Did you ever think that there just a few real lessons to be learned in life? Just a few. No more no less, but a few simple lessons. No matter how many more of personal development books you are going to read, no matter how many articles that will promise you to change your life you are going to read, the messages that you will come across are going to be the same.

I realized and I was relieved and so should you. It simply means that you can cut out all the BS that you see on the market today and save yourself time and money. Today’s personal development, self-help, psychology, leadership and change market is filled with the same message that just packaged differently.

So I will share just a couple of things that I think are consistent across the board.

• Figure out what you want in life
• Go get it
• Be consistent
  
• Action beats inaction
• It’s been done before

That’s all that there is to it. Each of our own life has a purpose that we need to define. There is no right way to figure it out, so it means that you will not find the answer in any of the books. That answer will come from within. Once you figure out your purpose and what you want to do, what drives you; you go for it.

If you want to get there, you have to be consistent in your effort. Along the way, you might feel like giving up, but just keep going and you will discover other options along the way. At the very worst, if you are stuck and don’t know what to do, just do something. Any small action will help you move forward. It will give you a new stimulus and you will learn something new about yourself.

The last and not the least – it’s all been done before. Do not be afraid. No one road is more or less traveled that any other one. Your problems have been solved a thousand years ago, your goals have been accomplished by millions. Do not be afraid and just go for it.

After this, there is nothing much to it. I’ve tried, I’ve read books and watched movies and so on. But in the end, it all rests within you to have the life that you want to have. Learn those few important lessons in life and move into doing, into action instead of just infinite contemplation of infinite choices.

Today we are going to learn another rule of economics as it applies to your practical life. There exists a concept called the Law Of Diminishing Returns, which simple states that increased activity results in increasingly diminishing returns with each additional unit of input. If we were to graph, it would look something like this:

On the horizontal axis you would have any activity and on the vertical axis you would have a benefit derived from that activity.

In my undergraduate college days, I used to think that about the above law only in turns of economics: factories, production, etc. Often, I would not realize that this law applies to many, if not all of our every day activities and goals that we try to achieve in life.

Let’s take a further look.

For the longest the idea of that more is better was unchallenged. Only, recently the less is more philosophy emerged. Less is more is nothing else but the law of diminishing returns defined in very simple terms. To be exactly correct, the following statement is true: more is less, as illustrated by the graph above.

I was first introduced to the idea of less is more when I saw a video about choice on TED. The speaker said that too much choice leads to confusion, unhappiness and frustration. This part of the argument can demonstrated by the above graph as well. At a certain point the benefit derived from an activity starts to decrease. I guess, this should not strike anybody as great news, because we have always heard of people telling us that moderation is the best and that too much of anything is bad for us. Well, now you have a graph to prove it.

However, let us consider the simple and powerful implications of law of diminishing returns to our everyday lives. Let us a create a couple of graphs to together.

1. Put MONEY on horizontal axis and HAPPINESS on vertical axis. It becomes clear that at a certain point money does not bring in any extra happiness. Also, it implies that having too much money, can also decrease your overall happiness. I read about a study in the Art of Choosing, which said that people who earned $100,000 were just about as happy as those earning half of that amount. It went on further to say that the same holds true for individuals who earn over $5,000,000. Think about it.
2. Put STUFF on horizontal axis and sense of INDIVIDUALITY on the vertical axis. The same simple pattern repeats.
3. Put variety of FOOD/EXERCISE on horizontal axis and HEALTH on the vertical axis. Watch the same pattern unfold.
4. Put KNOWLEDGE on horizontal axis and UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD on the vertical axis. Same rules apply.
5. Put EXPERIENCE on horizontal axis and WISDOM on vertical axis. It also holds true.
6. Put amount of CHOICES on horizontal axis and HAPPINESS on vertical axis.

The examples could go on forever. The point is that any given activity increases a benefit only to a certain extent. After that, the benefit either rises very slowly or it even starts diminishing. Try out the above exercise for yourself and you will see how this holds true.

More importantly, what are further implications of the above graph? It means that there is an optimum amount of MONEY, STUFF, variety of FOOD/EXERCISE, KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCES, CHOICES which will cause a maximum overall benefit to us. Isn’t it amazing? To me, it is.

It limits the possibilities in this world. Well, how is that great, you might ask? Simple. We all have a limited amount of time to live on this earth and we want to optimize how we spend out time. Clearly, we cannot experience everything that this world has to offer. But, now I realized that there is no need to because of the relationship described in this paragraph. The only question that is left to answer is the following: “What is the right of amount of “activity” that we need to perform to obtain the maximum amount of “benefit”?

