Are you stuck in a rut and don’t know how to get out of it? Are you tired of failing but feel like you don’t have the courage to try again? I have three rut-busters that will help you motivate yourself to get up and try again.

1. Look at your progress. One of the quickest ways you can motivate yourself to get up and try again is to take a look at how far you’ve already come. Do you really want to give up and quit now? I don’t think so! When you begin to feel like there’s no use in pushing on any further, stop for a minute. Take a good look at just how far you’ve come along the way. I’ll bet you just might be surprised at how much more progress you’ve made, than you thought you had.
2. Take another look at your ultimate goal. What are you working toward achieving? Can you smell success? Can you imagine what it feels like? Getting a good mental image of what you want can quickly motivate you to try again. In fact, being able to mentally visualize the outcome that you hope for can help motivate you over and over again.
3. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done. How often do you give yourself credit for having completed something or given your all? All too often people tend to give in to negative thinking: ‘I should have done that differently.’ ‘I could have done better on that task.’ ‘I really screwed up that one.’

If this sounds like your own thought process, stop thinking that way! Start giving yourself credit where credit is due.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Are you becoming a pessimistic person? Do you commonly find things that are wrong, rather than the positives in any given situation? It’s time to change your outlook on life. Did you know that just by changing your outlook on life you can actually improve your health? Here are some quick tips you can use, starting now:

• Practice positive thinking. There’s only one way you will change your way of thinking—with lots of practice. In order to create new habits, you must repeatedly practice it on a daily basis. So put on your positive thinking hat.
• Look for the good things. It doesn’t take much effort to point out everything that’s wrong. When you find yourself nit-picking, make yourself stop and then purposefully look for something good, instead.
• Forgive, even if you can’t forget. The old saying, “Forgive and forget” has been used quite a bit throughout the years. But we all know that forgiving is often times easier than forgetting. Take a small step towards forgiveness. While you won’t forget what happened, forgiveness prevents bitterness, which is extremely taxing, on both your soul and your mind.
• Be ready for the best. No matter what kind of life you’ve had up to this point, there is always hope for the future. If you’ve been struggling, prepare yourself for better things to come. Sometimes the darkest night is just before the dawn.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Success is defined as an event that accomplishes its intended purpose. To reach a measurable level of success, you have to be prepared. Once you are prepared, accomplishing your purpose will be more than possible, easy even. Here are the five keys that will lead you to success every time:

1. Know what you want. In order to be successful, you have to first have a goal in mind. The only way you’ll be successful is to know specifically what you want in life.
2. Align yourself with other successful people. Start hanging around with those who are successful. Listen to their conversations. Watch how they react to challenges. You can learn a lot just by surrounding yourself with other successful people.
3. Read about successful people. I’m sure like many, there are people that you admire. Read their biographies and learn about their failures that led to ultimate success. It will inspire and motivate you to continue on.
4. Practice what you want to become. Just because you know what you want, that doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to get there. However, you can act “as if.” The best way to do this is to practice being successful.
5. Hone in on your passion. If you aren’t passionate about what you’re doing, you will probably never enjoy it. Enjoying what you do will make you even more excited and enthusiastic about doing it.
6. Improve your self-esteem. Everyone can use a little self-esteem boost now and then. High self-esteem will give you the confidence you need to keep moving forward, even when it seems like there’s no way to win.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Is your Thanksgiving the same old boring routine year after year? Are you ready to do something different? Here are five simple ways you can give thanks this year:

1. Donate food and clothing. Look through your Yellow Pages and you should find more than one charitable organization. Go through your closets and cupboards and gather up all your “extras” to donate to the homeless or needy.
2. Cook Thanksgiving dinner for a needy family. Chances are, you know someone who is having a hard time making ends meet this Thanksgiving. What better way to give thanks, than to cook a nice Thanksgiving meal for a neighborhood family who doesn’t have much.
3. Gather your family. Has there been a riff in your family this year? All too often, families who are in the middle of a dispute (usually over something petty) cancel their holiday plans. If this describes your family, have Thanksgiving anyway. Call and invite everyone and have a nice family dinner, for whomever decides to show up.
4. Do something nice that is unexpected. In this fast paced world hardly anyone expects kindness any more. Go out of your way to do something nice for someone else. Watch their reaction. If it’s an older person, you might get a smile and a gentle, “Thank you.” If it’s a younger person, you might not even get eye contact, but do it anyway. You’ll love the feeling you experience.
5. Say “Thank you.” Again, we get so busy with our full lives that we often forget to give a simple word of thanks to others. It’s almost as if “Thank you” has turned into a “dirty” word. Break this bad habit by intentionally looking for times when you can say, “Thank you.”

Popularity: 6% [?]

