If you were given a date from the last five years could you say what day of the week it was? One young woman in Australia can remember every single day of her life since she was born. We hear about her life and the research she’s involved with—as a single participant.

You’re reading Mind De-Clutter: 7 Things to Stop Telling Yourself, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

“I don’t like myself. I’m crazy about myself,” said Mae West.

People tend to be too harsh on themselves, thus subconsciously fostering a negative self-image.

Many of us have that little, nagging voice in our head saying “You’re not good enough!” or “You’re never going to make it.”

These seemingly harmless insecurities slowly erode our self-esteem and confidence which can have a serious impact on the way we perceive things and cope with life’s challenges.

If you want to be happier and live a more satisfied life, cut yourself some slack.

Start being kinder to yourself.

And stop telling yourself these 7 things.

1. I’m So Stupid!

OK, there are times when the things you do turn out to not exactly be a good idea.

An inappropriate remark you made about a colleague?

Spending your last cent on those expensive, fancy shoes?

Making a really dumb business move?

Been there, done that.

You can legitimately ask yourself after any of those incidents “What the heck was I thinking?”

It’s true that certain things you do qualify as stupid, but that doesn’t mean that you are too.

And this tiny difference puts things into perspective and helps you avoid the trap of internalizing the situations in which you act daft.

In other words, you need to understand that acting stupid and being stupid are two completely different things.

This doesn’t absolve you of the blame and responsibility for your actions and give you a free pass to do whatever you please not thinking about the consequences however.

So, whenever you’re compelled to exclaim that you’re stupid for doing this or that, mind your language and say “I did something stupid.”

2. I Hate My Body

This is one of the worst things you can tell yourself.

Social media, TV and print commercials and the fashion industry are constantly raising the bar and setting unrealistic expectations when it comes to beauty standards, and it’s hard not to compare yourself to all those impossibly and yet effortlessly slender and attractive models and celebrities.

Many people are increasingly sensitive to their physical appearance, and at the same time, they’re too judgmental when it comes to their perceived imperfections.

It’s OK to strive to become the best version of yourself, but negative self-talk won’t get you very far.

Obsessing about your weight, nose, or teeth is something that can have some serious consequences on your self-esteem, so instead of standing in front of the mirror analyzing your “flabby stomach”, “big nose”, or “yellow, crooked teeth”, focus on what you like about your looks.

The trick is to take care of your body, train, eat clean, and try to improve what you can, but avoid negative qualifications.

Also, change your point of view and recognize every positive change that you notice as that will motivate you to persist.

3. I Can’t Do It

The thing is that you’re more capable than you realize.

You are most probably just too insecure and afraid of failure. And it’s this crippling fear that paralyzes you mentally and prevents you from trying.

As this belief is deeply rooted in your mind, you need to become aware of it and try to summon all your willpower in order to change it.

One way out of this blind alley is embracing failure. Once you realize that the world won’t end if you try and not succeed, a huge burden will fall off your chest, and it will be much easier to apply for that job you used to think was out of your league or ask for a raise.

Another useful thing to do is change your narrative – tell yourself “I can do it!”

At first, you’ll have to fake that sense of self-confidence, but with every seemingly impossible thing you achieve (or even fail to achieve), you’ll be able to dispel that dark cloud of fear, doubt, and insecurity.

4. My Life Sucks

Life isn’t always fair.

And this applies to everybody, not just you, even though Instagram might claim otherwise.

When you look at snaps of all those shining, happy people who don’t seem to have a single care in the world and who spend their days having fun with their equally cool friends, traveling around the globe and dining at Michelin-Star restaurants, you feel as if you’re the biggest loser ever.

Yes, the grass is always greener on the other side, and even psychology recognizes the detrimental effect social media has on our lives. Recent studies have shown that there’s a link between using social media and depression, as well as other mental health issues.

Again, focusing on the good things in your life and coming to terms that not everything can be as we’ve planned can help you break that vicious circle of despair and dissatisfaction.

It’s also a good idea to cut down on your social media time and do something that will make you feel better, such as taking a walk or going for a drink with your friends.

 5. Nobody Loves Me

Whenever you feel compelled to say this to yourself, remember that it can’t be further from the truth, because there’s always you.

And you love yourself, right?

This is something that most of us say when we’re consumed by self-pity and when we’re feeling down.

But the problem is that if you keep on telling yourself that you’re not worthy of love, you subconsciously start behaving in a manner that prevents you from meeting that someone special.

You stop going out and attending parties, not to mention that you refuse your friends’ attempts to introduce you to new people.

On top of it all, the feeling that you’re in a dark place affects your demeanor which means that you’ll be off Mr/Mrs Right’s radar.

6. I Give Up

We’re all sick and tired of everything, and that’s OK.

