Tag: Blame

Five Easy Ways to Make Your Life Better for 9/20/20

2 Most Powerful Ways to Remember Everything You Learn

(Thomas Oppong | Entrepreneur’s Handbook | 900 words)

We forget 90% of what we learn. This is a normal, healthy function of the brain, filtering out useless information to save room for the important stuff. When there’s information you do want to remember, these techniques are helpful:

1. Spacing – Relearning the information over time. That signals to your brain that it is something important to be retained.
2. The 50/50 Rule – Spend half your time learning, and half your time sharing or explaining what you’ve learned.

Related: Accepting Your Memory is Unreliable Will Make You Happier

17 Incredibly Easy Ways to Save Money While Shopping

(Steven Ray Marks | Self Helping Yourself | 1925 words)

A series of tips that can help you save hundreds of dollars a month without any effort, time-commitment, or sacrifice. Some highlights:

• How to make razor cartridges last for months.
• Don’t have brand loyalty.
• Check the per-unit cost when shopping.
• Use Instacart to compare grocery prices, even if you aren’t ordering from Instacart.
• How to (legally) get eBooks and audiobooks for free.

7 Simple Habits to Overcome Nervousness

(Henrik Edberg | Positivity Blog | Subscribe | 1175 words)

If you allow nervousness to overcome you, you’ll perform poorly at whatever it is you’re nervous about. Instead:

1. Prepare, if possible.
2. Ask yourself what’s the worst that could realistically happen.
3. Visualize in a positive way.
4. Slow down and breathe with your belly.
5. Pretend the person you’re meeting is already a friend.
6. Remember people don’t think about you that much.
7. Tell yourself you’re excited.

20 Little Things that Secretly Make You Unhappy

(Tanuj Sarva | Iynk | 1,725 words)

A list of mistakes you might be making that are sabotaging your happiness. Once you identify any that apply to you, some simple awareness can go a long way toward breaking the habit. These include:

• Believing everyone should play by your rules.
• Waiting for your dreams to come true to be happy.
• Not making time for the right things.
• Holding grudges.
• Being a perfectionist.
• Caring too much about what others think.
• Playing the victim card.
• Thinking you don’t deserve happiness.

3 Five Minute Confidence Boosters

(Anouare Abdou | The Ladders | 750 words)

To pump up your own confidence:

1. Collect evidence of your skills and abilities.
2. Visualize your future self, after you’ve achieved greater success.
3. Use bridge thoughts to connect where you are now to where you want to be.

Bonus Boost

Why I Don’t Believe in Cheat Days

(Steven Ray Marks | Self Helping Yourself | 750 words)

A “cheat day” in a diet disrupts the habit-building process, and reinforces the notion that eating right is a burden while eating like a drunk grizzly bear is a celebration.

Needing a cheat day is a sign that your entire weight loss strategy is flawed.

Instead, you should build the lifelong habit of making good decisions about what you eat. And sometimes good decisions can include eating unhealthy things, as long as you do it in moderation.

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Five Easy Ways to Make Your Life Better for 9/6/20

From Productivity Wishfulness to Mindful Productivity

(Anne-Laure Le Cunff | Ness Labs | Subscribe | 1100 words)

Many productivity systems that promise to make you superhuman are just fantasy.

Some telltale signs are that they make unrealistic demands, promise unrealistic results, or are advocated by a guru-like personality.

Studying these can become a form of procrastination itself. Instead, focus on building a system that works for you individually, based on your own individual needs and tendencies.

Develop this system by identifying bottlenecks, making time for self-reflection, managing your information-diet, and learning by doing.

Related: Don’t challenge yourself!

I found this in Khe Hy’s Rad Reads newsletter.

13 Incredibly Easy Ways to Improve Your Finances

(Steven Ray Marks | Self Helping Yourself | 2300 words)

Ways to improve your finances that take no ongoing willpower, effort, and minimal time-commitment. Some highlights:

• Invest your money in index funds without paying attention to the stock market.
• Don’t use a savings account
• Max out your company sponsored 401k match
• Get a rewards credit card, and pay it off every month
• Don’t use debit cards
• Set up automatic bill pay
• Refinance your mortgage and student loans right now

Good Enough is Just Fine

(Lawrence Yeo | More to That | 1150 words)

There’s no such thing as perfection.

But perfectionists can hamper their efforts by endlessly chasing this quality that doesn’t exist. And thus they never release their work.

Instead of struggling for the unattainable 100% standard, aim for a “Good Enough” standard of 95%.

Related: Perfectionism Paralysis Can Be Beaten By Half-Assing It

Replacing Negative Thoughts With Positive Thoughts

(Barrie Davenport | Live Bold & Bloom | 2500 Words)

Remind yourself to regularly examine your thoughts. And when they are negative, try to replace them with positive thoughts.

For example, replace “I am helpless” with “I am powerful and in control of my own destiny.”

Replace “Nothing good ever happens to me” with “I am surrounded by an abundance of opportunities.”

Replace “I am so angry at that person” with “I respect and love myself enough to let go of anger and live in peace.”

7 Grounding Exercises For When You Feel Overwhelmed

(Steven Handel | The Emotion Machine | 1650 words)

When you find yourself feeling stressed or overwhelmed, try grounding yourself in the present moment with these techniques:

• Five Senses: What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? What do you smell? What do you taste?
• 10 Slow, Deep Breaths
• Mindful Stretching: Yoga, Tai Chi, or just stretching while paying attention to your body.
• Nature Bathing: Go outside and take a walk. Ideally in a forest or park, but if that’s not convenient, just getting outside is helpful. Or if you can’t get outside, watch a video of nature.
• Spend Time With a Pet or Stuffed Animal
• Feel-Good Smells
• Sound Meditation: Take 30 seconds to listen to the world

Bonus Boost

Who’s to Blame For Your Weight

(Steven Ray Marks | Self Helping Yourself | 700 words)

Focusing on blame when it comes to weight is unhelpful. Blaming yourself is demotivating and unfair, because you may have been cursed with a lousy metabolism.

But saying you’re not to blame is also demotivating – that’s just making excuses.

Instead, focus on taking ownership. Your weight may not be your fault. But only you can take the necessary actions to improve it.

Self Helping Yourself Tweet of the Week

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