Author: Steve Bloom

A Lot Can Happen in a Year: 2014 + Announcements + Best Posts of the Year

Steve Bloom 18 Comments

A lot can happen in a year

The coming of the New Year is always a weird time for me.  For most of the year, I try to be in the present and concentrate on what I’m working on.  But this time of year I tend to focus on all the things I’ve done and what plans lay ahead.

It never seems like a year is long enough to do much. But as I reflect over 2014, I realize just how much I’ve actually accomplished.

I took on several challenges that I’d never tried before and had a lot of great, new experiences. I’ve gone through many big changes and I took some really big steps in writing for this blog.

As I look ahead to 2015, I can already see signs of better things to come. Some new projects and plans are already in the works which I’m really excited about.

But before we get to the new year, here are some of the highlights from the previous one:

1. More traveling. I spent time in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. I also went to California to go wine-tasting with friends and toured all the missions in San Antonio – not just the Alamo, all of them. It took all day, but it was worth it to see some incredible sites. And seeing Mardi Gras in New Orleans was unforgettable.

2. I released my book on travel – Spend Less, Travel More.

3. I’m working on a new book. I’ve almost completed the first rough draft.

4. My wife and I risked a ton of money on IVF in order to start a family. The odds weren’t great, but I’m happy to announce that we were successful. Sometime in mid-April, we’ll be having a baby boy. It’s all so very exciting. I love when a big risk pays off.

5. Several people have expressed interest in donating to the site so I experimented with it by creating a Patreon page. I wasn’t sure what the response would be, but so far it’s been great. Click here if you’re interested in reading more about it.

6. I read over 50 books this year which met my goal of about one a week. Next year I’d like to do even more.

7. I’m reading all of John Steinbeck’s books. Now that I finished Grapes of Wrath and A Russian Journal, I’ve read 19 in total. Only nine more to go.

8. My wife and I made a goal to stop eating out – both restaurants and fast food (unless we’re traveling). We’re making all our food at home and it’s been a fantastic experiment. Not only are we saving a lot of money, but we’re also eating much healthier.

9. I took in some masterpieces this year at some art museums and the symphony. I got to listen to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons live.

Goals and Thoughts for 2015

In January, my wife and I are going to Turkey. We’re landing in Istanbul to see the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and wander the streets before going elsewhere in the country.

For those of you who might be wondering, my wife will be about six months pregnant during this trip, but we got the OK from our doctor to go.

By the way, here’s a quick tip on getting cheaper plane tickets. When we originally searched for flights to Istanbul, the price was $750 apiece. The next day it shot up to $875.

We tried the usual ways to get around it like clearing the browser of cookies and even used a different computer, but nothing worked.

So I called the airline directly and told them the website wasn’t working for us. I got the $750 price over the phone which saved us $250 in total. So if you notice a sudden price spike like this, it can be worth calling directly to get around it.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I’ve also been working on a book. This time it’s a novel about men and women and their relationships together; I don’t know quite how to describe it yet without giving away too much. I expect to complete it sometime in 2015.

When it’s finished, I’m planning on sending it out to literary agents and publishers. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback and emails from readers who love my writing style so I think it’s worth searching out an agent who might be interested in my work.

Best Posts of the Year

I probably don’t say it enough, but I want to thank you all your support and readership. I feel extremely lucky and fortunate to reach so many people and that my words are touching so many lives.

More posts are already lined up for release in 2015. There’s a lot of good things to look forward to.

I’m going to end this by going over some of my more popular posts from the previous year. If you missed some of these, you should definitely check them out.

10 Hard Things You Need to Do to Live a Full Life

17 Ways Travel Makes You a Better Person – this one blew up on Stumbleupon and was seen over 13,000 times there.

The Einstein Method for Freeing Your Creative Mind

Do More Boring Things (Seriously)

50 Things Really Smart People Do All the Time

Why Having Faith in Yourself is So Damn Important
photo credit: just1snap

The Starving Homeless Cat and Lessons on Making the World a Better Place

Steve Bloom 18 Comments

The Starving Homeless Cat

When I was living in Morocco, I saw stray cats everywhere. Often hissing and scratching whenever anyone came near, they were angry and filthy. People kept their distance.

