Self Improvement

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

17 Ways Travel Makes You a Better Person

Steve Bloom 21 Comments

Travel Makes You a Better Person

One of the best aspects of travel is in discovery.  Whether you’re immersing yourself in a brand new culture or wandering the streets of a foreign city, you’re finding new things to see and experience.

Part of that discovery is in what you learn about yourself.  Like most experiences, travel can change you in ways you might never have expected.  And as I look back on my trips, I realize just how many of them have changed me for the better.

Here are some of those ways:

1. Forces you out of your comfort zone

Travel means new foods, cultures and places to explore.  Try speaking that new language or eat a new kind of food you never knew existed.  When you’re thrown outside of your normal circumstances, you’ll discover more about who you are and what you’re like.

2. Time management

When you have only have a week or two to see a country, you have to manage your time so that you see as much as possible.  This means estimating how long you think you’ll spend at each place and setting a proper schedule.  Because of my travels, I’ve become especially good at estimating how long something will take.

4. Getting off the beaten path

Even if you’re traveling in a group, there’s usually enough time to get away to do your own thing.  You’ll take that side street to see where it goes or walk into a small pub to make friends with locals.  Breaking away from the norm is good since you’ll learn to live life how you want to, not just because that’s what everyone else is doing.

5. Seeing new ways of living

Nothing can be more eye-opening than surrounding yourself with another culture that chooses to live their life completely different from yours.  That can give you a new perspective on how you live and make you see your life in ways you never considered before.

6. The chance to reinvent yourself

At home, people can see you a certain way and pigeonhole you into a personality type that can be hard to escape.  Travel can give you a chance to explore other sides to your personality.  You’re free to break away from how people normally see you and reinvent yourself.

7. Building confidence

You’ve just traveled across a country, tried a new language and haggled over prices in a market.  They’re all things you didn’t know you could do before, but dug up a new-found sense of adventure and somehow made it work.  With travel, comes challenges.  And the more challenges you take on, the more sure of yourself you become.

8. Planning and organizing skills

What’s the best route to take so I see all the major attractions?  What’s the best way to get to the next city and back so I don’t miss my flight?  How should I organize my itinerary?

Travel is about making choices.  You have to organize your trip so that you have a place to stay and transportation to and from certain destinations.  Personally speaking, planning and organization takes up a huge chunk of time before I even arrive.

9. You become an interesting person

Travel is an opportunity to do things you might not otherwise get to do.  Adventures from surfing, whitewater rafting or exploring a jungle will give you amazing experiences you’ll have for the rest of your life.  It’s simple: do interesting things and you’ll always have an interesting story to share.

10. Living with less

It’s hard to carry a lot while traveling.  At some point, you have to carefully examine what you actually need and leave the rest behind.

I’m always amazed at how little I can get by with when I travel.  It teaches me that life can be lived a lot more simply – there’s surprisingly little we actually need to be comfortable.

11. Taking bad experiences in stride

While traveling, I’ve been swindled out of money.  Two other times, I was with people when they were pick-pocketed.  It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally bad things come up.  When they do, it’s easy to become furious and let your emotions boil over.

But eventually you learn to just let it go because there isn’t anything you can do.  Dwelling on it won’t solve anything so you learn that you have to let those negative feelings go.

12. Feelings of gratitude

It’s easy to forget just how lucky we are.  We live in a world full of abundance and wealth and often never fully appreciate what we’ve been given.

Traveling to a poor country can make you realize just how much you actually have.  I’ve made friends with people who have so little – much less than you normally see.  It brings into perspective all those wonderful things I failed to appreciate.

13. Social skills

I’ve met people at hostels, guided tours, bars, cafes, monuments and buses.  You can meet local people and other travelers – good people and bad, introverted or outgoing.  Wherever you go, there’s the opportunity to get to know someone and make a new friend.

14. Flexibility & Adaptability

Recently when I was flying to Los Angeles, a flight was cancelled and I was stranded for a night in San Francisco.  Suddenly I had to scramble to adapt plans and make last minute accommodations.

But rather than seeing it as a source of frustration, I saw it as an opportunity.  After my wife and I got a place to stay, we hit the town.  When you can change quickly to circumstances, you can get a lot more out of life.

