Sometimes we just make the wrong decisions. Sometimes we become shortsighted and focus only at the things that are the most convenient and most pleasant at the moment. Some of us even confuse that with “being in the moment”. All of the above simply means that we are discomfort averse individuals.

We seek out pleasure and try to avoid discomfort. Inherently there is nothing wrong with that. However, if you look deeper into that all sorts of problems rise to the surface.

Seeking out pleasure and comfort while avoiding discomfort is a form of procrastination. Procrastination is like robbing yourself in the future. It is like taking a credit on your future and your goals and never really working to pay it off. It is like cheating yourself.

If we continuously borrow against our future, then eventually we will have to pay the price as we cannot postpone discomfort forever. More importantly, discomfort forces us to grow and change and progress. Comfort in a sense kills progress and joy of learning in life.

But the real question is why we act like that? One possible answer, as it is proposed by Joseph Stiglitz, is that we lack vision in our lives. We do not know where we are going, we never think of our or others future beyond today. Without vision, our values are useless. If we do not know where we are going, even the best compass in the world will not help us get there.

Without a vision our lives become bland and boring. We lose interest in life. Vision is not simply a goal to achieve. Vision is desire to change, it is a vision of positive change for yourself and those around you. If you do not have a vision to guide your life, your daily actions will lack direction, passion and drive.

But how do we “get” vision? I think it starts with curiosity and a  desire to overcome a challenge. Vision starts with a desire to become a positive role model for others. Visions starts with a desire to do good and change the world for the better. If we do nothing to contribute to the well being of others, then what is the purpose of us living on this earth?

No, we are not mean to merely exist on this planet. Our life only has meaning in the context of other individuals, human beings. Without others, there would be no reason for us to exist. Yet, over and over again, individualism is drilled into our heads.

Then we become so overly concerned with ourselves, that our life loses meaning because we forget that our life alone is meaningless. Others give meaning to our life. Maybe it is about time, for America and the world to stop focusing on individualism as much and promote social values that bind and bring people together as one unit.

Indeed house divided falls. But what happens when the house is divided into hundreds of millions of individual pieces? It is even surprising that some parts of the world have not fallen apart just yet.

Having a vision means being concerned not only for yourself but for those around you. Having a vision will cure you of the disease of the shortsightedness. It will help you make the right decisions, and stop robbing yourself and others of a bright future.

What is your vision? What is your drive?

Just recently, I started attending mixed martial arts class. It is truly amazing to learn the things your body can do. Mixed martial arts is all about teaching your body to do things it has never done before. At first it can be difficult, but over time, your learn how to do it the right way.

Probably the best advice I have heard regarding learning some thing new is summed up in the following short phrase: “Slow To Smooth To Fast”.

Whenever you are trying to learn something new, you brain will become confused. It will be doing things, it has never done before or making your body do things it has never done before. It can be quite challenging. But the secret is to just take things slow and learn to do them the right way. Proper execution and form are crucial.

If you do it slow and with proper technique, you will build a solid foundation upon which you will be able to build something amazing. If you start taking shortcuts, you will have a weak foundation, which will not support your dreams.

At first you will be choppy, and things will take you forever to finish. But the more you do it the right way, the faster your body will learn how to handle it. Over time, you will transform into smooth. Your movements might be slow, but they will be smooth and executed properly. Equipped with slow, smooth and proper execution, you will be ready to move on.

You will move to becoming faster. Speed will come with practice. With practice, you will master it and over time you will start asking yourself how could have ever not known how to do this.

Keep this in mind – Slow To Smooth To Fast – in anything you do. It does not matter if you are picking up a new subject at school, learning a new sport, a new instrument or whatever, remember the magic formula and never take shortcuts and you will be surprised how much faster you will get to where you want to go by taking things slow.

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

It’s All About Stress

Stress is not created equal. Some is good, some is bad. Yet, in the end it is all just stimulus, which we respond to. Some of us respond to it consciously, some of us just go with the flow. It is very important to understand how you react to stress if you want to learn how to better manage it. Like everything in life, change and progress begins with awareness.

