Motion Is Emotion – Using Body Language To Change How You Feel

“Emotion is created my motion. Whatever you’re feeling right now is related to how you’re using your body.”

– Tony Robbins

If you struggle with confidence or happiness you have probably been given the advice to “fake it ’til you make it.” As if acting confident or happy will make you confident or happy. For most people this advice just sounds bad. We want to be ourselves, not someone fake, being forced to pretend but it also sounds too good to be true.

But it’s not.

Our bodies have formed a very strong association between our emotions and body language. When we get overwhelmed with emotion, our bodies reaction. Sometimes our bodies reaction so strongly it’s seemingly completely out of our control.

When we are super excited and happy, we can’t help but smile. Not just with our mouth, but our whole face smiles. We hold our head high and our shoulders are pulled back. We get a sudden burst of energy.

When we get sad, our faces scrunch and tears come out. Crying, after all, is to sad what laughing is to happy. We slouch and sometimes curl up into a ball. We don’t want to do anything but sulk in our sadness.

The same way that emotions cause our bodies to react a certain way, our bodies can cause our emotions to react. This association between our body language and our emotions is so strong that either one, body language or emotion, can trigger the other.

Consciously dictating your body language can make your body release the matching hormones for the emotion that your body is expressing.

If you smile, hold your head up high, pull your shoulders back with your chest out, your brain will follow. Your body will release endorphins. You will feel happy because your body is telling your brain that that’s how you are feeling.

It’s possible to get lost in an act. You begin acting a certain way so much that it becomes a part of you. Like if you start using a certain word mockingly, eventually you will start using it without realizing it.

If you want to feel a certain way or, maybe more importantly, see yourself a certain way, starting acting how you want to feel or see yourself. It’s something you need to do.

The human mind is so much stronger than most people give it credit for. Happiness and confidence are not innate. They’re not traits people are born with. They’re learnable and manipulatable emotions.

Remember that motion is emotion. Act how you want to feel and you will begin to feel that way. The acting part goes away after not too long.

The Benefits Of Cold Showers – It’s More Than You Think

“Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation. It means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.”

– Michael J Fox

Whenever you are sweaty and dirty, few things feel better than a nice hot shower. It feels clean and refreshing. It can almost feel like it burns your daily sins away. Although they feel great, taking a hot shower may not be the smartest thing.

Hot showers aren’t all bad. They can help with lowering tension and relaxing muscles as well as helping to unclog your nasal passages and pores. But cold showers offer better benefits.

Some of the benefits you can experience from taking cold showers are physical but alot of them are mental. Let’s go through some of them.

Stimulates Your Immune System

Exposing your body to cold water increases your bodies white blood cell count. These are the cells that fight diseases and sicknesses. More white blood cells means lower chance of getting sick and can also mean quicker recovery time from sickness.

Increased Alertness

This is better experienced than understood through explanation. Cold water increases your heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate. Because of this, cold showers raise your metabolism and create a sense of alertness.

A Better Mood

Cold water helps your body release endorphins, which are the hormones that are responsible for happiness and feeling good. Cold showers have been shown to help fight depression and anxiety, but should not be used in replacement for any medication.

Acceptance

It can be difficult to convince yourself to jump in a cold lake or pool, let alone turn the water of a shower cold, especially since you have the option of warm water. But once you do, you can come to terms with the initial, horrid shock on your body. Cold showers typically don’t last long so you know that once you start, you’re already almost done. Its knowing that sometimes a little bit of discomfort has many benefits, and that dealing with bad, not only isn’t that bad, but makes the good feel alot better.

Cold showers, and cold water in general, have many scientific health benefits. Wim Hof and many athletes will attest to that. But the mental benefits are a little less known. It’s making yourself comfortable with the uncomfortable, strengthening and conditioning your mind for growth.

You don’t have to stop taking hot showers, but do yourself a favor and try taking short, 2 minute long cold showers for the next 30 days and see how you feel.

Getting Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable – Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”

– Brian Tracy

Our minds train us to seek out comfortability. When we get a new car, bed or sofa, it needs to be comfortable. When we sit or lay down, we position our bodies to be the most comfortable position we can find. Even with clothes, they need to feel good both physically and mentally. They can’t be too tight or too loose and they have to accentuate certain body parts while hiding others to make us feel confident.

Being comfortable is also what is easy. Being uncomfortable can be both physically and mentally painful. From rejection to growing pains, being uncomfortable is more trouble than it’s worth.

Or is it?

