I am very excited to share with you all yet another guest post.

This time, I wrote an article for Goodlife ZEN.

“You can find weekly, practical inspiration at Goodlife ZEN. Get a new take on life, find creative ways to make your wildest dreams come true, and become what you aspire to be.”

Warm thanks go out to Mary, who gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts on her great and inspiring blog.

5 ways to escape the escapist weekend

Here is an excerpt form the article:

“It is Thursday. You are already thinking about Friday. It is Friday morning. You are thinking about Friday afternoon. It is Friday afternoon. It is here.

What do you do?

We all look forward to weekends because it is the time for us to relax, become refreshed, and energized. Ironically enough, only a few us manage to do that. The rest of us just use the weekends to escape from our problems, troubles, work, and “reality” all together.”

Click here to continue reading…

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Image: nattu

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

I sometimes wait to write later in the day. Sometimes I do it because I don’t have time in the morning. Sometimes I just wait for inspiration. Inspiration comes from the articles I read or the experiences throughout the day. Well, this article is inspired by an event that happened today.

If you guess that I was pissed off because of the event, then you are right. The only good thing that is going to come out of that negative experience is this article.

The Mistake

In the past, I wrote how disagreement can create value. Many times it provides a different perspective on the same issue and so on. However, arguing has to be done the right way, otherwise it can lead to resentment.

From my experience today, I have come to the following conclusion: before engaging in a conversation and proposing your own perspective on an issue, make sure you understand the other person’s perspective completely.

If you do not take the time to completely understand the other person, then you will just end up insulting the other individual by making assumptions. Also, it is extremely difficult to even talk to a person when you know they did not care enough to research and understand your point of view.

Moreover, when you make assumptions without having the whole picture, you are going into the conversation with a closed mind with a predetermined outcome in your mind. That is the exact reason why you are not able to understand the other person completely to begin with. Your emotions and your prejudice get in the way. Your mind gets closed off before the interaction even starts.

Going to a conversation with a closed mind and a lack of complete information, you are sure to piss somebody off. Even if you won’t piss them off, they will be hesitant to ever talk to you again.

The Solution

So how do you actually avoid making this mistake?

1.Try to figure out why you want to engage in the interaction to begin with. Figure out your intentions first. If your intentions are to prove the other person wrong, then you might as well just drop the idea. However, if you intend to learn a different perspective  and suggest an alternative view to the other person, then that in itself will help you keep an open mind.

2.Do your research before engaging in an interaction. If you have the right mindset, then do your best to understand the different perspective. This will require you leaving the emotions behind you and understanding things for what they are. This will challenge you, but do your best.

3.Clarify before making a point. After completing the above two steps, here comes the crucial one. Summarize the other persons perspective to your opponent to make sure you understand their point of view exactly. This will show the other person that you actually took the time to understand their perspective and did your homework instead of just unloading your views and perceptions on them.

Do the above three steps and you will be able engage in more meaningful connections with other individuals. Try it out and see the magic work. This is part of the art of listening, truly listening. This is the skill that will help you open new doors and deeper understanding about life.

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Image: danorbit

I wrote a guest post for Write To Done, which I would love to share with the rest of you! Before, I go into that, I would like to thank Mary for being so open to my ideas and accepting the article! I felt amazing after she said yes! After all, over 15,000 subscribers received my article. Talk about peer pressure :)

The article talks about the blogosphere as playground: a place where we can have fun and just play for the sake of playing. If you want to learn or remember how to play, then you might to check out the article.

Either way, here are some of the bits from the article:

“I have one question for you: “When did you grow up?”

OKAY, that is actually just the first question. Here’s the rest.

Do you remember that exact moment when you decided to stop having fun and start being serious? Do you know when your careless smile was replaced by a frown? Do you know when you stopped believing in your dreams and decided to become reasonable?

Maybe it was around the time when you stopped playing.
Until that point, the whole world seemed to be your playground!”