Moving to Houston, I was confronted with a similar problem. While nowhere near as bad as Morocco, there were a few feral cats in my neighborhood.

One cat in particular, setup residence just outside my apartment. Whenever I opened the door, she was lying either on my porch or in the bushes out front.

At first, I treated her like a pest – just like everyone did with the ones in Morocco. As I passed by, I didn’t give her a second look and she would run off and keep watch from a distance.

I told myself that it was only a stray cat – who cares what happens to her?

Then one day, for whatever reason, I took a closer look. On inspection, I noticed she was beaten up and so hungry that I could almost make out her ribs.

It was the first time I took notice of how much this animal was suffering. Realizing that I had been ignoring her pain for months tore me up inside.

I’m a big proponent of building a better life and making the world a better place, but here was a living reminder of how much more I could be doing. How did I walk past this cat for so long and fail to notice how much she was suffering?

A big problem was my mindset.

When I lived in Morocco, I had ingrained this idea that stray cats were pests and should be treated as vermin. But this mindset clouded my judgement and I overlooked the needs of a poor creature right outside my door.

That all changed.

I walked into my apartment and got a small cup of cat food (I have my own cat) and laid some out to feed her. She was incredibly scared at first, but eventually came closer and closer.

As she crept out of the shadows to eat, she became more trusting. Eventually she got close enough to let me pet her

Weeks passed. The more I fed her, the more friendly and trusting she became. She even started to approach me and meow when I came near.

I looked up information on the best practices to take care of feral cats. Houston has a free program to vaccinate and neuter strays, but this cat had already been taken in (you can tell by her ear which had been clipped).

Now that I’ve been feeding her and giving her positive attention, she has come out of the shadows. She’s lively and energetic and well-fed enough so you no longer see her ribs.

Because of my actions, she’s no longer needlessly suffering.

What I Learned About Making the World a Little Better

It’s easy to look at the world and see all the big problems going on around us. When we hear about injustice and violence, we want to do something.

Most of these problems are outside our control; there’s little we can do about the things we see happening in the news. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything to make the world better.

Think about how to make your surroundings a little better – the things and people you actually interact with on a regular basis.

Do a random act of kindness.

Stand up for someone who needs help.

Make someone smile.

Volunteer.

It starts by recognizing what you can do to help. In Morocco, no one gave a second thought to the stray cats. Even local Moroccans seemed not to notice the problem – most had no clue why there were so many stray cats to begin with.

But because they ignored the stray cats, it continued to be a problem there. Many cats needlessly suffer and die there because no one will take the time to do anything about it.

That’s what I had become too – someone who saw a clear problem but simply ignored it or refused to believe that it was there at all.

As Edmund Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This cat taught me that I can’t just sit back and let bad things happen without doing something about it. If I just let this cat slowly starve to death, how could I possibly forgive myself?

Making the world a better place isn’t a one person job. It’s all our jobs. Think of how wonderful the world would be if we all just spent a little time trying to improve it.

As small as it may seem, by helping this cat, I’m making the world just a little better – it’s an extremely tiny, fraction better – but still better.

Even small efforts, if done by many people, can make a noticeable difference.

And really, that’s all most of us can do. For most people, making the world a better place starts by doing good at home.

6 Tips to Do Crazy Things that Scare You

Steve Bloom 26 Comments

Do Something Crazy

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

When I was a little boy, I was afraid of just about everything. Too shy to make many friends, I kept my social circle small. I shunned change and risk-taking; the thought of doing something crazy like traveling to another country didn’t appeal to me.

As I grew up, I started noticing all the opportunities I’d been missing. My own fear made me miss out on fun adventures and many potential friends.

So one day I decided I had to face down the things that scared me. If a great opportunity came along, I had to take it – no matter how scary it seemed.

Funnily enough, the more I did the things that scared me, the more I realized just how safe these things actually were. Instead of running away from crazy, scary things, I started to run towards them.

The little boy who was once afraid of travel started to visit exotic far-off locations. I did things that once seemed way too crazy to attempt like swimming with sharks in Belize or hanging out with locals in Vietnam.

I stretched my social skills too. Long ago, the thought of approaching a cute girl and starting up a conversation seemed terrifying. So I faced that fear and started striking up conversations whenever I wanted.

