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are abundant. Folks of all many years utilize these games to enhance psychological functioning and mind aging that is counter.

Mind training can help enhance your memory, reaction time, and logic abilities, although studies have shown that the connection between mind training games and enhanced functionality is intellectually complicated. A good work out and have now enjoyable too, decide to try these games and tasks which could boost your psychological focus and physical fitness if you wish to offer your head.

Sudoku

Sudoku is just a real quantity positioning game that utilizes short-term memory. To perform a Sudoku puzzle, you need to look ahead and follow tracks of effects – this one must undoubtedly be an eight and this one a 4, and such like if you place a 6 in this field. This kind of preparation helps enhance memory that is short-term concentration.

You’ll play Sudoku online, for an application, or in writing. Locate a regular Sudoku in your newspaper, obtain a guide with several puzzles, or install free software on your phone or tablet.

Sudoku puzzles can be found in varying quantities of trouble. When you are starting, have fun with the simple games. You learn the guidelines. If you should be playing written down, make use of a pencil!

Lumosity

Lumosity the most mind that is made and psychological fitness programs. You’ll join an account free to play three games each day or pick the registration solution for lots more offerings. In either case, you can keep an eye on your outcomes and enhancement.

Lumosity’s enjoyable mind training and physical fitness are psychological, tests, and tasks supported by technology. You can play them on the internet site or install the apps, which are free iOS and Android. Lumosity also offers a mindfulness and meditation application called Lumosity Mind.

Crosswords

Crosswords are a mind that is classic, accessing not merely verbal language but a memory from numerous measurements of real information. There are lots of how to do crossword puzzles, both online and down. If you are given a daily paper, you will almost always get yourself a crossword here.

Or select a guide up of crosswords, exceedingly worthy of your level of skill and passions.

Additionally, find many choices for crossword puzzles online or via free or apps being affordable. The AARP site supplies a crossword that is day-to-day’s free to everybody else, whether or otherwise not you are a person in the team.

Elevate

You will have to download an application to try out Elevate’s 35 (and counting) different mind training games, which may have a belief is highly academic. It is free (with in-app acquisitions), and both iOS and Android variations have tens and thousands of five-star reviews.

Elevate’s games focus on reading, writing, talking, and mathematics, and you will personalize your training to pay attention to whichever areas you like. Much like almost every other mind game, you can monitor your progress to observe your increasing abilities.

Peak

The peak is another choice that is app-only for iOS and Android that delivers mind games to focus on focus, memory, problem-solving, psychological agility, and much more intellectual functions. If you are competitive, you could be inspired by seeing the way you perform against other users. The application is absolved from making use of, but a membership that is affordable more features.

Happy Neuron

Happy Neuron divides its games and tasks into five crucial: memory, attention, language, executive functions, and visual/spatial. Like Lumosity, it personalizes working out to suit you, tracks your progress, as well as the games depend on medical research.

You need to spend a month-to-month membership to make use of your website, and its simplified application variation can be obtained for Android users just. Pleased Neuron does, but provide a trial offer such as the approach to help you see if you.

Braingle

Claiming to have the earth’s biggest collection of mind teasers, Braingle’s free site provides a lot more than 15,000 puzzles, games, and other mind teasers and an online community of enthusiasts. You may also make your very own puzzles to offer your head a super exercise. Braingle features a variety that is wide, including optical illusions, codes and ciphers, and trivia quizzes

Queendom

Queendom has a considerable number of character tests and studies. It possesses a significant number of “brain tools” including logic, spoken, spatial, and mathematics puzzles; trivia quizzes; and aptitude tests to help you work out and test your mind thoroughly.

If you wish to save yourself outcomes and ratings, you will need a free account. Some recent tests might be written just snapshot outcomes for free and charge a cost for complete reports.

Brain Age Concentration Training

Brain Age Concentration Training is just a mind training and physical fitness psychological for the Nintendo 3DS system. It offers lots that are huge to hone your concentration, memory, calculation, and other mental abilities.

It’s enjoyable, portable, and challenging. Brain Age commonly readily available for the Ninte.

I almost broke my neck this morning. I woke up to the lovely sounds of birds during mating season, amplified through a powerful phone speaker. Morning-me is a lazy piece of shit and doesn’t have his snoozing behavior under control. Evening-me knows that and puts the phone out of reach so I have to get up.

I slowly pulled my arm out from under my sleeping girlfriend’s head with the precision of a heart surgeon, then set out to silence the birds advertising their sexual finesse. I didn’t get far, though.

On my second step, I tripped over my girlfriend’s slippers and fell head-first into my cabinet. She didn’t even witness her attempted murder but was sleeping like an angel, quietly drooling on the pillow, her cute snore mocking my misery. I thought about throwing her out the window, but the mountain of paperwork associated with first-degree murder made me change my mind.

Then, I sighed. Just a few years ago, these would’ve been my slippers.

I used to be extremely disorganized. Appointments? Late. Meetings? Unprepared. Important documents? Sure, right under the stack of receipts, coffee cups, and yesterday’s lunch.
Since then, I’ve made a 180° degree turn — and realized something profound:
Being disorganized is sh*t, being organized is “the sh*t.”

Imagine for a second what your life would look like. No more stress being late, panic over a lost document, or apologies because you forgot a meeting (again). Instead, you’ll be organized, productive, and have a lot more fun.

However, most people disregard a core element of being organized. They spring clean, write fancy to-do lists, and get Marie Kondo tattooed on their forehead. But after a few weeks, everything’s back to chaos.

Organizing isn’t hard. Staying organized is.

Any system, your life included, is subject to entropy — an always-increasing measurement of disorder. Like cream spreads in coffee, the thoughts, things, and people you hold dear spread throughout your space. Meetings fill your calendar, Amazon orders your cabinet, and thoughts your cerebrum.

That’s why organization isn’t a one-time thing. It all comes back tomorrow. To keep the chaos at bay, you’ll have to cultivate small, sustainable habits.

What You Can Learn from Beaver Dams

Beavers are fascinating. They build dams transforming entire ecosystems, some of them big enough you can see them from space. Not bad for a mammal not much larger than a rolled-up yoga mat.

Their dams are sophisticated structures, put together from trees, branches, leaves, stones, and mud.

Building these takes great organization. If they just threw everything into the stream and hoped for the best, they couldn’t even clog a bathtub.

Instead, they start with a couple of big trees and build everything around them.

Like beavers, organized people have a solid base they build their days on. They find their unshakable ground in routines and rituals, whether it’s a glass of water and five minutes of stretching in the morning, a short walk at lunchtime, or a bit of reading at night.

Establish a small, achievable routine and stick to it like clockwork. It will become a solid and reliable structure to build your days on.

The Ultimate Weapon for Lazy People

MMA fights are brutal — and so is the training.

Contestants harden their shins by rubbing hardwood over them, again and again. It’s painful, but it’s still better than having their leg snap in half like a twig during a fight.

Preparation is a key element to being organized. Accumulate resources now and draw on them when shit hits the fan.

As Benjamin Franklin said:

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure.

You don’t have to rub a broomstick over your shins every night in case a brawl breaks out at the office, but a few small tricks go a long way.

• Prepare food in advance. Cooking takes almost the same time no matter if you make one, two, or five portions. Most foods are easy to freeze and reheat and having emergency provisions for a long day can be a lifesaver.

• Check your notes before a meeting. It takes five minutes but makes you seem like you spent hours on it. Small effort, huge gain.

• A perfect morning starts in the evening. Prepare cereal, clothes, and car keys. What takes five minutes in the evening takes about half an hour in the morning, especially if you’re already late. Trust me, it’s science.

Preparation is the ultimate weapon for lazy people in the fight against chaos. It not only saves you time, effort, and stress, but also puts you on top of your shit.

If You Fail To Plan, You’re Planning To Fail.

2 Simple Rules for an Efficient To-Do List

Call me a weirdo, but I like trains. They get you from A to B, they’re reliable and more eco-friendly than cars, and in every country but Germany, they’re on time. I’m waiting for a delayed train in a cold and dreary station as I write this.

Trains are great because they run a specific schedule. You know you’ll arrive at your destination. There’s no risk of taking the wrong highway exit and ending up in Albania instead of Alberta.

But if you want to quickly cover a lot of ground, you can’t stop at every small village or wait for delayed passengers.

Organized people are like trains — their to-do list is their schedule and nothing gets them off track.

However, most people do to-do lists wrong. They write random tasks on a note and tick them off one by one. They get things done, but they don’t make progress.

Here are two quick tips to turn your to-do list into an efficient operating schedule.

• Set Most Important Tasks (MITs) for the day Your day might start well, but at one point, the fuckery begins. An unexpected meeting, a coworker needing help, or tripping over your girlfriend’s slippers and breaking your foot. Even if everything goes smoothly, you’ve often exhausted most of your cognitive resources by lunchtime. Decide which three tasks move your needle the most and make your day a successful one. These are your MITs — start on them first thing in the morning and don’t touch anything else until you’re done.

• Batch the small stuff Jumping from task to task kills not only your productivity but also gets you off track, making you less organized. The solution? Do all the small things in one go instead of having them disrupt your flow multiple times a day. Watering plants, bringing out the trash, and answering emails can all be done quickly. Batch them together so you’re less prone to distractions.

Use Electronic Help

Ever since the invention of the wheel in 3,500 B.C., humans have used technology to make their lives easier. The steam engine in 1698, the household fridge in 1913, and the massage chair in 1954.

Today, smartphones can take a ton of liability and cognitive stress off your brain.

I use alarms for all my recurring tasks. I’ve got one to turn off my internet at night, another one for my weekly review session, and a few to check in with my accountability partners. Don’t stress your brain trying to not forget. Just wait for the ring ring.

However, the biggest electronic game changer I’ve encountered is Evernote. To say it’s a note-taking app would be an extreme understatement. From archiving documents and photos over automatically sending meeting notes as emails to tracking your habits, there are very few things Evernote can’t do. They’ve even got a bunch of templates to use free of charge, whether for meetings, project management, or creative writing. Today, I use it as my go-to note-taking and organization tool and it has saved me a ton of headaches and frantic searches for lost notes.

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Outsource as much of your brainpower as you can.

Your Environment Can Make or Break You

People say eyes are the windows to the soul, but I disagree. If you want to know someone’s inner workings, have a look at their room — and if you can, their browser history.

There are two types of people in this world — the ones who put things right away and the ones who let them sit until the pile is too big to be ignored. But this is a two-way street.

Your environment has a huge impact on you and your behavior.

It’s hard to stick to your diet if there are stacks of cookies everywhere and if you’re surrounded by tottery towers of dirty dishes and massive mountains of long-forgotten laundry, your head will start spinning just from looking at them.

But putting thing away before it piles up is easier said than done.

For years, my room looked like a Ninja Warrior training ground, and breaking this habit was no easy feat. But there’s a little trick that has helped me keep my surroundings in order.

Every night, I do a five-minute cleaning session, so every morning I wake up to a clean and organized room instead of facing yesterday’s mess.

We Are What We See. We Are Products Of Our Surroundings.

Your Most Important 10%

I’m too much of a time-optimist. I often assume something will take half an hour when in reality, it takes twice as long.

Things don’t always go as planned, which can turn your days into a stress-fueled game of catching up and always being late. Luckily, there’s a simple solution.

When I set up my work structure for the new year, I included one hour of buffer time every day. This means even if a task takes longer than anticipated, I’m still not running late, which has been a huge contributor to my peace of mind.

Always schedule 10% of extra time, whether you write a report, do the dishes, or have a date.

Best case you’ll have some free time to prepare yourself or relax, worst case you’ll be on time. Both will make you much more organized.

Wrap-Up

Being organized and having your surroundings in order is awesome. Less stress, panic, and apologies. More time, control over your days, and confidence in yourself.

However, getting organized isn’t a one-time thing. Instead, you have to build small, sustainable habits.

• Use routines and rituals as cornerstones for your days
• Prepare in advance
• Use a smart to-do-list
• Make technology work for you
• Clean up right away
• Use buffer times

Choose what you need most, do it for a month, and see how much better you feel.

For Every Minute Spent In Organizing, An Hour Is Earned.

In positive psychology, a “flow state” is where you’re “in the zone,” fully absorbed in whatever activity you’re in. You lose track of time and you’re fully present.

Being in “flow” is crucial to high-performance and creativity. It’s crucial to being happy. It’s crucial to social connection.

And here’s the truth: You can live your entire life in flow. It turns out, being in flow isn’t that big of a mystery.

There are many “flow triggers,” such as being in various types of environments, having short deadlines, having high consequence for failure, etc.

One Outcome At A Time

Wherever You Are, Make Sure You’re There.

But there’s one “flow trigger” that is more important than anything else. And that’s having ONE OUTCOME that you’re seeking at any given time. For example, right now I’m writing this article. The ONE OUTCOME I have, for this moment, is to finish this article. If I stay focused on that ONE OUTCOME, then I’ll stay in flow until this article is done.

The problem for most people is that, while they’re doing one thing, they’re also seeking other outcomes. Say you’re at home with your family but you’re also wanting to see what’s happening on Facebook. You’re now pursuing TWOOUTCOMES… being with family and checking Facebook….Flow gone.