If you are curious as to what happens next, read on:

The Ultimate Playground: Blogosphere

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Image: soulholder

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.

Habits Run Your Life

Life is simple.For the most part it is run by habits that we acquire over our lives. When I use the term habit I refer to a default way of responding to a reoccurring situation. Habits form because life is repetitive – common things happen over and over again. People act in predictable ways and our brain subconsciously starts responding in a preset way to certain reoccurring events.

Many of us, however, make it difficult by adopting the wrong habits. We start responding in such a way that is destructive to our lives. For example, people form the habits of negative thinking, laziness, pessimism, failure, depression, victim mentality and so on as a default way of dealing with tough situations.

Most of the time, people are not even aware of their destructive habit until somebody tells them so. Habits form because of the environment that we live in and because of the people that we are surrounded by. Humans learn by imitation and if we see something done enough times, we tend to accept as the default behavior to a particular situation. You can image what happens when a person grows up surround by the wrong role models – a ton of destructive habits that can run our lives into shambles.

If we were only able to change those destructive habits into constructive ones our lives would become a lot more simple and much more rewarding. That is all there is to it. Of course: “Easier said than done.”

How To Simplify Your Life

You could take the following steps to simplify your life.

• Become aware of your own destructive habits. This might the hardest step of them all. As I have mentioned before, most of the time we are not aware of us becoming engaged in a destructive action. A simple way to see if the action is destructive is to check if it interferes with your goals or your life purpose or if it slows your growth and development as an individual.

• Become aware of the situations in which you respond in a destructive way. Once you have identified your destructive habits, you will have to closely watch when the habit reoccurs and try to figure out what caused it. For example, if you start smoking after you become stressed out, you will know the stress is the trigger for smoking.

• Make a list. The next step is fairly intuitive. List your destructive habits along with situations that trigger them. Write it down and carry it with you. Glance over it daily so that you become more and more aware of the situations that trigger your destructive responses.

• Prepare a list of constructive responses. Once you have a clear list of the situations that trigger your destructive habits, create a completely new list of constructive habits to replace your destructive ones. For example, try this: instead of going for a smoke when you get stressed out, take a 5-10 walk outside as a new default response. The thing is, habits do not disappear, they must be replaced with a new habit; otherwise your brain will find its own default way of dealing with the situation. After all, habits exist for a reason – they offer us quick solution to common events. So it is in your benefit to make sure that you respond in a positive manner as opposed to becoming your own obstacle.

• Practice. That is how habits are created – by repetition. That is the only way to create a constructive habit that will change your life – practice. The more you practice the less you will have to think about it. Eventually, it will seem to just happen naturally. It might take years, months , or weeks for your brain to form new neuron connections and accept a new way of behaving.

• Reward yourself. This is helpful, but not required to reinforce a new positive habit. Think of something that will help you act one way versus the other. It might things as simple as watching your favorite show, treating yourself to a nice meal, a movie or a spa to reward yourself for your effort.

I Simplified My Life

Here is a very simple example from my own personal life to illustrate the above point. I was addicted to watching cartoons before going to sleep. I just had to watch them, or otherwise I could not sleep. This would keep me up until 1AM or 2AM  every night. Naturally, it would interfere with my work the next day as I would be sleep and tired the whole time.

The situation that caused me to watch cartoons was stress from the whole day. Simple enough. My destructive habit was watching cartoons. Once I had that, I had to write down a new constructive habit – it was meditation. So slowly but surely, I was able to cut out cartoons before going to bed and I would start meditating. It worked!

Now before I go to bed, I meditate. Mediation seems to work like magic and now I can go to sleep on time without wasting precious hours watching cartoons. Of course, because of that I am less stressed out the next day and meditating becomes much easier before going to bed. It’s a win win!

QUESTION: How could you use this technique to simplify your life?

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Photo: Flickr

I went skydiving and I survived. I am here to show and tell and share my experience with you all and encourage you to take on more risks in life which will change you forever!