But if you keep on repeating these three words to yourself, they will be stuck in your head, and you’ll start believing that it’s the only option you’ve got.

Life is full of hurdles, but it’s what makes it exciting and dynamic.

Whenever you’re on the verge of waving the white flag, take a break and try to remember the times when you felt the same and when you faced a seemingly insurmountable problem.

Ask yourself how things panned out back then and you’ll realize that you managed to overcome numerous roadblocks over the course of your life.

And this one is no different, but overthinking gets the better of you.

What you should do is get some rest and take your mind off the problem for a while.

7. This Can Only Happen to Me!

Or as Adrian Mole succinctly puts it “Just my luck!”

By blaming that invisible, supernatural entity whose main task is to make your life miserable for everything bad that happens in your life, you actually give up control over your destiny and let yourself go with the flow.

Again, that fear of being responsible for a potential failure rears its ugly head and turns you into a passive observer of your own life.

But, what you need to understand is that you’re an agent of change and that you don’t have to take a backseat.

Things you say to yourself cut deeper than other people’s words, and you need to change your tune for the sake of your well-being. Remember, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Rebecca is a freelance translator passionate about her work, and grateful for the travels it has taken her on. She has recently started writing about some of her experiences at RoughDraft.

You’ve read Mind De-Clutter: 7 Things to Stop Telling Yourself, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

By Deepak Chopra, MD

If you want to know what human beings really want, consider how Alice reacts to Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s inventions are so entertaining, we tend to smile at how upset, vexed, and unsettled Alice actually is. Wonderland overturns our regular, orderly, and predictable life, which is what people actually want.

The inhabitants of Wonderland aren’t just fantastic. They are unhappy. The White Rabbit is anxious enough to be a study in stress over a deadline. The Duchess’s cook throws dishes in a state of rage, and the Duchess herself hands Alice her squalling baby, which turns into a pig. Alice is very glad to get out of there. But Wonderland haunts us, and for good reason.

We are shadowed in everyday life by fear of the unknown and unpredictable, and perpetual chaos would be intolerable. To assuage our fears, we have mentally constructed a picture of life that is reassuring, but wrong. There’s a kind of silent conspiracy to impose logic, reason, order, and predictability which actually isn’t there in Nature.

As an Oxford mathematician, under his real name of Charles Dodgson, Carroll was deeply attached to order, reason, and logic. In the Alice books he was sending two messages that modern people still believe in. The first has already been mentioned: It is better to live an orderly, well-organized life than its opposite, a disorderly and messy life. The second message is that the natural world runs on logical and predictable cause-and-effect. This message is sent by reverse example, since Wonderland is the place where the Red Queen “believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Alice laughs at this, but there are at least three impossible things that everyone cannot do without. The first, known as intuition, defies logic, because intuition strikes out of the blue, giving rise to sudden insights, breakthroughs, and discoveries. Without it, the modern world wouldn’t exist—we might not even have the wheel.

The second impossible thing is synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences, which defies cause-and-effect. Without synchronicity, diverse areas of the brain could not perform precisely coordinated activities; in fact, no cell could. Hard as it might be to credit, your whole body is held together by synchronicity, because gravity, electromagnetism, and chemical bonding aren’t enough to keep your body from flying apart into a cloud of atoms and molecules. Every force that acts upon you, every chemical reaction, and the hum of electricity in every cell must act in perfect accord to keep you intact. Mechanical cause-and-effect can do no more than make physical objects glom together lifelessly.

The third impossible thing is more technical and is known as quantum entanglement. Two subatomic particles like an electron or photon can be paired so that no matter how far apart they are, if one undergoes a change, it will be instantaneously mirrored by the other in complementary fashion. Quantum entanglement happens instantaneously even across billions of light years, therefore defying the speed of light.

Einstein’s famous phrase for this, “spooky action at a distance,” reflected his disbelief that the speed of light could be defied. He spent the second half of his life trying to make sense of the phenomenon, and such was Einstein’s prestige that it has taken highly complex, expensive experiments (the latest involved using light from quasars billions of light years away, passing through some of the world’s biggest telescopes) to settle once and for all that he was wrong.

These three impossible things have such vast and unsettling implications that whole books have been written about each, but the upshot is that we are all Alice. We have settled into regular, orderly lives where predictability, logic, cause and effect, and the general theory of relativity operate, while on the fringes our existence is shadowed by impossible things. It is hard to realize that both worlds are equally valid as the framework of existence, and even harder to see that all the order, logic, rationality, and predictability is solely the construct of the human mind.