While being physically comfortable when fitting is certain spaces is a way that your body can stay healthy, being uncomfortable is necessary for growth. When you get taller or your muscles get bigger, we experience growing pains and soreness. While they are uncomfortable, they are also signs of growth. Even though muscle soreness/fatigue and growing pains are thought of as purely physical, we can actually experience mental growing pains as well.

Mental uncomfortableness and growing pains are often avoided at all costs. This is the cause of the fear of rejection and commitment as well as the stagnation of people’s careers and personal lives.

When you put yourself into uncomfortable situations we put ourselves in learning situations. Humans are creatures of habit. Habits form through repetition to the point where less and less thought are required for a specific response. We stop thinking about the things we do. Uncomfortable situations are often situations you are not experienced well enough on to form a habit or they make you break a habit.

Although you can gain useful knowledge by reading or having mentors, often applying the knowledge is the real learning moment. And because this is new information, we become uncomfortable when we actually use it.

If you want to truly learn, you must act, and in doing so, you will feel uncomfortable. That’s good. Quit associating being uncomfortable with negativity that you most avoid at all costs. Being uncomfortable is learning. It’s growth. It’s life.

Challenge yourself to do things make you uncomfortable everyday. It could be something small like hopping into a cold shower, or something huge like moving out of your hometown away from family and friends. Ask someone out on a date. Give a sincere compliment to a stranger. Keep eye contact (but not long enough to make yourself seem like a serial killer). Join a club or take a class. Start exercising.

Do something new so you can learn. So you can grow. So you can live.

The One Thing All Successful People Have In Common – You Can Too!

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

– Winston S. Churchill

If you take a look at a successful person, you will always find they have one thing. They may not be the smartest, the strongest, the nicest, the most attractive or even the most confident. Some might suffer from anxiety, depression, dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, or other mental “issues.” Successful people also come from vastly different upbringings and are surrounded be different family members and friends, if they even have them in their lives.

By no means am I saying that no two successful people are similar, or that the smartest, strongest, nicest, most attractive and confident people aren’t successful. But those are not what define success because anyone can be successful.

Success is the ability to overcome obstacles, to conquer challenges. So what do successful people, from real state investors to proathletes and even bloggers or youtubers, have in common that help them face adversity and overcome it?

It’s a strong mind. It’s resilience, determination, and having a delayed gratification mindset. In other words, they aren’t afraid to fail in the short term, in fact they may encourage it, because they know they will succeed in the long term.

Even if right now you don’t think of yourself as resilient or determined, or care to do something without instant gratification, it isn’t the end of the world. You can change. These are learnable. It requires energy and willingness. That’s all it takes to become successful.

Let’s take a look at exactly what these are and how to become them.

Resilience is the ability to recover from failure. To become resilient, all it takes is failing. Pick something you know you will fail with your first try. Maybe hitting a bullseye with a dart, doing complicated math problems in your head or spelling difficult words. Be creative. Now do it until you succeed. Don’t take a break. Do something different like this everyday until failing does not bother you anymore and it’s a habit to just try again. The harder it is and longer it takes to accomplish, the better it feels.

Determination is the ability to accomplish what you set your mind out to do. Half of being determined is being able to figure out what you want to do. The other half is doing it. Think of something that maybe boring or difficult, but has a positive impact. This could be something like working out or reading. Set reminders, leave sticky notes around the house or whatever you need to do so that you can’t use your memory as a reason not to do it. Plan to workout or read a certain amount everyday for a week. Then 2 weeks and keep going up and picking different things. Do something that starts out being unpleasant and make yourself do it do accomplish a goal, even if the goal is just to do it.

Delayed gratification is a where you do something, knowing the reward you get won’t be for a while. Most people want instant gratification. This is why gyms are the busiest when people make their new year’s resolutions, but slow down again when people don’t see results about a month later. Any time you are met with anything that gives you instant gratification, deny it, and find a way to reward yourself with bigger rewards for the longer you wait. Wait on eating that Twinkie. Let’s say you wait a week, treat yourself to two Twinkies, or a big bowl of ice cream instead.

Practice these. Master them. You will be successful.

The Importance of Goal Setting – Define Your Dreams to Achieve Them

“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.”

– Bill Copeland

What do you truly desire? If you have watched the TV show Lucifer, that question will sound very familiar. Even though it is used primarily to solve murders and get the main character laid in the show, it is a very important question to ask yourself.

What do you want? Not something that your friends or family want and not because you are guilted into wanting it by someone or the media. Deep down inside yourself. What do you want? It could be money, fame, material possessions, a record or title, love and other emotions or freedom. Be creative. What you want is up to you.