As human-beings, we are driven by outcomes. In philosophy, this is known as Teleology. Every human action is driven by an aim or end. If I go to the grocery store, there is a goal: Buy groceries. If I go to the bathroom, there is an aim or end: Go to the bathroom.

Everything we do is driven by an outcome.

Our brain’s become mentally lazy when we stop being purposeful about what we’re doing. We can become accustomed to never being fully present, and rather than being where we are and accomplishing our ONE OUTCOME, we get sucked into mental addictions.

So, if you’re reading this article right now, then finishing the article may be the ONE OUTCOME you’re currently pursuing.

When you accomplish one thing at a time, you’re giving your best to that thing. You’re not stressed. You’re present and in flow. As a result, you actually accomplish WAY MORE.

Success is increasingly about quality over quantity. Relationships are about quality over quantity. The 80/20 Principle is true. 20% of what you’re doing creates almost all of your positive results. 15 people in your life are the one’s creating the most happiness and success.

Focus on what matters.

Keep it simple.

Do one thing at a time.

One Major Goal

What Is The ONE Thing I Can Do Such That By Doing It, Everything Else Will Be Easier Or Unnecessary?

But there’s more to this idea than simply focusing on ONE OUTCOME at a time. If you want to radically improve your overall results, you want to simplify your daily, weekly, and year goals.

Every day, there should only be ONE OUTCOME you’re trying to produce. Stop trying to do a thousand things. 80% of what you’re doing is a distraction anyways. Focus on “less, but better.” If you focused on one really good and powerful outcome each day, your quality would increase dramatically. Rather than doing 10 things poorly, you’d be doing one thing, the right thing, VERY WELL.

This doesn’t mean you only do one thing per day. But as it relates to work, lets say, you only have one key outcome. Anything above that is gravy. But by doing less, you’ll actually accomplish way more. Because you’ll be doing the right thing, and you’ll be doing it very well.

Productivity is about doing less. Busyness is about doing more.

The most successful people in the world do less. People working paycheck-to-paycheck do more.

Want to become brilliant at what you do? Focus on one key outcome per day in your work. What about weekly? What’s the ONE OUTCOME this week that would make the biggest difference?

Robert Brault has said, “We are kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to lesser goals.”

What Brault means is that it is not the challenges or obstacles between ourselves and our ideal future that are stopping us. Instead, it is “clear paths” to “lesser goals.”

Think about this for a second: What is the ONE GOAL you truly want for yourself? I know you probably want many things. But which one is most crucial? Which ONE OUTCOME would make the biggest difference in your life?

The more simplified your future, the more streamlined will be your “path” or “process” to creating that future. This is crucial because motivation depends on simplicity. If you want to be very motivated, you must see a clear and compelling future. But you must also have a “path” for creating that future. If you’re pursuing too many goals, then you won’t have a clear path forward. As a result, you won’t create momentum.

Momentum and confidence involve taking 20 steps in 1 direction, not 1 step in 20 directions.
What’s the ONE GOAL you should really be pursuing?

What would happen if you stopped investing all of your energy into your “lesser goals”?

Want More Flow?

If you’re doing one thing at a time, you’ll be in a flow state. You’ll be immersed in what you’re doing. As a result, you’ll accomplish so much more.

I wrote this blog post in about 20 minutes. I didn’t get distracted once. It was the one outcome I wanted. I was in a beautiful flow state while writing this article. It was very enjoyable for me, and hopefully enjoyable for you.

Wherever you are, that’s where you should be.

What’s the one outcome you’re trying to accomplish, right now? Stop trying to squeeze too much in. Just do that ONE THING. Once you’re done, you can do the next thing.

Being home and present with people is crucial. Connecting with them should be your ONE OUTCOME. Be home. Be present. Be with your people.

When it comes to people, and especially children, it is understandable when you’re “away.” If you’re “gone” for work, that’s fine. But if you’re “there” but only half-present, that’s unacceptable to anyone, especially children.

Either be there or be gone, even if that means being in a different room or outside the house for “work.” Be gone or be there. Create ONE OUTCOME at a time.

If you want flow and extreme productivity (i.e., extreme RESULTS), then seek fewer goals. In other words, stop pursuing “lesser goals.” Go for ONE THING at a time. Making a true decision means “cutting of alternative options.” Commit!

I’ve learned this lesson again and again. When I was an undergrad, my ONE OUTCOME was getting into a high-tier PhD program. That gave me the path I needed. When I wanted to become a professional writer, my ONE OUTCOME was getting a 6-figure book deal with one of the BIG 5 NY Publishers. Now that I’m a professional writer, my ONE OUTCOME is selling millions of copies of Personality Isn’t Permanent.

The more focused you can be on the key outcomes you really want in your life, the more progress you’ll make as a person.

The more flow you’ll live in.

Peace.

Despite Dopamine Fasting 2.0’s soaring popularity in media outlets all across the globe, misunderstanding about it still abounds. Fortunately, we’ve done all the hard research for you. Look no further to learn the most essential things you need to know.

Let’s get started…

What Is Dopamine Fasting?

There’s been much confusion about what dopamine fasting entails. Some people mistakenly believe you have to reduce dopamine levels, avoid talking or socializing, avoid all stimulants, avoid technology, or even take a vacation.

Real dopamine fasting encourages health-promoting behaviors. But you also have to break your overdependence on technology. So, you can’t binge-listen to Spotify; get lost on YouTube; spend hours scrolling through social media feeds; play internet games from dusk till dawn; eat an entire cake in one sitting; or generally indulge in any other harmful dopamine-related habit.

The Science of Dopamine Fasting 2.0

Dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter — a chemical released by nerve cells to send signals to other nerve cells. Because dopamine is essential to so many bodily functions, you can’t “fast” from it. What you can do, though, is fast from impulsive behaviors that dopamine enforces.

What does impulsive behavior look like? Well, you might remember the concept of conditioned responses from psychology class years (or decades) ago. For example, you see a notification on your phone (the stimulus), and thenyou grab the phone to read the notification (the reward). Whether or not we admit it, the process is impulsive; it happens without thought. The goal is to break the automatic behavior.

Dopamine Fasting 2.0 and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Dopamine fasting adopts a technique based on the principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The technique is called stimulus control, and its goal is to form new neuropathways. 

It requires lots of willpower to regain flexibility over impulsive, rigid habits. But it’s possible by restricting external stimuli. The process of stimulus control involves the following:

• Put away the stimulus (like your phone or gaming console), or make them harder than usual to access.

• When you feel the need to check your social media feed or engage in an online multi-player event, engage in an alternative activity that’s incompatible with the stimulus. For example, you can read a book, listen to a podcast, jog, or even eat.

• Be accountable to a person or software to avoid cheating. 

It’s natural for your urges to keep returning. However, CBT has an answer for that, too. In the exposure and response prevention technique, you deliberately expose yourself to your trouble stimuli, and then just be a non-judgmental observer of the thoughts and feelings that arise. You remain detached, and eventually the urge will subside. 

Frequent practice of exposure and response prevention weakens classical conditioning, which ultimately restores behavioral flexibility. When both CBT techniques are employed, CBT becomes the benchmark remedy for impulse control disorders.

In a recent study involving more than 1765 students, it was discovered that dopamine-fasting from Facebook for a week helped them regain, on average, 13.3 hours of time. It also significantly reduced depressive symptoms, by 17%. This allowed them to engage in healthier behaviors instead.

The Dopamine Fasting 2.0 Schedule

Dopamine Fasting 2.0 is different from other fasting programs in that it uses time blocks. The program doesn’t enforce total deprivation, but it encourages fasting for gradually longer periods intermittently for greater benefits.

This program is designed to help practitioners regain behavioral flexibility in certain areas. So, you can still indulge in the activity after following the fasting schedule for the day.

The fasting period excludes the time that would normally make it easy for you to comply with the rules.

For example, if you’re fasting from online mobile gaming, you wouldn’t count hours where you are at work, especially if you work in an office with strict rules regarding the use of mobile phones.

So, when should you fast? Here are some options:

• 1–4 hours (or more) at the end of your day 
• On Saturday or Sunday
• 1 entire weekend per quarter (go on a local trip)
• 1 entire week per year (consider it a holiday)

There’s no fixed amount of required fasting time. You can set your own fasting time based on your current tolerance level. But be determined to slowly increase your scheduled fasting time until you’ve reached your desired result.

The Dopamine Feasting 2.0 Schedule

While there are no stringent rules for when you need to dopamine-fast, there are none for when you can dopamine-“feast” either. So when you’re not fasting, you can indulge in the behavior for 5–30 minutes as often as three times a day. 

If you’re trying to limit your phone usage but are on feast mode, one effective technique, for example, would be to check your phone for notifications immediately after meals and only for a limited amount of time.

The Importance of Dopamine Fasting 2.0

More than ever, researchers have raised concerns about how overly dependent younger generations have become on technology and the internet. With hundreds of social media platforms and online multi-player games, there’s little wonder why so much time is spent on the world wide web.

People derive pleasure from doing different things. And the likelihood of addiction to a particular behavior varies from one person to the next. 

In no particular order, the most common impulsive behaviors that are prone to addiction are:

• Emotional eating
• Internet use and gaming
• Gambling and shopping
• Porn and masturbation
• Thrill- and novelty-seeking
• Recreational drugs

Fortunately, dopamine fasting can be applied to any of these addictions, and more. If you have an impulsive behavior that needs to be checked, consider making a Dopamine Fasting 2.0 schedule.

In a Nutshell

Dopamine fasting differs from intermittent fasting because the program gives you a bit more flexibility. You can still enjoy addictive activities, but you build in checks to prevent disastrous bouts of overindulging. In the long run, you’ll have gained more control without feeling deprived.

And when you’re fasting, you don’t have to be miserable! You can still engage in other fun and exciting activities, and these activities can improve your health at the same time. For example, you could cook a healthy meal, exercise, learn a new skill, read, paint, or hang out with friends!
So go on, try it out and make Dopamine Fasting 2.0 work for you. You’ve got nothing to lose.

Disclaimer: This information isn’t a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should never rely upon this article for specific medical advice. If you have any questions or concerns, please talk to your doctor.

When it comes to self-care, sometimes a baby step is all you need. And sometimes what feels like a baby step is actually a monumental, life-changing leap forward.

You might feel as though you just don’t have the time to invest in your well-being. I mean, who has the time to take care of their mind, body, soul, and mental health every day while working, parenting, being a good friend, nurturing a relationship, doing the dishes, and all the other random, daily things we might have to do?

The answer?Well, all of us.

The problem is never that we don’t have the time; the problem is that we don’t think the time we have is sufficient to make a meaningful difference in our lives.

I often feel this too. But I’m wrong.

More and more research is revealing that even small amounts of certain positive practices can have a disproportionateeffect on our health and well-being.

Most times, focusing on time-consuming commitments, such as spending an hour at the gym each day or committing to meditation for 30 minutes every morning, can be difficult to find the time for, and, therefore, difficult to sustain. Shorter commitments are not only easier to sustain, but can sometimes bring us similar results.

Putting our health last on our list of priorities is not just unproductive, but downright dangerous. If we do this, we’ll increase our chances of burning out, and recovering from burnout will take a lot more time than we would have spent taking care of ourselves in the first place.

Committing to a self-care routine, no matter how busy you think you are, is, in the long run, just good time-management.

A Twenty-One Minute Self-Care Routine

When I’m talking about self-care, I’m focusing on science-backed practices that are quick to perform and lead to greater levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and lower levels of stress.
I’ve created this little exercise as a way of showing you the difference you can make in your life with even a negligible amount of time. This 21-minute routine includes four practices that can be performed in any order and either all within the same 21-minute block or sprinkled throughout your day.

Practice #1: Spend just 2 minutes writing a positive message to someone you know.
Happiness researcher Shaun Achor says that social connection is “the greatest predictor of long-term happiness,” and that the connection between the two “is stronger than the connection between smoking and cancer.”

Spending just 2 minutes writing a positive message to someone you know each day can have amazingly positive consequences on your happiness levels. Achor writes,

Start Work By Writing A Two-Minute Positive E-Mail Or Text Praising Or Thanking One Person You Know. And Do It For A Different Person Each Day

Example: ‘Hey friend! I’m thinking about you today. I just wanted to drop you a quick note to tell you I love how positive you are. You really inspire me. Have a great day!’

Practice #2: Spend just 5 minutes communicating what you’re grateful for.

Studies show that being grateful for just 5 minutes a day can make you happier and more resilient in the face of stress and trauma.

I’ve found gratitude to be one of those practices that provides an immediate positive effect. And I’ve found it even more powerful when I stop and recognize that I’m grateful for something or someone when it’s happening or when I’m with them.

Most people choose to journal what they’re grateful for. This is probably the best place to start in order to develop a consistent, daily practice. But some people may find it even more powerful to speak their gratitudes out loud to themselves or to share them with a friend.

Practice #3: Spend just 7 minutes in prayer or meditation.