15. Becoming comfortable with uncertainty and the unexpected

Trips don’t always go according to plan.  There’s plenty that can go wrong to either derail your itinerary or force you to change your plans.

But as you travel, you realize that the unexpected is rarely as bad as you think.  Often they’re just small obstacles that can easily be overcome.  Eventually you become accustomed to uncertainty and the unexpected challenges that come your way.

16. You become smarter and more cultured

Whether it’s your goal or not, travel makes you smarter.  All the things you learn about other cultures and people – their quirks, mannerisms and worldview add to what you discover about the country’s history and politics.  Eventually you come away with a deeper understanding of a country just from being there.

17. There’s time to reflect on your life

As exciting as travel is, there are plenty of moments of downtime.  Whether you’re on a train heading to your next destination or resting in your room, there are moments to pause and reflect.  During those times, thoughts often go back to your life back home.

Being immersed in another country and culture can help you get into an outsider’s mindset on your life.  It can give you a good insight into what you really want out of life and where it’s heading.
photo credit: Riccardo Romano

What to Do When You Feel Like Giving Up

Steve Bloom 18 Comments

Giving Up

“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” – Elbert Hubbard

I’ve accomplished many big goals over the past few years.

Live overseas?  Did it.

Graduate with a master’s degree?  I crossed that off recently too.

When I set my mind to a goal, I put in a lot of time and effort to finish it.  Even if goals take a lot of hard work, I know that with patience and perseverance, I can achieve them.

But still, I would be lying if I said I never consider giving up.

That goes for everything I’ve done.  There hasn’t been any big goal that I’ve set out to accomplish that I never felt like walking away from.

Whenever I set out on a big goal, I know that I’ll eventually get that gnawing voice in my head saying things like:

“You’re not good enough to do this.”

“It won’t work out the way you planned.”

These negative thoughts eat at the back of my mind like parasites.  Whether from fear or self-doubt, they pop up to derail my plans.

But I don’t let them.

I know that these thoughts are a normal part of the process.  They’re just another obstacle you have to overcome to get where you want to go.  And if you know how to handle them properly, they’ll never hold you back.

Whenever I feel like giving up, I first ask myself one simple question:

Is this goal something I still want or has something changed?

Perhaps you feel like giving up simply because you no longer want what you’re working towards.

Maybe you feel like giving up because your priorities have changed.  It’s possible to set out on a goal, but change over time.  Perhaps you’re at a stage in life where you no longer find this goal important to accomplish.

If that’s the case, your feelings are there because you no longer value the end goal.  In which case, you shouldn’t feel bad about quitting.  There’s no point in chasing something you don’t truly want.

If You Still Want the Goal

If you still want to keep going, but you’re feeling like giving up, it means that you need to reconnect with what you’re pursuing.

When you’re working hard to reach something, your motivation and inspiration for doing it can get lost among the daily effort.  We start to focus too much on what we need to do and less on why we need to do it.

Here are four ways to get back on track:

1. Revisit your motivation

Remind yourself why you wanted to pursue it.  What was the reason you started out?

Think back to what inspired you.  Was it a book, a person or a story?

Take some time to reconnect with that inspiration.

Reconnect with everything that made you excited about it.  Most of the time, what’s missing is that spark – the electric excitement of what’s possible.

There’s a purpose behind your actions and you just need to re-discover what it was.  If you can remind yourself what made you begin in the first place, you can give yourself a boost to keep going now.

2. Focus less on the end and more on how far you’ve come

Sometimes we focus so much on the end goal, that we forget to realize just how far we’ve actually gone.  If all you see is how far you still need to go, you’ll only discourage yourself and become frustrated.

Instead, take a moment to see where you’ve been.  How much have you done to get to the point you’re at?

Think of all the hard work you’ve done.  Think of all the progress you’ve made and how much you’ve actually done.  You’ve done a lot more than you’re giving yourself credit.

When you take a moment to shift your focus from the end to the beginning, you’ll really start to feel good about what you’ve accomplished rather than bad about what you still have ahead of you.

3. Talk to someone

Feeling like giving up can be an emotional experience.  When you get that feeling, your mind is filled with emotions like fear, doubt, worry and frustration.  It can be a difficult time.

Sometimes you just need an outlet.  Just having someone to share your thoughts with can get some of those thoughts out of your head.