If we could figure that out, then we could easily know how much money we need, how much variety of food we need, how many and what type of experiences to seek, and how many choices we should offered to maintain the optimum amount of well-being. Armed with that knowledge we could truly simplify our lives and feel so overwhelmed to do more and more without realized if and how much extra benefit we are gaining from a given activity.

Even though the options and activities are endless, the way we react and experience life is limited. So who is up for the challenge to figure out how much and what type of activity we need to maintain and live the most enjoyable life possible?

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Image: gaspi*yourguide

This topic has been on my mind for the last few months. If I were to write it any other time before today, the article would have sounded just like anything else you have ever read before.It would have been about how one should not give away their power and how to make the choices for yourself. It would have been about the ability say “No!” to others as a way of maintaining control over your actions. It would have been about how control over your own actions can bring happiness to your life.

That is exactly the reason why I did not write anything.It is just more of the same old.It is everything everybody has heard before.

More importantly, it might be wrong.

There is nothing worse than misinformation that leads to false expectations, which result in unhappiness. Until today, I held a dare belief that the more control we have over our lives, the happier we are. I believed that we should make our own choices and decide our own destinies no matter what. I believed that until today. I thought that it was the only way to happiness. I believed and I was willing to say so to others.

Today, I realized how wrong I was.

That is exactly the reason why I want to share my newly found understand about control with the rest of you. The inspiration for my newly found knowledge comes from the book “The Art of Choosing”. As it turns out some people actually prefer not to have control over their lives. Yes, you heard it right. Some people prefer to have others make their decisions for them. What is even more interesting is that some people are even happier when they do not have to make decisions for themselves in many aspects of their life. That particular statement almost flipped my world upside down.

It possible once again that less is more and more is less? Is it another obvious truth that we have overlook in the Western societies?

We are lead to believe that more choice is better, that control over your life is good without even considering that fact that those statements are not absolute truths. It is almost like imposing a “one size fits all” approach to happiness. At first glance, it seems to make perfect sense. The more control you, the more choices you can make for yourself and therefore you can create the life that you really want. It does make perfect sense, but not to everybody.

That statement seems to ignore the fact that there are different people who might not want to be completely in control of their lives. It makes a basic premise that we all like control. However, it is not the case. As it turns out, depending on your childhood, your upbringing and your community you might prefer to have less control over your life and be just fine with it. Now, image being a person who prefers subconsciously to have less control in their life over their actions, but living in a society where control and personal choice are being forced down your throat. You might turn out to be very unhappy without even knowing why.

You might end up blaming yourself for being weird or different; and you might even go as far as to say that there is something wrong with you. Nevertheless, the society is just being inconsiderate of your differences. Being in control or not being in control of your own life is neither good nor bad. The old saying “To each his/her own” is as true as ever.

It is only my hope that this knowledge will help you understand others better and appreciate their differences more. It is my hope that you will think twice before imposing your own worldview onto others and realize that even some of the “truths” are just widely held beliefs that vary from culture to culture, country to country, town to town, and person to person.

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Image: sacrifice_87

I deleted my facebook account. Pretty much sums it up. It is pretty simple to do, once you find the link that you need.

I deleted my facebook account and I feel great. One simple reason: I realized I had no use for it. I realized that as I was talking to my brother. It just suddenly dawned upon me that I was just mindlessly wasting my time on this social network. I realized that I never really needed facebook. Many people quote that in “this increasingly busy” world it is harder and harder to stay connected with people. That is what they say. They also say that it is almost a necessity to have facebook.

I disagree.

Facebook is and always was a cheap substitute to real communication. Instead of calling somebody and saying “Hi” we stalk them on facebook and leave a 5 second comment here and there. Instead of meeting our “friends” in person and sharing the experience of a journey, we just put the pictures up on facebook and let others click through them. Instead of sending a personal invite or an actual gift, we send electronic invites and electronic gifts (which costs money!). Instead of asking a girl/guy out in person or over the phone, we instead “poke” them on facebook. Instead of calling somebody to wish a Happy Birthday we just leave a wall post. Instead …

This could on forever. The point is this: facebook encourages superficial and insincere communication. So what that we have hundreds of friends on facebook. Do we really keep in touch with them all? Do our “friends” just become another news feed item that gets lost amongst a hundred others? In the end, you are just cheating yourself.

