Stories

How to Overcome Fear & Let Your Creativity Flourish

“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” – Sven Goran Eriksson

When you are happy you are confident, and you make choices that give you a better chance at success. When you procrastinate and resist change, that’s fear taking over.

It’s difficult to pull up that creativity anchor and let the “happy you” set sail.

Your fears are just trying to protect you from emotional pain. It’s self-preservation.

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9 Ways to Be Happy Within Yourself

By Olusegun Jegede / 38 Comments

Have you ever found yourself standing in front of the mirror and yelling at yourself or hating yourself? Do you understand what it feels like to be completely disgusted with yourself and longing for a change? We often spend time upset about something, allowing our environment and circumstances to dictate whether or not we are going to be happy. The truth is that we can live our lives with happiness and decide that we are going to do whatever it takes to be happy. You can be happy if you have the mind to.

Happiness is something we must do on purpose. In the midst of struggles or difficulties, we must choose to be happy. Happiness does not come from the acquisition of money or things; happiness begins from within each of us. Being happy within ourselves simply means showing mercy to ourselves, forgiving ourselves, befriending ourselves, accepting ourselves, and loving ourselves. It’s a lifelong journey that requires regular self-examination and an ongoing process of making peace with ourselves. It means discovering what makes us unhappy and choosing to live in peace. It means treating ourselves with compassion and kindness. It makes us to begin to enjoy life more and more and celebrate it as adventure in peace. It helps us to live life to the fullest, and help make the world a better place for us and others.

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5 Ways to Remove Negativity From Your Life

By Deborah Fike / 21 Comments

If there was one word on this planet that killed more change, it would be the word ‘No.’ No, I don’t have the energy to launch a new business. No, I don’t have time to write a novel. No, I’m not smart enough to learn Chinese.

It can be hard to turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes,’ especially if we ourselves are the sources of our own negativity. It’s possible, though, if we work to eliminate the sources of our self-doubt and indecision.

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How the iPad Will Change Education

By Steve Kaufmann / 5 Comments

An optimist always thinks that change is for the better. In his book, The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley describes the progress of human knowledge, a process of accelerating, spontaneous, change. Larger and larger human communities connect and exchange goods, information, and ideas. Only the best ideas survive. As these ideas accumulate, they become part of our collective intelligence. The result, in the last few hundred years, has been a dramatic improvement in living standards and a reduction in the number of hours of work necessary to acquire basic goods and services.

Education has been an exception. In the US, the cost of K-12 education, in constant dollars, has increased by 350% since the 1960s with no improvement in results.

The iPad , and the next generation of cheaper and better electronic tables that will follow it, are symbols of the dramatic change that is sweeping through the world of education.

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Mindfully Moving Beyond Multitasking

By Christopher R. Edgar / 29 Comments

It’s become a truism in productivity literature that we shouldn’t multitask. Constantly switching between projects, we’re told, wastes time, because we need to reorient ourselves whenever we change tasks.

In working with clients on productivity issues, I’ve noticed that, although some people understand intellectually that multitasking is bad, they have trouble kicking the habit. As hard as they try to zero in on a single project, they find their attention constantly jumping around — from writing that e-mail, to coding that computer program, to folding their socks, and so on.

In other words, for these people, multitasking isn’t really a choice — it’s more like something that happens to them. But why?

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10 Small Changes Which Make a Big Difference

By Ali Luke / 19 Comments

When you want to change something in your life, it can feel overwhelming. Whether it’s losing 50lbs or switching careers, starting a side business or spring cleaning the home, it might be a change you’re desperately keen to make … but getting started is really tough.

You don’t have to take huge, sweeping, radical steps, though. Small and simple changes are often the best way forwards – they’re sustainable and manageable, and you’re not likely to give up after one half-hearted attempt.

Here are ten to try.

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How to Change Another Person’s Life

By Peter Clemens / 26 Comments

There is a very easy way to change another person’s life, and it involves doing nothing directly or intentionally for them.

Back in 2008 I published two stories on PickTheBrain by Stephen Hopson that illustrated the profound and lasting impact a single person can have on our life. In these stories, Stephen shared how a teacher who belted out “THAT’S RIGHT STEPHEN!” gave him the confidence to overcome the insecurities he held due to being deaf.

Very often, as was the case in Stephen’s stories, the person who changes us does not even realize the positive and profound impact they have had. Why? Because they have not done anything directly and/ or intentionally for us. Rather, they have simply been living their own life in such a manner that we can’t help be changed for the better.

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How to Change Your Life

By Mark Harrison / 17 Comments

We are often told that change is uncomfortable and difficult, that it inevitably involves pain, and that to change your life is to struggle and fight against the status quo. But there is another way. Change can be gentle, spontaneous and natural – effortless, even. With the right approach, big changes can occur without the upheavals we might normally associate with such shifts.

You create your own experience of life

It seems to be a rule of nature that similar things conglomerate. People from a similar social or cultural background are drawn together by a shared worldview; the rich and famous socialize within their own circle; similar scientific ideas which seem to arise at around the same time. The familiar saying, ‘birds of a feather flock together’ arises from this observation.

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How Pain, Heartache and Loss Can Make You Better

By Gabe Martinez / 15 Comments

Pain and loss is a reality that we all have to deal with in our lives from time to time. It can control our lives and bring us down, or it can actually cause us to change in good ways and make us better.

It’s easy for us to want to push aside our negative feelings and not acknowledge their existence. We want to feel good and be happy all of the time.

And there’s nothing wrong with wanting happiness.

But what if when pain, heartache, or loss strike us, they can actually change us to make us better people? And what if it can help us deal better with future occurrences of pain?

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Throw Away Your Labels and Accept Change in Others

By Deborah Fike / 25 Comments

The hardest part about change isn’t that it happens to you. Of course it happens to you. You remember how breaking up with that guy made you see life from a different perspective. How quitting your job made you learn a new skill. You are a constantly evolving person and, for better or worse, you have learned to cope with change all throughout your life.

But do you realize change happens to those around you too?

Before you say “yes,” consider this anecdote from my childhood. I grew up in a family with six children. Separated from oldest to youngest by 13 years, you can imagine that we had a wide variety of personalities amongst the siblings. My oldest sister was the Care Giver. My brother, the Logical Scientist. Me, the Dreamer. My younger sister, the Lazy Genius. My youngest sister, the Hard Worker.

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7 Powerful Success Principles

By Mr. Self Development / 13 Comments

A principle is a rule or law concerning a natural occurrence. When principles are applied, the results are predictable. Today I want to talk about seven success principles that will make your success a natural occurrence. These principles are timeless; they will work today the same as they worked 2,500 years ago, the same as they will work 2,500 years from now.

If you follow the success principles, success will surely be yours. Contrary to popular opinion, public debate, and what you may have seen on television, success is not the result of good luck. Success comes from the proper application of principles.

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