Good Habits

One of the things I liked most about living in Morocco a year ago was that I got to speak French on a regular basis. I’m good at it, but not quite fluent.

I’ve never actually tested how much I know about French, but it’s at least conversational. I know enough to be comfortable speaking to locals for long periods of time.

I still occasionally strain to understand them and vice-versa, but the sharing of verbal information does happen.

The end result is good enough that it impresses many people. I’m proud of my French speaking abilities.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

But here’s the ugly truth about this accomplishment:

It took a lot of hours to get here. That time was spent memorizing words, practicing by myself and reviewing.

In short, it was a lot of dull boring work.

The same goes for most skills:

Learning a musical instrument means hours of practicing your scales.

Becoming a good writer means hours of writing spent on your computer.

You have to spend hours reading dozens of books to understand any subject in-depth. Once when I was learning economics, I checked out textbooks from the local library so I could better learn the subject.

Let’s look closer at all the things I do to get into great shape:

• Eat healthy meals every day
• Eliminate all junk food
• Stick to a consistent workout regimen
• Switch out soda and other sugary drinks for water

These are all boring things, but they’re also very necessary for my workout goals.

If you want to be in the best shape of your life, you need to do all of those things. It’s all done so you reach an end result that will make you feel good about yourself.

Funnily enough, I do a lot of things other people consider boring so I can have crazy, fun adventures later.

People think it’s boring how I don’t spend a lot of money on fancy cars, big screen TVs, clothes or expensive drinks in clubs.

That may be true, but I do these things so I can save money for traveling.

It’s boring to them, but I treat it as an investment for an adventure later on. To me, it’s worth forgoing these items so I can see more of the world.

The Problem of Needing It to Be Fun

For someone who writes a lot about doing crazy things, it might seem odd that I would advocate for doing dull activities.

You might ask: couldn’t I reach my goals and have fun at the same time? That would be ideal, wouldn’t it?

I know there are a lot of things out there that try to incorporate fun while building skills. For instance, there are computer programs that will teach you a foreign language in a fun way. There are countless workouts and diets that incorporate fun too.

What’s wrong with taking one of these routes?

There’s a lot wrong with them, actually. The trouble is that trying to make everything fun doesn’t work.

It seems as if more and more things try to be fun in order to get more people to do them. I can’t count how many late night TV commercials try to get people to buy the latest workout equipment whose biggest feature is that it combines working out with fun.

Everyone I know who gets into great shape puts in a lot of time and effort. No one gets there with the latest gadget saying it can be fun to get there.

I’ve tried programs that try to make learning a foreign language fun. Many work really poorly because they focus too much on having fun instead of learning the language. Others work moderately.

But none of them come anywhere near the dull activities of memorizing words, reviewing and practicing. It’s not the most fun way to learn, but it’s the most effective way.

Boring Can Be Great

You have to do what works.

It’s boring to eat right and exercise regularly.

It’s boring to cut costs to save money for traveling.

It’s boring to memorize French words.

It’s boring to drink water instead of soda.

But if you want to get anywhere, you have to embrace these boring things and stop trying to make things fun. Besides, it won’t all be for nothing. When you put in the time, you can achieve some really impressive things.

I know it might seem counter-intuitive, but boring can be pretty awesome.
photo credit: Jesse Millan

In 1905, Einstein introduced the world to his groundbreaking theory of special relativity. It’s a very complex theory that I couldn’t possibly begin to explain here. But it spawned one of the world’s most well-known equations: E=MC².

Einstein is arguably one of the world’s greatest creative thinkers. How his mind came up with idea after idea is astounding. By looking at some of his most famous quotes, we can get a valuable insight into his creative mind.

One of the reasons Einstein came up with such good ideas is that he started off with good problems. As he once said,

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

Before you even begin thinking about anything, you have to first define it. If you don’t take that first step, you may have good ideas – but they will probably be bad solutions.

This applies to developing new products, processes, important life decisions or just about anything you want to do. Define the problem first.

If you want to define a problem:

• Clarify the problem
  -What do you know about it?
  -Have you gathered enough information yet?

• What is the nature of the problem?
  -What are you actually trying to solve?
  -What is the root of the situation?