Meditation is everywhere. It’s one of the most common pieces of self-care advice. Unhappy? Try meditation. Sad? Go meditate. Poor? Close your eyes right now and count your breaths!
Although it’s true that meditation won’t fix all your problems, it can certainly help you find peace of mind and a sense of calm that can create a chain-reaction of positive outcomes.

Meditation is an essential ingredient in this stack because it only takes a few minutes to experience its positive effects. A study at Wharton found that just 7 minutes of mindfulness practice a day improved mental health and could “make students and employees more productive in their work.”

Do you pray?

Research is showing that people who practice prayer experience effects similar to those who practice meditation. Shayla Love writes in Vice:

Dozens Of Studies Have Found Changes Before And After Prayer Or Meditative Activities In The Autonomic Nervous System, Which Controls Relaxation And Arousal, In Parasympathetic Activity, Which Can Decrease Heart Rate And Blood Pressure, Metabolism, Or Respiration. Measurements Of Hormones And Immune Function Have Seen Changes In Cortisol, Noradrenaline, Endorphins, Sex Hormones, And Growth Hormones. Brain Studies Have Implicated Activity Changes In The Frontal And Parietal Lobes, The Thalamus, Limbic System, And Brain Stem, And Show Increases In Grey And White Matter In Certain Areas Of The Brain

Every minute I’ve ‘wasted’ meditating has probably saved me 2 minutes that I would have spent procrastinating or stressing out.

Tool: I’ve found the Waking Up app by Sam Harris to be a great way to start a mindfulness meditation practice. (Not an affiliate link.)

Practice #4: Spend just 7 minutes breaking a sweat.

It turns out you don’t need to hit the gym for an hour to get the benefits of exercise.
Researchers at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Florida created the popular 7-minute workout. The workout is a type of High-Intensity Circuit Training. HICT is a…

“combination of aerobic and resistance training in a high-intensity, limited-rest design.” Studies show that it “can deliver numerous health benefits in much less time than traditional programs.”

You might not get jacked on this workout, but if you’re busy, it’s a research-backed, timesaving way to take care of your physical health and boost your mental outlook.

Here’s a sample 7-minute workoutfrom the study:

Exercises are performed for 30 seconds, with 10 seconds of transition time between bouts. Total time for the entire circuit workout is approximately 7 minutes. 

1. Jumping jacks Total body 
2. Wall sit Lower body 
3. Push-up Upper body 
4. Abdominal crunch Core 
5. Step-up onto chair Total body 
6. Squat Lower body 
7. Triceps dip on chair Upper body 
8. Plank Core 
9. High knees/running in place Total body 
10. Lunge Lower body 
11. Push-up and rotation Upper body 
12. Side plank Core

For image references of the movements, see the photos in the study.

If you have the time and you want more of a challenge, just repeat the circuit 2–3 times.

Got more time? Try these slightly longer, science-based practices.

• Spend 10 minutes talking with a friend:Althoughit’s beneficial to invest as much time as you can with friends, even small amounts of time can be powerful. According to a recent study, even as little as 10 minutes “of social interaction a day helps improve the wellbeing of people living with dementia in care homes.”

• Spend 18 minutes walking in nature:Research shows that people who spend 120 minutes/week (or just less than 18 minutes/day) “in nature are far more likely to report being in good health and having higher psychological well-being, as compared to those who don’t embrace nature.”

• Spend 20 minutes writing in a journal:You may have heard that journaling is beneficial, but a study showed that after three consecutive days of just 20 minutes of journaling, people medically diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder reported significantly lowered depression scores.

• Spend 45 minutes making art: According to a study in Art Therapy, “45 minutes of creative activity significantly lessens stress in the body, regardless of artistic experience or talent.”

You Can Create More Time

We shouldn’t assume our busyness is only caused by necessary, helpful things. We might be legitimately busy with many important commitments, but chances are, we also have some negative habits that are draining our time and energy.

Track your time

One of the most powerful things you can do to create more time is to find where you’re wasting it. Spend a few days tracking the time you spend on things. Try to notice what you spend your time on when you’re not doing things already written in your calendar. This might show you that you have more time than you think.

Stop unhelpful habits

As you track your time, you may find things that are counterproductive. Here are a few examples of things we can STOP doing that will give us more time for the helpful things we want to do.

• Spend 15 minutes and 45 seconds less complaining: There’s a 10-year-old article in the UK newspaper, the Daily Mail. It claims that the average adult spends this much time each day complaining about things like the weather, the restaurant service, whatever. Cut this down and you’ll have more time AND you’ll increase your well-being.

• Spend 20 minutes less sitting: For the average person, “only 20 minutes less sitting per day is enough to maintain good health and muscle mass,” according to Finnish researchers. You could try using this time for your walk outdoors or your workout.

• Spend much less time checking your email: I have to admit that it’s often more for me, but the average person checks their email around 15 times per day. A study from the University of British Colombia “found that when people were limited to checking their email just three times per day, their stress levels decreased significantly.”

We can create more time by becoming aware of, and stopping, bad habits that drain our time and energy.

The Takeaway

When you’re busy, it can feel next to impossible to make time for your own well-being. We often feel overwhelmed and think we don’t have the time to take care of our mind, body, soul, and mental health.

But this simply is not true. Here’s what is:

1.You have the time, you just don’t think it’s sufficient to make a meaningful difference.

2.But it is. Research reveals that many self-care practices only take minutes to have a positive effect.

3.Here’s my daily, 21-minute self-care regiment: Spend just 2 minutes writing a positive message to someone you know, 5 minutes writing down what you’re grateful for, 7 minutes in prayer or meditation, and 7 minutes breaking a sweat. This can be performed in any order, any time of day, all together, or spaced out. Pushed for time? Try that.

4.Still think you’re too busy? You can create more time by 1) tracking what you’re spending your time on, and cutting out bad, time-wasting habits.
Taking care of yourself is productive and smart. What’s not smart? Drowning in busyness, neglecting yourself, and burning out. Recovery from that burnout will take longer and be much harder than 21-minutes a day.

I was six years old when I first called my teacher a stupid cow, the most insulting words my first-grade brain could cook up in a fit of rage. Seven years when I started punching a sofa in the middle of class. Eight years when I was excluded from a field trip for being too rowdy. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

One of my distinct childhood memories is ripping a notebook to shreds and kicking dents in a steel door when my mum locked me in the basement. Ah, good old times!
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all these incidents, it’s this:

Being angry sucks.

It makes you miserable. It makes everyone around you miserable, too. When you’re angry, you struggle to find a solution to the problem and make bad decisions, like fighting with people you love and calling them names. There’s really not much good about it.

Yet, it’s easy to give in. One small thing can make you angry and ruin your day, like when someone who’s won his driving license in the local lottery cuts you off on the highway. Anger provides quick relief, an outlet for pent-up pressure. But the negative emotions corrupt you, make you irritated, and turn your good mood sour.

How Much More Harmful Are The Consequences Of Anger And Grief Than The Circumstances That Aroused Them In Us!

Wouldn’t it be better if you could turn the anger into positivity instead?

Over the years, I became much calmer. Tranquility has turned into one of my biggest strengths because it allows me to achieve what I want without being distracted by rage. Anger is weakness, calmness is strength.

I’ve found three ways to cultivate peace of mind. Even if you don’t struggle with regular rage, these techniques will help you keep your calm even in the biggest storm.

Don’t React — Respond Instead
Anger isn’t the same as being angry.

There’s a subtle, but important difference — one is an emotion, the other one a state of being. You can’t control your emotions. You can of course go Kim Jong Un and suppress them into non-existence, but that doesn’t do you any good. Practice acceptance instead.

Emotions are your brain’s feedback mechanism. They tell you to feel angry when you hit your foot on your desk. But you decide if you react and trash it, or if you acknowledge the feeling and respond with calmness. From my personal experience, working on a three-legged desk isn’t a lot of fun, so keep that in mind.

Anger is telling you to pull the trigger on a gun — but no matter how much it screams at you, you can decide if you move your finger or not.

If you react instead of respond, you’re a slave to your emotions.

You lose power over yourself. Others can make you angry and watch you dance like a wind-up monkey. Back in the day, my classmates sure had fun with it.

How can you turn your blind reaction into a rational response?

Emotions are a funny thing. The more you resist, the stronger they come back, and the more pain and suffering they cause.

Instead, experience them without reacting to them. That’s the real superpower.

The next time someone sends you an upsetting mail, cuts you off in traffic, or starts their life story to the cashier when all you want to do is pay for a coffee to go and two bananas, feel into the emotion.

Where does the anger sit? Your chest? Your arms? Your jaw? Don’t resist — but don’t react either. Then, when the wave has washed over you, let it go and choose to stay calm.
Respond instead of react.

Leave Your Mind Behind

If you asked me about the worst thing in the world, I’d have an answer faster than a vegan telling you how nutritional yeast tastes just like cheese.

People walking slowly in front of me.

Ironically, it’s often the people who should hurry the most because they have the least time left (read: seniors). Maybe I’ll understand it when I’m old, but it drives me nuts to have to trudge along a supermarket aisle with the speed of a slug because I can’t overtake and Mr.I shouldn’t even buy green bananas because who knows if I still get to eat them has forgotten his hearing aid at home. However, I’ve turned these gruesome experiences into a humbling practice.

While responding and reacting both happen on the level of the mind, I take it one step further and completely detach myself from it. Sounds weird? Let me explain.

You are not your mind. You are the consciousness behind it.

Like your mouth speaks and your ears hear, your mind thinks and you, the consciousness, listen to the thoughts — and this is where the trouble begins.

Your mind loves to solve problems, which is both its best and worst feature. Like a dog biting a bone, it attaches itself to a problem with no sign of letting go. Your thoughts always come back to the situation causing anger. That’s why you have to stop thinking altogether.

When you interrupt your stream of thoughts, you’re left with a state of bliss and peace and pure Being. It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. There are no problems, no time, and no judgments about others’ walking speeds. Everything just is.

This state is what most major spiritual movements strive for — nirvana, enlightenment, or non-duality. When you are 100% present, you detach yourself from your mind and with it, all the anger and problems. This is hard to grasp with your thoughts because it goes beyond them, but here’s how you can experience this state.

• Observation without judgment. We are quick to form opinions on everything we see. The dress is a beautiful red. This food tastes bland. The price is too high. He walks too slow. Let go and observe instead, without any judgment.
• Feel into your body. Your awareness rests mostly on your thoughts. Your mind ruminates, decides, worries, and like a TV, creates a lot of captivating, colorful images and noise. It’s hard to pull your consciousness from it, but it gets a lot easier when you give it another program to pay attention to. Focus on your body. Your breath. How your fingers feel. The little veins running over your hands. When your awareness rests on these feelings, it isn’t on your mind. And when you leave your mind, you mute the TV and turn around, leaving all the anger behind you.

Getting into a state of Being instead of thinking completely pulls you out of your anger and any other problems. It isn’t easy to do, but over time and step-by-step, you’ll catch glimpses of it. Every time you interrupt the constant stream of thoughts your mind generates, you step into a state of peace and bliss.

Don’t think. Just be.

Use Your Energy in the Right Way

Anger isn’t all bad — there are two sides to every coin.

It can be a great motivator and drive you to new heights. The liberated energy itself is neither good nor bad — it depends on what you do with it.

Like a pent-up river, it can wreak havoc and destruction if you let the dam break, but it can also bring benefit and prosperity if you use the water to generate electricity or grow crops.

A few weeks ago, I hit my toe on our bathtub. After a few hearty f-words, I tried to flip the script and channel the energy into finding something to be grateful for instead — like not breaking my toe. This reduced the heat and saved my mental pot from overcooking immediately.
Cut off in traffic? Be grateful there wasn’t an accident.

Missed your train? Be grateful there is another one.

Someone says something rude? Be grateful your mouth and ears work and you can communicate in the first place.

When you focus on your blessings, it’s hard to get lost in your curses.
Being grateful forces you to look at what you have instead of what you have not. It’s a much better use of your time and energy and brings your mind peace instead of war.

If you want to change your life for the better, be grateful.

Every Time You Get Angry, You Lose

With all this talk about detaching yourself from your mind and being grateful, you can think I’m a saint. I’m not.

I’m just a dude who has spent a lot of his life being angry and realized that apart from short-term relief, there’s nothing to gain, but all the more to lose.

You make yourself miserable. You destroy your relationships. And you kill your chances of living a happy and fulfilled life, so do yourself a favor, and stop getting angry.

This doesn’t mean you should take shit from people. Stand up for yourself and set clear boundaries. But do so without being angry.

Respond instead of react. Detach yourself from your problem-seeking mind. Turn your energy into gratitude.

Life is better that way.

For Every Minute You Are Angry You Lose Sixty Seconds Of Happiness.

When it comes to self-help for mental health or wellbeing, much of it is about as useful as a porn site asking a teenage boy if he’s over 18. Translated: It’s worse than useless.

That said, when devising this list, I tried to take into account the author’s character — and whether I believe them to be full of shit or not — as much as I did the quality of their book.

Furthermore, one of the biggest problems I find with mental health — especially anxiety which is currently rampant — is that we give the symptom far more weight and power than it deserves. Not only hindering recovery but often making the situation significantly worse.

