Personal Development Blog For Living Your Full Potential

3 Steps to Get Your Brain Back on Track You are often your own worst enemy. It starts with the words out of your mouth and the voices in your head. From telling yourself that you aren’t knowledgeable enough to take on a new challenge to the nagging doubts about important career moves, the negative words in your mind are obstacles to the success you want to achieve. A little self-doubt is normal because life is filled with uncertainty. The risks that you take to stretch yourself and succeed are real ones, accompanied by the possibility of failure. But when you speak ill to yourself, you are hurting your chances for success. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are three simple steps you can take right now to stop sabotaging yourself—and affirm your capacity for success. “ The words in your mind are obstacles to the success you want to achieve. —RISHAWN BIDDLE 1. Change the words in your mind Gospel singer Hezekiah Walker once sang, “I won’t harm you with...

Leaders always want positive outcomes, but many are unaware of how their thoughts and words may undermine their success. Based on years of shaping the culture of organizations, Michael and Megan show you three key principles to ensure that your words have a positive effect on your organization—and yourself.

How Repetition Can Be a Game Changer The idea of self-talk elicits images of less-than-sane people muttering to themselves as they stumble about less-than-safe streets. I try not to look like that when I talk to myself. In theory, this means ensuring my internal monologue is actually internal when other people are about. In practice, people are always sneaking around corners and into elevators with me as I recite my day’s to-do list or ask myself if I turned off the stove. Luckily, self-talk is more the rule than the exception and most people respond to its externalization with a knowing smile and a polite nod of the head. It’s polite to stop once caught in the act, of course, but having followed this protocol no one has ever backed slowly away from me in fear. In fact, as scientists learn more about the benefits of self-talk, whispering “tuna fish” while hunting for cans on grocery store shelves has become more common. Positive words enhance Self-talk is a growing research field...

Why Lincoln, Henry, and Sojourner Truth Stood Out People have delivered countless speeches in history. But even speeches delivered by the most prominent people, on the most auspicious occasions, routinely make little difference. Think of presidential speeches, like inaugural or State of the Union addresses. How many of them had any lasting impact? Just a few, like John F. Kennedy’s 1961 exhortation to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” What makes great historic orations so powerful? Typically, they combine well-crafted words, clarity of thought, moral passion, and an uncanny sense of historical timing. Many of the greatest speeches of history were not destined to become great. Often the speaker was not the most famous person in the room, or was not giving the keynote address. Sometimes the oration was so unexpected that we don’t even have the text of the original speech. But that combination of apt, passionate words, delivered at the rig...

In my course with Cal Newport, Top Performer , we have students engage in research to identify which career skills would benefit them most moving to the next phase of their career. Initially, we had expected these to be complex craftsman-like skills: writing, programming, design, etc.. To our surprise, students kept coming back telling us a somewhat different story: soft skills were the key to getting ahead. This is a common story in larger organizations. In such organizations, being a brilliant programmer, designer or writer is useless if you can’t effectively coordinate with the people around you. And in bigger organizations, the people around you can easily become the biggest obstacle to that success. Knowing how to deal with people artfully, therefore, can easily become a key skill to success. I know many incredibly successful people whose main asset is being really good with people. This is doubly true outside your profession. Whether it’s dating, friends or family, having stro...

By Leo Babauta There’s a part of us that wants to find peace from all the chaos in our lives, all the busyness and distractions and complication and stress and overwhelmingness of it all. We want to get away from it all, or get control of everything and create order out of the mess. We want stillness, we want rest, we want peace. But this kind of banishment of chaos and stress isn’t usually possible, unless you go into the mountains and live in a monastery. (Spoiler: You’ll find chaos there too.) So what can we do? The answer is to find stillness and peace in the middle of chaos . This is an advanced practice, and so if you’re new to meditation, I suggest starting with my beginner tips for mindfulness and then move on to my short ebook, the Zen Habits Beginner’s Guide to Mindfulness . But if you’ve meditated a bit, you’ll have the foundational skills for stillness in chaos practice. In this post, I’m going to share a practice of resting at home, and then talk about how to use th...

Frank Ostaseski has learned a lot from sitting amongst dying people – and now, he wants to share that wisdom with the living. The post What the Dying Can Teach the Living: The Five Invitations appeared first on Good News Network .

Hear the incredible story of a pair of coincidences, along with a husband’s hunch, that saved a woman from possible brain damage. The post Husband’s Hunch Saves Woman Who Fell Asleep Watching TV (Podcast) appeared first on Good News Network .

Snooze Now, Conquer Later My two-year-old is asleep for the third time today. I thought I had developed a clever disciplinary method when I started telling him that cranky kids need naps, and sending him to bed multiple times. Turns out I was being more clever than I knew. Instead of being better behaved, he just keeps going to sleep. There seems to be no limit to the number of naps this kid can take. As an added bonus, without fail, he awakens a much more pleasant child. My father has also started taking naps more seriously. He has always an epic sleeper. I remember him lightly snoozing in his chair as the rest of us went about our business, mumbling that he was awake if asked. In celebration of retirement, he has taken it to the next level—graduating to daily, horizontal naps. With the old and young around me choosing naps, I can’t help but wonder if I’m missing out on something. I’m not the only one. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington have spoken about their napping ...

Real Stories from Leaders Like You The intentions are noble: You want to buy a house with a backyard for your kids, pay off debt, or do something to actually justify the $50,000 worth of student loans that feels like a noose around your neck. You vow to work harder than everyone else on your team, to be the first one in and the last one to leave. Every new opportunity is a chance to showcase your talents, your leadership skills, your ability to thrive under pressure. You say “yes.” To everything. In fact, you’ve forgotten how to say “no.” But you can’t do enough, be enough, earn enough, fast enough, and even as you devise a way to keep your head above water (barely), the things that matter most—your relationships with family and friends; your physical, mental, and spiritual health—spiral helplessly out of control. The “whys” don’t matter anymore—you work too much to enjoy the new house, or the extra cash in your pocket now that you’re debt-free. All you can see is a list of to-do...