Now, do you have everything you want? Hopefully not. Life would be boring and unfulfilling, and there would be nothing for you to works towards.

Goals are very important to have and set. It gives you a purpose, can help you spend time more wisely, motivate you and give you a long term vision. Setting a goal puts into the universe that you will achieve that goal as well.

Having a goal and setting a goal are different though. Just having a goal doesn’t do much by itself. Setting a goal requires a couple things. Imagine shooting a bow and arrow at a target, blindfolded. I would take the bet every time for the miss. But if you weren’t blindfolded, you can actually see the target, you know how high it’s placed, how far away and how small it is. That would help your tremendously with hitting the target. From there, at most it takes a couple shots, but you’re set up to succeed.

To make sure you don’t go through life blindfolded, let’s look at how to define and set your goals, not just so you can achieve them, but so you will. Let’s start with an example, a goal of mine:

By my 25th birthday, I will have bought a brand new BMW 4 series Coupe or Sedan (depending on what is out), without any financing.

This goal accomplishes multiple things.

It’s specific and measurable. I have a specific date by which it needs to be done, June 20th, 2022. It’s also a specific what and a specific how. I said it was new and gave the make and model, and that I do not want to take out loans for it (giving myself leeway for all cash or cash+trade-in).

It’s realistic and obtainable. This car based on this year’s price, would be around $40,000-$50,000. In a little under 3 years this is definitely realistic. There are plenty of people who earn more than that in a way shorter amount of time. And unless they stop making the 4-series by then, it is also obtainable.

Its a challenge. For a college drop out, that just had 2 cars repossessed, and is about to move out of state a second time in 2 years, it will be challenging. There is no point of making something easy a goal. There should be a possibility that you fail, to keep in honest in your effort.

Now it’s time for you to set some goals and take that blindfold off.

Remember this: Never let goals start with one day or tomorrow. One day and tomorrow turn into never. Start now!

How to Learn More Effectively – Getting the Full Use From Reading

“The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The willingness to learn is a choice.”

– Brian Herbert

There are many ways to learn new information, whether it’s reading, watching videos, listening to podcasts, attending classes, having a mentor, or personal trial and error. It’s also no secret that some people learn quicker than others or that different kinds of learning (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) that work better for some than others.

And if learning wasn’t complicated enough already, it turns out learning is mostly temporary. Extremely temporary. Within an hour of being presented new information, most people retain less than half. And after a day that half turns into over 70%. The longer the time frame, the worse our memories hold up.

Thankfully I don’t need to remember when the Battle of Gettysburg happened or how to do calculus on a day to day basis. Or maybe that’s why I don’t remember.

See, memories form through synapses, which are connections made by neurons (cells of the nervous system, and in this case more specifically the brain). The more often the synapses for a memory form, the better the memory gets. This is why learning proper form in sports ,such as throwing a ball or punch, takes alot of practice, as can solving algebraic equations. And after much practice, these things require less and less thought and it becomes more natural.

This can be problematic if it comes to trying to learn alot of information. You may not always have time for the tedious repetition it can take to learn new information. That is the boring part of school for alot of people. A presentation with notes, then class work, then homework, and a study guide to prepare for a test. Not only is it time consuming but it gets boring and exhausting.

Let’s look at some ways to learn new information more efficiently.

Explain or teach it to someone

I had a teacher who said “You don’t really know something, else you can successfully teach it to someone else.” It requires true understanding not just of that topic but of a foundational topic as well. If you can have deeper understanding, it becomes less a part of a memory and more a part of your knowledge.

Use as many senses as possible

Often times when learning something new, we can not possibly use all five senses. Instead of just reading a book for example, you can take notes, make anotations, or rewrite the important parts to involve touch and you can listen to a video or the audio book as well to involve your hearing. This can help create three different memories for the same thing.

Apply or Use the information immediately

When you learn a new concept or idea, think about what it can apply to or find some examples of it. This will help make practical sense of the information and more importantly it creates an association. If you learn A and can associate it with B you have more to remember it by and thinking of B can remind you of A. The more the better with this strategy.

If you can I would recommend doing all three of these and finding time for at least a little repetition. After all, if it is worth learning, it’s worth remembering.

The 80/20 Rule – Being More Efficient With The Idea That Less Is More

Practically everyone and their mother has heard the expression, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Well, it turns out you also should not put all your eggs in to multiple baskets equally. A small minority of your baskets should hold the majority of your eggs.

