuous from the moment we were conceived until the last seconds of our stay.  Nothing comes from nothing. And everything will eventually go to nothing. But unless we have turned into void everything would still be subject to improvement. If we have missed in childhood all the developments we were bound to undergo then adulthood is never too late to give them a shot. All it would take is to gather everything in one heap and toss them all in one try with fingers crossed hoping that all would end well.   The end is never the end of it all though. Depending on your treatment of things, the end might as well be considered as the beginning. The start of a new trial. All we need is to take the positive attitude and make ourselves believe that some things are meant to fail on our first trials and then luck would follow us.  Our route for development is always towards a specific goal. And since nothing come...

Physical Presence for Confidence  and Self Esteem Physical presence is known to be the state by which people would see us, would appreciate our worth and would acknowledge our presence. It is a state of occupying spaces without causing any tension at all. We don't always want the responsibility of being the top dog. However, we all need recognition and as such, we have to develop our physical presence, both for self realization and for other people's appreciation. A good physical presence would help us communicate our dominance or at least our value in a circle of people. It is also one way of recognizing the real condition of things when people begin to take dominance. But it may also be used as a help to recognize other people's failure to act or when we become invisible ourselves. Invisibility is an entrapment we must all avoid to maintain an ideal state of confidence and self esteem. For with visibility, our attributes would be recognized and our value as a person would...

Building Confidence and Self Esteem Optimism! It all lies in our positive perception of our personality, the events occurring around us and life itself. So long as we believe in the goodness that we may have in life, we are bound to enjoy it the way every man should. Unfortunately, many of us cannot grasp optimism from a life that is muddled with miseries, morbidity, and struggles. Of course, life's pleasure would not be appreciated if it were not equaled with unhappiness. Pain cannot be felt if all we know is joy. Tears would lose its worth if we always experience happiness. Confidence would not be recognized if we do not fall flat on our face sometimes. Life is a gratifying privilege and we can make everything we want from it. We have to start early in building our foundations so that we wont have to loose precious moments that shall never pass by us again. A moment that's gone is gone forever but your light won't even lose its value long after you have gone. With optimis...