There is no better way to learn how you respond to stress than by engaging in physical exercise. If you observe how you react to stress (weight) in physical exercise, you will be able to become more aware of how you handle stress in other situations. There are plenty other parallels between life and lifting that I would like to discuss. You will observe the following lessons yourself if you just take the time to go to the gym.

There. Now you have another reason to go workout instead of just getting in shape.

Lifting For Life

Stress is necessary for growth. When you lift, you place your body under stress – a stimulus that your body is not used to. Your body responds with pain. It will tell you that it hurts, that it is heavy, sweaty and uncomfortable. Yet, that pain is necessary for muscle growth. That is the ONLY way, that our bodies will become stronger. The phrase, use it or lose it, is as true as ever. Same thing is true for life. If there is no stress in our life, then there is no new stimulus being introduced and we began to stagnate and digress. Only through exposing ourselves to new and unique situations you will be able to lead a progressive life.

Not all stress is created equal. If you life, then you know that there is good pain and bad pain. Same way there is good stress and bad stress in life. The good pain in lifting is the one that stimulates growth. It is by no means comfortable, yet it is very motivating because you know are achieving your goals. The bad pain is the one that causes injury, fatigue, and unhappiness when you lift. It is important to learn how to interpret those two signals. Good pain or stress should motivate you to keep pushing yourself to achieve your goals. Bad pain should be a signal to slow down, rest and recover and figure out what you are doing wrong. Life works in the same way. We need to understand when to push ourselves and when to pull back.

Strong get stronger. Weak get weaker. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Rich get richer? Poor get poorer? And it is true as always. Once you start lifting and becoming stronger, you will only be able to do more and more, push yourself further and further. Those that chose to never start lifting, will increasingly get weaker as they will fail to expose themselves to the stress required to build strength. The difference between the strong and the weak is the ability and desire to get through the temporary growing pains. I am talking about that time when you are trying to get back in gym after a year of no lifting. At first, it will feel as if you have destroyed every single muscle tissue in your body. Yet, if you are able to push on, you will soon start reaping the reward of progress and growth. The only question is this: “Are you able to push yourself through the growing pains?”

Variety is key for progress. If you have lifted for a while, then at some point you will hit a plateau. It is a point at which your positive gains seems to have stopped. No matter what you seem to be doing, it almost seems like you are stuck. However, before you give up, consider a couple of things. Sometimes, all that is needed to move beyond that “stuck point” is some variety. It might in the from of lighter weight, more repetitions, different exercises all together or maybe some help from a friend. Stagnation comes from exposure to the exact sames stress over long periods of time. After a while our bodies simply adapt to it and that same stimulus just does not have the same effect as it did before. Similarly in life, we sometimes feel stuck because we have been doing the same routine over and over again. Just a little bit of variety might be needed to brighten things up.

Don’t do it alone. Weight lifting is a stress inducing activity on its own. Doing it all by yourself can be very discouraging as you might not have anybody to share your joys and your downfalls with. Finding a partner who will be there to spot you, to motivate you, to encourage you is crucial to success and progress. Another added benefit of a partner is that you will have somebody to compete with, which will further advance your growth. Find a proper partner is not that easy as many people are flaky, not committed, negative or just not focused. It is a great lesson to carry forward with you on to any other activity in life. When starting a new activity, be sure to look for the right person to come along, otherwise you might take a step back instead of a step forward. Moreover, be prepared to start alone and find somebody else along the way.

Build proper foundation. Nothing will set you back more than an injury. Injury can take you out for days, weeks, months or ever years. I have experienced it myself. Most of the injuries come from improper technique or form. It is crucial to do things that right way. You might be inclined to add more and more weight as soon as possible without understand the fundamentals. In that case, you would be just cheating yourself and heading towards a serious injury. It is better to take things slow and learn how to do the exercises properly than to rush into things only to suffer a major set back later. I am sure many of you, have experienced this in other areas of life. Sometimes you are so eager to get things started that you forget to set up a proper foundation.

