10 Tips for Overcoming Shyness

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Shyness

1. Acknowledge your fear and accept it as a specific and particular feature of your personality. Do not try to get rid of it immediately: even if you think you’ve succeded at first, the fear will likely return. The issue here is not to eliminate fear, what we have to do is assimilate fear, understand it, point it out, handle it. Fear vanishes only when it realizes of its inability to distress us anymore.

2. Talk about your fears and share your experiences with others. This way, you will get accustomed to your fear and will handle it normally.

3. Decode your fear and try to elaborate a definition of it. Which feelings activate when you’re afraid? Anguish, sorrow, disappointment, guilt, helplessness?Identify each of the feelings, and analyze them carefully: perhaps they’re hiding a deeper problem.

4. Find all the information you need. The most you know about your fears, the least they will be able to disturb you.

5. Analyze your fears calmly. Fears almost always come from a wrong perception of reality. Try to spot what aspect of reality you’re perceiving mistakenly.
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5 quotes to live by

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  1. “If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.” (Bertrand Russell)
  2. “Try to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.” (Sydney Smith)
  3. “What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.” (Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama)
  4. “Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
  5. “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” (Bertrand Russell)

7 Essential Tips to Lose Weight the Healthy Way

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In this post I’ll give you 5 tips to lose weight the healthy way. Start by noticing that our bodies like slow, gradual changes in terms of calorie intake and exercise. Avoiding overweight is important: remember that women who lose between 10 lb and 25 lb halve their risk of developing diabetes and for men the risk of suffering heart problems reduces noticeably. Begin to learn how to lose weight by following these guidelines:

1. Lower your stress levels: too much stress acts as an important and pernicious factor for overweight and your overall health. This occurs because, when you are under stress (family, work, relationships, etc.) a chemical in your body (cortisol) is secreted, and the excess of this chemical will be retained by the body. Now to reduce stress, I recommend you to do things like taking a walk, and a few stretching and breathing exercises. Here are a some tips for overcoming stress.

2. Cut down on fatty meals and eat more fruit, vegetables and wholegrain bread. I specially recommend to increase greatly the consumption of leafy greens such as spinach. The reason is because these vegetables contain lots of antioxidants and fiber, and a higher intake of leafy greens can make your body burn calories and fat. Lower your cholesterol levels.

3. Drink water and eat fiber before meals. If you want to reduce hunger and prevent those pesky crazings for food, I recommend you to take a glass of ice water and eat some fiber (like an apple or some almonds) just before eating. Try it. It works!

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Work, boredom and procrastination

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Today I was thinking about my previous entry on procrastination. Therein I said that people who do not love their work are bored (and likely boring) people. I want to add up to it:

  1. Work is desirable because it might serve as preventive of boredom. Indeed, our work at a given time and location might be really tedious or uninteresting. However, such tedium is quite small in comparison with the boredom stemmed from empty days, days without nothing to do.
  2. Further, work has another benefit: it makes vacations much more enjoyable when they come. A happy life requires balance. All pleasures, all the time, are no good for the soul. Contrasts help us to appreciate the world in the right context.
  3. And third, the obvious one: work increases our probabilities for success, both economically and profesionally.

The conclusion seems clear: work, even a boring one, always leaves some kind of profit.

50 Hacks for Developing a Strong Mind

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  1. Solve some puzzles and crosswords.
  2. Try to be ambidextrous. Use your nondominant hand to brush your teeth, comb, handle the mouse. Write with both hands simultaneously. Do the same with the knife and fork.
  3. Learn new languages
  4. Learn to enjoy things like paradoxes and optical illusions.
  5. Make mental maps of your neighborhood, state, country.
  6. Block one or more senses. Eat with your eyes closed, use earplugs, bathe with eyes closed.
  7. Develop comparative tasting. Learn how to properly taste wine, chocolate, beer, cheese, etc.
  8. Develop leadership attributes.
  9. Find intersections between seemingly unrelated subjects.
  10. Learn how to use different keyboard layouts.
  11. Help others.
  12. Play some musical instrument.
  13. Find new uses for common objects. How many different uses you can find in a nail? 10? 100?
  14. Reverse your assumptions.
  15. Learn techniques of creativity.
  16. Go beyond the “right” answer.
  17. Go beyond obvious reality. Ask yourself: What if…?
  18. Play your favorite videogame
  19. Become a critical thinker. Learn to realize common lies.
  20. Learn logic. Solve puzzles logically.
  21. Familiarize yourself with the scientific method.
  22. Draw. Make doodles. You don’t have to be an artist.
  23. Think positive. Continue reading →

