Jumpstart Your Dream Life

Slow Down and Take a Deep Breath

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We normally think perfection is the final stage in a process. But it’s not. There’s another step that comes after: speed.

When you first learn a skill or create something, you struggle. You go through trial and error, trying to figure out what went wrong. The going is slow.

Then, you start seeing small glimmers of success. You receive positive feedback. You begin to feel more confident as you get closer to where you want to be.

Finally, you have it. The ideal prototype. Your technique nailed down. A system in place. Now that the structure is in order, the next step is to go faster, and faster… and faster.

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This Parable Shows Why You Shouldn’t Sweat the Small Stuff

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“If only…”

Any sentence that starts with these words never ends well. It’s filled with pain, loss, and the feeling of unfulfilled potential. We believe that if only things happened differently, then the rest would fall into place.

Like heavy snow on a rooftop, fixating on the negatives will weigh you down. When the burden is too great, the foundations weaken. Then, they collapse.

In the face of disappointment, it’s easy to lie down and not want to get back up.

But things are not always what they seem. What seems bad may not be so bad after all. It may even turn out to be good.

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Give Thanks: Gratitude Makes You Happier, Healthier, and More Popular

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What does it mean to “give thanks?”

Well, it depends. It depends on who, where, when, and how.

If you were around in October 1621 at the Plimouth Plantation, you might have been part of the “First Thanksgiving”. Here, the Native Americans and Pilgrims came together to celebrate the first harvest in the New World.

The settlers had struggled the previous winter due to a lack of supplies and food. Many had starved or became ill and died as a result. Yet, a number survived. Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag tribe, had given the colonists food to get through their first winter.

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You Are Capable of Change, You Just Need Your Brain to Believe It Too

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Your brain becomes fossilized with age.

At least, that’s what they say.

In order to be classified as a fossil, a specimen usually has to be over 10,000 years old. When you consider this, comparing aged brains to fossils isn’t exactly a flattering metaphor. Fossils are hard, lifeless remains of what once was a thriving being – and that’s exactly what your brain becomes with time.

But it starts even earlier than that.

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4 Simple Changes You Can Make to Boost Workspace Productivity

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Forget the aesthetics. Forget the newest design trends buzzing around. Forget the fancy workplaces in countdown lists.

If you run your own business or work remotely, chances are your workspace isn’t going to look like those you see in glossy magazine pages. Besides, do you really want a full playground in your room?

Well, maybe you do. Regardless, the point is that you don’t have to turn your office upside down to improve your workspace. With a few tweaks, you can create an environment that helps you become happier, healthier, and perform optimally.

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Drinks, Drugs, and Dinners: How Diet Affects Your Sleep

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It’s that dreaded time again.

Not when you have to get out of bed. Not when you have to step into a meeting. It’s when the clock strikes, signaling time for you to sleep.

As you crawl into bed, you wonder if things will be different. Will you shut your eyes and finally fall into slumber? Or will you once again stare at the ceiling, waiting until you drift asleep? If it’s the latter, you’re likely to end up exhausted the next morning, even though you went to bed early.

There are numerous reasons why we have difficulty falling asleep. Sometimes, it’s psychological. Other times, it’s due to the stresses that life cruelly throws at us. But what about our dietary habits?

We carefully plan out our diets to energize ourselves, trim our figures, and improve our overall health. Yet, the substances we ingest take a secondary role when it comes to sleep.

Here are four dietary factors that might be affecting your sleep:

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20 Things You Need to Stop Doing Now

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“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

Once in a while, we sit down and try to figure out what we need to start doing. We ponder our past actions and their results, where we are right now, and what we should do next.

While these are logical steps to take, we neglect the fact that putting more things into our lives means we have to take out other components. After all, we only have so much time and energy in the day. And in order to make space for what we want to do, we need to discard our bad habits first.

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The Only 5 Things You Need In Order to Live a Good Life

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“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius

Overload has become the norm.

Every single day, we’re barraged with copious amounts of information. We’re told how we should spend our time, what we should eat, and where we should go. While we search endlessly for the answer, we usually end up where we began: in a bottomless well.

When you add in factors such as the rise of automated technology, increasing choices, and the pressure to keep up, is it any wonder that we feel swallowed up in everything?

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3 Quick Things You Can Do To Boost Your Confidence

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When it comes to boosting people’s confidence, we hear the same pieces of advice all the time:

  • “Be strong.”
  • “Believe in yourself!”
  • “Just think positive.”

The problem with these phrases is that they assume people can simply build up courage on their own to achieve their goals. It makes us think that if we just put in the effort and try hard enough, we can become confident.

A lot of the times, we can’t.

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Are You Stuck in a Rut? Here Are the Signs.

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Sometimes it’s hard to notice when we’re stuck in a rut. You could go through the dull, numbing pain of everyday activities and not feel any desire to change anything. After all, as humans we have the amazing ability to adapt and cope with nearly any situation.

The downside though, is that we get used to things that make us unhappy. Ideas or places we used to resist eventually become the same things we cling onto, not out of need or want, but out of familiarity.

Here are some signs that you may be in a rut.

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