Self Improvement Archives - Page 2 of 5

How to Improve Your Self-Esteem

I struggled with low self esteem for most of my life. When I was young, most of the feedback I got from my mother was “You could do better”. If I got a ‘B’ on my report card I was told “You could do better”. It didn’t matter what household chore: dusting, washing dishes, cleaning my room. It was always “You could do better” followed by a series of corrections. Sometimes her reaction was “Can’t you do anything right?”

The meaning I gave to these events was that “I’m not good enough”, “I can never be good enough”, “I’m stupid”, “I’m incompetent”. No wonder I had low self-esteem! It took me years to realize that the negative meanings I gave things were wrong.

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5 Lessons Learned from a Toddler

By Deborah Fike / 31 Comments

If I could summarize my world for you in one sentence, it would be: chasing my toddler. I know the back of my daughter’s scruffy blonde head anywhere: dashing across the living room, making a break for the next grocery aisle, or attempting to go up the slide (much more fun than going down). My old day job required me to attend meetings and sit in front of a computer most of the day. Now, I’m lucky if I get 10 minutes to sit down for a breather before my girl has me running to catch up with her.

I’ve never raised a child before, and given my personality, I decided to read about it. All the toddler self-help books talk about what you need to teach them: how to play with others, learn language, go potty. These books contain great advice for child rearing, but none discuss the things parents learn from toddlers. I have learned at least as much from my daughter as she has learned from me. So here are some tips for living from someone who just started her life journey:

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How to Use Lucid Dreaming As a Catalyst For Personal Change

By Alex Fielder / 16 Comments

In today’s society, everyone is trying to either make more money, lose a few pounds around the waist, or simply just get ahead of the pack. It seems we’re always striving for some sort of new goal. But in many cases, what is lacking is one vital element…the inner confidence to do it.

In the real world, we face numerous obstacles that can set us back from reaching our goals, our dreams, and our most cherished desires in life. There is never a shortage of mental or physical hurdles that tend to stand in our way.

But what if you could change your level of confidence from the inside out, through your dreams?

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How Asking for Help Makes You Grow

By Isabelle Fredborg / 32 Comments

We live in a society where we more or less consciously are told that unless you take care of yourself, no one will – at least in the Western world. You’re on your own. This can be exhilarating. You have the power over your own future. But it also implies that unless you do it yourself, you didn’t deserve it. You cheated somehow. We have all seen the lone wolf entrepreneur who single-handedly launches a successful company or two, fuelled by caffeine and applauded as a genius by us mortals. We’re almost conditioned not to ask for help.

When you have a problem, asking for help sounds like an obvious solution. Yet we so often choose to struggle with our problems alone, sometimes even going so far as to isolate ourselves or pretend that everything is all right when that is far from the truth.

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Don’t Study the Basics, Learn By “Grazing”

By Steve Kaufmann / 16 Comments

If you really want to learn something, don’t worry about learning the basics first. Just go about gathering knowledge wherever you find it, doing things you like to do. Instead of trying to build a house of knowledge, one brick at a time, starting from the foundation, try to learn by “grazing”, following whatever attracts your interest. You will find that apparently aimless “grazing” will take you over increasingly familiar ground, and your grasp of the subject will naturally deepen.

At school we are taught that we need to learn things in a certain order, according to the curriculum, so that we can pass our tests. Learning is divided up into short spurts of activity, with the class subject changing every 30-40 minutes. The teacher decides what we are going to learn and at what pace. We are usually dissuaded from going ahead of the teacher to pursue things that interest us. We don’t have the luxury of staying with a subject of interest for a whole morning, let alone weeks at a time.

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Cultivating Patience

By Deborah Fike / 16 Comments

We live in a “now” culture. If it takes more than five seconds for a website to load, we won’t view it. We want to call our friends now, even if we’ll see them in 10 minutes. The “now” culture is one of convenience, and let’s face it, convenience can make our lives easier.

Unfortunately, by gaining convenience, we’ve lost some of our patience. Waiting has become a common enemy. We get irritated when the guy in front of us jokes with the cashier because it takes longer for us to buy milk. We want pills and surgery to lose weight instantly, rather than streamlining our diet and exercising. We want to have the best life possible right now, not tomorrow, and certainly not next year.

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Neurolinguistic Programming – A Road Map to Change

By Mark Harrison / 7 Comments

What makes some people successful and able to handle change creatively? Why do some people seem to have good relationships or always appear to be in the right place at the right time? Is there something special about them? Are people born with certain traits which enable them to navigate through difficulties with apparent ease? Or is it all down to luck?

In the 1970s, John Grinder, a professor at the University of California, and a student called Richard Bandler started to work together on a project to observe the behaviours of successful people. They were interested in why some people are so good at what they do. Together, they developed a way of observing, codifying and replicating the thought patterns and behaviours which lead to individuals experiencing high levels of success. They called the approach Neurolinguistic Programming, since it explores the relationships between how we think (neuro), how we communicate (linguistic) and our patterns of behaviour and emotion (programmes).

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9 Inspiring Lessons from the School of Life

By Srinivas Rao / 20 Comments

A few years ago, I found myself sitting on my couch at home watching a movie – School of Life – that would fundamentally alter the course of my life. Below are 9 lessons inspired by that movie.

1. Life is a Hero’s Journey

Whether you realize it or not, you are the hero of your story. At the end of your life all you’re going to be left with is a story made up of events and experiences. The most important thing you can do is to make that story epic. That is why I suggest that you always choose a life made up of experiences instead of one made of possesions.

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When Helping Hurts: A Lesson on Enabling

By Nea Joy / 48 Comments

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge advocate for helping others. I believe in reaching out, giving a helping hand, providing emotional support, and contributing financially. I believe each individual can make the world a better place by helping others in some way. On the other hand, it’s relatively clear that anything, including help, can be done in excess. So, what does it mean to help until it hurts?

When Helping Hurts

Helping aids progression, creates an environment of positivity, adds value to the life of another human being. Helping lifts you up, but doesn’t hold you up; it allows you to hold yourself up as best you can. Helping at its best is supportive, not controlling; strengthening, not debilitating; mobilizing, not paralyzing. When helping hurts, it is no longer helping. It is enabling.

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Personality 2.0

By Mark Hooson / 11 Comments

Technology is a marvellous thing. In the always-connected world of 2011, if we hit a problem with a piece of software or a gadget – the manufacturer can issue a patch or a firmware upgrade to solve the problems.

When it comes to humans, however, fixing our problems isn’t as straight forward as downloading an upgrade, plugging in and re-synching.

If we were able to upgrade our ‘personality firmware’ however, here’s how I think it might look, with the ‘Personality 2.0’ firmware release notes!

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How to Stand Out from the Crowd

By Gabe Martinez / 22 Comments

The world is full of competition. There’s always somebody else trying to out-run us so that they can get to the top. This can be discouraging because we might feel we can’t compete on their level. But I think we should see competition as a good thing. It helps us to stay motivated in the things we do, and it helps us to do better for ourselves and others.

Sometimes we get to a point where we just kind of lie dormant, not really progressing much in our lives. For example, sometimes in our careers we lose hope and think that there’s just too much competition and there’s no way for us to get ahead. Simply put…not true! Part of wanting to make positive changes in your life involves giving yourself that extra boost to stand out from the crowd.

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