Hard but essential pills to swallow in order to become your best-self
Ambitious people are a dime a dozen. Most people doubt themselves. All of us — in some shape or form — are stuck in la la land.
One of the most difficult yet useful skills is the ability to balance your aspirations with reality. A pessimist and an idealist both miss the point.
The point is to have optimism about your future but look at the state of society, your environment, and your circumstances without rose-colored glasses.
Many of these truths sit right under your nose. Intuitively you know they’re true, but facing them head-on means discomfort.
Success or failure…
#1. How they treat service staff
Learning how to read people is a psychological superpower, but it’s also a skill that anyone can pick up. It’s possible to glean a ton of information about others simply by paying attention.
Ever since I started writing, I’ve been honing this skill. It’s not a hard and fast science — everyone has off days. But staying aware of a few patterns can help you find people with great character — and shape the person you may wish to be. I look for these eight subtle clues in my interactions with people to understand who they really are.
The way they treat service staff
The way…
Why do we love life quotes so much?
I think I have the answer. Life quotes have a way of piercing through the b.s. and noise surrounding us. Life quotes are the swords that cut the Gordian knots of noise and reveal the essence of life we know deep down but tend to forget.
I’m a writer, which means I love quotes. But I also understand how simultaneously insightful and useless they can be. You can do one of two things with a quote — use it as inspirational fluff to post on Instagram or use the insight to change…
Your relationship with yourself spills into all of your relationships, period. We’ve all had moments in our life where our relationship with ourselves was more responsible for our real-world outcomes, whether or not we want to admit it.
An inability to be alone can push away partners and friends because of co-dependency. We blame other people for the problems in our relationships when we’re really seeing projections of ourselves in others instead of seeing them as they are. …
Treat yourself like Pavlov’s dog
It’s a scenario most of us can relate to: You set a big goal for yourself — maybe you wanted to write a book, or start your own business, or perform standup comedy. In trying to achieve that goal, you had waves of motivation, but they were never enough to push you to the finish line. So you stopped trying. Now, years later, you look back at your life and realize that nothing has really changed. You start to think that maybe you’re just not smart, talented, or brave enough to do the thing you wanted to do.
Use this three-step system instead
It’s this never-ending cycle that yanks your emotions up and down. You find yourself feeling motivated and inspired, but it quickly fades and you don’t actually follow through with any of your goals. Instead of translating your positive emotions into action, you get stuck in a loop.
Even reading self-help can be tricky, even dangerous, because you can get hooked to the dopamine rush you get from feeling like you’re on the verge of great success. Like an addict, it takes more and more to get you back to that high level. …
Just be confident!
Self-improvement writers do nothing more than tell you the things you know to be true.
So why do you read self-help articles if you already know the answers? Because following through with advice is hard. I openly admit that self-improvement advice is ineffectual. That’s why you have to drill it into your head, constantly.
Everything you read involves things that are easy to tell someone else to do, but hard to do yourself. I’ve grown stronger in my convictions over time because the things I tell other people to do are the things I’ve done myself.
I can tell you…
You don’t have to listen to me. You don’t have to buy into the lessons, the hype, of self-improvement whatsoever. I welcome the criticism of the industry. You don’t have to do anything.
You could stop reading self-improvement articles altogether and forget about the idea of chasing a dream. You’d probably be happier and more content. All you need to do to be happy is to meet your own expectations. You can do that by rising to lofty ones or lowering them down to the reality you already live in. Your choice.
But, if you’re like I was a few…
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle
This works in both directions. We are what we repeatedly do in both a positive and a negative sense. What we say doesn’t matter all that much. Neither do our intentions. There is a win and loss column in your life defined by your behavior.
Have you ever had a friend who says they hate drama and gossip, but always create drama and gossip? Do you know someone who always talks a big game about the next project they’re going to start, but never…
Learn to be socially savvy one small step at a time
All of us could probably use an extra dose of social confidence. Some people have a more difficult time socializing than others. For all of us, the best way to get momentum with developing social skills is to find quick and useful tips we can implement to build more confidence in the future.
Regardless of what you think about your social skills right now, just know that many of these skills are learnable. You can practice your way to a much higher level of confidence, but you have to start somewhere. …
Ayodeji Awosika
Learn how to become a top Medium writer and make a living writing here — https://bit.ly/freemediumcourse4u