This brings me to the 80-20 rule also known as the Pareto Principle. Pareto, an Italian economist, noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people. He realised that in many cases 20% of the causes are responsible for 80% of the outcomes. In other words, the minority controls the majority.

The numbers 80-20 are not important, nor do they need to add to 100%. It’s the idea of the majority of outcome vs the minority of causes. Keeping in mind that the numbers are not going to be fully accurate here are some examples in everyday life of this principle:

  • 20% of the food you consume daily accounts for 80% of your calories consumed
  • 20% of products in a store account for 80% of sales
  • 20% of your relationships account for 80% of happiness you get from relationships
  • 20% of your bills consume 80% of your income

Now that you know what the 80/20 rule says and have some examples, we can look at how you can use it to better your life.

For Health:

The small amounts of food that account for the majority of our calories that we consume daily is some kind of junk food. Whether it be Twinkies, a chocolate shake, or a Big Mac meal, junk food is any food with an abnormally high number of calories. In this case we use the 80/20 rule, see that there is an imbalance, and try to balance it out. We can cut out the junk food for a healthier alternative.

For Business:

Whether it’s the product or service industry, 20% of products or clients account for 80% of income or profit. We can use that information to spend time or advertising dollars more wisely. Focus more time on the minority of clients that keep you in business and give them the best service imaginable. Focus more of the advertising budget on the minority of products that drive your profits. You can still put resources in the majority, just don’t do it equally.

For Relationships:

Not all friends are created equal, nor are family members sadly. Everyone connects with some people better than others and not everyone has the same affect on us. Many people are in toxic relationships. Many people bring down and hold back other people, in potential or happiness. Cut out these toxic people from your life and focus on growing the relationships that make you significantly more happy than others. For most, these are your kids, your spouse/significant other, your parents, or your best friend.

There are probably endless ways in which you can use the 80/20 rule to improve a facet of your life. If you find an imbalance, try to figure out what the important minority is. Focus on that and do it first. If possible and if it makes sense, cut out the majority that results in little benefit if any. Or, as was the case for food, try to find more balance if the minority results in a negative majority.

Some areas to look at would be financials, work life, entertainment, or whatever else you can think of. You just need to be able to spot the imbalance, analyze it, and want to better your life.

Work Ethic – The 1 Thing That Can Make Up For Disadvantages

“If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)”

-Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

From the time when you are born, there are few things you can control until you start growing mentally. You can not control your genetics or environment. There will always be someone taller, bigger, smarter, or stronger than you. There may always be people who come from wealthier households, in safer neighborhoods, with better schools, teachers and coaches. Life’s misfortunes are not always just that.

Change the way you see these misfortunes. It takes struggle, growth, learning, and overcoming to truly succeed. Those misfortunes can be blessings because they are obstacles you encounter early in life to give you experience and mental strength. These experiences can be what drag you down, if you let them, or what make you into a successful person.

If you were in a high level race that you have to qualify for, and once you met your goldenchild opponent and lined up to start, you noticed that he started 10 meters ahead of you, what would you do? Would you quit? Would you compete physically, but mentally you start preparing the loser’s interview on how the race was unfair? Or do you get ready to push harder like you’ve been doing your entire life and prepare your winner’s interview, reminding everyone that hard work can overcome predetermined advantages?

For both of you to qualify for this race, you have gone through so much more. You have more experience, practice, determination and even motivation. The things everyone has told you your whole life are disadvantages may be the biggest advantage of all. Overcoming adversity has become a habit thanks to your work ethic.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell mentions the 10,000 hour principal. To truly master something you need 10,000 hours of active practice. Practice where you are pushing yourself, learning and growing. An example he mentions is Bill Gates and how he spent pretty much his entire childhood working with computers. The earlier you start, the earlier you can achieve those hours. Consider all the adversity you have overcome, hours of practiced work ethic.

Your work ethic is what can make up for everything else. Everyone at the top of their profession, accomplishing their dreams, have one thing in common; they obsess over their work ethic. Often to the point where work for them is fun.

You Owe It To Yourself – Wake UP!

Focus on your daily blessings, future opportunities and possibilities, and never allow your challenges, struggles, and obstacles to interfere with your peace of mind. You owe abundant happiness and success to your inner-self.

–Edmond Mbiaka

Take a second and think. Are you happy? Truly happy? I’m talking that if you died today, and as your spirit is floating off this earth you look at back at your life, you have no regrets kind of happy. You know you did everything within your power to make sure you enjoyed every second. You found a way to work a job doing what you love. You took time to value and grow your relationships. You made a positive impact in someone else’s life.