It didn’t feel like life was passing me by anymore. In fact, doing things that scared me made me feel more alive than I’d ever felt. Nothing seemed beyond my reach.

Here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

1. Minimize thinking once you’ve decided to do it

Fear is an expectation of what might happen in the future if we take a certain course of action.  Because we don’t know what will happen on the scary path, the uncertainty can feed our fears and make us envision all the potential bad things that might happen.  It’s easy to get lost in these thoughts and psych yourself out before you even take the first step.

Train your brain to ignore these thoughts. When you’re mind starts racing, calm it down and get back to reality. Many of the fears you’ll focus on will be nothing but your imagination going wild.  It’s good to be aware of all the potential dangers, but you can’t dwell on them.

2. Scary things=growth

Remind yourself that the biggest moments of growth happen when you do something scary. It’s always scariest the moment you move away from your comfort zone and try something completely different.

Sticking to the safe and familiar will assure that you continue to see the same results in your life.  By moving away from the norm and facing down those fears, you’ll get places you’ve never been before.  To get somewhere you’ve never been, you have to do things you’ve never done.

3. Get pumped up to do it

Fear isn’t the only feeling you’ll get when you think about trying something crazy; it can also feel thrilling and exciting.  But too often, the fear overrides those feelings keeping you from actually doing it.

Pump yourself up.  Get so excited that fear is crowded out and diminished in size.  When you feel that exciting energy surging inside you, you’ll get the inspiration and motivation to get yourself going and you’ll think less about the fears you might have.

4. Start small, aim big

Let’s say that you want to skydive. It might be too scary an idea to immediately hop on a plane, go to 16,000 feet and parachute out. You might be jumping the gun a little.

That’s why skydiving places have a period of preparation and training involved before you even step into a plane.  They know it’s important to build up to that big moment.

It’s okay to start off with small, steady steps to reach one big scary goal. By taking it in small, more manageable chunks, you’ll find it’s easier to keep pushing yourself to the end.  All that matters is that you’re moving forward to something that you ultimately want to do.

5. Distance yourself from how crazy you think it is

One mental trick that works well for me is to distance myself from the crazy thing I want to do. That can help prevent you from getting too into the moment and psyching yourself out.

Approach it as if you’re another person.  See yourself as an observer of the situation almost as if you’re watching yourself.  The main idea is to just get outside of your head and dissociate yourself from what’s going on.  By disengaging with the situation, it won’t seem as scary.

6. Change your attitude about fear

It’s not always best to examine our feelings of fear on an emotional level.  Rather than tackling them that way, we should take a closer look at our attitude towards it.

Think back to the last time you did something really scary.  It didn’t seem so scary after the fact, did it?

That situation goes for all fear – it goes away once you’ve actually done it.  It just drifts away because the reality isn’t as scary as the fantasy happening inside your head.

Whatever you’re thinking about doing will be exactly the same.  You’ll feel scared before doing it, but feel better once it’s over.  If you don’t do it, that fear will always be with you.  Imagining that fear vanishing away after the fact can be a good source of motivation.  All you have to do is just start.  Do it now and let the fear fall away later.
photo credit: Matthew Kenwrick

6 Things Everyone Hates But Should Actually Be Thankful For

Steve Bloom 35 Comments

Things Everyone Hates But Should Be Grateful

Over the years, gratitude has been getting a lot of attention. As well it should. Counting our blessings has been shown in studies to improve health, mood and mental well-being. The benefits seem endless.

Making lists of what you’re thankful for is therapeutic because we can focus on the good and forget about the bad.

But are the bad things we leave off really that bad?

If we made a complete list of reasons to be thankful, it would have to include things people often complain about and actively try to avoid whenever possible.

These are things people would probably rank dead last on reasons to be grateful. But that’s only because people don’t realize that they should be thankful for them to begin with.

The truth is that a lot of good can come out of bad. Despite being the source of anger for so many people, these things can actually be very beneficial.

Things like:

1. Stress

No on likes stress, right? Even the name “stress” itself seems to have a harsh sound to it. And certainly, chronic stress can have negative consequences such as weight gain or depression.

