Steps To Your Better You - RETIRE

Using daily affirmations to challenge and overcome negative self-talk, building self-esteem and motivation is a great way to, well, challenge and overcome negative self-talk, building self-esteem and motivation.

Whether young or young at heart, self-discipline is a skill that can be developed or improved. Implement small, consistent actions to strengthen self-control and follow through on your commitments.

It may be time to remove a few people from your list or take yourself off another person’s list for them.

Set yourself up for more adventure and less frustration in accompanying tasks and learning new skills by calling them ‘quests’ and checking them off as missions accomplished.  

Use tools like to-do lists and the Pomodoro Technique to manage time effectively and increase productivity.

Regularly acknowledge and appreciate the positives in your life to boost overall happiness and motivation.

Personal development advice is universal and primarily evergreen. Hearing the words is important, but they are worthless without some work.

You don't have to make it cult-like, but establishing a consistent and productive morning routine will set a positive tone for the day.

Embracing challenges and viewing failures as opportunities to learn and grow is not just a way, it's the inspiring path that fuels your personal and professional growth.

If you are unsure how to start setting personal or professional goals, the SMART method (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) is the best way to accomplish them.

Boring people cannot see past what they were taught to believe. Lacking the ability to see other people's perspectives is why they are bad at communicating.

Take into account the views of other people and cultures that you are surrounded by that you may have never truly noticed.

Infinite lives and NPCs who only exist to do your bidding may seem fantastic, but they only exist in the world behind your VR headset. You have to learn to navigate and thrive in the world that exists IRL, with no skins or filters.

Things may not be going the way you want them to fight now. Or even in a marginally positive way. You have to find the resources to keep moving forward.

Your perceived intelligence is less about how much you know and more about the perception your audience has of you. You are probably smart enough already, but there is nothing wrong with gaining more knowledge. But improving how you communicate your intelligence is a better way to show the world you have ‘increased’ your intelligence.

We need more people to keep dreaming. But we really need more of those people to put more action into turning great dreams into greater realities.

You are closer to achieving that goal than you think, even if the world around you seems to be crashing down on you. Show some faith in your past efforts, your future returns, and all those who have worked to stick with you along the way.

The right people will be attracted to your life when you quit playing roles you think they want to see. Stop hiding who you authentically are, even if you are not exactly the person you wish to be.

The most precious currency you have to trade with is time. You exchange time to acquire money, resources, relationships, and comfort. Spending time on useless activities (unless they bring you joy in a time of rest) wastes currency you can not earn back and cannot transfer to others at the end of your time on the planet.

Boring people also can't make people cry, want to dance, or burst out in song. Learn to tell a few stories with an emotional range that can move people.

Work hard, and do not let the opinions of foolish people automatically discredit their views. They often know more than they seem to, even if their words and actions may steer you to believe otherwise.

Often, a solution will present itself in laying out a problem. Or at least, the skills needed to fix the problem will be revealed so you can find the right people with the right skills to fix it.

Personal epiphanies feel great, but they fade within weeks. Upon having an epiphany, make a plan and start actually changing behavior.

The less stress you can put on others to achieve your primary goals, the easier it is for those others to achieve their primary goals. And vice versa.

Doing the same things over and over may, on the surface, seem like the fate of the boring. The reality is the consistency of repeating actions helps you stay on task and sane when a routine gets busted.

An unanswerable questions like "What is my purpose?" can catalyze great things. Take the fear out of not having an answer and work hard to find one.

Our good plans fall apart when we delay working on them, so put some work into them immediately. Until they prove to be a path to a bad plan, then a little procrastination may help you see where the errors of your ways lie.

Don't be concerned with the amount of good others are doing in the world. Don't be concerned with the amount of good you could do in the world if you had their position and resources. Focus on the amount of good you can do right now, and what you can do #as you increase your role in society.

This is not a setup for depression but an exercise in strategic planning. Sports teams always practice how to recover from a ‘broken play.’ Run some of your future life plans in your head, visualize what parts might not work, and fix those parts ahead of time.

Boring people do not know how to tell a good story. Learning good story structure and practicing a few stories so you can easily find the right one to tell will make you less boring.

It is easy for you to judge others for their apparent faults. It is not easy for you to notice your faults and spit instant hot takes your way on how to fix them. But when you can do it, the payoff is huge.

If something surprises you repeatedly, you see a trend. Stop being surprised by a thing you know is going to happen. And if it is

Develop a habit of getting the running list of things out of your head and onto paper, making the list real and tangible.

This is not about what they have earned because they probably haven’t. This addresses your ability to maintain your composure around others by not letting yourself get triggered by difficult people.

There is a lesson to learn from every experience and moment you live through. These are lessons for you and those who have their eyes on you.

Don’t let outside opinions drive the pursuits of your goals. At the same time, put a realistic time limit to those goals that you can hold yourself to.

Find ways to evaluate your life and fix the issues before they become real problems. Zoom in to find the details that need addressing, and zoom out to see your life in exhaustive detail to ensure you are moving along a worthy path.

As a door closes on an opportunity, another one is not guaranteed to open nearby. Plus, they tend to open when they want to, not on any rhyme or reason that follows your work to be prepared for any opportunity.

The phrase ‘follow your passion’ is getting much-deserved hate from the personal development world because of the ease it can be used to manipulate and mislead. Following your passion is not necessarily bad advice, but it rarely comes with a manageable financial plan attached.

Whatever issues you face, if you can put a dollar value on it, whether just a single dollar or a million dollars, the problem becomes solvable. Even if you don’t currently have a million dollars to solve it.

Success is possible through relationships, as no one travels through this life all alone. Success is even possible if a partner relationship moves toward the cool side. Gaining success and maintaining the relationship will be challenging, but it is possible.

If a person faces deserved group criticism, the urge to join the fray in the verbal beatdown is high. Resist this urge, as it does help in teaching a lesson already learned. It just brings extra ugly to the situation, often making it worse.

Some people have trouble thinking of themselves as valuable unless told by someone else. Some people believe their value is better portrayed by tearing other people down. You can help them out in both cases by slathering on more compliments to people.

This week’s message was inspired by a rennet post on Seth Godin’s blog that made me evaluate what motivates me in my pursuits. Is it reaching the stated goal or just the journey to get there?

The best time to question the consequence of your actions is after you have survived an ordeal. The second-best time to question the consequences of your actions is the moment you begin to see the consequences of your actions.

Learn to endure 'stupid questions' as questions asked by people who truly don't know the answer. Learn to endure the people who tend to claim, 'I'm just trying to ask a question,' as people determined to be jerks despite the situation.

Want to feel empowered and better about yourself and your life? Face your fears and work toward that goal alluding to you. Just take it one tiny step at a time.

You don’t want to look for ways to exploit those around you. You’re looking for a way to better understand people by getting to know the side they (usually) do their best not to show you.

Sit down with a physical pen and a piece of paper. Use your phone app if you must. Freely brainstorm for at least 5 minutes (longer if you are feeling it), and out which ideas have been bogging you down, and make plans to do something about them.

You must have a good sense of perspective when going through a rough stretch of failures and coming up short. A rejection is not necessarily the signal of the end of a journey, and it may be a detour or a pivot.