What about the emotional energy that you spend over facebook: the privacy settings, the changing user interface, the dislike button and so on. Is it really worth spending your time and energy being upset about those things? And what about reading those overly negative status updates of people you barely know? What about people fighting over their relationship status on facebook? What about losing jobs over something you did or said over facebook? What about the possiblity of you being harassed by a criminal?

I had enough of that and that is why I decided to delete my account.

Now, I do not have to worry about either of those things. Now, I will know who my true friends are because they will call me or send me an e-mail if they will want to meet up. It’s a great way to eliminate dead-weight from your life. People have and always will appreciate a call, a sincere letter or an e-mail. Sure, we can all say that we are “increasingly busy”, but to me that’s bunch of nonsense.

If you do not have enough time to stay in touch with your friends through a phone call or an in person meeting, then you might have you priorities all wrong in your life. Think about it. Since when did relationships were pushed back into the background of our “busy” lives? It’s time to change that and remember what matters and ditch the deceptively “useful” technological tools.

If you want to establish a presence online and still keep your private life private, then there are plenty of other tools to consider. For your professional career, you might want to consider joining LinkedIn and as a tool for your personal expression and creativity consider blogging. Using only those two powerful tools, you will be able to create a strong and powerful image of yourself online, while keeping your private life private and your relationships deep.

I am sure some of you find facebook extremely useful and that is fine. The point here is to become aware of how the use of technology is affecting your life and really deciding if it is right for you.

Question: Do you have a facebook?

America is going downhill for one very simple reason: people seem to not be able to tell the difference between the disease and its symptoms. It almost seems to be common wisdom for people to think that treating a symptom of a disease is the same as treating a disease. In short, if the symptoms do not longer show up, the disease is gone. It’s a mental dis-ease, but nobody seems to think much of it. It almost seems like people are brainwashed into believing into the above truth.

It works so well because of one reason – convenience. America is obsessed with convenience and comfort. The more of it – the better. And for every obsession there are those that cater to it. Except there is one simple thing that is wrong with comfort – it makes you weak. One person at a time it makes a nation weak. We can already see the results of this destructive thinking.

PROBLEM: America is getting increasingly dumb. This is a tough one to swallow, but it is the truth. Instead of increasing the education standards and making students study and think, we lower those standards. Everybody seems to get higher GPAs, pass tests with highers scores and everybody seems to do better.

All of that at the cost of learning and knowing less.

More and more people are going to college with lower quality education. Educational institutions are more concerned about taking a dollar from you or the government than about admitting quality students, which are increasingly rear.In the process, the schools get paid, the private loan companies get paid and the students get screwed.

In the end, you have college graduates who know and do less than high school graduates in less developed countries than the USA. Everybody is so focused on satisfying people’s egos and avoiding hurting their feelings in the short term that they forget that they are hurting not only the individual, but the nation as whole in the long term.

SOLUTION: Increase the standards of education on all levels and let kids fail. We just have to understand that the purpose of an education system is to teach, and not to give passing grades for kids who don’t try. Only by failing you learn. In a sense, we need to deflate the educational system. So what if that students will be getting lower grades? That is not the purpose of education. Education is supposed to be challenging and difficult so that when we come out of school we are actually know a thing or two. Overtime, the students would get used to higher education standards and everybody would be fine. If you ask for more you get for more, if you ask for less then you get less.

PROBLEM: America is getting increasingly unhealthy. It is the results of people reaching out for the pill, falling prey to false advertising about quick weight loss diets and constantly looking for the easy way out. Instead of making the life long choices about their nutrition and exercise, people focus on the quick fix. Even in this day and age where information is abundant, advertising and the dream of the shortcuts seems to get the best of us.

It is convenient.

It is convenient for the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the fitness industry, the health-care industry, the insurance industry. Finally, it is convenient for the consumer. Yet, the consumers are the ones who end up complaining about increasing health-case costs. If you haven’t lived under a rock, then you should have heard about the health care reform that is trying to take place. Yet, it is all BS. Reforming the health care system for an unhealthy nation is the same as lowering taxes for the poor.

SOLUTION:Education. Teach people about nutrition and exercise from an early age. Make fitness classes mandatory and physically challenging. Teach people from young age about how to make the right choices about their nutrition and exercise. That is all there is needed to create a healthier and happier America.

That will automatically lower the cost of health-care.