Long periods of intense stress can be harmful, but short bursts of it actually has many amazing benefits.

Brief periods of stress can improve brain function and memory and boost your immune system. Added benefits include increased clarity, a general appreciation for one’s circumstances and better mental toughness.

Moreover the benefits of stress seem to increase based on your mental attitude. If you think it’s all harmful, it will negatively impact your health and well-being. But according to researchers adopting a “stress can be good” mindset actually increases the benefits you get from it.

So as weird as it might seem, taking the time to be thankful for stress can be good for your health.

2. Uncertainty about the future

The future is like a big question mark with plenty of uncertainty about what will happen. The unknown is fear-inducing as we worry about what troubles might be lurking around the corner.

But what would life be like if you knew everything that would ever happen to you? Imagine how boring and mundane it all would be. Yes, you’d be prepared for the bad times, but what about the good? If you knew everything that was going to happen, all those good moments waiting for you would seem less thrilling and less wonderful.

Uncertainty is a big part of what makes an exciting and fulfilling life. Not knowing what the future has in store for us can be scary, but that’s the fun of anticipation – seeing what happens.

3. Adversity and problems

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” – Bruce Lee

The University of Buffalo surveyed 2400 people repeatedly over a period of four years. Those who reported more adversity and difficulties actually had better mental health and well-being compared to those who had less.

The study highlights the connection between adversity and growth. It’s a sign that you’re pushing yourself to take on challenges others would simply avoid. Those who never experience adversity usually choose the easy life which is rarely exciting or fulfilling.

The only people who don’t experience difficulties are the ones who are standing still. Seeing your problems and difficulties purely in a negative light is misleading; they might just be signs of progress.

4. Pain

Some of us dream of a pain-free life. Some people are actually born without the ability to feel pain and would tell you that we don’t appreciate it as much as we should.

Pain is unpleasant and disruptive, but focusing entirely on the negative qualities ignores its positive motivational side. Would we change as quickly without pain?

Think of all the good things you’ve done because of pain. For example, you might have proposed to your girlfriend because the pain of losing her was too much. Maybe you pursued your dream because leaving it unfulfilled became too painful.

Seeing pain as entirely negative is missing the point about its purpose. It’s just a signal – that’s it. Yes, it’s an unpleasant signal, but if it pushes you in the right direction, is it really as bad as you think?

5. Our enemies

“We should value our enemies because they provide us with unique opportunities to practice patience, tolerance and forbearance.” – Dalai Lama

Just mentioning the name of an enemy can cause feelings of resentment and anger. But as much as you dislike your enemies, they can serve a real purpose beyond annoyance and frustration.

Your enemies are an opportunity to learn tolerance of others and the wisdom to respond to mean-spiritedness with kindness and compassion. Their irritability provides a chance to develop patience and calmness.

In addition, the competition you get with an enemy can be good for the mind. As they challenge your opinion or point of view, your mind quickly sharpens through debate and discussion. Each new verbal attack either strengthens your argument or reveals blind spots.

A good enemy can also be a major source of motivation. Striving to beat them, you work hard to make sure you reach your own goals ahead of them.

6. Making mistakes

It’s only natural to look at mistakes with some sense of regret. We hate making them and it’d be great if we just did everything perfectly. But as Alexander Pope famously stated, “to err is human.” Mistakes are going to happen – it’s a fundamental part of our nature.

But let’s get something straight. You become a better person because of mistakes, not despite them.

We can’t change much about making mistakes, but we can change our response to them. Continually repeating mistakes or failing to recognize them is misguided. Mistakes are only beneficial when we learn from them and use them as lessons to a better future.

Don’t regret mistakes; they’re valuable lessons in wisdom. That’s something to definitely be grateful for.
photo credit: Daniel Hoherd

The First Step to Being Powerful

Steve Bloom 16 Comments

Being Powerful

Dating back to 1400 B.C., the Oracle of Delphi was one of the most important places in all of Greece. It was a strange and mystical place. The oracle was said to be connected to Apollo and had the wisdom of the gods.

When a king or nobleman wanted to expand their power, they turned to the Oracle for advice. People as powerful as Alexander the Great to Roman Emperors sought out their guidance. Whole campaigns and strategies were created based upon what the oracle said.