Why Skydiving

Skydiving seems to be the ultimate challenge for the most people in life. It looks so scary and life threatening, but yet at the same time somehow safe.

When I told people that I am going skydiving, the typical response I heard was: “Why would I want to jump out of a perfectly good plane?” I did not know how to respond to those people. Maybe it was not for them. After all, it was their choice and their life.

I did not want to convince them to join me, but I knew that I had perfectly good reasons for skydiving:

• unique experience of a life time
• an exercise in overcoming the fear of fear
• making a tough decision and sticking with it
• challenging myself
• putting myself out of my comfort zone

Why I Went Alone

To my surprise I heard a couple of people saying that they wanted to go skydiving as well! I was excited! I did not want to do it alone!

Almost all of them told me: “Yea! It’s awesome! Let’s do it!”

Then I would follow up with them and all I would hear would be this: “Yea, I am busy that weekend”; “I had change of plans”, etc. I was disappointed, but I was expecting that. I came to expect for people to say one thing and do a different one. It seems that most of us are just scared of taking risks and rather stick with what we know.

Finally, I realized that if I waited for somebody else to come along , I would never end up go skydiving. I had to do it alone. So I just picked a date, signed up and waited to go skydiving. It felt good, but I was already getting nervous.

I Was Afraid

To be exact, I was afraid. No doubt about that. I had a list of questions and images running through my head:

• Am I going to die?
• If I die, is it going to be painful?
• How am i going to feel when I realize that I am going to die?
• Am I going to break my back?
• Is it safe?
• What if the parachute doesn’t go off?
• What if the plane crashes?
• How much experience does every body else have?
• What are the chances of death?
• What’s the worst thing that can happen?
• etc.

Luckily, I realized that skydiving is just like breathing to some people. I realized that I was not alone in my adventure. The Falling Illini president took me to the skydiving spot. He has done over 200 jumps! I did not even think that anybody would jump out of a plane more than once.

He was able to answer many of my questions and concerns and explained how everything worked. That provided me with some peace of mind. However, words did not mean much and I was as afraid as ever.

Still, I stuck with the plan. While we were driving, it all seemed surreal: I wasn’t really going to go skydiving; this is just a dream! Reality kicked in when we finally arrived and I saw the planes, the parachutes, the field, and people landing from 10,000 feet in the air.

I was not alone. People from all different ages, different levels of experience and different walks of life gathered that day to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

Finally, I paid. The actions were set in motion and there was no turning back. . Slowly but surely, my turn to skydive came. As I was getting ready, I wanted to scream and shout: “Hold up! Can I have some more time? I am not ready! I need more time!” and so on. Yet, things just kept moving and before I knew it I was on the plane. What happened next is history.

I did it!

Lessons Learned

After I landed, I had a lot of time to think and relax. Everything that I just did started to sink in. Here is what I learned from the whole experience:

• Just do it! Just go ahead and do it. If it is something that you want to do, nothing will stop you. All you have to do is decide to do it. Once the first domino falls, the rest will seem seamless and easy. Deciding to do something is key.
• Face the fear. Diving into the unknown, into uncertainty is scary! But the only way to conquer that fear is to face and keep going despite it. Fear is just an emotion saying to you: “You are doing something you have not done before!” That’s great! You are exploring unknown territories within yourself. You are growing!
• Be prepared to go alone. Most people will not face the fear. They will stay where they are. They are not comfortable with the emotion of fear, but you are! That is why there is a chance that you will start alone. It might be discouraging, but rewards in life come with a price.
• You are not alone. You might start out alone, but you will not end up alone. There are other courageous people out there, who are carving their own destiny, their own path in life. Once you leave the ones that are afraid, you will me the ones who are courageous.
• Seek guidance. You are not the first and not the last to travel this new road that you chose. Others have done it. Find them. Find them and ask them questions. Their knowledge will enlighten your path and ease your fears. Uncertainty makes us afraid. We like to know things. So educate yourself about your fear until the uncertainty is gone!
• Prepare for a change. Once you face and overcome your fear, you will change. You will change in ways you did not expect. Your current environment, you current friends and your current lifestyle might not seem appropriate for the person that you have become. But that’s the price of change. Are you willing to pay?

