3 Ways Your Breathing Can Improve Your Productivity

improve your productivity

While we’re working, we often get so absorbed in our projects that we forget about our breathing. When this happens, particularly when we’re under stress, we can lapse into restricted breathing—inhaling in short gasps, or shallowly into the upper chest. What we don’t often realize is that how we breathe can deeply affect our efficiency and enjoyment in what we do. In this post, I’ll offer three breathing techniques to help you stay focused and peaceful as you work.

Productivity writers often tell us to resist the urge to put off our work, but they usually don’t offer much practical advice on how to do that. In my experience working with people on productivity issues, we often procrastinate when an uncomfortable thought or sensation— anxiety or anger, for instance—comes up as we’re working, and we’d rather not experience it. We need, I think, some way to stay centered even when faced with those intense thoughts and feelings.

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How to Escape Mediocrity

escape mediocrity

“Mediocrity is the worst enemy of greatness.” – Icelandic proverb

Imagine you sit down on a hot radiator. In a few seconds, you will feel intense heat on your bum, jump up, curse, then go sit down somewhere else. And you’ll be ok.

Now imagine you’re in an uncomfortably hot room. But you’re feeling lazy, and the discomfort isn’t quite enough to make you get up and open the window or turn down the heating. So you stay, uncomfortable, for hours…

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7 Reasons a Blog Is a Phenomenal Personal Development Tool

personal development tool

In the 8 months since I started my blog I’ve gotten to know dozens of bloggers. While each one has his or her own unique interests and opinions, I think it’s fair to say we all agree on one thing: a blog is a phenomenal personal development tool. Here are some reasons why:

Goal Setting: Setting goals is a fundamental component of any personal development program. While there are a few different variations, it really comes down to one basic idea: write down your goals. A blog provides a great platform for writing down your goals and provides a place where you can review them on a regular basis.

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The Subconscious Mind: Insights from Viktor Frankl

subconscious mind

Viktor Frankl’s short book, Man’s Search for Meaning, has been described as ‘among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud.’ He begins with an account of his experiences in Auschwitz and other concentration camps and then develops the insights from these experiences into a remarkable synthesis.

The book has been the inspiration for many other works, including Stephen Covey’s famous ‘Seven Habits.’ Frankl’s work has a great deal to say about many aspects of life. His insights on the role of the subconscious are particularly interesting.

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Staying Motivated: The Watercourse Way

staying motivated

‘Giving up smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times’ ~ Mark Twain

So your goal is to get up at 4am every morning, go for a 5km run and take a cold shower before meditating and writing a chapter of your new novel? I can’t say I’ve ever tried to do anything like this, but I imagine it must be hard to stay motivated.

For me, sticking to a routine like this would involve brute force – a never-ending battle of willpower over the desire to stay in bed. But this would go against my fundamental belief that life is not a battle. To me, life is not like climbing a mountain – it’s more of a downhill thing. Alan Watts, a great proponent of a Taoist view of life, called it ‘the watercourse way.’ Water will always flow downhill, of course, and yet its power is undeniable. So how can we apply the watercourse way to getting things done?

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How to Use Your Subconscious to Change Your Life

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison

Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best.

Using subconscious requests will…

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Knowledge Plus Action Minus Fear

overcoming fear

Anything in the world is possible. But there is always one thing that stops us from doing it: fear. This can be the fear of starting a new business, the fear of public speaking, or even just the fear of something unknown. Fear often happens when part of us tells us to go for it, and another part of us tell us to be careful of the consequences. Feeling the effects of these consequences can be enough to stop us from taking action all together. But one thing that cancels out all fear is having knowledge of what you’re going up against and then taking action.

For example, when I was younger, one thing that I was always afraid of was math. In middle school, I loved to being creative. I was a person who thought spontaneous and did things on the fly. I remember I got an A in English class for making a Hobbit board game out of Play-Doh – an experiment we did for our final project. But when high school came, it was time to be more serious, and the first serious math class I had was algebra. Although this may have been a very easy subject for many people at the time, I struggled in it.

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You Can’t Force Other People to Change – But You Can Help Them

help people change

Do you have a teen who just won’t get off his backside and do anything? Is your brother deeply in debt? Have you got a friend whose romantic life is a series of disasters which she never seems to learn from? Are your parents severely overweight? Is your partner a smoker?

The chances are, there’s someone in your life who you believe is in need of change … but they’re not making any progress. If you’ve devoted yourself to change, perhaps making great strides in your personal and professional life, then it can be frustrating to see others – friends and loved ones – remaining stagnant.

So what can you do about it?

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Want To Change Your Life? Travel. Or Don’t.

backpackers

We often hear of people traveling across the world and experiencing profound life changing epiphanies. Well I’m here to tell you that’s not how it happens. Sure traveling around the world will change your life, but not exactly in the way you expect it to.

At this time last year my boyfriend Robin and I were just two travelers visiting East Asian countries like China, Korea, and Singapore. We considered ourselves to be independent, non-confirmist souls.

We had all these notions of inner change taking place. Or at least I did.

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How to Build the Confidence Habit

build confidence habit

“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh

We are all beset with doubts sometimes. Even the most self-assured and successful people can be unsure of themselves. Some people are clearly more confident than others, though. To what extent this is ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ is unclear, though I suspect that ‘nurture’ has a lot to do with it. I’ve seen my own confidence wax and wane over the years, and external factors have certainly played a part. Some signs that you might be lacking somewhat in confidence are:

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Staying the Course: How to Keep Your Resolutions

how to keep your resolutions

How are your New Year’s resolutions? Are you still going strong or are you flagging already? When we first make a resolution or set a goal, we are naturally motivated to make progress and so we can’t wait to get out there and make things happen. But, of course, resolutions often fall by the wayside – I recently read an anecdotal statistic that 95% of New Year’s resolutions are never followed through.

So is there any point in making them? Obviously, people do succeed in achieving their goals – 5% at least! There are, essentially, two rules for becoming successful. Set goals, and take consistent action towards them. Most people don’t even do the first part, and of the minority of people that do, most will not follow through. There are many reasons for our lack of resolution. Here are some common ones, and some suggestions for overcoming them.

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