The Art of Being My Dad

By Leo Babauta My dad was born into poverty in the tiny seaside village of Agat, Guam, in 1952. His mom died when he was a child, and he never knew his dad. He was raised by his uncle’s family in another small village, Piti, after being separated from his brothers and sisters. So he […]

9 Little Things That Make A Huge Difference For Your Happiness

9 little things that make a huge difference for your happiness

When it comes to happiness, most, if not all people are always advocating the idea of not letting the little things get to you.

“Don’t sweat the small stuff” as they say.

Let’s flip it around. The little things DO matter.

“A little bit goes a long way” as we all should say.

There’re a ton of simple ideas we can take up on to alleviate our pains, our ills and boost our happiness two to threefold.

1) Cleaning up your room

Because nobody, and I mean nobody will ever be happy living in their own filth. Whoever claims otherwise are probably hoarders and have major issues they need looking into.

A clean environment makes up for a healthy atmosphere, mind, body and soul. This is how you look forward to actually going back home and enjoy being alone.

So clean it up. Get rid of the clutter. Do a weekly thorough cleaning session and your mood will improve for sure.

2) Having enough sleep in a stretch

And when I mean a stretch, I mean sleeping 7-8 hours at a go. You can’t cheat by taking a few naps throughout the day and then back it up with Red Bull or some energy drink.

This may sound obvious enough, but most people don’t get enough sleep due to their hectic lifestyles. As a result, people get unknowingly cranky and unhappy.

You’ll look better too and definitely fall sick less.

3) Dress up. Groom

It’s easy to think and justify that we shouldn’t bother having to look good when we don’t have any engagements for the day. But I think it’s important to look good on the outside at all the times. If anything, we should put in the minimal effort to do so.

You’d want to look in the mirror and know you’re at your best. You do know after all, when you look your best. Why limit it to rare occasions? I don’t dress up at home, but I always shave or put on my contact lenses when I head out to wherever.

Look good for yourself. You’d subconsciously become more confident in everything you do then.

4) Shower

Again another obvious point, but surprisingly, most people don’t do this. I know of many friends who choose to head to bed after a night of drinking without showering. Gross.

So, at the risk of sounding like your mom, shower. Wash off the dirt and feel fresh. Clean behind your ears. This is how you stay clean, healthy and not smell bad.

This isn’t the cavemen era anymore. I bet you aren’t homeless either. Stop living with dirt!

5) Do that one piece of work, no matter where, no matter what

You know what happens when you decide to procrastinate and hold off work?

You feel half-hearted. You think you get to enjoy your newly-found space of free time, but at the back of your mind, you’re thinking of the work. You’re feeling guilty and unaccomplished.

That’s not how you become happy. You HAVE to do the work. So feel uncomfortable and do it anyway. It will make you happy later on.

6) Take a break

Yet, remember that you’re allowed to take breaks. Don’t overwhelm yourself with work and think that you’re have to use up every second of your time being productive.

You aren’t a robot.

7) Get off social media for just a bit everyday

It’s my personal opinion that social media does more bad than good. I think we’re constantly distracted and becoming unhappy because of it.

Now, I’m not asking you to go cold turkey and start hating on technology. I’m saying, take a break from it every now and then. Get off Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for a couple of hours a day.

You’ll start to notice your surroundings. You’ll start to appreciate things for what they are and you’ll fall back in love with things. You can also create meaningful conversations with those around you.

How does this happen? Because you’re no longer relying on updates just to be happy.

Take this small step. You’re fully capable of being happy off the grid.

8) Don’t spend, yet spend

Let me be blunt:

If you’ve a ton of savings, then go ahead and spoil yourself. You deserve it. Life isn’t all about money, but it does make our life easier. And since you’ve worked hard for it, you should be rewarded.

If you don’t, stop spending. Please put that credit card back in your wallet. Don’t even think of going drinking if your idea of spending is only with credit.

Depending on where you are in life, be sensible with money. That’s all. There’re too many, if I may say it, stupid ideas on money by dumb and reckless people.