The health care right now is expensive for a reason: there are tons of unhealthy people. That automatically raises the insurance costs because more and more people are falling in the increased risk group. The focus should on prevention of disease, rather than the superficial treatment of it later. It’s no rocket science, and it bothers me seeing people not solving the problem the right way.

In the end, it is all about making the right decisions. However, it is hard to learn how to make the right decisions when nobody around you is making the right decisions.

So in the end, it all comes down to education, experience and values.

The state where America is today is reflective of it’s education, experience and values. That is the real disease – lack of all three. If we were only focused on helping people make the right choices and showing them how to make the right choices, we would not have nearly as many problems as we do today. It is funny, how a nation with so many resources and so much potential can end up in state like this.

What about you? Are you taking care of yourself? Are you treating the disease instead of the symptoms? Answer that go ahead; you might be surprised with what you find. Remember, one person at a time, a nation can become stronger or weaker. It is up to you.

How important is money to you? What does it mean to you? How much time in your day do you spend worrying about money? Is being rich one of your goals in life? Do you know why?

These are all important questions that you should answer for yourself.

I have come to the following conclusions in my quest to understand the world of finance:

• Money is not real
• Money is a side effect of living your purpose of life
• Rich is a state of mind
• Money reflects value
• Money is a tool, it is means to an end, not vice versa

All of the above conclusions have lead to understand that worrying about money is pretty silly. I am not mocking people who are struggling financially. I am just saying that many people are focused on the wrong issue. Most people are unhappy because they have the means and the ends confused. If you continue worrying about acquiring more money, then you will end up leading a poor life. I can almost say that with certainty.

If you should not focus on money, then what is it that should focus on? You need to focus on the real source of wealth, which gives rise to wealth. You should focus on creating genuine value in your life.  Worry about that. Try and figure out a way how you can create value for others. That is the true source of wealth – value.

How does that help? Here is how. If you focus on creating genuine value for others, then you will just know that riches are surely to follow soon after. With that in mind, you won’t have to worry if the economy is rising or falling, or if the dollar is becoming stronger or weaker. You won’t even have to worry if you lose your house or your savings because you will always now that you have never lost the source of that wealth: yourself.

You are the biggest asset in your life and you should invest the most time and effort into fine tuning your ability to create value.

The big question, then is not how to get more money, but how to create more value. So, how do you create value?

1. Understand yourself. You should be the person who knows you the best inside out. That will require time and effort. It will require you knowing what you like and what you dislike. You will have to figure out what drives you and what depresses you. You will have to know your strengths and your weakness. Only by understanding yourself, you will be able leverage your strengths and your passions to figure out where you fit in the world. Moreover, you will be able to figure out your underlying purpose in life.

2. Follow your life purpose. With a clear image of where you want to go in life, you will naturally dedicate yourself to your ideal and become and expert at what you are trying do in life. If you try and do anything else but what you absolutely love, then your whole being will resist  and it will ultimately lead to unhappiness and poor life. If you follow your passion, then you will just know what to do and where to go. You will able to make choices and decisions so much easier. There will be a clear distinction in what you need and do not need in your life.

That is all there is too it. Surprised? You should be.

I was going to write more about transferable skills, marketing and branding and so on. Yet, it does not really matter. It does not matter if you understand what rich or wealthy and poor really mean. They have little to do with money. Remember, correlation does not imply causation! Rich and poor are simply states of mind.

Being rich means doing all the things that you always wanted to in your life. What else could anybody really want in life? After all, even those who acquire a lot of money, what do they do with it? They usually spend it doing the things that they want to do. It might be going on vacations, spending time with the family or learning something. Yet, it is crucial to understand: you don’t need to be rich dollar wise to do the things that you enjoy.

All you need to do is make the right decisions by understanding yourself and following your life purpose. That is the real difference between the true rich and the true poor. With these new definitions of rich and poor, reread the article and see if it makes more sense now. Go ahead and do it. It might change your life.

With that in mind, this would be a more appropriate picture:

QUESTION: Are you still worried about money?

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Image (top): Delox – Martin Deák

Image (bottom): dotbenjamin

“Be The Change You Want To See In The World” – Gandhi

Yes, it is more of the same old “be the change you want to see in the world”. Yet, no matter how old it is, it never gets old. It is probably one of the most overused phrases in the world that joins that ranks of “Just Do it!”, “Impossible is nothing” and so on.