Feelings can carry a weight to them.  When you bottle them up in your head they just weigh you down.  Talking them through with another person can help you release that weight off your mind.

Plus, it’s good to have someone who can put things into perspective.  They’ll remind you why you want this goal and everything you’ve already done to achieve it.

Having someone to cheer you up at the right moment can help you get out of your slump and back on track.

4. Fall in love with your challenges

Big goals take time and effort.  You can’t expect things to fall into place right away.

I’ve learned that big accomplishments rarely work as a straight line from a to b.  It’s a zigzagged course taking you all over the alphabet from a to z.

You’ll face unexpected challenges.  You’ll face difficulties you never anticipated.  It’s never as straightforward as we like and that can be frustrating.

But rather than letting it bring you down, see the positives of the situation rather than the negatives.  The problem can be that you’re seeing your challenges in a negative light.

Don’t see them as negative things you’re forced to overcome.  See them as puzzles to solve.

Think back to a time when you were challenged.  It can be a time at work or school when you were faced with a problem and you overcame it.  Remind yourself how good it felt when you finally solved it.

Your challenges can be solved too.  When you remind yourself of that good feeling you had when you finally solved it, you can give you the motivation to recapture it.
photo credit: Jason Parks

7 Simple Ways to Live a Positive, More Fulfilling Life

Steve Bloom 30 Comments

Positive LifeThe journey to building a better life seems never-ending.  We’re all busy working hard, earning money, pursuing our goals and trying to build our lives into what we want.

Generally speaking, we think the people who are living the good life are those who have it all – money, success, looks, a big car and a fancy house.

We think these lofty goals will make our lives significantly better.

But are these really things that lead to a better and more fulfilling life?

I’ve traveled all over the world.  In my travels I’ve met some of the poorest people you’ll ever know.

They don’t have access to much money.

They don’t have the big car and fancy house.

But despite their situation, they seem content with what they have.

Having more stuff doesn’t always equal a better life.  In fact, I’ve noticed that some of the best ways to improve your life can also be some of the simplest.

Here are seven of those ways:

1. Focus on what you can do right now

There are generally two types of problems: ones you can control and ones you can’t do anything about.

The ones you can control need your attention.  Since you can determine how they turn out, your focus can actually make a positive difference.

Focus less on the problems you can’t control.  You can’t do anything about them.  It doesn’t help if you put a lot of time and effort on them.

If you can’t fix them, then all your worrying, thoughts and feelings about them become wasted energy.

2. Be playful and imaginative

At some point while growing up, we decide to stop playing and using our imagination so we can live more in the real world.  It’s a natural part of getting older.

But playing and imagination shouldn’t be abandoned altogether.  That’s the lighter and happy-go-lucky side to who you are.

Your playful side can bring you back to your childhood when you were more care-free.  Your imagination can help you see the world in new and wonderful ways.  Those are great benefits we should never give up.

3. Take ten minutes to sit back and just relax

The world around us seems so busy.  Everyone wants more of everything and they want it done right now.  It’s easy to get caught up in the go-go environment that pervades and surrounds us.

When is the last time you took a few minutes to just sit back and relax?

Take a few minutes to sit in silence.  Let your mind wander and get lost in your thoughts.

It helps if you meditate, but even that isn’t always necessary.  What’s important is that you slow down and enter the silence of the moment.

4. Embrace change

No matter what point we are in our lives, we’re going through a change.

Some people resist change and try to keep their lives the same.  While you might succeed for a while, it’s going to be frustrating and painful.

Change shouldn’t be something we dread or avoid.  Instead of becoming sad by it, we should be welcoming it.  With changes come new exciting opportunities, fun, inspiration and growth.

It might be time to let go of the past and embrace the possibilities of the future.

5. Lift your spirits

You can choose to go through your day in a foul, ill-tempered mood or an upbeat and positive one.  It’s all in how you approach your day.

Fill your life with inspiration.  There are countless movies or songs that can build you up and enrich your soul.  Surround yourself with positive people.

Energy is contagious.  If you fill your life with uplifting messages, you’ll notice that you see the world in a much better way.

6. Watch your self-talk

When is the last time you monitored the thoughts you made to yourself?

They might be doing more damage than you realize.

I knew a girl once who would wake up every morning, look at herself in the mirror and tell herself how disappointed she was because she was a little overweight.

