No matter how big or small a failure is, failing sucks. Period. It’s true that you can learn much more from failure than from success, and it’s true that every successful person went through a series of failures before reaching the top, but still … winning is sweet, and failing sucks. The problem with failure is that if it’s not managed properly, it can do serious damage to your life or potential. A big improperly managed failure can get you financially or emotionally bankrupt, stuck in the comfort zone forever, or even cause you to quit when success is just around the corner. That’s why I decided to write a (short) manual on how to properly deal with failure. In this article, you will learn all the important things surrounding failure and how to turn it into a big win.
By nature, we all like status quo, certainty and control over every situation. But life has become extremely complex, fast-changing and uncertain. That means the only constant in our professional and personal lives is change. And change goes against our basic nature. The winners are people who learn to do hard things. Managing change is one of them, because it enables you to become flexible and adapt to any new situation. It enables you to grow and move forward. One of the best books that teaches people how to change things when change is hard is called Switch, written by Chip & Dan Heath. The book presents many interesting stories of how change was successfully implemented. It also offers a very precise and simple step-by-step formula for implementing change. That’s why I decided to write a summary of the book.
Several years ago, in the supermarket where I most often buy groceries, I picked up some packaged food, looked at the nutrition facts label and said to myself: “I want to know exactly what these numbers mean”. I’m so happy I did that, because learning about macronutrients (proteins, carbs, fats) was some of the most valuable knowledge I ever acquired about dieting. So, I want to share with you, in a very structured and simple way, all the important basics of macronutrients that every single person should know. Among many other things, learning how to read nutrition fact labels and understanding macronutrients (macros, in short) will help you to: Easily calculate when you are in a caloric deficit or surplus, depending on whether you want to lose weight or for your muscles to grow, the percentage of proteins, carbs, fats and sugars that you intake and how to fine-tune your …
If there is a single area of life with the most confusing and contradictory information, it’s dieting without a doubt. There are hundreds of different diets out there, most of them claiming to offer you a miraculous solution for high levels of energy, a fit body and absence of any illness. After reading a few dieting books or articles, you have no idea who to believe and what really works and what doesn’t. For almost every type of food in existence, you can find several “scientific” studies that are for and against eating that specific food. And for almost every type of diet, there are gurus explaining their stories of how they easily acquired a six-pack, got cured of cancer and now they need only 2 hours of sleep. All you have to do is to click the buy button. And you know what. They are all wrong. Because I’m …
You are here on this world for three main reasons. The first one is to experience as many different things as possible and enjoy life to the full. The second one is to create, contribute, share, and leave a positive legacy behind. And the third reason why you’re here on this planet is to improve, evolve, grow and become the best version of yourself. So the question is: what can you do to make sure you become the best version of yourself? The initial step towards becoming the best version of yourself is knowing your ideal self very well. The best way to do that is to make a persona of your ideal self. In general, personas are used in marketing for fictional characters representing the ideal customer or a typical representative of a user segment, but they can easily be used to clarify who you want to become. The …
In this blog post you will learn how to really think positively and how to simply transform negative thoughts into positive ones (or at least neutralize the darkest ones). As we all know it, positive thinking is a very important part of a happy and successful life, but you can’t just decide to think more positively. If it were that simple, everyone would be happy and optimistic and super positive. As you can’t just decide to think more positively, you also can’t force yourself into positive thinking. It will only make you miserable. Trust me, I tried that approach. When you try to force yourself into positive thinking, every time a negative thought crosses your mind, you will only get mad and angry and disappointed, and that means even more negative thoughts. You accomplish the opposite. What you need is a simple step-by-step process to gently outsmart your negative thoughts. …
“Soft indicators” of emotional pain and psychological issues many times get ignored. It’s like having a papercut that never gets healed. But the cost of any lasting emotional pain is enormous. Relationships suffer, life can’t be fully enjoyed, you rarely believe in yourself enough to follow your own dreams, even small irritations lead to emotional overreactions. Happiness with a smile on your face becomes something alien to you. It’s definitely worth to tackle even the smallest emotional issue and solve it once and for all. In this blog post you will find the list of eighteen soft indicators of a turbulent personality, emotional suffering or small psychological issues which point to a high probability that you can strengthen your mind and emotional stability for a better quality of life.
Negative labeling is one of the cognitive distortions. A child accidentally spills milk and the next thing s/he hears is “you’re so clumsy” or maybe even “you’re my clumsy little baby” with a kind, cynical voice. Then s/he hears it again and again and again, and soon s/he starts to believe that s/he really is clumsy. Every small ineptitude that happens later in the adult age makes the person feel horrible, enforcing the clumsiness label even further. There are two options when it comes to labeling yourself or others. A label might be complete fiction. Just a falsely installed belief that has nothing to do with reality. Or there really is some behavioral drawback present, but by labeling you make that one single behavior into a characteristic and apply it to the person as a whole. Both types of labeling (or name-calling) bring nothing but negative thoughts and energy in …
A nice guy can be quickly confused when they hear the statement that women are attracted to assholes and that nice guys finish last. I suffered from the same confusion, not knowing why being nice is so problematic. I always wanted to be exclusively a nice person, but that often didn’t lead to the results I wanted. Sometimes it backfired in a nasty way and I didn’t understand why. At the end of the day, I was only being nice. The confusion went away after reading No More Mr. Nice Guy written by the psychotherapist Robert A. Glover. After reading the book, I finally understood that there is a healthy form of being nice (something we should all do) and a very toxic one (fawning). And the toxic form is the one that backfires almost every time, because it’s nothing but a manipulation strategy. Being a nice guy (the toxic …
The all-or-nothing mindset (also known as polarized thinking, dichotomous thinking or “black‑and‑white thinking”) is a common thinking error that turns you into a bitter perfectionist who gets emotionally irritated by the smallest deviations from unreachable expectations. Since your expectations are completely unrealistic, and then life happens, you are constantly irritated, bitter and depressed. With all-or-nothing thinking, any small imperfection turns your life into a big drama. Many times, you even tend to blame yourself for it. And during the day, many imperfections always do happen. How good can you feel then about yourself and life? Once you become aware of your all-or-nothing thinking patterns and how silly they are, you can finally breathe easier and calm down.
