Like anything in life, there is always going to be the good and the bad. Roses are beautiful, and they have a powerful fragrance. However, many have thorns that can pierce even the thickest of leather gardening gloves.

Two main points comprise the dark side of improvement.

First

Understand that there is no magic pill for self-improvement. Self-improvement is a process which takes time, effort, and planning. It can’t be as simple as taking the black or white.

We are creatures that like comfort. Therefore, we tend to wait for the pain to motivate us. Self-improvement is a choice you make to fulfill that part of our DNA that gives us the drive to create a better world. When you were a child, first learning how to ride your bike, your father did all he could to prepare you for that first ride. He showed you how to balance the bike, pedal, and control its direction. However, despite his best attempts at keeping you balanced, you probably fell a few times before you got the hang of riding a bike.

Pain doesn’t have to be bad, nor dysfunctional, as long as we learn from it.

As you move through your plan for self-improvement, expect to fall so that you can get back up stronger.

Disappointment

Every year we make resolutions, only for most of us to give up on them before February rolls around. You start with all of the enthusiasm you can have to support your optimistic belief that this will finally be the year you accomplish…

Only, in the end, you end up with disappointment as your enthusiasm fades, and self-discipline is required to reach the goal.

Understand that while the concept of self-improvement can turn into something of a rabbit hole for us, it can be a powerful tool.

God instilled in us the need to create and produce. Naturally, we feel a need for improvement. It can become toxic for those of us who see this need for growth as a flaw. Our society has labeled anyone with the drive to succeed as having an addiction. It is not an addiction; it is a God-given drive.

Going back to the bike analogy: That child, be they you or someone else, approached that bike ready to learn how to ride without training wheels. He was excited. However, the first time he fell off, he probably felt a twinge of discouragement.

It’s important to remember that he didn’t approach that bike with the knowledge of how to balance it. He likely knew how to operate it mechanically thanks to the safety of his training wheels. But just because he could still improve on his ability to ride doesn’t mean he was fundamentally flawed. It just means that he had room to grow and something to learn. He had a way to improve.

Growth

Also, bear in mind, that like the child learning how to ride a bike with training wheels, the point of growth in self-improvement doesn’t occur when the goal is attained. It happens when we learn each step of the way.

A child who is learning to ride their bike without training wheels is probably going to fall. For older generations, this entailed some form of knee skinning. Regardless, the entire experience is a learning moment passed down from one generation to the next.

We tend to see our goals just beyond our reach. When we stumble while reaching, it’s essential to remember that the stumble or trip-up is a learning moment — not a failure. The dark side and toxicity come when we throw in the towel when we stumble rather than getting back up.

Avoid Self-Judgment

As a side note, remember that you are always going to be your sharpest critic. Not criticizing yourself doesn’t mean that you should not evaluate your actions. The process of self-improvement requires honest assessment, not self-judgment, and there is a big difference. When you judge, you believe that you see a finished product. With a flawed finished product, it is thrown on the scrap heap, and you start over. Self-improvement requires you to hold yourself to a higher standard without using a whip.

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If you think that minimalism is all about throwing your stuff away and counting pennies, then you must think again. Adopting a minimalist lifestyle is fundamentally about changing your mindset, about working out what your real values are and living in tune with them Freeing yourself from society’s consumerist expectations is one aspect of minimalism, but here are five reasons you should consider incorporating minimalism into your life.

1. Minimalism frees you the need to impress

Minimalism means you can step aside from the hamster wheel of always having to look successful, having the latest brands or models of gadgets, smartphones, and clothes. You waste loads of energy trying to get ahead, looking for the next promotion, working 80-hour weeks and juggling all those obligations. You could put all that energy into things you genuinely love and care about instead.

2. A minimalist life can save you money

Once you’ve decluttered your house, especially your closet, you’re much less inclined to welcome in more stuff. Minimalism encourages you to distinguish between needs and wants. “Needs” are things that help you reach your goals/purpose in life.  Those impulse buys or the bargains that you never use, or wear become much less attractive.

3. Minimalism can lead to a healthier you

Moving to a simpler lifestyle can have some unexpected health payoffs. Minimalists find they tend to eat better, exercise more, have better sleeping habits, and generally have less stress in their lives.