Be sure to manage your finances and life well your own way.

9) Don’t think about helping people. Just do it

Have you ever walked across a homeless person begging for money and then decide to give some change? But, when you reach in to your wallet, you realize the notes you’re carrying are too big. You then feel conflicted on whether you should give or not.

By then, you’ve walked far away.

And then you feel bad. You feel worse later because you end up spending that big note on some useless thing you don’t need.

That’s the folly in a lot of us. Perhaps it’s time we decide to help others to help ourselves. It DOES work that way!

Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking only for yourself. Use the power of impulse to make this world a better place. You’ll be guaranteed happiness this way.

Something awesome for Pick The Brain Readers!

I hope you enjoyed the article! Want more ways to be happy?

Then you’re going to want my book. It’s free! Here it is:

12 Things Happy People Don’t Give a F**K About!

Time to shed the crap in life and start being happy! This free book is only available through this link to Alden Tan.

Alden Tan keeps it real at his blog and writes about motivation in unconventional ways. His two main passions are Bboying and writing. Check out his free report, 12 Things Happy People Don’t Give a F**k About!

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How to Run Meetings that Get Results: Lessons from the Pentagon

Don’t you love meetings?

Especially the ones that go on forever and result in nothing productive?

Unfortunately, this sad state of affairs is all too prevalent in organizations. During my 24-year Air Force career, I attended literally thousands of meetings. Looking back, it’s astonishing how much time I spent in meetings and how little was accomplished.

I encountered my first example of a well-run meeting when I was a young lieutenant in Germany. Every morning, all the key personnel of the unit were required to attend a highly structured, stand-and-deliver meeting with a very crusty—and very smart—commander. I learned quickly to have my stuff together or else things didn’t go very well for me. There was no idle chitchat; everyone was engaged. When the meeting ended, we walked out with a clear idea of the day’s objectives with a minimum investment of time.

Later in my career, I remembered those meetings and vowed never to waste my folks’ time with unnecessary meetings—and when I did have them, to make them count. I found this mind-set to be particularly successful when I worked in the Pentagon, which houses a formidable bureaucracy.

The process I used at the Pentagon tapped into a need for military and civilian “action officers” to actually take some action and do their jobs. These professionals always knew they would be doing something substantial when they participated in my meetings. So people appreciated that I respected their time. The impact that my approach had on my ability to get things done was amazing.

Here’s what I did:

Before the Meeting

• Determine the specific outcome or set of outcomes you want to achieve. This is especially critical to ensure the purpose of the meeting is clear. Lack of a clear outcome is a primary cause of poor meetings.

• Make a list of the required and optional participants that you need to achieve your desired outcome. Invite the decision-makers. If they can’t make it, put the word out that whoever attends in their place speaks for them. In this way you prevent people from blocking progress because they aren’t authorized to make a decision. If you need subject matter experts to provide additional support for the meeting, have them to attend as well. Construct and distribute a logical, time-driven schedule of events so everyone knows how to prepare and what’s expected of them. If possible, get the schedule out at least a week ahead of time. It’s important that you keep a record of when and to whom you sent the meeting notice. You’ll be surprised how many people will claim they never got it.

• Make a list of deliverables and products required before the meeting, and set a deadline and format for their delivery. Gathering and preparing meeting materials like slide decks and reports takes time. Don’t leave this to the last minute.

• Reserve a room that is conducive to what you intend to accomplish. Makes sure the room is the right size, it has enough chairs, and it has the equipment you need. Assess whether the location is advantageous to you, neutral to your cause, or puts you at a disadvantage. For instance, if you anticipate that the meeting will be contentious, perhaps you’ll want to find a neutral location.

• If time allows, send out multiple announcements to the participants, and secure their RSVPs. Follow up with phone calls if necessary. Increase the probability of having a good meeting by getting the right people there.

• Identify your note taker. A competent note taker is crucial. The note taker creates the record of what was said, agreed to, and disagreed to.

• If it will help your cause, provide basic refreshments and snacks. Then plan time to prepare or purchase them.