Standing back without any agenda in mind, you cannot help but observe that human beings are as intensely irrational as they are rational, that the creation of life on Earth has required the destruction of millions of prehistoric species in order to make way for Homo sapiens, and that science’s cherished laws of nature are constantly confronted with chaotic, random activity everywhere in the cosmos (not to mention in our bodies, where cancer is thought to be a runaway genetic mistake).

There’s a lot of skepticism about impossible things—the impossible things always win in the end, however—and a lot of propaganda, about how to make your dreams come true though making money, leading the ideal family life, constantly consuming more and more, etc. The three impossible things we’re discussing here haven’t shattered this illusion, but global climate change has a good chance of doing the job for us. The prosperous lives of consumers carelessly leaving huge carbon footprints has to change to avoid climate catastrophe, and yet the illusion of normality makes people cling to a lifestyle that only brings the peril closer.

One of the impossible things, intuition, might save us, in the form of new bright ideas that can be transformed into technology to end the imbalance of greenhouse gases. But many of these ideas already exist, but are blocked by our stubborn, perhaps fatal, attachment of what we call normal life. Believing in impossible things has a vastly important legacy and no doubt a future just as important. Science and our understanding of reality depends upon abandoning our illusions, no matter how comfortable they are.

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential and Daily Breath available on iTunes or Spotify  www.deepakchopra.com

If you’ve ever witnessed someone having an epileptic seizure you’ll know how frightening it is. And if you have epilepsy you’ll know that the unpredictability of seizures severely impacts your life. It’s like an ‘electrical problem’ in your brain. Researchers are now using AI technology to develop a wearable seizure forecaster.

Last week, I was researching a software tool for my business. After reading raving reviews, I decided to try it out. So I posted an inquiry in their forums.

Imagine my surprise when the CEO, Deep, responded to me personally with “Celes, you probably don’t remember but you coached me during some of my tough times. You and Tony Robbins helped me tremendously. You helped me do the limitless. 🙂 ”

Surprised, I quickly scanned my memory of the clients I worked with and realized it’s a coaching client whom I worked with in 2009! The details started flooding back. Deep signed up for my coaching back in 2009, which was 8 years ago. At that time he was a manager in a top bank but felt empty with his work and life. He was also feeling negative and low in confidence. During our sessions, we worked on finding his life direction, creating his career vision, and building his business plan, among other things.

After our sessions ended, Deep left his job and freed himself from his baggage. He traveled for a year, evolved to be a different person, and then started to build a product, which led him to create his software company today. With over 15 million client orders processed, it is helping thousands of business owners today with their businesses and the rewards of his labor are paying off!

Planting Seeds

When I looked back at our coaching logs, it’s remarkable to see Deep’s vision manifested into reality:

• His life vision: “To generate enormous wealth used to help the human community.”
• His business vision: “To make awesome tools, information products, and online marketplaces to help small business owners across the world. To be a preferred choice for all our clients, customers and partners.”

That’s exactly what he is doing now.

It got me thinking about the concept of planting seeds. How a seemingly small action can blossom and lead to some unimaginable, amazing outcome later.

For Deep, when he decided to act on his emptiness in life, he didn’t have a grandiose plan to start a world-class business. He just wanted clarity on what to do next. He had planted his first seed — to act on his unhappiness. His second seed was when he took the leap of faith to sign up for my coaching. After all, he didn’t know me personally, and the only thing he knew about me was through my articles.

During one of our sessions, I told him: “Don’t restrict yourself with your situation in life. Don’t worry about whether something is possible, realistic or logical. Just imagine this as your anything-goes menu where you can order anything you want from the universe.”

This really struck Deep deep (no pun intended). Following this direction, he opened his heart, wrote his vision and was extremely inspired by what he wrote. This was the third planted seed. Subsequently, we discussed other things during our calls, including his goals, values, and plans. These planted seeds would germinate and grow into his software company today, with him being the CEO of a team of 12 employees across the United States and India.

It is the same for other goals in life. Every goal, no matter how big, starts off as a seed:

• Dating — You want to meet the love of your life. It starts by clearing your limiting beliefs surrounding love. Then opening your heart to others. Then meeting new people. Then building relationships. Then assessing the right guy/girl, if the connection is for you. These are some of the things I teach in Soulmate Journey, my course on finding love, and some of my participants have been updating me on their new-found relationships and upcoming nuptials.
• Friendship — Having best friends you can rely on doesn’t happen overnight. It starts by being there for others first. Giving without expecting to receive. Being responsive. Making the effort to maintain your friendships. 
• Health — Having good health doesn’t come from exercising and eating healthily for one single day. It’s something that you build over time. Choosing healthy over unhealthy food each day. Choosing to be active. Many seeds planted over a long period, every day.
• Family — Having positive family relationships takes time, especially if your family relationships aren’t perfect to begin with. Caring for them. Doing little acts of kindness. I had a client who made the decision to work on her estranged relationship with her mom. One year after our coaching, their relationship is now in a much more positive place, where they talk with love and understand each other more.
• Career — Getting an amazing job doesn’t happen overnight. You have to first plan your career. Build your skills and talent stack. Then network and build relationships with industry peers, recruiters, and headhunters.
• Business — Same for a successful business. It starts with a vision. Then taking an endless series of steps to build your empire. Making endless iterations, adapting every second. Being open to failure and criticism, because these will always be there no matter what you do.