A Few Thoughts on Procrastination

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  • We urgently need to break the modern hedonistic cycle, that contemporary behavior characterized by the pursue of the least effort. We all want to succeed, and we have to know that success can only be achieved through effort.
  • Today, our most important and immediate challenge is to shake off passivity and lethargy, which are the most visible symptoms of mediocrity. It’s a time for sustained effort, steadfastness and perseverance.
  • We have to focus at our activities if we really want to emerge as individuals, families and nations of winners.
  • We should contribute to science and arts. Motivation is the key. People who do not love their work, do not face challenges, do not find obstacles to overcome… that’s bored (and likely boring) people. Continue reading →

10 easy tips to cope with stress

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  1. Know yourself: Learn to recognize your reactions to stress and think of them as a warning: some stressors are bothering you.
  2. Research about such stressors: A cornerstone to cope with stress. Take a few minutes to elaborate a list of people, activities, events, things that bring in stress to your life. Specify the more immediate stressors: work, family, money? Is it possible to diminish the effect of the stressors?
  3. Put things in right context: Maybe you are stressing about relatively small things which will be soon forgotten. No matter your stress, worries, results, your failure or your success, the world will keep going around. Think carefully about your stressors: they might seem catastrophic monsters, but they’re just problems which will be forgotten as time goes by. Therefore, don’t rush through life, learn to take things slow. Enjoy your family, your meals, your nature, your life. What have you done today to reward the great person you are? Continue reading →

The 7 Key Points of a Successful Training for Leadership

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Leadership of an organization that pursues great achievements must sustain and defend guidelines leading to constant training for its leaders, comprising several areas of leadership. Training the leaders of an organization is a process that should be implemented not only as a set of theoretical activities, but also by means of practical tasks. In the following, we will expand on 7 keypoints or principles that should be taken into account for the training of business leaders.

1. Knowing rights and duties

When you train a staff, the first thing you should teach is that leaders start by knowing their rights and duties within the organization. Teach them their rights, that will give them confidence in the organization and a sense of belonging. Besides, point out their duties, what the organization expects from them, their responsibilities. Take into account that leaders will utterly fail conducting an organization unless they perceive that their work will be rewarded. Your leaders must understand that leadership requires:

  • commitment
  • consistency
  • monitoring several activities
  • ensuring excellence
  • solving problems
  • making suggestions
  • controlling programs
  • following agendas
  • promoting ideas
  • defending organizational values

among other things requiring constant effort and dedication. This is why it is absolutely important to convey the leaders the value they have for the organization, the importance of their work, and the reward they can receive for their work. Leaders have to demonstrate passion and dedication. Motivation and perseverance are also at the core of leadership.

Knowing their duties will also allow them to know under what conditions they will be leading the organization, what are the expected results of their leadership, what is the proper way they should develop their leadership, and what are the milestones they are fully obligated to met for their leadership to be effective, and fully approved by the organization.

It is important that leaders know what are the rewards their leadership will bring along, because they are leaders committed to the organization, and they deserve wage benefits, admission to exclusive activities of the organization, and merit distinctions, promotions, delegated authority over certain matters of the organization. Of course, always in accordance with the results of their leadership.

When training a staff to lead, the future leaders must feel that the organization trust them, that they will be respected. Conversely, training must state that the organization expects dedication and concentration from their leaders. Teaching the leaders’ rights and duties within the organization is at the core of educating for leadership, of promoting a doctrine of respect between the organization and its leaders.

2. Train leaders for success

Leadership development means that you must train leaders to continually grow and mature. Leadership is not a static concept; leadership is a dynamic, mutable, adaptative process. More than training leaders, you should train successful leaders.