But before these powerful people could meet the oracle, they waited at the entrance. And inscribed in stone, for all to see, were these words:

Know thyself.

No matter how lowly or mighty you were, the first step for all those entering the temple was the same: know thyself.

Today this advice still holds to be true.

If you want to find your power, you need to understand who you are. Before you can be powerful, you have to know how you work, your strengths and inner workings.

Getting To Know Yourself

How well do you really know yourself? Unless you’ve already given it careful thought, you might not be as aware as you might like to think. Fortunately there is a quick and easy way to find out.

You might be familiar with the concept of an elevator pitch. It’s a short summary describing yourself and your strengths to another person. The whole idea is that you should be able to deliver the summary in the short span of an elevator ride which lasts roughly thirty seconds to two minutes.

So let’s do it. For the next two minutes, give your pitch. Either say it out loud or think it to yourself, but try to explain who you are, what you’re really good at and why. And please, try to stay away from generic statements like “good communication skills”.

Ready? Go.

What was the result?

Did you struggle with your strengths or did you know them?

This might not have been too hard for you considering that elevator pitches are commonly taught to job seekers who are instructed to rehearse them. But even if you’ve never done one before, you still might have had a few things to say.

But you need to know yourself more than this. Your strengths are only the start.

Let’s do another elevator pitch, but this time let’s take a look at your weaknesses.

Once again, take a minute or two to tell someone about what you’re not good at. What could be improved upon? What are you not as good at as you’d like?

Ready? Go.

What was the result this time?

This was probably harder for you. Most people are comfortable focusing on what they’re good at, but avoid looking at what they’re not. We like to showcase the highlights and brush everything else aside.

However, your weaknesses are just as important as your strengths. While our strengths tend to get us places and help us on our journey, our weaknesses can hold us back. If we don’t know them, we might be missing something that is weighing down progress in our lives.

Once you understand them, you have two choices:

1. Let them go. If the weakness isn’t a big drag on your ability to be successful, you might not have to do anything at all.

2. Work on them. Turn that weakness into a strength. Or at least modify it so that it won’t hold you back anymore.

Know Thy Inner Voice

Of course, there’s a lot more to who you are than just your strengths and weaknesses. To really get to know yourself, you still need to look at your inner dialogue.

What’s inner dialogue you ask?

This is the “discussion” you have going on in your head.

Let’s look at this example:

Let’s say someone has hurt you recently or said something you don’t like, what do you do?

You re-enact the whole scene in your mind complete with dialogue. You might envision yourself talking angrily. Perhaps you think about what you could have said or what should have happened.

If you talk to yourself harshly or criticize yourself, your inner dialogue can leave you feeling angry, helpless or sad.

My inner dialogue used to do this frequently after parties. I’d re-enact scenes in my head of conversations or situations that went badly, but ignored the ones that went successfully. That gave me a skewed version of events that left me sad and full of doubt.

Your inner dialogue is an activity that goes on whether you like it or not. But it’s powerful because it affects our emotions, thoughts and behavior.

This is important: we become the story we tell ourselves. Your inner dialogue can be like affirmations – constantly thinking about the same subject for too long makes you accept these thoughts and words which causes you to act on them.

What’s important is that you be consciously aware of them.

When you find the conversation dwelling in useless or negative territory, stop it. Change it to something more productive. If your dialogue is giving you a skewed version of events, try to balance them out.

Unless you get control of your inner dialogue, all those strengths you listed earlier won’t make much of a difference.

On to Step Two

Once you’ve got a handle on your strengths, weaknesses and mental attitude, you’re ready for the next step to being powerful: taking action outside yourself.

Where are you going to direct your power? What world do you want to conquer?

If we were standing at the entrance to the oracle of Delphi, this is the time when you would walk in and ask your question which could determine your destiny.

It’s up to you to decide. But whatever path you want to take, it will become a lot easier once you take that all-important first step: know thyself.
photo credit: Scott Swigart

This Incredible Story Will Make You Rethink Impossible

Steve Bloom 30 Comments

Rethink Impossible

Sometimes a story comes around that is so inspiring that it makes you question just what you’re actually capable of accomplishing in your own life. This is one of those stories…

In 1984, Augusto and Michaela Odone took their six year old son to a doctor because he was stumbling, becoming bad-tempered and not feeling well. After a few tests doctors diagnosed their son, Lorenzo, with a rare disease called adrenoleukodystrophy.