Attitude matters. Some might describe lifting and exercising as boring, repetitive, sweaty, hard, painful and so on. And they would be right. It is all of those things. But at the same time, it is challenging, rewarding, fun, energizing, empowering and confidence creating activity. It is only a matter of which side you choose. All of these different words can describe the same exact activity. The ones that you will choose to describe your exercises will make you either love it or hate it. Likewise, we all are living the same life, how do you choose to look at it?

Consistency results in lasting gains. Many people lift for short periods of time and then quit. Then they start over. By doing that, they never move beyond the starting point. It might be even more discouraging that doing nothing. Only those that stick with the activity for extended periods of time without major breaks will be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. After a while, your body will require you to exercise and stay active. Eventually, you might be able to change the way you feel about being active and you will not have to think twice about going to the gym. Same is true for any other area in life. Lasting results will come from persistent purposeful actions.

The truth is that the list could go on and on. I could easily twenty other things that I have learned about life from just exercising. But then you all would have no reason to exercise! Just kidding. Indeed, working out is a rewarding activity that will teach you not only about your body, but about how you handle stress and life all together. Look for clues in your own behavior and you might learn valuable insights in other areas of your life.

So what are you waiting for? The secrets of life are waiting to reveal themselves at your local gym!

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Image: jontunn

I have been writing on a regular basis for four months now. Writing is a form of self examination, a way to express the ideas and thoughts that matter to you the most. Given enough time, you will start noticing reoccurring thoughts and ideas, which will eventually form patterns.

I would like to share one pattern that, I believe, is the root cause for people’s unhappiness in their life. It is a simple, yet powerful observation. I am not trying praise myself here. I truly believe that the following observation holds a lot of weight if fully understood.

People lead unhappy lives because they cannot tell the difference between the means and the ends.

To be more exact, people think that some means are the ends. If we were to understand things for what they are, our lives would be much simpler. To make things clear, let us define means and ends.

I look at means as tools, which help you achieve your ends or goals. Let us assume we are building a house. House is our end, it is our goal. It is something that we want to accomplish. In order to do that, we are going to need a variety of tools: bricks, cement, wood, hammers, nails, glass, etc. Pretty simple stuff.

However, for some reason, when it comes to our personal lives, we are in the fog as to what the tools are and what the goals are. Actually, most of us are in the fog because we have no clear set goals of what we want to accomplish in our lives. That is why misinterpret some of the tools to be our goals. Only if we took the time to figure out what it is that we want to accomplish in our lives, then the distinction between means and ends would be clear.

Ends would be something that we have defined ourselves as a specific measurable and objective goal  that we want to achieve and means would be everything else.

I know it all sounds a bit complex, but let us look at two of the most common misinterpretations that people make.

“Being happy is my goal”. I disagree. Being happy should never be anyone’s goal. Happiness is just an emotion. It is an important emotion, which only tells us that whatever we are doing now is good for us and it is important to us. I believe it is a mistake to chase “being happy” as the purpose of life. Happiness is a side effect of achieving your goals that you have set for yourself. Happiness is a side effect of following your life’s purpose. That is all. If we confuse happiness to be something that we must achieve, then we automatically doom ourselves for unhappiness. Do not make this mistake. Remember and repeat the following: Happiness is a side effect of me following my life’s purpose.

“I want to be rich”. I disagree. Being rich should never be anybody’s goal. Money is just a tool that can be used to accomplish our goals. Simultaneously, it is a side effect of achieving your goals and following your life’s passion. That is where true wealth lies: in becoming what you have always dreamed of becoming. If you make being rich as one of your goals, then once you achieve this “goal”, you will feel empty and betrayed. Please do not make this mistake.  Remember and repeat the following: Wealth is side effect of me following my life’s purpose.

I can promise you that if you understand and differentiate between means and ends, you will be able to lead a rich and fulfilling life. However, if you mistake means for ends, be prepared for the unpleasant.

Which road do you want to take? Which road are you on right now?

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”– Thoreau

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Image: thefost

Have you ever set out to accomplish a fairly vague goal such as becoming better at something. That something could be speaking, writing, socializing, networking, basketball, programming and so on. Since better is a very vague word, it is inherently hard to measure our progress or know how we are doing.