Some leaders fail distinguishing between successful leadership and being a leader and feeling successful because of such status. There is a great difference between being a leader who thinks he is successful because he has reached a leader status, and being a leader who has set out to achieve things, worked hard, and has achieved his success because he conquered his goals. The later one has the right attitude. Success is not a random thing, success is achieved when one is out to reach a goal, and has managed to reach it.

If you do not want to have mediocre leaders, teach them to differentiate between what a leader is and what it means to be successful leaders. You must train leaders so that they understand that having a leadership position is not everything: having a status, an office, an appointment, maybe a team, does not mean to be a successful leader. In order to qualify as successful, a leader has to:

  • Have a clear goal she wants to reach.
  • Such goal comprises general and specific objectives to be achieved.
  • Arrange such objectives in estimated time intervals.
  • Identify the required steps to achieve each objective.
  • Know limitations and obstacles, and possible solutions for overcoming them.
  • A leader does not to stop, a leader does not get discouraged by adverse outcomes: leaders are perseverant, they keep going on.
  • Stand firm despite attacks and impediments.
  • Do not stop until he reaches the end of the goal.
  • A leader, no matter victories and defeats, is carefully enough to keep the right target. No deviations are allowed.

All these steps tells us that being a leader means more than just only a status. Trying to keep leadership according to these parameters will allow the leader to achieve success in everything she undertakes.

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The Fear of Failure: A rationalization

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What’s a failure? According to Wikipedia, failure refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. Therefore, failure is the opposite of success, and that’s why fear of failure can reach really high levels. A process leading to failure or success involves a lot of decision-making. Many people are tormented by some decisions: they may even have a great idea, but do nothing to get it going, just for the fear of not succeeding. The most practical way to banish this fear is changing the attitude and the way we perceive failures. If we learn proper ways for decision-making, we could stop giving so much power and energy to the thoughts related to the possible consequences of our decisions, and thereby we could save ourselves from unnecessary suffering.

When we are walking the paths of life, we always learn something new, and in the learning process have to pour a few drops of sweat. There is no reward without effort. So, every time you try to learn something new you will have to invest some energy. That is the investment you have to do to achieve mastery in something. Do you want financial freedom? Well, you have to start learning how to make decisions and avoiding the fear stemming from mental scenaries of failure. Because financial freedom is not achieved only with the money. Wealth does not just mean to have a lot of money. If you’re hoping to win the lottery to get your financial freedom, you are standing on quicksand. Now, if you want to go on a safer, smarter road (and of course a little slower), it all depends on your learning process. You have to keep a positive attitude all the time, you have to be resilient, ready to overcome any failure. When you accept failure, when you learn to ignore failure scenearies because you’ll be ready to overcome them and keep going on, then the word failure will be erased from your mind. The trick is not to avoid thinking on failure; the trick is forming the mental disposition to, no matter the result of our decisions, keep going on. In fact, failure might become a powerful ally, an instructor, you will learn to stand up after falling. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: remember that seemingly negative circumstances can turn into blessings.

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The Fortress of Fears

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The biggest fear is fear itself. No human is without fears; even in the deepest recesses of our souls, some fear is lurking. And this is not bad, quite the opposite. Fears mean limitations of the mind. Just as our body is a limitation of physical matter, our mind also means an unknown territory, a frontier to our capabilities. When these boundaries are not imposed by a disease or a syndrome, that is when it is purely and exclusively a fear. The problem with these limitations is that they may get to function as a constraint. Sometimes fear becomes a barrier, which prevents us from moving forward. However, when you overcome fears, you get higher. When you get over your fears you grow as a human being, you break that boundary, entering a new world of possibilities.

The problem is when fear is fear itself. That’s when people get stuck. They avoid facing life because of the fear of being afraid. In other words, we are avoiding self-growth, we don’t move forward. At the outset, fears might seem as high as huge fortress walls, impossible to access. However, beyond fears, there is a new world containing hides greatness, happiness, and more importantly, life. We should think if we want to live avoiding the bitterness of fears, or to live our lives at their fullest. Because unfortunately, life truly begins from the moment our fingers crush the huge rocks that make up the great fortress of fears; that’s when we really begin to live.

Think about it, spend a few minutes of your time to think if you stopped living in fear of being afraid. Think about which side of the fortress you are. Surely there is still enough time to pass through the walls.