It is one of the most used, but one of the least practiced ideas in the world.

Everybody is quick to throw it out there: “Be The Change You Want To see In The World” and then they turn around and complain about how unfair life is. At the very best it is hypocrisy, and the very worst it is the attitude that creates the overworked, unhappy and unfulfilled world.

We as people create that world. Our collective choices and attitudes create the world that we live in. We collectively created the 9-5 nation (should I say 9-9 and get paid for 9-5?), the always rushing, never stopping, always miserable and complaining nation. We did that together.

And, yet we have the audacity to complain.

How dare you complain about the something that you are part of yourself? If you do everything that makes this world as it is, then you have no right to complain about it. Really. You don’t. Matter of fact, you never have the right to complain. Complaining is a different way of not taking the responsibility for your life.

Do you think you are the only one who feels trapped? I don’t think so. There are millions upon millions of people out there who feel just like you, and do nothing just like you. They feel helpless and powerless. But do you really understand, that we together, as people, have made the world what it is today?

That means that we can all change it – together. We can do it together, if we only choose so. If all us made conscious choices to give in to the routine less, if all of us stood up for ourselves and our values, if all of us together decided that we had enough of this overly materialistic and celebrity run world, then we could do it.

We can do it.

Why hasn’t it happened yet? If everybody is so fed up, why isn’t anybody doing anything?

I know why. Everybody else is waiting. They are all waiting for somebody else to do it first. They are waiting for somebody to take the responsibility of being the first one to stand up from them. They are waiting.

Are you waiting too?

Have you every really thought that you could be that person that “they” are waiting for? I think they are waiting for you to stand up and become the change that you (and they) want to see in the world.

Now you know. Everybody else feels just like you. It’s just like school all over again. Remember when you were afraid to ask a “dumb” question only to realize later that everybody else was wondering the same? Well, this is kind of like that. Except this time, it is a fact that everybody DOES want to change the world for the better and once again, it is the time for you to make a fool out of yourself and stand up for the values that matter to you.

You don’t have to do anything big. Start at home, with your family and your friends, then at work and so on. Before you know it, your attitude will have changed the world. Sometimes people just need an example, a leader to see that change is really possible and that it is not just in their heads.

You can do it! You can be the leader in your own way. You can start the change by changing yourself and leading by example. We have created the rules that we hate, we can just as easily destroy them and create new ones.

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Image: the-tml

After a while, I just get bored of some things. I do.

I get bored hearing about the same old issues and problems and people never doing anything about them. If I had a TV show and I had a segment called “What Grinds My Gears”, people with never ending same old issues would be on that segment. No doubt!

What grinds my gears even more is the excuse that the same people use: “Well, you know…my life just kind of got in the way! You know how it is!” And then they would go on babbling about work, family, kids, homework, “rough” weekends and so on. Yea, I understood it. I understood a while ago. But then I stopped understanding because the same people would end up talking to me again, telling me how the life got in the way.

Yuk.

I used to be one of those people. I know – GROSS!

Thankfully, I stopped. I got tired of hearing myself complain about the same old things, trying to resolve issues or achieve new goals, but then end up seeing “life getting in the way”! So I did three things: 1) I shut my mouth 2)took responsibility away from “life” onto myself 3)looked for ways to create a life which would help me solve my issues. Matter of fact, to this I try not ever to share any negative news with other people. I just deal with them on my own. If I do reach out, it is just to ask for advice, but not to whine to them about my problems.

So, what about you? Does your life get in the way? Do you want to:

• get a new job
• lose weight
• go on a vacation
• wake up early
• start working out
• start saving money
• read a book
• learn something new
• go live in a new country
• go skydiving
• learn to dance
• start dating

Well, do you? Have you tried achieving any of those things, but then life just got in the way?I am sorry, but I have no pity for you.

Life just does not get in the way, you let it.

How? Simple; you probably make dumb decisions and instead of taking the responsibility on your own shoulders, you just blame life for getting in the way.

Let’s take a look at somebody who wants to start working out. He makes it his New Year’s resolution: “I am going to go to the gym four days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.” Right on! The first week goes by, he is still at it. The second week gets tougher, but he still pushes on. Then, the third week comes around. Not so good. He started missing his workouts and before he knew it, he stopped working out all together.

Friends: ” What happened, man?”

Him: “You know. Life just kind of got in the way.”

Friends: “What do you mean?”

Him: “You know. The work started to kick in. I have to work late and then after work I don’t want to do anything. My brain is fried!”