Rejecting the demands of a materialist society means you are more likely to prioritize and make time for healthy activities like hiking, running, yoga, or mediation. All of which leads to losing weight, lower blood pressure, and a healthier, happier you.

4. Your relationships will improve

Minimalism has the potential to make you a better person! The process of re-evaluating your life and behavior makes you focus on what’s important to you and your family. Practicing minimalism virtually forces you to sit down and talk about values and how to live an authentic life.

Understanding what makes you happy gives you a different perspective on the world. If you no longer focus on creating a good impression, you are more inclined to slow down, really listen to people and be more empathic. You think before you speak and you’re more respectful of other people.

5. You’ll be more confident

Having done the work to begin a minimalist lifestyle, you’ll realize you are a work in progress. You’ll stop being so hard on yourself (and others) and be more comfortable with imperfection. Minimalism leads to a more authentic, more self-assured you!

We are going to examine how being mindful benefits your emotional health. Mindfulness is the art of tuning into your emotional state of being. It’s becoming aware of yourself, and particularly your emotions. You might think that you are already in-tune with your emotional states, but are you?

Do you recognize when you have experienced an emotion? Or do you realize when you are experiencing a feeling? There is a difference. The first way is past recognition and the second present recognition. Most people are guilty of the former, although they believe they are doing the later.

Being able to decern the difference is what mindfulness of your emotional states is all about. Being emotionally healthy is the ability to recognize your current or present emotional experience. When you intentionally identify what your current emotional state is, you can experience significant improvements in psychological health.

If emotional health is something you want to improve, below are some of the benefits of mindfulness.

Experience Full Emotions

When you practice mindfulness around our emotions, you learn to experience your emotions at their fullest expression.  

Suppose you are sitting around a table during the holidays with your closest friends and family.  There is delicious tasting food packed on every last inch of the table. There is a sweet and pleasant smell in the air. The sound of laughter and conversation is bouncing off the walls. At that moment, you notice a warm glow deep inside your chest. 

What if you were able to identify this warm deep glow inside of you as joy and love in the present moment? Not after the fact—when you reminisced about this memory—but in the present when it occurs.

When you’re mindful about emotions at the moment you are experiencing them; you can also cultivate the feeling and allow it to develop into its fullest expression. You can experience the joy and love to its fullest.

Allowing your emotions to express themselves to their fullest does wonders for your emotional health. It’s much like allowing your body to experience the fullest expression of physical motion, which is good for your physical health. Mindfulness helps you exercise your emotions to their full expression.

Experience a Complexity of Emotions

When you practice mindfulness of your emotions, it also enables you to experience the entire complex array of emotions that you possess.

When you are at the mercy of your emotions—meaning that your feelings occur to you and are entirely outside your control—you will often notice that the same few emotions seem always to be present. You will tend to have a “top tier” set of emotions that seem to dominate the others. They can dominate so much that you soon never see any other emotion surface.

When a few emotions dominate over the rest, it’s not a healthy way to live. Just as going to the gym and only working your calves and biceps creates an imbalance in your musculature, merely expressing a few emotions creates an imbalance in your emotional health.

When you practice mindfulness, you develop the ability to cue into different emotions you possess intentionally. You can experience a wider variety of emotions because you deliberately seek out new emotions and identify them when they occur. Being mindful benefits emotional health and leads to a more balanced and exciting emotional state.

Experience the Right Emotion

Finally, practicing mindfulness helps you experience the right emotion for the situation.  When you are not mindful of your emotional state, a feeling that is not well suited for the occasion might present itself.

A very hurtful and sad experience can happen to you, for example, and anger boils up in you. If you don’t practice mindfulness, you might unconsciously experience this emotion and therefore display a behavior that is not well-suited for the situation. Using anger can lead you to experience more distress, anxiety, and pain.

A person adept at practicing mindfulness, on the other hand, would be able to identify the current emotions they are experiencing and determine whether or not they need to pivot and access a different feeling that would be more effective for the situation. Mindfulness applied in this manner allows you to function in a healthier emotional space. 

Being mindful benefits emotional health, and the reward it brings is a state of wellbeing. It is your choice to be aware of your emotions and experience all that life has to offer or react to your feelings and put yourself in a cage.