One problem that many procrastinators seem to face is not planning ahead. When you don’t have a plan for each day, you’ll be much more likely to put things off because you’ll never feel a sense of urgency to get anything done.

A daily task list helps to keep you on track with your goals. It also creates a feeling of importance for each task, which will push you to work harder towards completing everything.

To get you started, let’s create a daily task list for you:

1. First, sit down with a pen and paper (don’t use the computer for this!) and write down everything you do, or need to do, in a week’s time. If you want to plan ahead for next week, then write down everything you have to get done next week. Just make a simple, unnumbered list.

Tt is important that you write down everything, no matter how minute it seems. Write it all down—everything from brushing your teeth to job tasks. If it has to be done, write it down.

2. After you’ve listed every single thing you need to do next week, you’re ready to do triage.

During this second stage of the process, you are going to reread your list and eliminate any unnecessary tasks.
First, go back through your list and see if there are any tasks that are glaringly needless. Most of the time, you’ll automatically be able to point them out with no problem at all. If you see tasks that seem to be unnecessary, just draw a line through them to mark them out.

Now that you’ve done this quick process of elimination, it’s time for the dirty work. Of the remaining tasks on your list, which ones take up too much of your time? Which ones do you end up wasting time on, when they really aren’t all that important? Cross them off your list.

What we are doing here is paring down your list to get to the bare bones. The only tasks we want on your list are the ones that are truly important and necessary to your daily existence—in both your personal life and your career.

If you work from home, doing this is probably more important to you. Your time is even more precious and is probably more difficult to manage. Working from the comfort of home tends to make one just a tad bit lazier than the next person. Eliminating these unnecessary tasks will help free up more of your time to work on building your business.

3. Prioritize your new task list. Now that you have eliminated all the time suckers from your task list, you can prioritize your new list.

First, if your task list is a weekly one, break it down into a daily task list. Many times you’ll have repetitive tasks, and then a few extra ones. That’s fine.

Take your daily task list and give each task a number, with 1 being the most important task on your list. No two tasks should have the same number.

After you’ve completed your task prioritization, take another look at your list. If you think some tasks need to be rearranged then do that now. Keep rearranging the tasks until they are in order of importance to you. Now you have a list of your daily tasks. These must be done every single day. If something doesn’t look right, or if you realize you forgot a task or two, change your task list as needed.

This isn’t something that is written in stone. Rather, your daily task list is flexible and should be changed and updated as needed.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Are you running from one place to another every day, but never seem to have enough time to do everything that needs to be done? You are among one of many people who say there’s just not enough hours in a day. If you’ve been struggling to find enough time in your day, try some of these time savers:

1. Exercise while talking. If you like to exercise but can’t seem to find time for it, this is an easy way to get it in. Many phone calls average at least thirty minutes, especially if you are talking to a family member or friend. Use that time to get in some lunges, crunches etc.
2. Make the crock pot your new best friend. Cooking dinner usually takes anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour, depending on what’s on your menu. You can save an enormous amount of time by prepping your dinner in the morning, putting it in the crock pot, set it on low, and then forget about it until dinner time.
3. Schedule your day. It has been proven many times that by creating and keeping a schedule you can actually save time. The reason is because by having a schedule on hand, you don’t waste time trying to figure out what you were supposed to do that day. Get a day planner and keep your schedule in one spot for easy reference.
4. Set your clock for thirty minutes earlier in the morning. Just by waking up a half hour earlier, you can get a jump-start on your day. You might see this as losing 30 minutes, but ask yourself this: How much more could I get done just by waking up early? What’s more is if you are usually late to work every morning, giving yourself 30 extra minutes will help you be ready and at work on time, if not a few minutes early.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Meditation is defined as continuous and profound contemplation or musing on a subject or series of subjects of a deep or abstruse nature. Simply put, meditation harnesses your mind to bring focus.

The purpose of meditation is to help you become more focused and calm. Meditation revitalizes your mind by releasing negative thoughts. It also helps give you clarity about certain situations in your life. If you have been searching for an answer to a problem, meditation can help clear everything up so that you can see clearly and know what you are supposed to do.

Meditation is said to give a greater sense of peace to many, as well. Regular meditation helps put things in their proper perspective. It gives you a greater sense of peace of mind and helps to reduce stress.

There are various methods of meditation, divided by Eastern and Western techniques. The most common form of meditation today is Zen meditation. It is simple and easy. Here is a general overview of how to meditate in this manner:

• Choose a comfortable spot to sit (on the floor, in a firm chair, on top of your bed).
• Sit cross-legged, with your back at a straight angle.
• You can close your eyes or leave them open. Just remember to focus; don’t allow your mind to wander or daydream.
• Rest your tongue on the roof of your mouth.
• Place your left hand on top of your right, palms up, thumbs just touching and rest them in your lap.
• Draw a deep, slow breath in.
• Slowly release your breath in an exhale.
• Repeat this deep-breathing exercise.