Friends: “Right…”

Him: “Yea! I just couldn’t keep up. You know how hard it is, right?

Friends: “Yea!”

Him: “Then I have to watch my favorite shows and then I have to go out with my friends, socialize, etc. And then, I have to run all of these errands! So, I just said screw this! I want to have a normal life, so I stopped. Maybe next year I won’t be as busy with life.”

Friends: “Yea, man. You will have your chance!”

Just writing that, brought back unpleasant memories.

If life gets in the way, then it is all your fault, because you have created the life that you have. Furthermore, if you let life get in the way, then you probably do not want to solve an issue or achieve a goal bad enough.

That is all there is to it.

Just admit that to yourself. Admit it! If it is something that REALLY is bothering you, then do something about it in way that won’t let your life get in the way. Oh, I almost forgot. Here is how:

• Shut up. Stop complaining to others about how hard you try and how life just gets in the way. Nobody cares. You just waste your own time and others. Instead, if you are going to talk to somebody about your issues, be precise. State the issue and ask for advice of how to accomplish it. Consider the advice and try putting it into action. If it doesn’t work, move onto something different.

• Take responsibility. Life is never at fault. You are responsible for your life. You make the decisions that get you were you are right now. This might be a really hard thing to do. Taking responsibility is never easy, but this will put the control back into your hands. Life will not, randomly, get in your way. You will be able to look at yourself and look for the best ways to solve this problem. So, empower yourself by taking responsibility.

• Reorganize your life. If you have done the above steps, then you will realize that much work needs to be done. It might be simply summed up in the following: eliminate what you do not like and start doing what you like. It will have something to do with eliminating negative habits, people, environments, or things that “prevent” you from doing what you want. It will be hard, but you can do it. After that, you will have all of this free time to fill with things that you want to do. Just make sure, they are the things that you really want to do. This process will be pointless if you will have no real reasons for doing any of the things you said you wanted to do. Simple fact is that some people are just too comfortable with their lives to change anything about them.

So next time you hear yourself or your friends saying that life got in their way, just smack them on the head and tell them to take the responsibility to their own hands! Or just send them to this blog for some verbal head-smacking. Do whichever you are more comfortable with.

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Image: remuz [Jack The Ripper]

Your life is defined by your decisions. Everyday you wake up and you make decisions. That is all life is – continuous decision making process which creates the person that you are today.

Most of the decisions are fairly simple. Every morning when you wake up, you decide what you are going to wear, what you are going to eat and what you are going to do during your day. You probably will never think about many of them twice unless you somehow managed to make a destructive decision too many times, until it developed into a destructive habit.

However, some decisions are perceived as being extremely tough.

What exactly makes a certain decision a tough one? For example, they might have a huge impact on your finances, your relationships, your career, your health, your rest and so on. A tough decision usually comes sprinkled with fear and uncertainty.You will always want to know how things turn out in the end. And you are always going to be looking for the happy ending, right? At least, I do.

Matter of fact, you are probably going to be looking for a happy ending not only for yourself, but for those around you as well. You want your decision to have a positive impact on the people you care about. So far so good? Not exactly.

Many times your concern of how your action is going to affect others is exactly what prevents you from taking the action? Am I right? Think back to some of the following scenarios: you want to quit your job, you want to end a relationship, you want to change your major, you want to confess in something you did wrong, you want to stand up for what you believe in and so on.

How many of those times did you prevent yourself from making a decision because you were thinking the following: “I can’t do that. I don’t want to disappoint this person, I don’t want to hurt them, I don’ want to break their heart” The variations are countless.

Well, I have news for you. Ideally, you should eliminate other people out of the equation when making tough life decisions.

I am making the assumption that you are a decent human being and that you are not taking a decision to purposefully hurt somebody physically, emotionally or otherwise. I am referring to situations where you are following your path in life, where you stand up for your beliefs and your values.

When you are in a tough spot, there are many variables to consider. Sometimes the answers is not clear. The best thing to do then is to eliminate as many irrelevant variables as possible. I am making an argument that other individuals in your life are one of those irrelevant variables.

Many people in life feel like they are responsible for other people’s feelings when making a decision.

I disagree.

You are not one simple bit responsible for how others feel or react to the decisions that you make in life. 9 times out of 10, others will use that knowledge to manipulate you into making a decision that favors them instead of you.

People will react the way they do. There is nothing personal in that. They are just reacting to a situation.