Think in terms of needs. What are you ultimately trying to accomplish?

So once you’ve defined the problem, what do you do?

Einstein was very knowledgeable about his subject, so it’s easy to assume that he used that knowledge to fuel his creative mind. Yet Einstein would have been the first person to dismiss the role knowledge had in his process. As he once said:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

It’s interesting how we often approach tasks, problems and situations. All too often, we do it this way:

Use knowledge and concrete thinking –> come up with a creative solution for it.

But Einstein would actually have looked at it this way:

Use imagination and creative intuition –> come up with a logical solution later.

It was imagination that helped Einstein form his famous equation. When he was just 16 years old, he imagined chasing a beam of light. He imagined what it would look like to ride along beside it on a motorcycle and thought hard about what would happen.

The ideas he got out of this thought experiment helped him think creatively about how light worked. It helped him focus his thinking enough to come up with his revolutionary idea.

Knowledge is an extremely important and useful way to share and learn information. Einstein would eventually write down all his discoveries logically for the purpose of sharing knowledge. In fact, his knowledge is how we know so much about the universe.

But logic and knowledge can be too narrow and methodical when thinking creatively; it makes everything slower. Imagination lets your mind run without speed limits or barriers. The ability to go anywhere and do anything opens your mind to new possibilities and ways of seeing the world.

As Einstein once said, “logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

For Einstein, creative insights don’t come from reason, they come from imagination and intuition. Amazingly, these are the same kind of qualities you’ll find with artists.

Maybe that’s why Einstein said,

“The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

Einstein was definitely someone who found a lot of value in art. He was highly talented in both the violin and piano and would play them whenever he became stuck on a big problem. Often after playing, he would come out with a novel new approach to try.

You can see this artistic approach in a lot of great scientists and thinkers. Many of them explored their artistic side one way or another. Even Sherlock Holmes would play the violin when he was stuck trying to solve a mystery.

So how powerful are the arts? Researchers at Michigan State University found a strong correlation between childhood engagement in the creative arts and success later in life.

According to one of the researchers, “arts and crafts training correlates significantly with success…measured in valuable products such as patentable inventions and founding new companies.”

The skills you learn in the arts are perfect for complex thinking and problem solving. Artistic skills such as playing, intuition and analogies all help you come up with a long list of new ideas and opportunities to explore.

It seems as if these skills are formed from almost any artistic expression such as writing, painting, playing music and metalwork.

What matters most is you’re actively artistic. It’s not enough to just listen to music or look at paintings, you have to play an instrument or pick up a paint brush.

Many artistic skills are about taking things apart and putting them back together in new, inventive ways. That explains why so many kids who engage in the arts create more patents and businesses. It also explains why Einstein valued music so much as a physicist when he was trying to generate new ideas.

So to recap, here’s what we’ve learned from Einstein about freeing your creative mind:

1. Define what you’re thinking about.
2. Use imagination and creative intuition to examine it.
3. Explore your artistic side to facilitate breakthroughs.

There’s an old saying that goes “knowledge is power.” That’s true in the sense that it will help you learn what we already know – but imagination and artistic expression will help you open your mind to those things we don’t.
photo credit: Landahlauts

It’s hard to underestimate the importance of confidence.  Confidence in yourself is needed if you want to reach your goals and live up to your potential.  Without it, you might not go after all the things you want out of life.

With enough self-confidence, you could begin that dream project.  You could let go of all your fears and start living life on your terms.  No fear or doubt could hold you back.

But self-confidence doesn’t come easy.  It’s built over a lifetime of experiences and risk-taking opportunities.

Yet there are many things people do that undermine and hurt their confidence before they’ve even had a chance to build it up.  Tiny little mistakes can cause big problems unless corrected.

Any of these eight mistakes could be killing your confidence.

1. Assuming you should feel as confident inside as others are outside

Everyone’s point of view takes place from the inside-out.  That is, we see everything from our own thoughts, feelings and fears.

On the other hand, we can only see others from the outside-in.  We can only see their actions and outward appearance, but not their inner thoughts and fears.