No? Then it’s time to make a change! Use this as your wake up call!

Life is short. Extremely short. You are living now. The only time guaranteed to you is NOW. An afterlife is great to believe in, but it is far from guaranteed. Worry about the afterlife, after your life. What if everyone is wrong? What if after you die there is nothing. No life after this one. No light. Just darkness and nothingness. It’s over. Did you make use of the one life that was guaranteed?

You have it now.

Live the best life you can. Do what makes you feel butterflies in your stomach like when you had your first crush in kindergarten. Live for moments that makes your heart tingle, like a first kiss, a new love or accomplishing something everyone else thought you couldn’t do, even you sometimes.

You owe this to yourself. The only person who has to deal with the responsibility of living your life is you. The only person who has all the experiences you have is you. You are the only constant person in your life from one second to the next. Can you live on a repeat cycle, working a boring 9-5 then going straight home and sitting in front of the TV until it’s time for bed? Sure you can. That’s easy. Over 90% of Americans do pretty much exactly that. It’s not what they love to do. But it’s easy.

Do what isn’t easy. Do what you love doing more than anything in the world. Find a way to make a living off of it. Work each and everyday to be the best. Not just the best on the planet, but the best that there ever will be. Your potential is not who you are today or tomorrow. Most people never reach their true potential. Most people don’t work towards their potential. Don’t be most people.

One of the most famous questions is “What is the purpose of life?” The great thing is everyone has a different purpose because no one has the same dream. Dreams are dreamt different from person to person. But you, as well as everyone, owe it to yourself to live trying to reach your potential, to live chasing your dreams, to live a life that you can actually call a life!

If you’re feeling down, like you’re in this bottomless pit that you can’t get out of. You feel like you’re depressed and you have no motivation. All that is inside you is a bunch of miserable memories and negativity. It gets better. In everything in the universe there is balance. If you feel so down now, think about how high you can and will go to balance it. There is hope.

Without the bad, there is no good. If you never got sick or injured, feeling healthy wouldn’t feel so good. If there was no heartbreak, love wouldn’t feel so good. If there was no failure, success wouldn’t feel so good. So welcome the bad. Welcome sickness and injury. Welcome the heartbreak. And welcome the failure.

Do it because that means the good is on it’s way. Do it because you know you’re strong enough to overcome it. Do it because you owe it to yourself. Be the best you you can possibly be.

The Importance of Having Multiple Sources of Income

“Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man’s lifetime income – which he then spends sending his son to college.”

-Bill Vaughan

For most of you, the only money hitting your bank account is coming from your normal everyday job. What would happen if for some reason you lost your job? Or let’s say you wanted to make more money. How many times can you ask your boss for a raise in a small amount of time? A $1/hr raise is thought to be pretty significant but assuming you work 40hrs per week, that’s only $80 more per paycheck, before taxes.

If you want to increase your income or stabilize it, one of the best, if not the best way to do it is to increase your number of income sources. First we will discuss the reasons that this is effective. Then we will look and some ways we can execute on this idea.

Reasons it’s effective:

  • Make More Money – If you make $8/hr at one job during the week, and add a weekend job that also pays $8/hr, you make more money.
  • More Potential – If you have two jobs, you could ask two jobs for a raise instead of just one.
  • More stability – If you got fired or laid off from one job, you still have some money coming in.
  • Could Multiply Your Money – If your second job was making passive income instead of a weekend job, you could make $16/hr instead of working more time.
  • Possibly More Paydays – More paydays means a more consistent flow of money to your bank account. No more waiting for your next payday to buy something.
  • Don’t Get Burned Out or Bored – Doing one thing for too long can get exhausting, even if you love it. This gives potential to keep things interesting.

Now that we have gone over some reasons that having multiple sources of income is good, we will see how we can go about this. There are two ways to do this.

1. Active Income
You work for the money. You only get paid for the time you spend actually doing work. This is like a typical 9-5 job.

+ Easy to find, fast

– Increases work time, limits potential

2. Passive Income

Your money works for you. You setup a system to pay you overtime, even while not working.

+ Requires less time, potential to multiply $, can have endless number of income sources, you’re your own boss

– Can take time to work, you’re your own boss

Some examples can include writing and selling a book, YouTube channels, dropshipping stores, Multilevel marketing (like Amway), writing a blog, Amazon Affiliates or having a branded Teespring store.

Really anything where you can provide any type of value or can form a membership system.

Be creative. The more fun you have, the better you will do. This is meant for the long run, you just need to be consistent.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started