Keep your attention focused on your breathing only. Remember, if your mind begins to wander, bring it back into focus on your breath.

For your first few meditation sessions, you may not be able to meditate for longer than five or ten minutes at a time. Meditate for as long as you can, increasing your time over a few weeks. Eventually, you’ll be able to meditate longer. Don’t forget…meditation can and should be done on a daily basis.

Popularity: 8% [?]

If you are not familiar with the Law of Attraction or how it works, this article will give you a general overview. There are 4 basic things you need to know about the Law of Attraction. They are:

1. The Law of Attraction is always at work.
   No matter if you are aware or not, awake or asleep, working or relaxing, the Law of Attraction is in constant and perpetual motion in your life. Most people who do not fully understand the Law of Attraction believe that if you don’t know about it, then it isn’t working in your life. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. You are always attracting, good or bad, whether you realize it or not.
2. The Law of Attraction requires a positive mental attitude.
   In order to attract good things into your life, you must have a positive attitude. With the Law of Attraction, you are focused and concentrating on attracting good things. As such, you should be thinking positive. A negative attitude will thwart even the best of intentions.
3. The Law of Attraction requires good intentions.
   “Good intentions” in this context means that you are totally focused on the best possible outcome for any given situation. For example, if you project an intention (or fear) of losing a game of chess, chances are you will lose. Why? Because by focusing on losing (the worst case scenario), you have actually attracted that loss to come your way.
4. The Law of Attraction requires energy.
   You can have the best intentions in the world and actively pursue vibrating greater health or wealth, but if you don’t apply energy to your intentions, they are simply wasted. The Law of Attraction doesn’t mean that you’ll get something just because you want it and are constantly thinking of it. The Law of Attraction requires steady attention and action towards that goal. You have to actively seek after the thing you’re attracting, too.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Anger is not necessarily a bad thing—unless your anger gets out of control. When your anger reaches the point of you losing control of your words or actions, then you have a serious problem.

Anger can and should be controlled. If you are having trouble dealing with your anger, or you don’t know how to control it, these anger management tips will help you.

• Walk away. If you feel your anger rising to the breaking point, stop and walk away. Never pursue a heated argument or debate when you’re angry. Instead, take a deep breath, and step away from the situation. If you must, go for a short walk to cool off.
• Find a productive way to express your anger. Instead of getting angry and letting the whole world know it, find something to do to release your anger. Rather than holding in your thoughts and feelings and brooding over them, find a way to reasonably express what you are feeling.
• Don’t blame or point to others. When you are angry, you tend to point the finger at others. Instead of doing this, calmly express how you are feeling. Use “I” statements. For example: “I feel neglected.” “I need time to process this information.” “I’m mad because you didn’t clean the basement today.”
• Learn to communicate effectively. In addition to using “I” statements to express your anger productively, you need to learn how to communicate in a more effective manner. Many times the source of anger stems from feeling misunderstood or ignored. Learning how to communicate with others can greatly reduce these feelings.

Finally, anger can be controlled by practicing relaxation techniques often. Try meditating or exercising to relax regularly.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Belief in yourself is extremely important. When you truly believe in who you are, you can

• Achieve more
• Become more productive
• Be more focused
• Get more done
• Be proactive

Let’s take a look at how self-belief can help you…

ACHIEVE MORE
Think back to a time when there was something you really wanted to do. Maybe you had just chosen your college major. The thrill and excitement of going after a career you adore probably drove you to study and work hard on attaining that degree. Because you believed in yourself, you were able to achieve what you wanted.

BECOME MORE PRODUCTIVE
When you believe in yourself, you rarely find excuses to not do what you know you should be doing. You are confident in your abilities, and as such, you choose not to procrastinate. You become wiser with your time and learn how to be creative and constructive with what you are given.

BE MORE FOCUSED
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? When you believe that you are capable of doing something, your mind becomes sharp as a tack. You have extreme mental precision as you set to complete a task. Your thoughts are focused and on target every single time.

GET MORE DONE
Self-belief enables you to achieve more because you are more productive and focused. When you are able to hone in on this personal principle, you will also begin to notice that you are able to get more done. In many cases, you can get a lot more done in a much shorter amount of time, too.

BE PROACTIVE
The absolute best thing about believing in yourself is that you become proactive in your own life. You don’t wait for someone else to validate your thoughts or actions. Instead, you praise yourself for a job well done. You stay busy, working hard towards your goals and dreams.

Popularity: 8% [?]