Choose to do something difficult every day. It will make you stronger and help you realize your potential. How will you ever know your limits if you never fail and only practice things that are within your comfort zone?
Tag: self-improvement
Adversity, self-improvement, and fulfillment
Challenge and adversity sucks when you’re in the thick of it. It can seem like the hardship will never end. But just like all good things must come to an end, so too must all bad things. Life goes on – it stops for no one and nothing.
The great part about overcoming adversity is that it tests you and lets you know what you’re really made of. When life seems too easy and you’re completely comfortable, we often lack the intrinsic motivation to strive for self-improvement. But when we face difficulties and need to get something done, often times you will rise to the challenge. How will we know our limits if we never challenge ourselves (or are not challenged by outside circumstances)?
Think about how you can push yourself today – how you can test yourself. Have you been living a soft, cushy life for too long now? If so, do you feel that you’ve come close to reaching your full potential or is there more to go? And the other, more important, question…do you even care to reach your full potential? There’s no judgment if you don’t. You need to feel fulfilled and only you can determine that.
Impactful hours
The Wealthy Gardener discusses the idea of how the most productive people take advantage of maximizing their time by adding impact hours and minimizing the amount of hollow hours throughout their day.
We all have the same amount of time in the day, but clearly some people have more impact than others. Clearly some can accomplish more in the same amount of time than others.
Why is this so?
It is because they use their hours more effectively to create better results. Even though they have the same 24 hours as everyone else, they have fewer hollow (aka “wasted”) hours. What would an example of a hollow hour be? Watching Netflix, scrolling through social media, doing nothing to move you forward or achieve your goals.
Your goal should be to fill your day up with more impactful hours. What actions do you need to take to move the needle in getting you closer to your goals?
On holidays
A lot of people love holidays and birthdays. They enjoy gift giving, gift receiving, recognizing others on their special day, or being recognized on their own special day.
As I was thinking about it yesterday (Father’s Day), I realized that I really enjoy the holidays and birthdays too. But I honestly don’t care about receiving gifts or recognition. That’s not my love language. Holidays and birthdays are just another day to me. What I love about the holidays though is having a set day, a reminder, to take some time off from work. It’s almost like a forced break. It’s a scheduled day in our calendar where it’s not only socially acceptable to not work that day, it’s actually encouraged and it’s a little strange to be working.
It’s important for the hard-drivers (the people who are always focused on work, achievement, and improvement) to take some time off. Because too often, we are thinking about what we need to do next, when really we need to just enjoy time with our loved ones – the ones who make our lives worth living.
So, yes…I enjoy holidays too. But it’s not for the reason many think about.
Choose your mood
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” – Abraham Lincoln
Have you ever noticed something that triggers one person and puts them in “a mood” for the rest of the day, but a similar event has no affect on a different person? Why is that?
It seems like some people are predisposed to being angry at the smallest things – letting everything around them affect how they’re feeling at that moment. But it really doesn’t have to be that way. In most cases, it only takes a mindset shift to live a happier, less stressful life. Obviously there are things that happen to us that are very serious. Thinking positively doesn’t necessarily make the situation all better, but it’s still the better choice to make rather than dwelling on the negative. Regardless of how do you think about the situation, you probably can’t control those outside events and you can’t change the past. But you can control how you respond to them.
Choose to be happy and see the good in every situation. Why would you want to choose to be anything other than happy?