For each seed, you nurture it by giving water, warmth and sunlight. As you do that, it grows into a seedling. Then a sapling. Then a tree.

(Image: Gilly Stewart)

The tree here refers to what you want to achieve — run a successful business, have a great career, have a great relationship, have great friends, have great health, be financially abundant, be a prominent figure in your field, have your TV/talk show, move overseas, travel around the world, or some other goal.

The seeds here refer to your first steps to make your goal happen.

Many people often look at the trees, wondering when they are going to get that. Nice, big, gorgeous trees that they want in their garden.

But that’s missing the point. The critical point is not the manifestation of the trees, but the planting of the seeds. Because when you are not planting seeds, how can the trees grow in your backyard? How can you expect to get results, when you have not put in the effort to get things moving?

Corn seeds, ready to be planted into the soil (Image: Mohammed Anwarul)

Planting Seeds in Your Life

This brings me to these questions:

1. What goals have you been meaning to pursue, but are putting off? In Love? Health? Carer? Business? Family? Friendships? Pick two areas.
2. What is the first seed you can plant to get it going?
3. How about the next 3 seeds? What can you do to keep this momentum going?

Say you want to switch to a career in Machine Learning. However, your past experience and skills are not in this area. A possible seed you can plant is to take up a course in Machine Learning. I have a friend who is doing a two-year Masters course in Machine Learning for this very reason — to switch to this field after he graduates. 

If you have an aptitude for programming, you can self-learn with free materials online and tools like TensorFlow. You can develop open-source tools using machine learning, get user feedback and market results (e.g. X number of downloads, featured on XYZ magazine), and highlight these achievements in your resume as validation of your skills in this area. This is exactly what my husband did in the past year, though in a different field, and he’s now able to pivot and switch his career to this new field.

Or say you want to get married at some point. You are 35, single, and constantly tied up with work. Maybe a good first step is to draw some boundaries with work. Stop working all the time and create a cutoff. Set aside a few hours each week to meet new people. Examine if you have inner blocks to love, which is very common for long-standing singles, and engage a coach to help you address these blocks. Staying immersed in work, without opening yourself to others, will not help you get into your dream relationship.

Not all the seeds that we plant will blossom. Sometimes there are seeds that just don’t germinate. For example, when you reach out to a friend to build a connection, but it’s not reciprocated. When you want to build a relationship with someone, but he/she is not interested. When you start a project and put in the due effort, but it doesn’t turn out the way you want. When you try to help someone, but get a negative or lukewarm response. When you open your heart and trust someone, but he/she bites you in the head.

But that doesn’t matter. Not all actions will lead to results. But some will. The goal is to plant as many seeds as possible in pursuing your goal. To plant the right seeds by getting advice from the right people and sources, because these shape your day-to-day thinking and long-term direction. To create so many avenues and possibilities for success, that success is imminent. To never stop taking action.

So… what seeds do you need to start planting? Can you get started right away today? Because the sooner you plant your seeds, the sooner you water them and care for them, the faster they will germinate, grow, and blossom into the beautiful trees you are looking for. 🙂 And how your future will be, 10, 15 years down the road will be shaped by the seeds that you plant today.

Be sure to check out: 

• The Power of Little Changes
• The 21-Day Incubation Period
• Put First Things First

The post Are You Planting the Seeds for Your Future? appeared first on Personal Excellence.

Dementia affects around 450,000 Australians, and it comes in hundreds of forms. New research reveals that one form of dementia takes away the ability to daydream, and this has implications for improved care. Sleep disruption in middle age also emerges as another risk factor. And we hear how, after diagnosis, one person found a meaningful role in breaking down the stigma of dementia.

Question:

I work in the hotel industry and I have lived in several countries. I am very satisfied with my job and I feel passion every day at work. The situation is that now I will like to build a family and find a partner, a husband to share my life and to have a family with. I have being living here in L.A. for almost 5 months and I don’t know how to start having a balance in my personal life. I want to have friends and I want to find people to share my time off with. Sometimes I feel I can reach it and sometimes I just feel so alone and I don’t know how to start and take away that emptiness. I admire you and I have read your books. I love my life and I feel I have being blessed with everything I have lived. Still, I am 36 years old and I really need your advice please.