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Motivation is the driving force that inspires us to take action to achieve our goals. Everyone has experienced a time in their life when their motivation takes a downward turn. It is important to remember that at the end of the day, your motivation starts and ends with you. You can wake up feeling inspired and crush your day, or you can sit around the house and be lazy. Ultimately, the choice is yours. Here are several useful tips for increasing your motivation starting today. 

Tip #1 – Set Clear Goals

Many times our lack of motivation happens because we haven’t set clear goals for ourselves. If you go any way the wind blows, how can you expect to stay motivated? When you set clear and specific goals, it helps to focus your attention on what matters most and provides you with the motivation you need to continue on when things get tough.

Tip #2 – Find Your Why

You wake up and struggle to get going; it may be because you haven't found your "why" yet. When people fail to achieve their goals in life, it is because they haven't taken the time to discover what it is that makes them come alive. We are more motivated when we feel like there is a purpose to what we are doing and where our efforts contribute to the greater good. Finding your "why” will increase your motivation starting today. To identify your why, you'll want to ask yourself the following questions:

• What makes you come alive inside?
• What excites you. You can not stop thinking or talking about this subject.
• Where do you add the most significant value?
• What are your innate strengths?
• How will you measure your life?

When you find yourself running into roadblocks on your way to achieving your goals, step back, and reassess your “why.”

Tip #3 – Prioritize Your Health

Your level of success in life is determined by how you take care of yourself. If self-care isn’t a top priority in your life, everything else suffers, which can cause you to be more distracted and less motivated. Try creating a morning ritual and make a habit of waking up and engaging in activities that will increase your motivation. If you want to improve your motivation, then you have to make your physical health a priority.

Tip #4 – Picking Your Friends

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Jim Rohn

Take a look at these five people and ask yourself.

• Who do you spend your time with?
• Why do you spend time with them?
• Are they negative or positive people?
• What actions do you have in common?
• Are they action takers or do they gossip?

This is the most essential tip for increasing your motivation starting today. Spend your time with motivated people. It is contagious. When you are around motivated people, you do more without thinking about it. You want to help them accomplish their goals. When you show motivation and passion people will want to help you too.

 Most people have dealt with limiting negative self-talk their entire lives. Negative experiences start during childhood and continue throughout our adult lives. This is a normal part of life that we all experience. Too often though, our thoughts become negative as well. Even more troubling is when we start negatively talking to ourselves. This negative self-talk is one of the most limiting behaviors. Use these tips to help overcome limiting negative self-talk.

1. Distinguish between negative thoughts and critical thinking.
   We need to hone the art of self-critique. Otherwise, we will never believe that we are doing something wrong. However, you need to recognize when that critiquing becomes negative self-talk. When you can distinguish between these, now critical thinking has become a powerful tool.
2.  Accept failure.
   If you like to beat yourself up whenever you fail, you are in for a steep road ahead. You will fail, and you will do it many times in your life. Embrace this as a gift rather than a burden. Try to view failure as more of a lesson learned. Don’t tell yourself you are a failure; tell yourself that you just learned what doesn’t work.
3.  Repeat daily affirmations.
   You should look for affirmations that fit your current life situation. Use these as often as you can. Try repeating these affirmations every day. You should even write them out on a piece of paper and keep them close. The idea here is to program your mind for positive thinking. The more you keep at it, the more natural it will become. Ideally, those negative things you tell yourself will eventually be taken over by your positive affirmations.
4. Limit your time with negative people.
   These people thrive on negativity and enjoy dragging others down with them. If you cannot avoid them altogether, spend as little time with them as possible. You already struggle with negative self-talk, so you don’t need them adding more negativity. If you spend more time with positive people that build you up, your negative self-talk will naturally reduce.
5.  Learn to see the good in people.
   If you are always thinking negatively of others, it makes sense that you will more naturally think negatively about yourself. Being more open-minded towards others will help you be more accepting of your flaws as well.
6.  Negative thinking is a choice.
   Even though you have been bombarded with it since you were a child, thinking negatively is something you choose to do. Conversely, positive thinking is just as much a choice as negative thinking. Choosing positive thinking isn’t an easy, quick fix; it takes a lot of work and practice. …so start now!
7. Strengthen your self-belief.
   Negative thinking often occurs due to a lack of belief in yourself. When you strengthen your confidence, it will help you get through those times that bring you down.