So when we compare ourselves to other people, we have mismatched viewpoints.  Others may seem so self-confident that we think they have no doubts or fears.  That can make us feel bad about our own confidence and any doubt can be seen as a sign of weakness.

However, if we actually were able to look inside other people, you’d notice that more people have doubts and fears than we realize.  It’s just that we can’t dig into their minds to see it.

Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.

2. Forgetting to watch your body language

Little shifts in body language can affect your self-esteem and level of confidence.

Are you slouching?  Are you in an closed posture and hanging your head low?

If you’re doing these things, you’ll feel extremely unconfident.

Stand up straight.  Open your body language and lift your head up.  Model your body language on confident people.

Your thoughts will change as a result.  If you act confident, your mind will believe it.

3. Worrying about the things you can’t control

What if the weather turns bad and I arrive late?

What if I get sick?

It’s easy to get sucked into the land of “what if’s”.  In this place, you worry about all those things you don’t have control over.

If you want to build confidence, you have to let go of those things you can’t control.

Worrying about these things makes you feel helpless.  Instead of actively controlling the events going on around you, you’re passive.  Things happen to you instead.

That’s not the sign of someone with confidence. Should you add to focus your energy on what you can control?

4. Negative self-talk

Watch your inner dialogue.  What kind of thoughts do you have about yourself?

If you say a lot of mean things to yourself or come down hard on your mistakes, you’re only doing yourself a disservice.

You may think that being hard on yourself will push you to do better next time, but it could also be cutting your self-confidence down.

Yeah, you might motivate yourself to do that thing, but it will hurt you later when you try to do something else.

If you make a mistake or don’t live up to expectations, learn from it.  Shake it off and move on.  Lingering on it with negative thoughts will not do you any good.

5. Trying to fix it in your mind instead of the real world

So negative thinking can bring you down, but does positive thinking bring you up?  Yes, but only to a certain point.

You can’t build confidence completely in your mind.  You can think positively and build inner confidence as much as you want, but eventually you have to bring it out into the real world.

The surest way to build confidence is to get real-word experience.  Go out and do what you want to do.  Learn from mistakes and keep building yourself up.

That’s how confidence is best built and maintained.

6. Overestimating your abilities

It’s good to be confident in yourself, but bad to be over-confident.

Over-estimating your skills will hurt you even more once you face reality.  If you’ve built yourself up, you’ll have to deal with the fall.

That can be devastating.

You definitely want to push yourself, but be realistic about your skills.  Don’t let a fantasy mindset crash against the wall of reality.

7. Never taking accountability

Self-confidence is about belief.  You have to believe in what you’re doing and that your actions are exactly what you want to be doing.

That means taking accountability for those actions.  If they don’t turn out exactly the way you want, you have to accept that and take responsibility.

Own up to your actions.  Be accountable for them.  If you honestly made the best decision with the information you had, you have nothing to be afraid of.  If you didn’t, it may be time to re-examine your decision making.

In either case, own your decisions.  Only those without confidence to back up their choices would back away from them after the fact.

8. Letting fear run your actions

It’s alright to be afraid – it’s part of being human.  In fact, I’d say that fear is a sign that you’re heading in the right direction – it means you’re pushing yourself past your comfort zone.

But sometimes fear takes over.  It leads to procrastination.  We start avoiding things and push them off over and over again.

Instead of making conscious decisions to not do something, you let fear decide for you.  Letting fear make your life choices means you’ve consciously decided to stop determining your actions.

You’ve let something else dictate what you’ll do.  Self-confidence is all about believing in yourself and making the decisions you want to make.  If you let fear do that for you, you have no room left for confidence.
photo credit:David Goehring

We all know someone who seems way too lucky.  They’re always stumbling across great new jobs, coming up with new business ideas or meeting the right people.  It seems as if they’re always at the right place at the right time.

How do they do that?

It might be tempting to dismiss it all as luck.

But maybe something else is going on.

If you were to observe these people closely, you’d see that opportunities don’t just come to them; they’ve developed habits that help make them appear more frequently.

It’s about how you interact with the world that determines how many opportunities come to you.

Simply put, you don’t need more luck to make great opportunities happen, you just need the right approach.  If you want better opportunities, you need to watch these eight habits:
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