• At least an hour before the meeting starts, get the room set up. Bring up the computer and projects; check microphones if you’re using them. Pull up your charts and other electronic material. Put out nameplates. Set up your refreshments.

During the Meeting

• Introduce the meeting’s host (if other than you) at the start of the meeting and welcome the participants.

• Right up front state the purpose and desired outcome(s) at the beginning of the meeting.

• If applicable, go over action items from previous meetings. If progress hasn’t been made, take some time to drill down and find out why. Then, gain agreement on what the responsible party will do to accomplish the task and set a revised deadline.

• Keep the meeting flowing and on schedule. If a discussion can’t be concluded, table it for a future meeting or an off-line discussion. Keep a tight rein on irrelevant topics and rabbit holes. Otherwise, you risk derailing your meeting.

• Before concluding the meeting, sum up the tasks, agreements, outcomes, deliverables, responsible parties, and due dates. This is extremely critical so that everyone is clear as to what transpired and who will do certain tasks.

• If needed, agree on a time, date, and location for the next meeting. Ensure you sustain momentum. It’s much more difficult to pull together a follow-on meeting once everyone has returned to their normal day-to-day routine.

After the Meeting

• No later than twenty-four hours after the meeting, send out meeting notes to all participants. Don’t underestimate the importance of this step. It’s the way you document progress and help hold people accountable in between meetings.

• Communicate with those responsible for actions to assess status, head-off problems, and provide motivation.

• Wash, rinse, and repeat the entire process for your next meeting.

All this planning, preparation, orchestration, and follow-up may seem like a lot to go through, and it is when you first begin to use this process. However, the template is effective for both formal and informal meetings at any level of your organization. Although you may not need to use all these steps, you can use them as a template to help you tailor the process for what you need.

As a side benefit, people will appreciate you for your outcome-oriented focus and your respect for their time.

And trust me, if it worked in the Pentagon, it can work for you.

Joe is the author of The Leadership Forge: 50 Fire-Tested Insights to Solve Your Toughest Problems, Care for Your People, and Get Great Results. He is the President of The Leadership Crucible, an executive coaching and leadership development firm. Joe is a decorated Air Force veteran who deployed in support of seven overseas operations. His twenty-four year career included command of five units including the Air Force's only combat-coded communications wing.

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7 Science-Backed Tips for Sticking to Your Fitness Resolutions This Year

These days you can’t throw a rock without hitting some new diet plan, app or gadget that promises to help you get in the best shape of your life with minimal effort.

But as much as we’d all love to pop a few pills or strap on a toning belt instead of eating less and exercising more, the fact of the matter is that getting and staying fit is hard work. Fortunately, though there are ways to make sure your efforts pay off in the long run.

Over the years researchers have uncovered a number of nifty tricks to help you get closer to your fitness goals without counting calories or following complicated exercise routines. So, if getting fit is one of your resolutions this year, here are ten more effective ways to make it happen.

1. Set bigger goals

When it comes to weight loss we’re often advised to set small “realistic” goals, with the reasoning that we may become discouraged and give up if we fail to reach them within the timeframe we set for ourselves.

However, a study carried out by researchers in the Netherlands found that people who set higher weight loss goals actually put more effort into reaching them and lost more weight within a two-month period than those who had set lower weight loss goals.

Of course, no one size fits all when it comes to weight loss and what works for one person may not be the best option for you. But if you’ve always set ‘doable’ fitness goals for yourself and just aren’t seeing the dramatic results you’d like, it might be time to set your sights higher.

2. Slow it down

Research shows that it can take up to 20 minutes for your brain to register that you feel full after eating. This is because the brain needs to receive signals from stretch receptors in the stomach, which are activated when it fills with food, and also from digestive hormones in the gastrointestinal tract.

This whole process takes some time, so if you shovel down an entire meal in under ten minutes you’re far more likely to overeat than if you take your time to savor the food and chew each mouthful slowly.

If you’ve finished your meal and still feel hungry, make a point of waiting a few minutes before going for a second helping, as your brain may simply need more time to register that you’ve eaten enough.