I Changed

Indeed, after skydiving many things changed. Everything seemed so trivial. Skydiving was like whole new world that I have not realized existed. Coming back to “reality” was weird: the sky did not look the same, people did not look the same to me, my fears were not the scary any more.

Most importantly, I became comfortable with uncertainty. I became comfortable with taking risk and facing my fears. I became comfortable with making tough decisions is sticking by them. I felt like I was born all over again.

It’s Your Turn

You do not have to go skydiving to go skydiving. There are so many opportunities in life where you can put yourself at risk, face your fears and realize how trivial they were. You will start looking at a world through a different pair of glasses. Danger will turn in opportunity, fear will turn into growth.

Do you want to go skydiving without going skydiving? If so:

• Go speak in front of a large group of people – you will survive!
• Go ask the girl or guy out – you will survive!
• Stand up for yourself – you will survive!
• Quit your crappy job – you will survive!
• Do what you want to do – you will survive!

Not only you will survive, you will learn and grow and become stronger and stronger with each new experience!

Loneliness

Everybody has been lonely at some point in their lives. Sometimes we feel lonely when we are in a huge crowd; sometimes we feel lonely when we are by ourselves. Loneliness seems to creep up on people without them knowing.

I have known people who had nothing  – no friends, no money, no careers, no motivation – who felt lonely. I have known successful people who had it all – careers, money and friends – who felt lonely. I have known people who went from being lonely while having nothing to being lonely while having everything.

Why do we get lonely? How do we deal it with loneliness? If we want to answer those questions, we have to first answer this question: “What is Loneliness”?

What Is Loneliness

Loneliness is the feeling of being disconnected from the rest of the people. It is the inability to relate to others on any level: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. At least that is how I understand it. That would explain why very successful people and very unsuccessful people can feel lonely – most people find it hard to relate to them and vice versa.

It would also explain the expression: “It is lonely at the top”. It is true. Yet, we can take the above example and define it more broadly. It would be fair to say that people are going to feel lonely when they engage themselves in activities that most people cannot relate to. So if you find yourself feeling lonely, you are most likely on the very positive or the very negative end of the spectrum of human experiences.

How to Deal with Loneliness

Once we examined what loneliness is and why feel lonely, we can take the next step and examine how to deal with loneliness. The basic idea underlying all the below listed tools has something to do with reconnecting with other people.

1. Change your perspective. It might be all in your head. You might be just imagining that nobody can relate to you. Think of ways of how other people can be experiencing what you are this moment as well. It will help you feel more grounded and more human because of that shared experience.
2. Change the people you surround yourself with. If you discover that you truly cannot relate to the people around you, it might be time to change your environment and find some new friends to hang out with. It is possible that you could have outgrown your peers; it also possible that they have outgrown you.
3. Open up. Chances are that if you are feeling lonely it is because you cannot relate to others or they cannot relate to you. Either of those scenarios could be solved by simply talking to people around. Be vulnerable and tell them how you feel. More likely than not, you will discover that people will be able to relate to you more than you think. After all it has been said that the more personal the matter, the more universal it is.
4. Gain experience. It might be time to get out there and experience life to be able to connect with others better. Since people build friendships around the feeling commonality and shared experiences, it is important to create those experiences. Not being able to do so might cause you to feel lonely.

If I had to sum all the above, I would say the following: “If you want to stop feeling lonely, find or create an experience that you can share with others.” No matter how unique you think you are, chances are the everybody else has gone through what you are going through.

You will be able to lead a richer life because of ability to connect with others. You never know who is out there that needs your help or who out there is willing to help. So go out there, and experience and show everybody that you are a human being just like the rest of us. People will appreciate that.