For example, I set out into the blogging world. I just wanted to share my thoughts with the rest of the world, help a couple of people. Nothing big. Then I started getting into it, as I realized vast opportunities that blogging presents. And then, I realized that if I want to make anything out of my blog, I have to improve my writing.

A tool of communication with the rest of the world! Sounds pretty important doesn’t it?

Well, as I progressed through my journey, I felt that I was getting better at it, but I was not sure. So I decided to ask for feedback. It’s one of the best choices I have made.

It does not matter what you are trying to get better at; you NEED to know how you are doing. Are you running a project and want to know if the customer is pleased? Are you working on speech and you want to know if it is coming along well? If so, then the best way to get better at something is to ask for feedback. Period.

Here is why.

• It will show others that you care. What better way to show others that you care about what you do than by earnestly asking for genuine feedback? Even if it is something that you are doing for yourself (such as blogging, public speaking, project management, programming, etc), by asking others for feedback you will get them thinking about you. Your friends, co-workers, or family will become more aware of what you are doing and often will help you improve faster by providing  you with additional tools, advice or just general support.

• You will know your own progress. You will be able to understand if the actions that you are taking are helping you or hurting you. Feedback will help you figure out if you are moving too fast, too slow, putting enough, too much or too little effort in achieving your goals. Often times, we will have an idea of how we are doing, but feedback can work as a “reality check” for us to maintain awareness of our actions.

• You will push yourself out of your comfort zone. Naturally, you will have to put yourself out there when asking for feedback. You might have to force yourself to talk to your boss, your spouse, your children, your coworkers, strangers and friends in order to get feedback about the topic that concerns you. How is that pushing myself out of my comfort zone you might ask? Well, if you are asking for feedback be prepared to hear the good, the bad and the ugly. Especially the bad and the ugly. But that is exactly why feedback is important. If everybody just told you the good stuff while hiding the bad, what good would it do to you? NOTHING. So expect and learn how to deal with criticism and remember that a failure just points to an area for improvement.

• You will push others out of their comfort zone. This is a tough one. Believe or not people are very nice. Most of  us will do the most we can to avoid any sort of conflict. That is exactly what you are doing when you are asking for feedback, HONEST feedback. I am going to say it again: ask for HONEST feedback. That means others will have to tell you the bad and the ugly as well as the good stuff. That in itself is a recipe for conflict. People are worried about hurting others feelings by telling them the truth EVEN when they ask for it! Be sure to emphasize honesty because if they will try to play a nice person and hold things back from you, then you  and the other person will lose on the opportunities for growth by putting yourselves into a conflict situation.

• It will open up channels of communication. Naturally, this will force you to communicate and even talk openly to people which you would generally not even say “Hi” to.  This can be a great conversation starter and a catalyst for new friendships. You might discover new friends along the way who will help you excel even further by being honest and resourceful.

I personally experienced all of the above effects of feedback by asking my friend and fellow blogger Oleg Mokhov to provide me with honest feedback on my writing. It’s great and one of the more overlooked resources for growth. Because of this important information that I am receiving from Oleg, I am able to write better and better growing my blog and attracting more readers and hopefully helping them improve their lives!

You can do it too! All you have to do is ASK.

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Image: Don Moyer

We are all fully aware after we eat too much, drink too much, sleep too much, work too much and so on. We know because our body tells us so.

However, our body never really sends us a signal to stop consuming information. We are bombarded with information from the time we get up until the time when we go to sleep. Information comes in a variety of flavors: news, movies, TV shows, blogs, magazines, weather, YouTube videos, advertising, e-mail and so on. Our brain is constantly stimulated with information throughout the day and rarely, if ever, it will tell us that it has had enough.

That is exactly why we have to become aware of how much information we are consuming.

Information Obesity

Chances are you never really sit down and think about consuming too much information. Do you really need to watch those TV shows; read, watch or listen to news; read and track every single blog out there? Probably not. Many of us are just information consuming machines, just like some people are food consuming machines: it’s just important to eat, does not really matter what. You could call the phenomenon of people consuming too much information the information obesity.

It is time to trim the fat!