We don’t place nearly enough emphasis on the actual problem and the many solutions it presents.

Problems vary greatly, ranging from unhealthy relationships, abuse, bullying, narcissistic prick bosses, and everything in between. And so to the solutions. By challenging your current thinking and worldly views as well as tweaking behaviors and habits, you can radically improve your quality of life. And that’s coming from someone who despises the word “radical”.

Despair can turn to hope; anger can turn to love, anxiety to peace, depression to cheerfulness, so on and so forth. But you have to do the work. And, of course, accept that life will still suck from time to time.

To honor this topic’s complexity, I have strived to compel a varied list with something for everyone. A daunting task that actually left me with 24, not 22. If I’ve recommended a book, it’s for no other reason that I found it to be excellent and extremely worthy of a read. That’s pretty much the criteria.

Should you decide to pick one up, I hope it will both move, inspire, and thrust you into action for lasting change to ensure better days lay ahead. And with that said, I’ll shut the hell up.

Here are 22 of the Best Self-Help Books for Mental Health and Wellbeing

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristen Neff Ph.D.

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Kristen Neff is to self-compassion as to what Brene Brown is to shame and vulnerability: A Godsend.

I would go so far as to call this a bible book for your mental health.
Studies show self-compassion is a significant predictor of long term mental wellbeing. And it probably comes as no surprise to learn most struggling excel at being a dick towards themselves, making this book an absolute must to help foster what could eventually be a life-saving skill.

File it under: Your Mental Health Bible.

Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday

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All of Holliday’s books are great. This one just happens to be my favorite.
Easily digestible and packed with ancient wisdom, the stoic master seamlessly encapsulates a significant problem — our inability to be still — that makes us ineffective while offering many remedies drawing from Stoic and Buddhist philosophies.

File it under: Ancient Philosophical Wisdom.

Owning it: Your Bullsh*t-Free Guide to Living with Anxiety by Caroline Foran

The first of four Irish authors to make this prestigious list. Who knew I was so patriotic?

As with all story-based books found here, you get genuine raw authenticity without the bullshit and a very welcome splash of humor — all of which Foran provides in spades as she outlines her battle with acute anxiety.

This book is a perfect mesh of storytelling and an extremely well put together practical guide to help you both understand and manage your anxiety.

File it under: Your No Bullshit Anxiety Companion.

Predatory Thinking: A Masterclass in Out-Thinking the Competition by Dave Trott

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Dave Trott is a hard-nosed heavyweight genius in the advertising industry. So what the hell is he doing in this lineup, you ask?

Simple: The best advertisers know how to solve problems and find solutions through creative thinking. And your mental health and wellbeing is likely crying out for better solutions. Unless, of course, you want to be told for the zillionth time to take a breath or step out in nature?

Assuming the answer to that question is “screw you, Nicky,” then you might just benefit from a masterclass in creative thinking. Which is exactly what this book is: A masterclass.

In this instance, you are your own competition. And this book is packed with life lessons you can benefit from today.

File it under: Creative Thinking.

Everything is Fucked: A Book about Hope by Mark Manson

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In a year where everything is fucked, and hope is all but lost, how could this not feature? Manson is extraordinarily gifted at taking complicated or boring topics and making them fun, digestible, easy to understand, and entertaining.

Not one to fuck around, you won’t find a sprinkle of fairy dust here. Drawing on a pool of psychological research and philosophy, you’ll be taken on a wild journey in search of hope that will help you understand why, when everything is technically better than it has been in our history, it all seems, well, fucked.

If you want to face the truth head-on while understanding your mind better to build resilience and greater self-acceptance, this book is an absolute must.

File it under: Retro Philosophy and Psychology.*

*I’m seriously struggling to come up with good themes for the filing cabinet.

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown Ph.D.

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It seems everything Brown touches turns to gold. And this book is no different.

Time and again, our shame or reluctance to vulnerability wreaks havoc on our mental health. In Daring Greatly, Brown packs years of research on both shame and vulnerability — what it is, what it isn’t — to help inspire the reader to find the courage to be vulnerable for a happier, lighter, and freer existence.

File it under: Inspirational Feel-good Research.

The Anxiety Epidemic: The Causes of our Modern-Day Anxieties by Graham Davy

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Having had the pleasure of interviewing him twice, I’m a big fan of Davey, who is the Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex. Much of his research extends across mental health problems, specifically anxiety and worry.

What I love about this book is that it doesn’t tiptoe around the topic. It’s hard-hitting research at times and incredibly informative and educational as to what anxiety is, its many disorders, and their symptoms, etc.

If you are looking to understand anxiety better, this book is for you.

File it under: Easy-Reading Academic Research

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

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If we are honest, most of us want to be liked more, to connect more, to succeed more, to do and be better in all aspects of life.

Unfortunately, when life is kicking the shit out of us, we inevitably become preoccupied with ourselves and forget how important it is to form connections with others. We also become lonely which has severe consequences in itself.

This timeless classic is here to help in all facets of life.

File it under: Psychological Life Skills

Bonus Time: A True Story of Surviving the Worst and Discovering the Magic of Every Moment by Brian Pennie

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What can I say? This is an absolute belter of a book.

Unable to escape the pain of anxiety and desperate for relief, Brian turned to heroin, which saw him fall into a 15-year addiction that nearly — and probably should have — took his life. Until one fateful day, he managed to break free from it all.

Bonus Time is his extraordinary account of a life consumed by addiction — a life he managed to break free from to the point he is now a Ph.D. candidate studying the neuroscience of mindfulness.

File it under: Inspirational Storytelling

Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom by Rick Hanson Ph.D.

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Brian Pennie credits this book in Bonus Time for playing an intricate role in his recovery. And for a good reason.

Rick Hanson does a spectacular job presenting cutting-edge neuropsychology and ancient Buddhist wisdom with steps you can take to help rewire your brain for greater levels of happiness and resilience.

All of which will make you bulletproof like the Buddha himself.

File it under: Easy-reading Brain Science

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

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In a nutshell, this is an account of Frankyl’s time in a Nazi death camp. Not necessarily focussed on the horror experienced daily, the emphasis is more on the psychological journey and how he found meaning in his suffering, which ultimately gave him the strength to persevere.

A key takeaway is there will always be suffering, but you get to choose what meaning you assign to it, which is critical when pursuing freedom.

To say he delivers a profoundly powerful message is an understatement. This book is a classic for a very good reason.

File it under: The Classic.

Jump: One Girl’s Search For Meaning by Daniella Moyles

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One word: Exceptional. I just finished it and think it is my favourite read of the year, reaffirming my belief the best books are all story-based accounts, as told by the author.

I saw a quote once that read, “anything but raw authenticity is a fucking waste of time,” and my God, does this book stay true to that. Not only is it exceptionally well written, but it’s also a masterclass in authenticity, which — let’s be honest — is very refreshing with so much fake authenticity out there today.

The first chapter is a good introduction. The second chapter blows the roof off. Moyles then continues this trajectory while documenting her personal account of panic and anxiety and everything that goes along with as she strives to find meaning from it all.

File it under: Inspirational Storytelling.

Healing Your Attachment Wounds: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships by Dianne Pool Heller Ph.D

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Ah, attachment theory. I suspect I’m not the only one who hates it? This shit goes right to the core of you.

If you haven’t heard of attachment theory, you’re probably best remaining blissfully ignorant. But as we are suckers for punishment, it was hypothesized by British psychologist John Bowlby in 1950, and concerns itself with emotional attachment between humans, formed from our early relationship with our parents.

There are four main types of attachment. The only desirable one is secure attachment, and if you are reading this, the likelihood of you being secure, I’m sorry to say, is pretty slim. That means you are either anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, or fearful-avoidant.

As we grow into adults and end up in relationships that don’t seem to pan out as Hollywood predicted, attachment theory will certainly help you understand why.

Trust me, when you find out, you’re going to want to fix it. And praise the lord because all hope is not lost, you can take steps to move towards secure attachment. That’s why you should read this book. Enjoy.

File it under: I Did Not Sign Up For This Shit.

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

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Originally published in 1903, this bad boy is the OG of self-help. Based on the principle you are what you think, Allen explains how our character, identity, ability, and success are all determined by the thoughts in our minds.

It’s not The Secret or some new-age spiritual bullshit where if you want a Ferrari, all you have to do is ask the universe for it, and — abracadabra — there it is in all is glory with a big red bow on it.

The ethos is very much around our ability to shape our thoughts to improve our lives. And it shows you how in a very inspiring way.

This book packs a punch. What I love most is it’s only 61 pages and simple to read. So you can go back and read it often to help keep you on course. Take it with a pinch of salt, and it has the potential to be very powerful, indeed.

File it under: The OG.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.

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What a legend Bessel Van Der Kolk is. He comes across as so genuine and sincere. And my God, is he accomplished. This book is incredible. It is also, without a doubt, the toughest read on the list. The subject is trauma, after all.

A must for anyone looking to better understand trauma or for anyone who has experienced trauma and doesn’t fully understand its impact.
Personally, I would be selective in the chapters I read. You do not need to approach it chronologically. Cherry-pick the chapters you believe are going to impact you the most, and take it from there.

File it under: Essential Trauma Reading

Love In, Love Out: A Compassionate Approach to Parenting Your Anxious Child by Dr Malie Coyne

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I must admit, I haven’t had the pleasure of reading this one yet. But I did have the pleasure of interviewing Dr Coyne, and she is amazing. Not to mention the work she does is incredible.
More importantly, the message, wisdom, and tips offered in this book can be a complete gamechanger for so many underserved parents out there who might be struggling with their own anxiety or have an anxious child whom they have no clue how to help.

File it under: Essential Reading for Parents.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall B. Rosenberg

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As stated on the cover, much of how we communicate could be considered violent. Obviously, this isn’t great, especially in our relationships, when communicating with those that matter most.
NVC is an extremely practical book that is easy to navigate with lots of strategies to improve your communication for better relationships.

File it under: Your Communication Bible

The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression by Edward Bullmore

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For such a dense and — you know — depressing subject, this book is a bit of a page-turner. It provides lots of interesting anecdotal stories throughout, all the while examining the link between inflammation and depression and the potential for a new exciting treatment, which is something we haven’t seen since the birth of Prozac.

File it under: Hope for a Brighter Future

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

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No other book on the subject comes close to this bad boy. James Clear is quite simply, the master of habit.

So many of us struggle to break bad habits and routines that are negatively impacting our health. In this book, Clear breaks down all the science in a practical and easy-to-understand manner, ensuring you know exactly what to do to adopt new habits into your life for a healthier, happier future.

File it under: Essential Reading

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

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The consequences of breathing incorrectly, as it turns out, can be pretty catastrophic. And while there is nothing more essential to our health than air, it seems we’ve lost our ability to breathe correctly somehow somewhere along the way.

Nestor brings you along on a fascinating journey unraveling the science of breath, and ultimately, guiding you to a place where you will be breathing better for a longer, happier, healthier, and more prosperous life.

File it under: The Power of Breath

Get Out of My Head: Inspiration for Overthinkers in an Anxious World by Meredith Arthur

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Currently being translated into many different languages, if you are an overthinker who appreciates the arts, then this little gem of a book is for you.

Packed with beautiful illustrations, Arthur provides you lots of guidance and inspiration, as well as soothing techniques to help you move through the traps of overthinking, all the while maintaining a light and upbeat tone throughout.

File it under: Your Pocket-Sized Buddy

The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage by Mel Robbins

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I found this book to be excellent. It’s almost too positive for me, but it’s not. If you know what I mean? Of course, you don’t. I don’t know what I mean.

The science behind it is fascinating. And the delivery is uplifting and pleasant. It also inspires you to play with your fears and take action, which can only be a good thing.

I’ll put it this way: I doubt many struggling with anxiety won’t be inspired to take action for having read this. And really, everything we need to do for change is found in action.

File it under: Feelgood Inspiration

Oh my God, I forgot David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

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To be filed under unbelievable inspirational storytelling. It’s so so good.

Crap, I cannot forget my buddy, Melissa Drake’s heartwarming tale of how she found reprieve from the grips of depression through dance.

File it under: Inspirational Storytelling.

And that’s all he wrote.

Meditation certainly isn’t new, but this millennia-old practice is definitely becoming trendier in the Western world. And though some of its benefits are hard or even impossible to measure, researchers keep studying what exactly happens to the brain during meditation. Thanks to these pioneers, today we have a much better understanding of what meditation does, at least on a neurological level.

With the help of modern neuroimaging technologies like fMRI, EEG, and spectral analysis, researchers have been able to study changes in the brain morphologies of meditation practitioners as they meditate.

The main insight? A significant decrease in beta wave activity. This means that the brain calms down a bit and stops processing information as actively as it normally does. That probably comes as no surprise, but if you’re curious about the science and what it could mean for you on a practical level, read on…

What Brain Regions Does Meditation Rewire?

Okay, so what exactly happens to your brain? A meta-analysis of 21 neuroimaging studies has found that at least eight different brain regions are consistently altered by meditation:

• Frontal lobe. The part of the brain that controls most important cognitive skills, including speaking, problem-solving, and judgment.