Eliminating limiting negative self-talk will open the door to a bright and exciting future. It will be worth all the effort you put into it. Do not give up. 

Image by John Hain from Pixabay 

Breaking bad habits made simple. We do not go out looking for our bad habits. One day we see the destructiveness of our habits. Some we tell ourselves are harmless, like watching too much tv. Even more serious ones like smoking, drinking, and overeating, we can justify them with social proofing. Over time we see how these behaviors hold us back from accomplishing our dreams. 

Your behaviors, minor or significant these five steps to breaking bad habits will work. You can defeat them and become the person you always wanted to be.

The Five Step Formula

1. Why does the habit exist? The stage has been set when we either become stressed or bored. Discovering the triggers is invaluable in figuring out how to the best way to change your patterns. Take a week and look hard at yourself. Use a pen and paper to write down when you slip into your undesirable habits. What was going on right before you slipped into the habit? What does this tell you about yourself?

2. Get motivated. What are the new behaviors you would like to replace the old ones? What are the benefits of changing? These benefits are important. Write them all down. These benefits need to be heartfelt to keep you motivated and on track. Visualizing yourself as a success is a large part of the motivation. Develop a clear picture of how the new you will look. It will be you in short order. You can do this!

3. Develop an action plan. You have your desired goal written down. Without a plan on how you will achieve the goal, you will fail. Setting goals are great, but you’re going to fail if you don’t also establish how you’re going to get there. Make achievable steps that you can measure. If you want to stop overeating, one action could be to have a list when you go food shopping and only get what is on the list. Then stick to the list.

4. Check your Progress. Do not drive yourself crazy with how you are doing. Set up regular times to review your progress. Remember, you are breaking bad habits. These patterns have been ingrained over a long period.  When you slip, get back on track. Beating yourself up will accomplish nothing.  Adjust your plan if necessary, but do not quit.

5. Do not do it alone. Using an accountability partner is a potent tool. You can easily talk yourself into relaxing your goals. Being accountable to someone else give you the strength to stay the course. If you need professional help, then, by all means, get expert advice. How you get the job done is not the important thing. It is breaking bad habits and installing new ones in their place. While these steps are simple, they are not easy. It will take all the discipline you can muster.

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Positive living is a mindset. Your attitude about life will affect your health, both physically and mentally. A negative mindset will raise blood pressure, stress levels, and makes everything a chore. You find adversities and hardships in life overwhelming.

Enjoying life is harder when you experience life with a negative mindset. It does not matter if you blame everything that goes wrong on yourself or everyone else; the result is the same. You are more prone to failure.

Anyone can introduce a more positive attitude in their lives. The power of positive thinking does work.  The detractors of The Power of Positive Thinking never put actions into their thoughts. They believe in the magic wand approach to life.  Thinking positive will change your mood, self-esteem, and reduce your risk of chronic illness.

Implement the following ten ways to a more positive viewpoint.

1.      Learn From Mistakes

Put down the baseball bat. Beating yourself up over mistakes accomplishes nothing constructive. It locks you into the past. Everyone makes mistakes. Do not waste your time covering them up. Look at went wrong and learn from it.

2.      Find positive friends

Who do you know that has that sunny outlook on life. Get closer to them that outlook on life is contagious.  Being around positive, upbeat people will help maintain a positive view on life.

3.      Be Grateful 

Look for the good in each situation. A significant change with little effort is to reflect on your day before going to sleep and find three things to be grateful for that day. Reflect on a gift you gave that day. Reflect on a gift that was given you that day.  These gifts do not need to be big or extravagant. Holding the door for someone, a smile, or buying someone a cup of coffee is a gift. Gratitude is a positive step towards positive living. 

4.      Find Humor

Watching funny movies or doing things that make you laugh signals the brain to release endorphins that make you feel good, what is better to relieve stress than a good laugh. After a while, you will find you are laughing at yourself all the time.