Trim The Fat

The process is really simple and pain free if you answer the following questions:

• Does this information add any value to me?
• Can I use this information to achieve my goals?
• Is this information relevant to my life?
• Does this information help me make decisions in my life?
• Does this information have any long-term lasting value?

You could add a couple of additional questions, but you get the idea. You can do away with most of the information that you are currently consuming in your life. You have to become selective with what information you consume and eliminate the information that is irrelevant to you.

Why Do It?

There are a couple of reasons to limit your information consumption. First, the more information you consume the more value it losses. Your brain can only process so much information without starting to selectively ignore it. Moreover, think about the opportunity cost of mindlessly consuming the information you don’t need. You could instead be absorbing that what really matters to you. Also, over-consumption of information will cost you a lot of emotional energy because you will react to information that has little to do with your life. Over time that will cause you to become insensitive to the information that you see around yourself essentially numbing your brain.

Sure, many of you will say, but I need to know! I need to know what is going on the world, I need to know how the celebrities are doing, I must know about all the technology that is coming out, I must watch the favorite show and so on and so forth. However, if you really sit down ask yourself the questions listed above, you will realize that you only need so much information to get you closer to accomplishing your goals in life.

If you are able to do this and limit the information to what only matters to you, then many changes will take place in your life. You will have more time and energy. You will be able to focus more. Your day will seem less busy and much more calm. You will stop worrying about the things that you can do nothing about. You will feel happier. More importantly, you will free up your brain power so that you can use it towards things that matter and achieve results faster. Trust me! I have done it myself.

I did it!

I have not watched TV in months. Matter of fact, I do not even have cable TV at my home. I barely read news (if ever). I have blocked websites using LeechBlock which were sucking up a ton of my time: Hulu, Gmail, Facebook and so on. I have limited my access to those sites to only certain times and hours within the week. I read only the books and blogs that matter to me and that will help me accomplish my goals in life: become a financial planner/advisor, become independent, improve my spiritual well being and many others.

It’s easy – JUST TURN IT OFF.

People love setting goals. Not too many people achieve them. Why? I think it is because people set goals without thinking. They set them because everybody else around them is doing it. Seldom people ask: “Why do I need this goal? What will accomplishing this goal accomplish in my life?” I am going to attempt to correct this situation with this article.

Read on.

I have never set yearly goals before this year because I always had my life planned out for me: register for classes, work out, get a degree and so on. However, now that I am a free man, it makes a lot of sense to set goals. Many people call this the New Years resolution, but I just despise the word because to me it represent the epidemic of laziness. So let us just call it goals.

The key question for me was: “What type of goals do I set?”

I knew it had to do something with the purpose of life that I have defined for myself: “Evolve by consciously seeking and learning from unique value adding experiences with a purpose of becoming a positive role model.” Yet, that was too vague.

I had to narrow it down. I did not want to pick random goals without any purpose in my mind. Then I thought that I should set life long goals that would support my life’s purpose. But then, how do I know that these life long goals will not change over time? It was a bummer.

Then I remembered!

I had to choose goals that would support my core values which are aligned with my purpose of life! It all made so much sense! Values define who we are and guide us in our lives. Therefore, if I want to have a clear sense of who I am and the direction of where I am going, then I must reinforce my values. I can reinforce them by setting goals that are congruent with those values.

For example, some of my values are independence, growth and experience. As I was looking over the list of my values, I realized that I was neglecting a major value of mine: independence. The next simple step was to just think of things which would enable me to become more independent.

It was easy!

I wrote them all out. I repeated the process until I had a complete list of major purposeful goals that I want accomplish in 2010. You can do it too!

Before you start you will need two major ingredients:

• Your Purpose Of Life
• Your Core Values

Once you have those taken care of, you can easily proceed by asking yourself a simple question: “Am I living this value in my life?” If not, then you simply ask yourself: “What do I need to do to start living this value?”

It is very simple and easy easy process, but it requires a lot of set up time: coming with the purpose of your life and discovering your core values. However, once it is all said and done, you will feel great as you will know the exact direction in which you need to take your life!

Happy Exploring!