There was no treatment for the disease. Doctors said little Lorenzo would continue losing his balance, go blind and deaf until eventually dying of aspiration. He wasn’t expected to live longer than two years after diagnosis.

Augusto and Michaela consulted several doctors and specialists about the disease, but everyone said the same thing: there’s no known cure or treatment; it’s hopeless.

But Augusto was a fighter and refused to accept such a terrible situation without expending every ounce of energy he had to overcome it.

If no cure existed, he would just discover one on his own.

Unfortunately, he faced some huge obstacles.

  • Augusto only had a high school level understanding in science and medicine.
  • He had to learn everything about the disease from scratch. That includes things like how degradative enzymes cross membranes and how long-chain fatty acids accumulate.
  • After learning about it, he had to discover a cure.
  • And do it all in less than two years so he can give it to Lorenzo.

When they told doctors and researchers about the plan, they heard the same thing:

“It’s impossible. It can’t be done.”

Turning Impossible into Reality

By day, Augusto worked as an economist at the World Bank. At night, he scoured research papers and medical journals from the National Institute of Health. He worked dauntlessly and put all his effort into figuring the disease out.

He finally got an insight from an unlikely source: the oils he used to make spaghetti carbonara. He reasoned that the oils might soak up the deadly acids before it hurt Lorenzo’s nervous system.

Medical researchers thought he was crazy. After all, it’s absolutely unheard of for complete amateurs in medicine to develop a cure to a complex neurological disease that professionals had been studying for decades.

But when they tested the oil on Lorenzo, it made a huge impact on his condition. While it didn’t cure him completely, it did halt the progress enough for Lorenzo to live an additional twenty years when he died from an accident – not the disease.

It took until 2005 for doctors to publish a study to finally prove the treatment actually works – which is now known as Lorenzo’s Oil (which is also the name of a movie about their accomplishment.). In that time, Augusto and Michaela had given it to hundreds of other people and saved lives all over the world.

The Big Lessons In This Story

It all sounds so impossible, doesn’t it?

Someone with only a high school understanding of science studying enough about a rare disease to find a treatment for it? And in less than two years?

We know it’s not impossible though. It happened.

I have to admit that if I had heard about Augusto and Michaela’s plan to find a cure to a disease with little to no knowledge about medicine, I would have assumed it was impossible too. It’s just so far outside of the norm that it’s too easy to dismiss it away.

But it should all give us pause to think about what we consider “impossible” in our own lives.

It seems so easy to define what’s possible and what isn’t. We tend to use our perceptions of things we’ve seen before to help guide us in what can actually be done.

But defining what’s impossible is not as clear as we’d like to think. Perceptions are largely based upon experience. That leaves a big gap of knowledge about experiences that haven’t been tested yet.

The Odones went into that unknown area of experience where no one had gone before. Because it had never been done before, people were ready to dismiss it away as “impossible”. But it’s important to test our perceptions and assumptions – many times they’re wrong.

If Augusto and Michaela had simply accepted their situation, Lorenzo would have died much earlier in his life. The only reason they found this cure was due to Augusto’s determination and willingness to fight.

Make no mistake about it. What Augusto and Michaela did was a long-shot – a huge long-shot. But that’s the strange and beautiful thing about life, sometimes the long-shots pay off.
photo credit: Hartwig HKD

8 Powerful Beliefs of People Who Reach Their Full Potential

Steve Bloom 18 Comments

Powerful Beliefs

There’s something compelling about underdog stories. You know the ones I’m talking about. The hero of the story is faced with a challenging obstacle or sinister threat and needs to dig down, deep inside to discover inner strengths and attain new heights.

It’s like Rocky who works harder and harder to defeat superior opponents or Harry Potter who needs to find his inner strength and resolve to battle Voldemort.

There’s a reason we like stories like these: it’s inspiring to think there might be more to us beneath the surface. They make us wonder what we might find if we take a look into ourselves.

These stories are about self-reflection and working hard to discover hidden potential. But more importantly, they’re about belief in finding what lies inside.