5.      Assess what you’d like to change 

Change may be scary at first. We are taught to look for security instead of happiness in life. Most of us bury our heart’s desire to follow the allusion of security. Starting small to test the waters is excellent. A common thing is wanting to change jobs. Changing jobs may not be the place to start. Do you come home to colors that you do not like? Change the color. Observe the effect it has on you. It will be easier to make a more significant change.

6.      Start your day with positive affirmations

Begin your day on a positive note. The news is not going to help you be positive. A daily meditation reading is an excellent way to introduce positive living into the rest of your day. Bring attention to everything that can go wrong today is not the way to positive living.

7.      Stop the flow of negative thoughts

Stopping negative thinking will take a lot of effort and discipline. It is worth the time and effort. When you have a negative thought, you must change the thought immediately. Insert a good feeling, prayer, or action in its place. Emmet Fox wrote a pamphlet “The 7 Day Mental Diet”. Emmet Fox gives detailed instructions on accomplishing this task.

8.      Find something you love to do

Finding what you love to do may be a hard task. We are overload with ideas for things to keep us busy. We are always presented with a new shiny, trendy something to try out. What brings you a sense of fulfillment? Find your heart’s desire.

9.      Live a healthy lifestyle 

Choose positive living by eating right, exercise, and associating with like-minded people. Your lifestyle has a significant influence on your mood and confidence levels. You will see life in a brighter light.

10.      Practice makes perfect

Winston Churchill gave a nine-word speech. He starts with “Never give up.”. He took some time and then repeated: “Never give up.”  He again took some time scanning the audience and said: “Never give up.” If you follow his direction, you will find yourself faced with a crisis and your thought will be what tools do we deal with this.  

We hear the answer is simple. We mistake “simple” as meaning easy. Life is not easy.  It is your choice of how life looks. Positive living is a choice. The steps to positive living are simple but not easy. The old cliche “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it” holds true.  

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The importance of your mindset is there are two approaches to your life. They are going to be total opposites. They do not keep company with each other.

You can approach life with a “fixed mindset,” or the other mindset is called a “growth mindset.” It holds that those with a growth mindset when embarking on a venture are more successful than those using a fixed mindset.

If you have a fixed mindset you assume that you are too old to learn a new skill set. Also, your potential and abilities are God-given and can not be changed and improved. The “growth mindset” are continually looking for ways to enhance their skill set.

If you fall into the fixed group, feelings of powerlessness rule your beliefs about changing your skills and talents. While the “growth” group believe they are the ones who make decisions about changing their attitude and competence level.

This is a very broad view of fixed and growth mindsets. Here are a few other differences. 

What is your attitude towards obstacles and mistakes? 

Faced with an obstacle, are you quick to become discouraged and throw in the towel? You conclude it just was not meant to be. Or God knows what is best and this is not it. The growth mindset has an optimistic outlook on the obstacle. They approach the problem with “it is what it is” and look for solutions and move forward.

The differences so far are the fixed mindset sees no room for learning and growth, while the growth mindset has positive and healthier options. The growth group will educate themselves and put to use the experience of others to overcome the obstacle. Thus living with a sense of accomplishment, the growth mindset will not see obstacles just opportunities for solutions.

Mindset Affects Your Health

Your mindset plays a role in our health. If you are discouraged continuously or depressed, your immune system is suppressed. The fixed mindset is more susceptible to illness and has a longer recovery time than the growth mindset.

The growth mindset is healthier and happier. Happier people are sick less often and for shorter periods.

Change Your Mindset

Psychologists and other professionals agree that the individual has control over how they view life.  It does not matter how long you have had a fixed or negative mindset; you need to decide to change and take some action immediately. Making the decision and waiting for the magic wand will not have any effect on your mindset. You need to take action now!

What does this mean the importance of your mindset? It means you are not doomed with a fixed mindset. Your past results are not permanent and you can always develop a growth mindset.

Let me ask you a question? Are you living with purpose? Or do you ask the winds for direction? There is less resistance going with the wind. But do you feel full-filled living a life with no direction or purpose? You accomplished many good things while following the path of the wind. Yet there is an emptiness in these accomplishments. We are overwhelmed by the media all day long. Think of the press as the wind.