• Temporal lobe. Most of the changes in this region happen to the hippocampus, a structure involved in emotional responses and memory formation.

• Parietal lobe. This part of the brain slows down significantly during meditation, thereby affecting how sensory information is processed.

• Thalamus. The thalamus, responsible for selective focus and attention, plays a significant role in sensory perception.

• Reticular formation. Located in the very center of the brain stem, this structure receives incoming stimuli and plays a central role in a state of alertness and arousal.

• Sensory cortex and insular cortex. Two areas responsible for processing tactile information and general body awareness.

• Cingulate cortex. An integral part of the limbic system, involved in emotion-related activity, learning, and memory.

• Superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and corpus callosum. These areas of white matter play a big role in communication within and between the left and right brain hemispheres.

A bit of a mouthful, right? Ultimately, the brain exhibits observed improvements in thickness and cortical surface area fiber density. But what exactly do these changes to the brain and its activity mean? Well, this is the part that can’t really be studied using neuroimaging, but the beneficial effects on day-to-day performance is noticeable…

How Can Meditation Benefit You?

Based on what’s known about the role of affected brain regions, and on various tests performed on meditation practitioners and their experiences, here’s a pretty compelling list of why you might consider taking up your own meditation practice:

#1. Less anxiety

During meditation, certain neural connections are weakened, meaning you won’t react as strongly to certain emotional stimuli. Furthermore, the parts of the brain responsible for reasoning aren’t influenced as strongly by the fear centers. This makes it easier to respond rationally instead of react explosively to circumstances that would normally trigger an emotional outburst.

#2. Faster learning and better memory

Meditation will help you better filter out distractions. Certain brain wave changes will help you think and learn faster, remember better, and be more productive.

#3. Increased creativity

Human creativity isn’t always easy to study objectively, but meditation is assuredly known to improve this as well. There’s evidence that open-monitoring meditation leads to improvement in creativity as measured by tests that involve innovating with unorthodox ideas.

#4. Improved focus

It’s said that focused attention is akin to a muscle that can be trained and strengthened through exercise. Consciously trying to prevent your focus and attention from drifting away is an important part of meditation. There’s evidence that practicing focused-attention meditation helps improve overall focus, extending the benefits of this practice to our daily lives.

Want to Approach Nirvana? Give Meditation a Try!

Just 20 minutes of meditation can lead to observable changes in how your brain works. And there’s evidence that in long-term meditators, the changes in brain wave patterns might be permanent!

So give it a go — there’s no harm in trying! Numerous meditation techniques exist, such as mindfulness meditation, mantra meditation, movement meditation, and much more. Just do some research, try out a few, and see what works for you.

Success Demands Singleness Of Purpose. You Need To Be Doing Fewer Things For More Effect Instead Of Doing More Things With Side Effects. It Is Those Who Concentrate On But One Thing At A Time Who Advance In This World.

If you want extreme levels of motivation and flow, you need a few key ingredients:

A Clear And Compelling Future

Your Vision Of Where Or Who You Want To Be Is The Greatest Asset You Have. Without Having A Goal It’s Difficult To Score.

Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor summed-it up best: Without having a future to look forward and stretch to, the present becomes meaningless and unbearable.

Your view of your own future directly impacts your physical and emotional health here-and-now. If you have a positive view of your future, then your emotions and behavior will be positive here.
If the future looks uncertain or bleak, then you’ll fall apart emotionally and behaviorally.

Your view of your own future is the single greatest factor in what you do here-and-now.
If you’re distracted or depressed right now, then what that means is that you’ve either lost hope in the future, or you don’t believe in your future.

This is why Dr. Angela Duckworth has found that “cultivating hope” is one of the most important aspects of being “gritty” or resilient.

So what does your future look like?

Many psychologists now believe that “consciousness” is really about imagining different future scenarios. That’s what makes us “human” and not “animal.” We can project the future. We can imagine something totally different. We can commit to something that we have no evidence of.
Dr. Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, has found that very few people spend time imagining their FUTURE SELF. We spend much more time remembering the past. As a result, we fail to predict where our lives will go. This isn’t because we can’t predict where our lives will go, but that we don’t.

Imagination is a skill to be developed. It’s something you can get incredibly good at. It’s something you must get good at if you want to control the direction of your life.

Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

You can imagine whatever future you want. You also can imagine who you want to be in the future. If you do not do this, then you can’t possibly make conscious decisions in the present.
You must imagine where you want to be so that here-and-now, you can make conscious decisions that will take you there.

How much time do you spend imagining your future self?

What is the future you want?

How much of your present here-and-now experience is driven by your chosen future?

One Very Specific Outcome You’re Seeking

What Man Actually Needs Is Not A Tensionless State But Rather The Striving And Struggling For A Worthwhile Goal, A Freely Chosen Task.

Having a “bigger future” is essential to mental and physical well-being in the present. But in order for your future to be effective, you need to quantify it. You need a specific goal to direct your focus and behavior at.

Viktor Frankl explained that “purpose” is essential. But “purpose,” as his quote above states, is really just a “freely chosen task.” This clarifies what most people have wrong about “purpose.” Most people think you must “discover” your purpose, and that your “purpose” is some big broad thing.

It’s not.

Your purpose is a freely chosen task. You CHOOSE your purpose, and your purpose must be a task you accomplish. For example, if you’re in college, then your purpose is to finish your degree. If you’re writing a book, then your purpose is to finish the book.

Your purpose is an outcome. It’s tangible. It’s something you can measure and accomplish. It’s time-bound.

Your “purpose” right now is different from what your purpose may have been last year. Next year, when your purpose may shift as well.

It’s crucial that your purpose centers around ONE SPECIFIC OUTCOME. The more singular your focus, the more inspired and clear will be your path to achieving it.

This is where it gets tricky for a lot of people. You need to choose ONE GOAL. ONE OUTCOME.

Right now, you’re probably trying to accomplish too many things. You have competing goals that are stretching you thin, stunting your flow and progress.

If you want more flow states and motivation, you need to simplify your future. You need to clarify one single outcome that is “YOUR PURPOSE.”

Making Trade-Offs

Essentialism Is Doing The Right Thing At The Right Time In The Right Way.

Choosing ONE OUTCOME is essential to having clarity and focus. Therefore, you must look at all of the “potential futures” you have in your mind and start making some decisions.
Look at all of your goals.

Which ONE is clearly the most important?

Put another way, which one, if you accomplished it, would change your life the most?

Which one, if you truly focused on it and succeeded, would make the biggest impact on your future?

Robert Brault has said, “We are kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to lesser goals.”

All of your goals are important or interesting to you. But some of them are “lesser goals,” even if you really want them. An “essentialist,” someone who focuses on the purely essential is willing to make trade-offs. They’re willing to forego certain things in order to have better ones.

The truth is, you can’t have it “all.” Decisions require removing alternative options. Making a true decision is how you change your life. But it also means you must say no to other things — even great things.

What is the most important OUTCOME you could turn into your purpose?

Now, this doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve your other goals. But maybe, you need to wait on some of the other ones? The order of how you do things matters. If you crush your ESSENTIAL GOAL — the most important one — you’ll probably have 10X more freedom and opportunity than you have now. If you achieve your ESSENTIAL and SINGLE GOAL — then the other things you want right now may become irrelevant.

Your one goal needs to be time-bound. Without a deadline, you have a “dream” not a “goal.” Once you’ve made the bold move and chosen the single goal that will become your current purpose, give yourself a deadline.

Creating A “Process” Of Sub-Goals

Assume The Feeling Of Your Wish Fulfilled.

Once you’ve clarified and committed to your single goal, you need to change your daily schedule. You need to target more and more of your time and attention toward your purpose — the “one goal.”

How much of your day is currently designed around creating this one outcome?

Committing to this purpose takes guts. It will challenge you to the core. Life will start to question your resolve. You’ll need to get help and support from the right people. In the book The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho talks about the “omens” that God leaves on your path, to not only confirm to you that you’re on the path, but to encourage you.

Once you’re truly committed, you’ll start seeing “omens” or having amazing experiences that will build your confidence and resolve. These “omens” are really just peak experiences that solidify to you that you’re serious about this, and that you’re going to achieve this.

The more committed you become, the more clarified will become your process. Yes, you have one single goal. But you need “sub-goals” or “means” to achieve that goal. Sometimes, the “sub-goals” or “process” will be non-linear. Sometimes, you must zig while everyone else is zagging.
The main point here is: You need a “process” to achieve your goals. When the “why” is strong enough, you’ll figure out the “how.” Overtime, the “hows” may change. For example, just yesterday, I recommitted fully to my single goal of selling millions of copies of Personality Isn’t Permanent, my new book. This led me to conversations and experiences that opened me up to an inspired path to making this goal real.

In order to have true hope and motivation — you need a clear outcome that you want, you need the sense of agency or confidence that you can do it, and you need a pathway to getting there. The pathways are your subgoals. And yesterday, I discovered a much better pathway to achieving my single goal than I previously had. This, of course, boosted my motivation and hope.
I would not have discovered or thought of this pathway, though, had I not been committed. It was through seeking help and guidance that I was able to find this new path.

You need a path to achieve your goals.

That path — your “sub-goals” — also needs to be quantified. You need specific milestones or outcomes along the way.

Your sub-goals need to clearly lead to your ONE MAJOR goal.

This is how you create insane motivation. This is how you live your life in a flow state. This is how you live your life “on purpose” and “with purpose” and “through purpose.”

Books are like breakfast cereal. The more choices you have, the harder it is to pick one.

Why do some books go in one ear and out the other? Why is it so hard to make a choice when the choices are endless? What defines “good”?

After 10 years and reading over 700 books, I have an answer (not the answer). My system made me much more comfortable choosing new books to read and understanding the context of each of those books. Books need to be read in a rough order so they can be fully understood and integrated into your personality.

My order isn’t what you’d expect. It’s certainly not what you learned in school, and it contains a lot of “low” art. I’ll explain why that’s bullshit. This is the truest order of reading books to create a good life that I can currently muster. Obviously, it’s incomplete, but it’s the best I can do.
It’s also not a reading list. I will make a lot of specific recommendations, but I believe that the category works. You may read Campbell — I may read Jung — but I think we will mostly come to the same conclusions.

The deep, unconscious motivation for reading needs to be straightened out. When you sit down to read, you need to know the force keeping your eyes on the page. If it is to “seem” well-read, it won’t last. It took most of my 20s to start getting my relationship to reading sorted out. Hopefully, you can skip some of that. At the core, it’s about habits, and plenty of people have written about forming good habits. Get the motivations and the queues right; the rest is automatic.

Let’s dive into the proper order, and I will explain my theories as we go. Depending on where you are on your reading journey, this can be started at the beginning or the middle. It also can, and will, repeat many times over a lifetime.

OK, so you’re completely at a loss as to what to read first out of the endless array of books. Here’s a good place to start:

#1. Fiction (Beginning with True Interest)

Forget what you’re supposed to read. Seriously, just drop it and pick stories that you are drawn to. Movies, short stories, TV, and graphic novels are all valid forms of fiction. All that matters is that you pay attention to how it makes you feel.

In school, we are forced to take tests on books we didn’t read to pass a test and prove that we’re “educated.” It’s entirely backward. I promise that if you allow yourself to follow your Harry Potter obsession to its very core, you will eventually find yourself reading Dostoyevsky (just don’t count on it).

Or, you’ll read trash for the rest of your life — more power to you. Maybe you’re a busy-as-hell CEO doing a lot of good. Don’t let anyone shame you for your choice in literature. I have to say, though — if you truly indulge in the books you really like — and they happen to be shallow, you will eventually get bored with them and ready to move on. Let it happen naturally.

Lots of books that people think are “shallow” only seem shallow on the surface. Look into the archetypes of Harry Potter, for example. J.K. Rowling got it exactly right. Why would we assume it’s an accident that she can fill a stadium to listen to her read a children’s book?

And that brings us to the importance of true interest. Your interest knows a lot more than you in a lot of ways. For example: Have you ever watched children play? They play house, or they play explorers. They give each person roles: “You be the daddy,” or “You be the bad guy.” What are they doing? They are acting out how to behave in the world long before they could explain it out loud.

That doesn’t stop when you get to be an adult. You only lose the will to play if you fear that you’ll do something wrong and embarrass yourself. Still, your interest is to teach you things about yourself that you can’t explain with words.

That’s why fiction is so important. It’s the adult playground. It’s the place where you can explore what sort of person you want to be long before you could articulate it. If you shame yourself out of the fiction you are truly interested in; you miss the only opportunity to grow.

So, if you truly have no idea what you want to read next — pick up a story, no matter how “childish” that calls to you. Don’t read books that you think you should. Find the place in your heart that yearns for an adventure with Dragons or a steamy romance, and follow that to the very bottom.

If you can’t think of a book like this, go to the bookstore. When you walk the aisles, watch for a book to “shine forth” (This actually works). Pick that one. Don’t binge it shamefully; That prevents you from growing. Read it mindfully and proudly.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Harry Potter series (obviously)
• The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
• Island by Aldous Huxley
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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#2. Self-Help (Get Your Life in Order First)

Why do people shit on self-help? Because they are afraid to admit that they might not already be perfect.