Furthermore, if you assume responsibility for how others feel then you will be doomed to suffer until you choose otherwise. Ultimately, you are tying your own well being to somebody else emotions. You are giving away your power to others by doing that.

Think about it this way. If other people truly cared for you, then they would just let you be and be considerate of what you are doing. Instead, if they are reacting in a manipulative way (crying, being upset, sad, needy, angry, etc) chances are they are not even thinking about what is best for you, but only looking out for their own best interest.

For the sake of illustration let us examine a common situation which I experienced over and over again in college.

I always signed up for classes early in the morning so I could get my day started early. However, my roommates did not have classes until later in the day. Given that fact, they would go out and come back really late: 2AM or 3AM in the morning.

The problem wasn’t that they were going out; it was that I could not rest properly because of loud noise at 4AM. For a long time I tolerated it, thinking: “It’s okay, they want to go out; they have a right to do so. After all they are paying rent too!” However, after a while I realized that I was not getting proper rest and was tired all of the time. Things just didn’t fit. Eventually, I realized that I was not the problem and that my roommates were simply being disrespectful of my rest and just had their best interests in mind.

I eventually started confronting them to the point where it became a serious problem and I ended up moving out.

Even though, the above situation is not as serious it still send the same message: if you want to empower yourself, eliminate other people out of the equation when making tough decisions in life.

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Image: nerovivo

What do you do over the weekends?

Are you one of those people who cannot wait for Friday to come around? Do you hate Mondays? Do you actually relax during the weekend?

Many people do not think twice about what to do over the weekends. It’s Friday. That means happy hour right after work, then going out with friends, spending tons of money during the night at the bars, then waking up in the morning feeling like crap trying to get better throughout the rest of the weekend. And so it repeats itself over and over again. And it is the norm to most of the population.

For the most part it starts in college and it never really stops after that. I used to be one of these drunk faces on Friday or Saturday nights, wasting my money and life away. I am glad I stopped before it was too late.

Time is precious and we ought to spend it wisely.

Many people lead lives they do not like, having jobs that they hate and the weekend seems like the perfect escape into the drunken illusion with friends where the pain and the worries seem to fade away. Yet, in the long run it accomplishes nothing. Well it accomplishes couple of things: it ruins your health, ruins your finances and it gets you nowhere. Sure, it is fun to hang out with friends and catch up. Yet, for most people it becomes a destructive habit, a routine, a fake escape from unwanted life.

Well, for better or worse I have spend a large portion of my college career just like that. Matter of fact, my weekends would start on Thursday nights and end up on Saturday nights. Every weekend. I did not think twice of it. It seemed fine. I was sucked in and stuck. Yet, I found myself more and more doing it because everybody else was doing it. It sucked. I had to stop and think. Something was wrong. Is this all there is to do over the weekends? Is his all I am here to do on this earth?

The answer was no. The life has so much more to offer and it is a waste of time to be engaged in such activities! This made me reconsider my priorities and my goals in life. I realized I did not have any and that was part of the reason why I was going through college days so blindly – I lacked purpose. Now, I have purpose, I have things that I want to do and accomplish. All of those things take time and money to accomplish, so I’d rather focus my energy on doing things that take me somewhere as opposed to those that keep me stuck in a destructive routine.

If you find yourself in this lifestyle, then there are many things that you should consider. Am I happy with my life? Am I happy with my job? Am I happy with where I am going? Am I working towards fulfilling my life purpose? Chances are that you will find yourself answering now to most of those questions. That is why exactly those are the reasons why you are engaging in destructive weekends.

I am not saying that you should never do this or that you should eliminate hanging out with friends or having some fun once in a while. No. What I am saying is to become mindful of what you are doing. Every action has an opportunity cost to it. So think about what you are missing out by spending those weekends going out, playing beer pong, watching football  and spending money while developing a drinking habit?

I can think of at least a couple of things that you can do with that time and money. You could save the money for an awesome trip, a car, a house, a book or you could simply invest it towards your retirement. You could spend that money on theaters, plays, performances, martial art lessons, great food, a romantic dinner with a date, learning how to scuba dive, picking up a yoga class and so on! You could spend the time on meditation, on developing yourself, finding for a better job, developing or finding a passion of yours, changing your life and rediscovering your life purpose!

Are you sleeping? I want you to wake up and smell the roses and find your own purpose in life and lead others to finding theirs! Think about it. Just think about it.