3. Use smaller plates

How much we eat actually has very little to do with how hungry we are, as evidenced by a Cornell study that used ‘bottomless bowls’ to determine whether visual cues influence how much we eat.

Half of the participants were served in bowls that were secretly refilled as they ate through a tube under the table, while the other half ate their soup from regular bowls. Those eating from the self-refilling bowls ended up eating 73% more soup, but surprisingly, they did not feel any fuller or believe they had eaten more than the participants who had used regular bowls.

The researchers explain that the amount of food on a plate or in a bowl provides us with a visual cue that influences how much we consume.

When you have a larger plate, you’ll not only load on more food, but also feel the need to keep eating until you’ve cleared your plate. So using smaller plates and bowls can help you cut down on the amount of calories you consume without even missing them.

4. Change what you see

Since visual cues are so powerful, what you see around you will have a big impact on the choices you make. If you have a jar of candy sitting on your desk, the temptation to snack on it will be far greater than if it was shut away in a cupboard. Similarly, if you have fruits and vegetables in plain sight, you’ll be more likely to snack on them instead of junk food.

A Today News experiment led by Cornell researcher Brian Wansink showed that the order in which food is served also influences your food choices.

Two groups of people were invited to enjoy a free buffet, and although the food was the same for both groups, it was arranged in a different order. When the fruit and salad had been laid out at the beginning of the buffet rather than at the end, people served themselves more of the healthy food.

So even if you don’t cut certain foods completely from your diet, starting your meals with a healthier item like a salad or piece of fruit will help you make better choices overall.

5. Work harder and less frequently

If you find it hard to set aside time to exercise every day, you may be pleased to learn that brief periods of strenuous exercise just twice a week can be very effective too.

Researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario developed a high intensity interval training program that required participants to exercise at about 90% of their heart for one minute followed by one minute of easy recovery. This process was repeated 10 times, bringing the total exercise time to 20 minutes.

After several weeks of following this program for two days each week, the volunteers showed significant improvements in their health and fitness. So if you’re willing to work harder when you do have time to exercise, you may not need to devote as much time to it as you think.

6. Implement immediate consequences

Although there are long term consequences for unhealthy eating or a lack of exercise, we tend to pay more attention to actions that have immediate consequences. Skipping your work out or having a hot dog for lunch won’t have any immediate repercussions, so it’s easier to ignore the fact that you’re breaking your resolve to eat better or exercise more.

With this in mind, implementing some sort of penalty for bad behavior will make you more likely to stick to your commitments. A Stanford study shows that commitment contracts can help people stick to their commitments in situations where there are upfront costs, but the benefits are delayed.

For instance, a contract that requires you to pay X amount of money to a friend if you skip your scheduled work out will make it more costly to do so and will increase your likelihood of sticking with the fitness program you’ve chosen.

The researchers also note that longer contracts (of more than 8 weeks) tend to be more effective, because it takes some time to get past the initial experience of displeasure and recognize the longer term benefits.

7. Reward yourself

In the same way that we’re more likely to pay attention to the short term consequences of our actions, we’re also more likely to feel motivated to do something if the payoff is immediate. Obviously, one work out or day of ‘clean eating’ isn’t going to pay off immediately, but you can find other ways to reward yourself for good behavior.

According to research from the University of California, Santa Barbara, incentives are very effective in encouraging the development of good habits, and in one study, people who were paid to go to the gym doubled their attendance rate.

While it might be hard to find someone who will pay you to work out or eat right, you can “pay” yourself in other ways. For example, after a good work out session you could allow yourself some downtime to watch an episode of your favorite TV series or get a massage.

After a while, your brain will begin to recognize the workout itself as the reward and you won’t even need these little incentives. But while you’re still forming good habits, rewarding yourself can help you stay on track.

Marianne Stenger is a writer with Open Colleges. She covers career development, workplace productivity and self-improvement. You can connect with her on Twitter and Google+, or find her latest articles here. 