I love people who love self-help. It says that they don’t care if people see them reading books about getting better. They aren’t afraid to admit that they could improve themselves.

Does some self-help seem obvious and trite to you? Don’t read those books. But don’t forget — that book might save someone else’s life (maybe even you in the future). Besides, it’s nice that self-help is unpretentious and easy to read. I see that as a bonus.

No matter where you are in your life, there is a self-help book that can help you. They usually aren’t great literature, but that’s not what they are trying to be. They are brass tacks. They want to tell you how to do the exact, practical thing you are trying to do.

The reason they come after fiction is that it’s the order people learn naturally. As I said, humans act out what they believe long before they can articulate it. Reading fiction is about acting out values. Self-help is about articulating them.

I read Harry Potter as a boy. At that age, I just loved it — I had no idea why. Later in life, I read a bunch of philosophy, mythology, and self-help. With the new context, Harry Potter suddenly took on a whole new meaning. While other fiction books I loved as a kid fell away, Harry Potter stayed because it got all the deeper elements exactly right.

Right, so, self-help can enrich fiction and vice versa — but that’s not the only reason self-help is high on this list. If you are struggling to pay your bills and maintain professional and personal relationships, you won’t have the luxury of reading. You’ll be too busy trying to survive.

If you get caught in that trap, it’s hard to get out. Reading is essential to life-long success. If you’re too busy to read, you’re never going to learn new ways to exit the struggle. Chaos piles up, and life gets out of hand. It happens to a lot of people.

If you feel the chaos of life piling up on you, the last thing you need is some snob telling you to read Neitzche. You need to read Tony Robbins. You need to get out of the hole so that you have the damn luxury of reading Neitzche someday.

Here are three vital things to read about if you haven’t already mastered them:

• Money
• Relationships
• Health

Here are some of the most life-changing books I’ve come across:

• 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
• Unshakeable by Tony Robbins
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle
• 7 Habit of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

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#3. Mythology (Learn to See What Matters)

About a year ago, Carl Jung turned my world inside out. He helped me see that the world is not only composed of matter but also what matters. In case you didn’t know, this is the primary struggle of modern people. What is the meaning if everything is measured?

Modern thinking has tricked us into thinking that life is subject and object, and they are perfectly separable. Think again, Jung says! You don’t see a chair; you see a sitting-down place. The chair doesn’t exist without your butt to sit in it!

I could go on and on about this topic (my friends will tell you with a deep sigh). The point is: Science is for measurement, stories are for values. As the great Scottish philosopher David Hume said:

“You Can’t Derive An Ought From An Is.”

Science can tell us what there is (roughly), but it can’t tell us what to do. See? This observation really blew my mind — sorry if I stress an obvious point.

Stories are just as important as science. The story of your life matters. What you value matters. What you value determines what you can see. To change your story is to change your life.
Good and bad isn’t something that exists out there. As great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it:

“The Line Dividing Good And Evil Cuts Through The Heart Of Every Human Being.”

That’s why your eyes are so glued to the TV while watching your favorite hero. You’re trying to understand the good and evil in your own heart. You’re trying to understand yourself.
Becoming aware of this process completely changed my life. It started simple, and I never felt like rushing my understanding. In the end, it’s as simple as understanding how to tell a story. Anything more is just gravy.

Even if you’re not a writer, it’s important to understand how stories work. They make human life possible.

Here are my favorites, from easy to difficult:

• Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
• Modern Man in Search of Meaning by Carl Jung
• Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson
• The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann

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#4. Pop-Science (Get Your Facts Straight)

“If You Go To Thinking Take Your Heart With You. If You Go To Love, Take Your Head With You. Love Is Empty Without Thinking, Thinking Hollow Without Love.”

Another quote by Carl Jung. Before I read him, I was too much thinking and too little heart. Stories are heart, science is thinking. With all my facts in a neat row and no love, I was hollow.
That’s why mythology was so important to me about a year ago. I discovered a meaning in life that didn’t ask me to believe in wishful thinking (which some overly optimistic self-help writers tend to sell). I needed a more robust version of meaning for the modern mind that wasn’t based on ignoring science. That’s what thinkers like Jung gave me.

I say pop-science because science needs a good storyteller to make it relevant to our lives. Otherwise, it is a phonebook. As Jung would claim, no information is meaning-neutral (despite what some egg-heads might have you believe). Unless you’re a scientist, it’s OK if you don’t wanna read scientific journals.

There are many great scientific storytellers out there. They were my first love, so to speak. When I was a kid, I read Hawking, Dawkins, and Sagan. What makes them great was not only the science but the way they mixed in storytelling. I was obsessed with rationality. I only learned later that it was just a story; A good one, but not the only one.

Read the great science storytellers of our age so that you don’t fall for pseudoscience. Learn to think critically as well as with passion and meaning. You can’t lean too far one way or the other. Strike a balance that makes you comfortable.

While this isn’t an urgent category, it’s important if you want to be a respected and trusted person. Without an ability to see fact from fiction, you are vulnerable to believe things that certain string-pullers would like you to believe. Myths show us what we stand for; facts prevent us from falling for anything.

Do you always avoid science? Dip your toe in the pool. There is more fun here than you think. Here are my favorites:

• A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
• How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollen
• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
• Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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#5. History (Know Where You Come From)

I struggle the most to read history. The way it was taught in school made it seem like memorizing dates and battles for tests.

That’s a shame because I finally realize that we are a historical animal. Reaching about history is reading about yourself. Without knowing about what happened in the 20th century, for example, we might be doomed to repeat the mistakes. That would be a disaster.

In recent years, I have been slowly engaging more and more with history. I’m sure many people could give you much better recommendations — but I can give you the point of view of a convert.
Not interested in history? That’s OK — stay higher on this list. Read long enough, and I promise you’ll come around. Nothing beats the feeling of realizing that someone 2,000 years old was going through the same things are you are.

Here are my favorites:

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Einstein by Walter Isaacson
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Hariri
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson

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#6. Philosophy (Tie it All Together)

In a lot of ways, I lived this list backward. I suppose that makes me a cautionary tale.
I studied philosophy in college. While I am very thankful that I did, I think a lot of what I learned fell on deaf ears. Only now do I even begin to understand Neitzche, for example. And only barely. I had no business reading him at 21 when I was mostly just trying to get laid.
That being said, philosophy is the ultimate self-help. It’s not as concrete and actionable as “self-help,” but it has the same aim. How does one live? If you want to know deeper truths to help you live a better life, read philosophy.

Philosophy is the highest level of abstraction. It’s thinking about thinking about thinking. It hurts the brain. I have a secret for you…a lot of it is nonsense.

When it’s not, it will knock your socks off. But when it is, it will make you read the same sentence 40 times and get no closer to understanding it. For a lot of the greats, I recommend reading secondary materials. Most of this stuff can be summarized. Only if you are a wild man on a mission should you dive into the source material!

That being said, I love philosophy, and I love philosophizing. It’s a hobby for me — like knitting. It doesn’t have to be a hobby for you.

There are a lot of great YouTube videos about philosophy. I recommend watching a lot of them before picking up any philosophical text. There is no rush, and there is no test. This should be fun. If it’s not, quit.

That being said, nothing will change your world like reading philosophy. Like Plato’s cave, you’ll see the world for the first time, and it will be marvelous. This can happen over and over. It’s truly something.

Here’s a shortlist, starting easy:

• Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday (concrete and actionable)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (Fiction, stunning writing)
• The Apology by Plato (where we started in the West)
• Beyond Good and Evil by Fridrich Nietzche (where we ended up)

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#7. Political (If Ever)

I feel intensely bored by politics.

For the most part, I think you can leave the political chatter to the heads on TV. Without deeper understanding gained from the above categories, political talk is powerless and toothless. With a deeper understanding, you see that it’s best to try not to engage on this level, ever.

People usually start with politics because they want to feel like they are doing something important. I’m here to tell you; nothing is more pressing or important than getting yourself in order. Without that inner work, any political change you make is likely to make things worse.

Politics is nothing more than recent history without any perspective or wisdom. Without a little time and distance, you can’t really see the forest for the trees. After a while of tree-gazing, you lose the ability to perceive forests at all.

Occasionally, politics pokes its ugly head into our lives, whether we like it or not. That’s to be expected and dealt with. Treat politics like fighting and reading like karate. A great karate master never goes out looking for a fight — but he will whip your ass if you start one.

Yes, vote. Make sure you engage with your community. But unless you’re passionate about something, there is no reason to be “informed.” Truly informed people know Plato as well as Twitter.

That being said, I have a few books that shaped my point of view:

• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
• Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
• The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Madison, Jay

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If you read these, you avoid the “he said, she said,” of most political writing. Here’s my basic takeaway (OPINION INCOMING):

The right wants stability. The left warns that stability makes power accumulate into fewer and fewer hands. Both are right. We have to talk to stay in balance. If you’re right or left is mostly due to your personality. The best political action you can make is to learn to talk to people unlike you. I’m a writer, and I live in LA. Of course, I lean left. But my parents are hard-working people from Louisiana. I have learned to speak with them. That feels important.

Reading great books starts with the reader. All books are about you if you’re reading them.

Read to have a good life, not to seem smart. Get smart as a byproduct.

Start easy, keep it fun, and never let it become homework. School is over, and you never have to do homework again.

Read the great books when they call to you. Let books change you from the inside out.

After over 700 books, I believe that nothing is more important.

PERSONALIZE YOUR FEED

SURVEY

This is not your mother speaking. However, it has come to my attention you take an awful lot of pride in being extremely busy while flirting dangerously close to the edge of burnout— in spite of all those productivity and mind-hack supplements you might be taking.

Burnout is a serious problem, and the less you take care of yourself, the more likely it is to occur. And seen as you have no intention in slowing down, I thought I would weigh in with a few self-care tips to help ensure you don’t end up a complete mess while you wait for any — or all — of the below to occur:

A) The world to stop and acknowledge just how awesome and hard-working you are

B) Your mother to send out a tweet saying how proud she is of you — which then gets retweeted a few thousand times

C) Landing a guest spot on the Ask Gary Vee Show

D) Actually making the world a better place

E) Finding out who killed Kenny

Seen as Gary Vee might be your best hope, self-care is pretty much essential to maintain a level of sanity in today’s world, so perk up a minute and pay attention if your boy, Gary, ain’t responding to your tweets.

In this day and age, I could write a list the length of the Nile of things you could do to cleanse that precious little soul of yours, but that would piss us both off, so I’ll keep it brief and focus on that which can create the most impact in the shortest time.

FYI: I’m running on the assumption you know that if you eat like crap and overdose on coffee, sugar and other stimulants, you’re going to feel like crap.

Take this stuff a lot more seriously than my intro and hopefully, you’ll never know just how lucky you are to have a healthy body and mind.

This is just a guide and some tips to help change your state, prevent burnout, and keep stress to a minimum. There are no rules here but your own. You do what’s right for you.

#1. Change Your Environment 

I’m not talking about quitting your job, packing your bags and moving to a new city or country. I’m talking about getting away from whatever is causing your stress and doing something that nourishes your mind, body and soul. It can be as simple as going for a walk or anything listed below.

I’m assuming you spend too much time at your computer while losing your mind. Studies carried out by Princeton University found that the brains of those who are sedentary behave differently under stress, and aren’t able to function as well. So stand the fuck up my friend, and take yourself off for a little trot.

The more you do this, the better it works. If things have got out of hand and you’re experiencing anxiety or depression, you’ll need to do more in-depth work, but even still, breaking your environment will always give your mind a much-needed break, so the best practice is to do it often.

#2. Practice Yoga

Realistically, everything listed here is worthy of an article in itself. And yoga might be the longest one. The mind-body connection is real Y’all, and nothing quite taps into it like yoga.
Yoga probably saves a million panic attacks a day. You stand to gain so much from a regular practice. I can’t begin to tell you how much it helped my anxiety. Just make sure to balance your Yin and your Yang. You’re already living your life in Yang, so do yourself a favour and get some fucking Yin!

#3. Stay Hydrated

No shit, Nicky. But seriously, according to a study by CBS, roughly 75% of Americans may suffer from chronic dehydration. Considering mild dehydration affects your ability to think clearly—that’s crazy!

Ease off on the caffeine and beer, and make sure you’re getting plenty of h2o. At a minimum, you should be drinking at least 2 liters a day — so drink plenty more and know what you need to accommodate your mind and body based on your lifestyle.

#4. Have Some Fun

If you’re not laughing your way through all the drama life fires at us — what’s the point? You have a duty to enjoy your life and have some fun. The more you honor that and the more fun you have, the more likely all the other stuff you’re stressing over will fall into place.

#5. Stop Drinking

It pains me to write this because I’m drinking a whiskey as I type. Alcohol is a depressant. If you’re going through shit, take a break from it and clear your mind. There’s probably nothing worse for you than alcohol. The clarity you stand to gain from cutting it out of your life — if only for a period is ridiculous.

#6. Listen to Music That Smoothes Your Soul

Music is extremely powerful when it comes to stress-management and relaxation. It can aid in meditation, lower your heart rate and blood pressure, and helps decrease stress hormone levels.