She didn’t think her internal monologue affected her, but that self-talk was having negative consequences.  It made her sadder and overly sensitive.

Sometimes we are our own harshest critics.  And when we come down too hard on ourselves, there’s no telling how much misery we’re making for ourselves.

7. List your reasons to be thankful

A lot of people focus too much attention on what they want.  But when you focus too hard on what you want, you lose sight of what you already have.

When you stop being thankful for what you have, you start taking it for granted.

Yet those are the things that should make us feel good about ourselves.

If you want to feel better, take some time to remember what you’ve got going for you.
photo credit: MartaZ*

How to Get Passionate About Boring Tasks

Steve Bloom 24 Comments

Become Passionate

If you want to learn a foreign language, you need to spend hours memorizing vocabulary and grammar.

To get into great shape, you need to perform repetitive exercises on a regular basis.

I’ve written about the importance of doing boring things before, but that lesson was highlighted to me a few weeks ago at the symphony.

As I was reading about the lead violinist, I found something interesting. Apparently, she still starts every morning playing the same scales she did as a beginner.

An extremely talented and advanced violinist starts out every day doing the same basic scales she did as a youngster. She says that they’re essential to maintaining her ability.

The big lesson in all of this is that boring tasks pay off. It’s just doing them that’s hard – after all, they’re boring.

Learning a foreign language is exciting. You get to speak to others in a brand new way; it’s impressive. But hardly anyone gets excited about learning the vocabulary.

Writing a novel is a big goal for many people. That excitement dies down when confronted with the day-to-day writing tasks that go into it.

But what if you could become passionate about boring tasks? If you can get excited to do them, you could unlock a lot of potential and accomplish more. But how do you do it?

The Power of Ritual

The first step to becoming passionate about a boring task is to create a ritual around it. Embedding them into a set sequence of activities will make it easier to integrate the task into your life.

According to Twyla Tharp in her book, The Creative Habit, she uses a morning ritual to help her exercise daily. Each morning activity leads seamlessly into the other until finally she ends up in a taxi cab going to the gym to work out.

She credits her daily workouts to this ritual. Otherwise she would never find the motivation to go. In fact, she quite dislikes working out, but the ritual activities flow so well that it sweeps her along to her goal.

Stephen King also has a ritual to his writing. Each morning, when he wakes up, he brews a cup of tea and takes a vitamin. Promptly starting between 8AM and 8:30AM, King sits in the same chair behind the same desk with all his papers arranged exactly the way he wants.

Once again, he credits his prolific writing with this ritual. As he has said, when he sits down at that desk, his mind knows it’s time to write.

I’ve had similar results. I used to write at various times and places with decent output. However, when I created a workspace and set a time-frame dedicated specifically to writing, my word count steadily increased.

Daily rituals are consistently found among a lot of highly accomplished people. If you want to read more about them go to this list of 25 famous thinkers and their inspiring daily rituals.

Find the Intrinsic Value of the Task

Turning the boring task into a ritual is only the first step. Rituals will make you consistent, but if you want to become passionate about the boring task, you need to do more.

There has to be something about the task that gets you excited. You have to find something that keeps you going and wanting to do more.

Passion will come when you find intrinsic value in the boring task you’re doing.

For example, when I was studying French, I memorized a lot of vocabulary words using flash cards. It’s hard to become passionate about rote memorization of vocabulary words, but it happened to me. In the end, it was one of my greatest joys.

Each day I would go through an old set of words and try to recall the translation. Each time I successfully recalled a word felt great. The more I recalled, the more I felt like I was building something.

Later, when I tested my translation skills with a French movie or TV show, I would pay close attention to any vocabulary words I had memorized. If I heard one and understood it, I felt the hard hard work was paying off.

That’s really the secret to being passionate about boring tasks. You have to feel like it’s building up to something or paying off in the end. You have to find purpose in them.

As I studied French, I could tell I was understanding more and more. Memorization wasn’t for nothing; I was building up the French language more than I could have hoped and that was exciting.

It’s the same for writing a book. I do a little here and there every day. It’s exciting to see the words coming together as the book forms.

People only dread boring tasks when they don’t see any reason or purpose to them. If you can see your daily tasks building up to something, it’s a lot easier to get passionate about them.
photo credit: Emily’s Mind