One way to keep the wind at bay is to have a list of things you choose to do each day. Daily planners and daily to-do lists are popular because they keep you living with purpose.  There will always be people and incidents that arise to take you in a new direction. Knowing your life's purpose, coupled with your daily to-do list, will aid you to make the decision to stay on track. 

Your daily list of things to do is necessary and helpful. The danger is we can focus too much on the "what" and lose sight of the "why."  The big picture is the "why." The "what" is the supporting cast. This change of focus will be subtle. Asking yourself, "are you living with purpose" will keep the "why" as the center of your life.

The way to stay focused on the daily tasks that need to be accomplished to live your life's purpose without being overwhelmed is the question.  Every week take some time to reflect on "are you living with purpose."

Have the things you have done this week kept you in the right direction?  What tasks have helped you fulfill the dreams you have for your life? Are any of these tasks just busy work? We all have routines. Are these routines serving us, or are they just keeping us busy? What new things can you try to align you with your "why"?

Going on Retreats is a tool that you want to have in your arsenal. A retreat is removing yourself from your daily life for a day or weekend. You can do this by yourself or with a group of like-minded people. Reflecting on your life's purpose is the only objective of this time. Having a journal, a calendar, and those to-do lists will be helpful in your time of reflection. 

Retreats can be annually, semi-annually, or quarterly.  The more often you take a retreat the quicker you can make changes to stay on track to accomplishing your goal "are you living with purpose".

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Ways to achieve goals is through the five steps we list below. We need balance to live a happy and healthy life; everything in this world comes down to finding the proper balance. Whether it’s in work life and home life, eating healthy and eating what makes you happy, doing stuff for others without neglecting yourself, etc., everything works better and goes more smoothly when you’ve got a balance. 

Achieving said balance isn’t the easiest thing, but we’ve come up with five ways to introduce more balance into your life and get things going in the right direction.

1) Prioritize

Prioritizing and scheduling can be a great practice to start introducing more of a sense of balance to your life. We all have busy lives and long to-do lists; the only way we’ll ever get everything done and find balance in our lives is by prioritizing what needs to be done when and scheduling our days.

The tricky part to this is deciding just what is important; in some cases, your work may take priority, but in others, family or friends may take priority over your work on your to-do list. Only you can decide what’s important and what should be prioritized in your schedule when.

2) Set Goals

Setting both long-term and short-term goals are ways to achieve goals and can prove to be incredibly helpful in achieving a balance in your life. It helps you keep your sights on what you want and what’s important, avoiding too much straying from your path. The short-term goals help you to track your progress as you work to achieve your long-term goals, and help you stay on track.

3) Be specific in your schedule and review it

If, in order to achieve more balance, your goals were to, say, spend more time watching cooking shows, you’re more likely to complete it by saying “watch The Barefoot Contessa and Iron Chef every Tuesday and Thursday evening at 5,” then if you say “watch cooking shows at least twice a week.” Don’t set yourself up for failure.

Once you’ve completed your schedule and are sure that you’re specific in the goals you want to achieve and the steps necessary to get there, you should review your schedule. This is an incredibly important step allowing you to reflect on your goals and priorities to ensure everything is as you need it.

4) Find an accountability buddy

An accountability buddy is someone that holds you accountable for the goals you’ve made, the priorities you’ve set, and the things you’ve said you’ve wanted to do and accomplish. It’s easier to find balance and stick to your goals and schedule when you have someone to be accountable to that’s is also accountable to you.

Your relationship with your accountability buddy should be interactive and mutual. If you’re not pulling your weight or your carrying more than your load, you could be hurting yourself more than you’re helping.

5) Always keep the process in mind

Life isn’t just about what you achieve and what you get; it’s about the journey, the process. To achieve a proper balance, you need to always keep in mind that it’s more the process than the potential achievement.

For example, you can make your goal to win a Nobel prize in literature, or you can make it be paid to write for your career. The latter is a more achievable goal that focuses on the process and journey more than the achievement or prize at the end.

Everyone needs balance to live a happy and healthy life. Finding the proper balance in your life can be difficult, but it’s not impossible, and it’s well worth the effort. We hope this article will help to point out the ways to achieve goals that are important to you. These five points will guide you on the right path towards a healthy balance in your life.

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