Obviously, the type of music matters, but I even find Eminem to be great so this is all on you. If I’m working, I’ll have some classical or relaxing music playing softly in the background which studies confirm help reduce stress levels.

And if I’m working and stressed, it’s usually because I’m not listening to music. So, if you have a Hitler type boss that refuses to allow you to tap into this form of stress reduction when you work — quit!

#7. Indulge in Cold Water Therapy

13-degree water is hardly an indulgent, but whatever. Stress causes inflammation. Inflammation is bad. Cold water therapy helps kick the shit out of inflammation, so get yourself down to your local plunge pool or at the very least, blast that shower on full freezing for a minute every morning.

On top of that, cold water therapy helps boost cognitive function, immunity and your mood by giving you a hit of grade A dopamine, unlike that crap you get from Instagram which barely lasts a minute.

#8. Get in the Sauna

Saunas are magical. I’m only recently starting to learn just how good they are for overall health and longevity. You’ll feel great, relieve stress, flush toxins, cleanse your skin, help induce a deeper sleep, relax your muscles and soothe any aches and pains.

You get all of that from sitting your ass down in a hot room. Fucking magical!

#9. Meditate

Some dude nails this quote:

“The goal of meditation isn’t to control your thoughts, it’s to stop letting them control you.”
Surely that’s worthy of a collective amen?

The breath doesn’t just play a role — it plays a major role in controlling emotions and keeping anxiety at bay. Meditation has been shown, through brain scanning imagery, to turn down the amygdala. And for anyone that doesn’t know, your amygdala is the little prick responsible for getting overly aroused and instructing the adrenal glands to flood your system with so much adrenaline — you’ll be reaching for the phone to call an ambulance before your heart bursts from your chest.

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Basically, your amygdala is a dick. Studies confirm you can tame the bastard through meditation. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need any more convincing.

#10. Practice Gratitude

“Gratitude Is The Healthiest Of All Human Emotions. The More You Express Gratitude For What You Have, The More Likely You Will Have Even More To Express Gratitude For.”

I’m all in with Ziggy! Challenge yourself to practice gratitude for 30 days, and I guarantee your life will start looking rosier. It really is a glorious bastard!

#11. Sleep Sleep Sleep

A lack of sleep is scientifically proven to be extremely bad for your health. Unfortunately, many struggle a lot with this one. I don’t care what anyone says — unless you’re a robot, you need sleep to function. The good news is that all the above should help.

In addition, you can burn some incense, drink camomile tea, light some candles, take a magnesium supplement, and infuse the shit out of your bedroom with essential oils.
Develop a nighttime routine that works for you and write in a diary all you achieved today and all you plan to achieve tomorrow, so it’s not running around your mind driving you batshit crazy as you try to nod off.

#12. Unplug

Your phone causes havoc on your mind. Get it away from you before you go to bed and don’t even think about reaching for it first thing in the morning unless it’s to turn off your alarm or throw it out the window.

Get in the habit of turning airplane mode on sporadically throughout the day and get out of the habit of playing with it when you are in the company of others. It will make you a better human.

#13. Talk to Someone

Sometimes the best thing you can do is sit opposite someone who’s capable of listening and offload your shit on them. Easier said than done because most people are incapable of listening and offer shit advice because the context they use will be their own.

If you have someone in your life that’s really awesome and supportive in this area, great. If not and you need to vent and process some shit you keep repressing, there’s no shame in paying for it. Change is hard when you do it on your own, but it can be fun working through some shit with someone else. What is it they say? A problem shared is a problem halved? The solutions are there, and sometimes the right ones will pop up quicker when you confide in someone with a neutral stance.

#14. I Didn’t Want to Freak You Out With Just 13 Tips, But That’s All I Got. My Bad!

Remember, all these are good for your body, mind and soul. The more you pull yourself from a stressful environment and indulge in self-care, the better you will feel.

Most of the above listed will instantly improve your mood and stress levels, but like everything else, the real results come with repetition and compound over time, so take this stuff seriously and incorporate what works best for you into your lifestyle.

It shouldn’t be a treat. It should be a priority. There are far too many in this world suffering from anxiety and depression due to the insurmountable stress of everyday life.

Start with you. First and foremost, you’ve got to keep yourself healthy and sane. And if you are suffering from depression, anxiety or just overwhelm, then talk to someone. You’ve got massive blinkers on. There are solutions, and when you sit down with someone that can help you see the reality, you’ll soon realize those solutions are well in your grasp.

Meditation is the practice of focusing on your body rather than your thoughts. The most common form of this practice is to sit still and concentrate on your breathing, either with your eyes open or closed. People who meditate for as little as 20 minutes per day have reported a number of benefits. Among the most well-known effects of this practice are the reduction of stress, anxiety and depression.

Frequent meditators typically find it easier to separate themselves from their thoughts. By taking a few minutes to pause from thinking and focus solely on their bodies, they learn to recognise their thoughts as emotions that live outside of them. As a result, when negative emotions arrive during their everyday lives, they are less affected by them. They also find it easier to connect with the present moment, rather than being distracted by a constant inner monologue.

What’s more, the meditation process itself can also be highly enjoyable. Some people report ecstatic highs during particularly clean sessions.

How meditation improves confidence

This comes back to controlling the ‘inner bitch’.

In moments of panic and anxiety, we often feel so attached to our emotions that they run our behaviour. We run away. We shake uncontrollably. We make excuses that seem so incredibly real. Without meditation, we may be helpless to prevent this from happening.

Yet, meditation trains us to separate ourselves from these thoughts. As such, we can learn to view our inner bitch as a separate entity. He is no longer a part of us. He is a voice which we can choose to embrace or ignore.

What’s more, regular meditation is likely to make you calmer overall. As a result, it may take more to trigger feelings of panic and anxiety. When these feelings do arise, you’ll find it easier to act logically and with emotional intelligence.

How else can meditation improve your life?

Here are some more reported benefits of meditation.

#1. Focus and productivity

Think you’re too busy to meditate for 20 minutes a day? It could be argued that you’re too busy not to do this.

Once you learn how to clear your thoughts during meditation, it becomes easier to do the same during everyday life.

This creates an ability to resist distractions. Often, you’ll end up getting more done by meditating for 20 minutes a day, then you would have done otherwise.

#2. Weight loss

Regular meditation reduces stress, makes it easier to lose weight.

After all, stress triggers the production of cortisol, which causes cravings for carbohydrates, fat and sugar, even if we’re not hungry. It also signals to your body to store calories as fat, making it harder to lose weight even if you’re eating well and exercising.

Without these cortisol spikes, your diet and exercise plan will be more effective.

#3. Better sleep

Poor sleep often arises from being unable to shut your mind off at night, perhaps because of stress or excitement. Either way, by practicing turning off your thoughts for meditation, you may also find it easier to fall asleep.

A good night’s sleep in itself can reduce cortisol, improve focus and help you feel calmer.

#4. Improved sex life

A common cause of erectile dysfunction (if you’re a man) or failure to orgasm (if you’re a woman) is being unable to lose yourself in the moment.

Whether it’s because you’re nervous or desperate to make a good impression, being stuck in your thoughts is the best way to ensure that sex is mediocre at best.

Thankfully, meditation teaches you to escape your thoughts, making it easier to connect with your partner, appreciate every sensation and enjoy mind-blowing orgasms.

If that’s not worth 20 minutes a day, it’s hard to think what is.

How to meditate effectively

Meditation is easier when it’s practiced in a distraction-free room. Set an alarm so you don’t have to worry about checking the time. Make sure you’re sitting comfortably.

From there, take deep breaths and concentrate on how your body feels. If a thought pops into your brain, don’t get frustrated or resist it. Accept it, then avert your concentration back to your breathing.

The more you practice, the easier it will become.

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However, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Your life and your situation are unique. You need to take various perspectives so you can choose the one that fits best. That’s why I’ve put together the best advice that helped me make better choices from people much smarter than I am.

Climb the Mountain of Inner Clarity and Overcome the Obstacles of the Mind

What do the world’s leading high-performance coach and a Shaolin monk with 30 years of experience have in common?

Both Brendon Burchard and Master Shi Heng Yi say that to make great decisions, you first need inner clarity. Without, you look at the road ahead through a foggy windshield and take wrong turns. But while you can quickly clean the outside with wipers, the inside often stays foggy, making it impossible to see clearly.

Information about your options is usually easy to obtain. You can ask about the requirements and pay of a new job, find out which girl would like to go out with you, or look up how many calories a burger has. Inner clarity, however, is much harder — the “what do I really want?” often isn’t easy to answer, at least not if you want the truth.

By mastering yourself first before you take on the outside world, you’ll free yourself from distractions, bad decisions, and layers of overwhelming uncertainty.

Ancient Shaolin wisdom says obtaining inner clarity is like climbing a mountain. Once you’re at the summit, you can see clearly. But you’ll have to face five obstacles on the way up, representing the states of mind that prevent you from making a clear decision.

Sensual desire

I’ve climbed a ton of mountains in my life and they all had one thing in common. Walking upwards is hard and you quickly get hungry and thirsty.

Now imagine you come past a restaurant with delicious food, cool drinks, and a bunch of people. How tempting is it to leave your path and join them? This desire keeps you from reaching the summit and obtaining inner clarity. Your short-term cravings stand in the way of your long-term decisions, whether you break your diet or decide to move across the country for a girl because you’re lonely and crave love and affection.

Before you make a decision, ask yourself: “Am I distracted by a desire or even addicted to a temptation?”

Ill will

In 2018, the Swiss mountain rescue had to pull 3211 people out of the Alps, many of them due to bad weather conditions. Climbing mountains is no fun when it rains since it’s easy to get lost and off track. When your mind is clouded with negative emotions and rain, you can’t reach the summit of clarity.

Before you make a decision, ask yourself: “Am I feeling a negative emotion?”

Dullness of the mind & heaviness of the body

Any decision you make takes mental energy and willpower. Car salesmen know this and let you decide about the most profitable options in the end when you’re too exhausted to resist. To reach the summit of clarity, you have to be fit.

Before you make a decision, ask yourself: “Am I unmotivated or exhausted?”

Restlessness & worry

When you’re worried, you often zig-zag between thoughts and ideas. “What if A doesn’t work? Maybe B is better. Or how about C?” You’re too worried about the future or stuck in the past to make a clear decision. Focus on the present moment instead.
Before you make a decision, ask yourself: “Am I caught up in the future or the past? Is my mind jumping from thought to thought?”

Doubts of other people

Doubts are normal. They’re healthy. They cause you to challenge your ideas and weed out the bad ones, separating the wheat from the chaff. But too many doubts, especially from other people, will lead you off track.

When you listen to others saying this won’t work, you will fail, and you should do something else instead, you get lost. Their doubts cause you to turn around, choose paths that aren’t your own, and miss the summit altogether.

Before you make a decision, ask yourself: “Am I lost in doubt?”

Inner clarity is key. Only with a clear mind can you make a good decision.

Use the 10–10–10 Rule to Think Long-Term

You base most of your choices on your emotions. The food you crave. The words you say in a fight. The tap on your alarm clock so you can snooze for another ten minutes. Your emotions determine a good deal of your behavior, but there’s an inherent problem to this.

Emotions are short-lived. They demand instant gratification and don’t care about long-term effects. Your decisions are often too focused on what you want right now when the consequences will still be there for years to come.

You need to make the long-term results more apparent so you can give them more weight in your decision-making process. This is where the 10–10–10 rule comes into play.

It’s as simple as effective. Ask yourself how you will feel about something in ten minutes, ten months, and ten years from now. These three timeframes put the long-term consequences into perspective.

Buying an iPad will feel good ten minutes after the purchase — you’ve got a new and shiny device, and you’ll probably spend the first few days glued to it. But what about in ten months? Will it be worth the investment? Will you still use it as much as in the beginning, or will you want something else already?

And when you look into the future ten years from now, you likely won’t be using it at all anymore. Will it have brought enough joy to justify the $600 you spent on it? Or could you’ve done something else with the money, e.g. spent it on a holiday or crazy trip you’ll still remember ten years down the line?

If you want to make a good decision, you have to consider the long-term consequences.

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Face Your Fears and Calculate the Cost of Inaction

What if I told you all your decisions and behaviors are rooted in fear? It would be a shameless exaggeration, but with a germ of truth hidden underneath.

You are prone to negative information, including anything that triggers your fears. This negativity bias is the reason why bad news sells like hotcakes while good news magazines struggle.

Your fears influence your decision-making process to a great extent. When the risks are unknown, unique, or infrequent, you often overestimate them, making mountains out of molehills.

After 9/11, many people avoided flying out of fear of terrorist attacks and traveled by car instead. However, the data shows planes are much safer than cars. This means an unnecessarily large number of people died on the road thinking it was the safer alternative.

How can you put your fears in perspective and make better decisions? With a simple exercise by Tim Ferriss, author of the bestseller The 4-Hour Work Week, and popular TED speaker. Fear setting will help you rationalize your fears instead of giving in to them, helping you to make better, life-changing choices.