My Experience

I am not a fan of competition. I never liked it. Ever since I was a young child, I had bad experiences with competition. Every time I engaged in some competitive activity,I instantly felt alienated and unwelcome among my peers. It seemed that everybody was trying to get to the top at my expense.

For example, when I played basketball, the other basketball players would try to put me down and belittle me.  They achieved their goals. Their negative words and attitudes would get into my head. My performance would suffer. Moreover, my spirits would go down and I would feel unmotivated to play basketball. It was hard and unpleasant for me to even walk into the locker room. I started becoming afraid of my teammates and even the game itself. Naturally, any competitive act caused me to feel negative emotions and would instantly paralyze me.

These emotions are still with me today. They are not nearly as strong or as powerful as they used to be, but they are there. I have learned to deal with them. Yet, for a long time my confidence suffered. My overall view of self-worth went down and it was hard to bring it back up.

Change

Yet, I knew it was up to me to change. I had to change my perspective and take responsibility for my actions. I realized that other people will not change. It was not worth my effort or being upset over it. I had to change the way I responded to and treated people around me.

Let us go through my experiences with basketball. The first thing I tried to do to bring my confidence up was to lift harder and work harder every day in practice. It worked. I was becoming stronger and more athletic. I was able to compete with others and even gain their respect. However, I started loosing respect for other basketball players myself. I felt like it was the time for me to pay back for all of my bad experiences in basketball. I became overly aggressive, angry and pushy. Naturally, nobody liked it. It caused resentment and people did not want to play with me. Team basketball suffered and I felt hurt again.

At that time, I did not recognize exactly what was going on. All I knew was that people were not fond of playing basketball on the same team with me. I realized that I was treating others just like how I was being treated myself for a largo portion of my life. I needed to evolve. The change came. I was not aware of it until recently. The change came because I changed my perspective. Instead of looking through the glasses of competition, I started using the glasses of competitive collaboration.

Competitive Collaboration

Competitive collaboration is all about growing while helping others grow. It is about engaging yourself in “win win” situations. The first “win” stands for your own “win”. The second one stand for helping others “win”. My experience with basketball illustrates that. Early in my basketball career I was engaging myself in “lose win” situations: I would lose; others would win. Later on, it changed to: “win lose”. I would win, while others would lose. Only recently it started evolving into “win win” situations.

Competitive collaboration is about creating a friendly and supportive environment where you are striving forward by helping others become better at the same time. It is not all about you. It is about respecting other persons. It is about pushing yourself to reach new goals and pushing the other individuals to achieve new heights as well. See, if you surround yourself with positive people who you show respect for and help them grow, you will naturally foster and an environment of support and respect for yourself.

Key element of competitive collaboration is sharing of information. It is beneficial on many levels. You get to test your ideas with others and see how they react. Your “competitors” might provide you with feedback and ways to improve on your ideas. They might offer you support in implementing them. They might also share their ideas and you could learn from each other.

Notice, however, that sharing information is beneficial for both parties involved. You would be naturally forced to keep innovating, keep thinking of better ideas to keep growing. Sharing of information opens up doors to opportunities that would not have otherwise existed.  It also shows that you are confident and mature person who is constantly pushing oneself to new heights.

Let us see how this applies to my experiences with basketball. I noticed that if I stared respecting others and recognizing people for doing a good job, I would get more respect back. I would get the ball more often. In playing pickup games, people would be more likely to pick me up. There was no resentment and no anger while playing; that reduced the chance of injury or even a fight. It made the experience of basketball much more enjoyable and fun.

Engage Yourself in Competitive Collaboration

In short, if you want to stop competing, but want to start competitively collaborating do the following:

1. Show respect towards others.
2. Show appreciation of others.
3. Push others to grow.
4. Support others when they are down.
5. Share your knowledge and ideas with others.

So, stop being a competitor and become a competitive collaborator. It will change your life.