The post 7 Science-Backed Tips for Sticking to Your Fitness Resolutions This Year appeared first on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement.

5 Ideas to Create an Amazing 2015

By Leo Babauta With every new year, comes renewed optimism. And while I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions that you’re just going to toss aside when things get busy, I am a fan of creating new habits. This year, I’m offering to help you create 12 new habits for 2015. They’re some of […]

Essential Zen Habits of 2014

By Leo Babauta This year been filled with overwhelming and moving moments, for me and for Zen Habits. Topping the list of overwhelming and moving: My book: I released my book, Zen Habits, to an outpouring of support in the Kickstarter campaign. The book was funded 500%, and is now at the printer. I can’t […]

3 Steps to Improve More by Learning Less

What a world we live in. The information age, as it’s being called, provides us with exactly that: information. For bettor or for worse, any question we have, any answer we require, or any ailment we’re trying to cure, is at our fingertips.

I mentioned that all this information could be for worse, but how is that so? How can more data and facts be a bad thing? Ah, well, with more information comes more opinions, and with more opinions comes a more convoluted message of…well, anything.

When we leverage this information to focus on self improvement, we are often thrown into sensory overload. There are so many books, articles, events, speakers, and armchair therapists, that it’s easy to become overwhelmed. With this in mind, it’s much better to improve more by learning less.

Self improvement: Uncovering personal values

The key to lasting self improvement is to uncover the core values and principles that govern your life, not to follow the latest improvement fad. This way, as you move through life, you’ll be able to navigate your way to personal success based on those values and principles.

Much like an ocean, all the self improvement tips and tricks, although helpful, are like ripples on the surface. It’s our personal values rooted deep in the depths of our psychological ocean that are ultimately used for self improvement. When we uncover a new value or principle through life experiences, we are literally self improving. We then use that newfound core value to propel our lives forward, further uncovering more values, and therefore, further improving ourselves.

By focusing on personal values and principles, you start a cycle of self improvement that never stops.

Personal growth: Back to basics

Self improvement and personal growth is an ongoing process, and one that can’t be rushed. Even though a lot of people are looking for a magic bullet or quick fix, it’s literally the process of self improvement that causes us to grow in the first place. To grow as a person is to be process oriented, and to do that, it’s important to get back to basics.

Once we begin to uncover and focus on our core values, personal growth is simply a matter of following those values. This way, we’re oriented toward the process of finding what resonates with our core self.

By getting back to basics, we’re reminded that true self improvement happens when we take our life’s principles, and test them with experiences. If your experiences resonate with your values, you know that you’re headed the right direction. If they conflict with your values, you’re telling yourself that you either need to adjust your course, or reevaluate your governing principles.

Personal growth is as easy as that.

Self Discovery: Learn, and then forget

Although achieving lasting self improvement is as simple as uncovering our personal values and getting back to basics, there’s an important linchpin that holds the entire paradigm together: experience.

The only way we can improve ourselves is if we put ourselves out there and try to learn from the world firsthand. This way, we can build on our experiences and get a good understanding of our core values and where we’re headed. Think of an experience as a stress test for your governing values. Pass or fail, you grow.

But, with all the self improvement information out there, it’s hard not to get inundated and give up. Because of this, it’s important to learn as much as you can…and then forget it all.

Well, not all, but definitely everything that doesn’t resonate with you. The truth is that a majority of information out there won’t resonate with you; it’s when we lose sight of this and try to account for everything that we actually stunt our personal growth. But, paradoxically, the only way we can uncover our values and get back to basics, is to go out and experience it all.

With that in mind, keep what you enjoy and discard the rest. Forget all the tips, tricks, and fads, and follow your core values and principles. This way, you’ll be on a path to self improvement that you paved, and not on a path someone paved for you.

——

Evan Tarver is a business development specialist with dynamic experience in the technology industry. He believes that people should be doing what they love, loving what they do, and getting paid for it all!

The key to true happiness is continuous self improvement. Connect with him to read his weekly articles on self improvement through professional excellence and receive your free e-book: 52 Quotes to the Life You Love!

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