When I thought about quitting my Master’s program to build my own business, I went through the simple three-step process to put my worries and fears into perspective. This led not only to a better decision, but also peace of mind and confidence in my choice.

Step #1: Define, prevent, repair.

The unknown and uncertain are a great source of fear. This Xenophobia often causes stock prices to plummet and also compounds many anxiety disorders. Lots of people are afraid of the dark simply because they don’t know what might be lurking in the shadows.

Before I decided to quit my Master’s, I was worried about all sorts of potential outcomes. What if I go broke? What if I’ll have to flip burgers at McDonald’s and get yelled at by angry customers? What if I regret this decision for the rest of my life? What if…?

But the more I defined and examined my fears, the calmer I became. Once I explored all the possibilities, I felt a sense of peace — nothing could surprise me anymore. The fear of the unknown was gone.

After you defined your fears, ask yourself how you can prevent the worst-case — and if there’s anything that helps you sort out the mess if shit hits the fan.

Sure, my business might fail. But I could prepare amply, get a mentor, and put away a financial buffer so I wouldn’t starve to death. And even if everything went belly-up, I’d still have my Bachelor’s degree and could score an entry-level job, so there wasn’t that much to fear in the first place.

Define your fears. Think about how you can prevent your worst nightmare from happening and if there’s anything you can do to repair the worst-case damage.

Step #2: Ask yourself, “What can go right?”

When you face a decision, you often focus on what can go wrong. Again, it’s natural — negativity bias and all. But what if you asked yourself “what can go right?”

Assume for a second everything went splendid without any hiccups or dead bodies in your basement. Just a smooth homerun without mistakes — putting you on top of the high score list.

In my case, that meant I’d be my own boss, make more money than I ever would’ve in the corporate world, and actually enjoy what I do for a living. It would be a dream come true.

Step #3: Calculate the cost of inaction.

Newton’s first law of motion states that if no outside force acts on an object at rest, it will stay at rest. In simpler words: If you don’t do something, nothing will change.

However, inaction comes with a hidden cost. Keeping your job will make you slightly miserable every day. Your apartment’s high rent will keep you from saving every month. Your toxic relationship will take a toll on your emotional well-being.

Once I considered these costs, I realized doing my Master’s was a pretty bad idea. I’d be miserable in my job, stuck in corporate life, and have a lot less time and energy to follow my dreams.

Calculate the costs of inaction. Write down what it costs you to keep everything as it is — in half a year, a year, and three years from now.

For your final decision, compare the scenarios from steps one and two. What if the worst-case happened — considering your measures for preventing and repairing the damage caused? What if your dream came true — considering all the good things that could come of it?

Rank these scenarios on a scale from -10 to +10 according to the long-term impact they can have on your life. In my case, I found myself comparing a -3 to a +9 — and that doesn’t even take into account the cost of inaction. To me, that’s a clear decision.

Distraction is everywhere. It comes in dings, vibrations, blinking lights, video calls, energetic children, and unplanned visitors, both live and online. In my article called “5 Ways Multitasking is Destroying Men,” I said multitasking is a severe problem.

Since distractions tempt us to habitually multitask, I would like to share how to avoid distractions. Distractions have been robbing men of their focus for generations.
Even Abraham Lincoln faced this problem.

People who wanted to speak with him frequently interrupted him at the White House. Despite his open-door policy, the 16th President was still able to read, write, visit battlefields, and abolish slavery, all while battling distraction.

It’s tough to know how Lincoln would have handled our modern distractions. While we will not be able to avoid 100 percent of them, we can avoid some.

Here are 6 practical ways to reduce distractions while still living in the real world.

#1. Turn off all notifications.

“Do not let your cell phone disrupt your day.”

People look at their phones close to 82 times per day.

So, turn off all notifications on your device. I mean everything. Do not let your cell phone disrupt your day.

How many times are you busy working on a project, having a healthy conversation, or trying to read an article and you suddenly receive a bajillion notifications from all your apps? Turn them off.

Nobody needs notifications from every single app. I only have my “reminders”notifications active. That way, I can control when I want to be interrupted.

#2. Focus in 20-minute intervals.

I recommend working in short bursts of 20-minute intervals to help you achieve hyper-focus. This is effective if you are easily distracted at work, especially while working from home.

Hide your phone, close your door, have your beverage already in hand, and work fluidly. Embrace having no interruptions for 20 minutes at a time. Then give yourself a five-minute break, but don’t get sucked into responding to multiple emails if you are trying to concentrate.

#3. Respond routinely to batch messages.

Only respond to emails and other messages at dedicated times. Be like professors, who let everyone know their open office hours — unless you are a CEO (or President Lincoln) and your immediate response is critical to others’ well-being. That’s not for all of us, though.

I find it challenging to hold off on responding when I receive an email at midnight. If I am awake, I feel tempted to reply, often trying to impress the sender by showing that I was up and considered their email important.

But most of the time, messages that show up late can wait to be addressed until regular work hours.

#4. Cancel social media.

This idea may be controversial, especially for my millennial colleagues — but I did it and am still alive. Get rid of your favorite social media platform.

It has been two years since I deleted my Facebook account and I have not looked back. I often would waste time perusing other people’s posts and inadvertently generating extreme disdain for people I once admired.

Sometimes, a post would get stuck in my head all day and disrupt my productivity until I vehemently voiced my opinion.

#5. Fast from TV and streaming.

After a long day of working, cooking, cleaning, and wrangling screaming kids, most of us just want to sit and relax. Awesome! Just don’t get distracted from relaxation, namely by streaming your favorite TV show.

I am a cinephile, so I get the need to get lost in a good film or a streaming binge. But try to have at least one day a week when you fast from all media.
This will help declutter your mind.

Talk to your spouse, play a board game, or open that book that has been sitting on your nightstand all year.

#6. Research.

Finally, learn as much as you can about this topic. Clifford Nass from Stanford discusses this in a video on YouTube.

Check out the books The Productivity Project or Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey. He has received the title “most productive man in the world” and has lots of great ideas on how to avoid distractions and multitasking.

And getting good at avoiding them will take time.

As I write this, I am leading an orientation group at my company. So, I am not guiltless in this, but I think with some self-awareness and practice, men can turn this around and increase focus in the areas of their lives that matter most.

This week was not a shining moment for me. My dishwasher broke a while back and I am in the middle of a warranty battle that is not going my way. There was a moment where I found myself getting increasingly frustrated while trying to navigate the warranty process on the phone. I was being handed off from one automated answering system to another, none of which’s voice recognition software seemed advanced enough to grasp that I had a broken appliance with a warranty. At one moment I found myself yelling at an automated system as the pre-recorded voice politely disconnected the line. Yelling at a computer system over something as trivial as a back-ordered part, again, not a shining moment.

You see, I have a hidden temper, and sometimes it surfaces. Many who read my writing know me personally and may be surprised to hear me say that. That’s because on the surface I generally am all smiles. But underneath the exterior lies a person who I work hard to suppress and educate. That person can be angry, mean, aggressive, and frankly kind of an asshole. I would define that person as a someone with anger issues, or one prone to extreme anger with little or no provocation.

As I write this, I can already see how I try to dissociate from that identity by talking about my angry side in the third person, rather than just saying it like it is… I have a temper and anger issues. Step One to fixing any problem is acknowledging there is a problem, right?

The truth is that this was brought to my attention by my wife a long time ago, she’s a strong and direct woman who was never afraid to tell me when I was being a ridiculous jerk. In spite of her repeatedly telling me this for a few years, I continued to ignore it as a real problem. I’d justify my angry moments with arguments such as:
– ‘You know what, it’s not my fault that their automated answering service sucks, sometimes yelling at a pre-recorded message is just the best way to get your point heard’ or
– ‘Hey, if the refrigerator didn’t want me to yell at it, then it shouldn’t have let it’s compressor go out’.

Rational, right? Wrong.

If you deal with temper issues, then I’d imagine you’ve heard yourself utter similar phrases in the past. As you’d have it, there are plenty of ways to be heard without losing your temper. Furthermore, most times a well thought out and collected argument is going to be far more impactful than blowing a gasket on an inanimate object that isn’t performing as you think it should.
This came to a head a few years ago when my wife asked me to seek help for my temper issues. I was taken aback, could this really be such a big problem that my own family was asking me to get professional help? Either way, one thing I’ve learned in life is that if your loved ones sit you down and ask you to fix something, then you should, at a minimum, be willing to discuss it. And in this instance, my wife already had someone lined up for me to go talk to, so I figured I better take it seriously.

That was two years ago, and I have been seeing a professional counselor ever since. Initially, I thought this was a bad joke… sit and talk about my feelings for an hour a couple times a month with a total stranger? I had better things to do like yell at automated answering services over broken appliances. But since then I have evolved a great deal in my perceptions of seeking help for emotional issues that are causing yourself and others pain.

If you’re a frequent reader, then you know I don’t write without offering some advice. So, here are just a few of the things counselling has helped me put in place to shift my mindset and deal with my anger more productively.

Talk it Out

I used to be afraid to have a discussion with someone who was bothering me. I’d simply let things bottle up. The inevitability of this suppression was that an angry eruption would eventually happen on an unsuspecting target (like a broken refrigerator). Months of undiscussed issues would channel into something that really had nothing to do with the root of my anger.

Since learning to be blunter with my loved ones and communities about how I’m feeling, I’ve become far less prone to angry outbursts. Sometimes these conversations aren’t easy, in fact most of the time they’re not. But I can say without doubt that getting that stuff out on the table is a cleansing experience and even tough conversations can only go up once the worst is on the table.

Find a Physical Outlet — and defend your time to do that thing with your life

If you deal with temper and anger issues and don’t have a physical activity that you like to do, then find one, fast. This can be anything; hiking, walking, running, weightlifting, rowing, swimming, wrestling, competitive fighting, basketball, soccer, cycling, or literally anything else that is physical.

Once you’ve chosen something, time block it, and defend that time, with your life. Because your relationships with loved ones just might depend on it. I’ve always been active, but I know for a fact that my anger issues are far more prevalent and surface level when I de-prioritize physical activity.

My sport of choice? Boxing. Given the context of the article, the reasons are likely fairly obvious. Boxing is a very aggressive and physical sport. If you don’t channel a bit of frustration productively when you’re in the ring with an opponent, who is trying to take your head off, then the regret will likely manifest in the form of a concussion.

I could (and likely will) write an entire article about the positive mental health benefits of exercise (increased endorphins, improved sleep and thus mood, increased post workout parasympathetic stress response, etc., etc.). However, for this article, the point is, exercise makes a huge difference for our mental health and temper.

Find Time for Low Impact Stress Relieving (Parasympathetic Activities)

As a male, it’s programmed societally to be aggressive, alpha, and on the go. While there is some benefit to these things, I have found that my self-improvement journey took an exponential leap once I started prioritizing healing activities (parasympathetic). These activities can come in many forms; taking a leisurely walk, sitting and watching the sunset with a loved one on the patio, playing a board game with family, getting 8 hours of quality sleep, baking a cake with your kid, throwing a football with your nephew, sipping a cup of coffee at a café (with no distractions), or anything you can think of that is relaxing. The key is to be fully present in the moment (no distractions).

These activities are like an internal reset for us emotionally. The parasympathetic response (opposite of the fight or flight response) holds benefits such as lowering blood pressure, decreased cortisol in the blood stream, decreased heart rate, decreased respiration rate, improved sleep, elicits healing, decreases inflammation, and overall improves our mood.
Once I started prioritizing stress relieving activities like the ones mentioned above, I noticed a definitive improvement in my mood and coping ability for stressful situations.

Reduce Alcohol and Intake of Toxins

A stressful day calls for a few drinks, right? It depends. Once in a while, no problem. But if a few drinks are simply your go to activity to blow off some steam and deal with stress, then take it from me… refer to the points above.

I used to be the first one to crack a beer after a hard day at work. The problem is that regular alcohol consumption has multiple adverse impacts on our mood and mental health. Ultimately drinking alcohol regularly, decreases serotonin, which leads to depression. And for someone with anger issues, this can be a slippery slope.

Once I started prioritizing exercise, parasympathetic activity, and communication with my loved ones all while deprioritizing alcohol consumption, I noticed a huge shift in my ability to control my temper and handle angry moments more productively.

Acknowledge Your Bad Moments

When you know that your emotions are about to run hot, own it. I spent years denying that I had a temper and using justifications to ignore the problem. While I am still far from perfect, I have become far more honest with myself when my temper surfaces in a way that I am not proud of. Don’t be afraid to apologize and own it. Also, don’t be afraid to ask yourself honestly what triggered you, so that you can identify your triggers and thus be prepared for them in the future.

Conclusion

There you have it, a tell all of my temper and how I work to control it. I hope that if you are someone who has experienced angry moments that you find use in this article. It’s never easy to have a mirror held up to your face and not like what you see. But if we can learn from the experience of others, then perhaps we can avoid some pitfalls before they become too deep.
I am far from perfect and still have moments that I am not proud of (refer back to the first paragraph and my brief story of yelling at an automated answering service over a dishwasher this week). But I can say that I use the tools above every single day of my life to mitigate what once was an out of control temper and it has changed my life for the absolute better.

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