Belief can have a big impact on our potential. When I look back on my past to a time when I quit or didn’t succeed, I can usually pinpoint it to a limiting belief holding myself back. It’s strange how often just changing the way I think can change the way I act.

It reminds me of this famous quote:

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right.” – Henry Ford

There’s a big truth behind this quote. Our thoughts and beliefs can have a profound effect on performance. Just having the right mindset can influence our behavior and abilities more than anything else.

Here are some good thoughts to get into the right mindset.

1. If I ask more of myself, I’ll get it

I see this principle in action frequently at the gym. People will lift the same amount of weight in their workouts for weeks on end and wonder why they’ve plateaued. If they just added more weight, their muscles would adapt and grow.

Don’t be afraid to push yourself a little and do more than normal. It’s easy to think we’ve reached our limits, but too often it’s just an illusion. The only way to reach a new level is to push yourself to do more.

2. It’s not too late to start

By the time Grandma Moses finished her painting career, she had been included in some of the most prestigious art galleries around the country, landed the cover of major magazines and sold thousands of dollars of artwork.

Such an impressive story for someone who didn’t start painting until her late 70s.

We all have inner skills and abilities inside us that we might not have discovered when we were younger. That’s no reason not to set aside time to discover it now. As an old Chinese proverb goes, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

3. I can always learn what I need to know

A lack of knowledge is no reason to stop yourself from pursuing what you want to do.

When I first started blogging, I didn’t know the first thing about WordPress, HTML, Twitter or – well, just about anything. But I started anyway because I knew that I could learn it as needed. Now that it’s years down the road, I’ve learned all of those things (and much more).

No one starts off knowing everything they need to. Even rocket scientists and people with PhD’s in physics had to start at the beginning and work their way up. If there’s something you want to do, you have to believe that you can learn what’s needed.

4. Perseverance and hard work will eventually pay off

It’s important to believe that hard work and perseverance will eventually pay off. Sometimes all you have to keep you going is the faith you have in your abilities.

It reminds me of a story I read about an author of about twenty books. I can safely say you’ve never heard of him simply because he never sent out a single one to a publisher. Not one.

He desperately wanted to be published, but was too afraid of rejection. The whole situation was a catch-22 keeping him perpetually away from getting published.

You have to be that kind of person who can persevere and keep trying no matter what. You’ll often hear “no” a lot, but you keep going for that one “yes” that will make all your efforts worthwhile.

5. There is no glass ceiling

It’s an invisible barrier separating you from the upper echelons. Something you perceive is holding you back from attaining the next level.

Perhaps it’s a limiting belief. Maybe you’re holding back because what you want to do has never been done before.

But there’s less holding you back then you realize. Thinking like this is often just in your head preventing you from reaching new heights.

6. I have untapped abilities waiting to be discovered

The more I reach into myself to see what I’m capable of doing, the more surprised I am by what I can accomplish. It only makes me wonder what else is lying dormant inside me.

People who reach their full potential realize there is more to who they are. They understand that overlooked abilities and untapped skills are just waiting to be discovered. All you have to do is believe they are there waiting for you to find them.

7. Even small progress is good

It’s easy to dismiss small progress as too insignificant to matter, but it does.

Think about a runner who makes small incremental 1% improvements to his strength, endurance or speed. It starts slowly, but steadily the improvements accumulate. Over time, those small steady steps will eventually add up to create a powerful runner.

All progress is good, even the small steps. We tend to celebrate the big achievements while ignoring the little ones, but that isn’t the best approach. Small progress might not seem like much, but over time, they can pile up and make a massive difference.

8. It’s important to start before I’m ready

Writing my first book, I knew full well that I had major gaps in planning – how was I going to format the book? How was I going to find a cover image? I didn’t have everything planned out, but I began, knowing that I would eventually solve all these problems.

You can sit around and try to prepare for every eventuality that comes your way, but you’ll never be fully prepared for everything. Start before you’re ready and know that you’ll have to face these problems. But also know that you’ll be able to find a way around them.

Diving right in is the surest way to get going. Patience may be a virtue, but if that means waiting and planning until you’re completely ready, you’re going to be waiting far longer than necessary.
photo credit: niko si