Increasing Self-Awareness With Meditation

 

Hungry for a Challenge?

It’s the third week in our pursuit to increase self-awareness, and this time we’re going to do what many experts claim to be the number one thing to increase awareness. I’m talking about sitting down, closing your eyes for 10-20 minutes and just observe yourself; mind & body. Try to distinguishing the active thoughts you have from just being present & aware. Sit however you’d like. Listen to whatever you’d like. Breath however you’d like. Frankly, the only way to fail this challenge is to not sit through your time quota with at least the intention of trying to reach a state of awareness.

Easier said than done, I know. But it’s okay, It’s called practice. If thoughts come up, they come up. Don’t try to manipulate yourself into forcing “emptiness” – that’s not the point. We have to get rid of the notion of being in control of our thoughts, that will never happen. Just observe yourself and allow yourself to go wherever your mind takes you. Now some would call this meditation, and some wouldn’t – you may call it whatever you like. The name of the game is not important, it’s the actions we take that counts.

Just to make you more excited – it will probably suck! They say it should suck for the first year. But hey, then there’s no need for high expectations! Worst thing ever is going to a hyped movie that only turned out to be an “alright” one. So why should you do it all if it’s all pain and no juicy stuff? Good question. Sounds pretty stupid, wasting valuable time…That’s the one thing we try really hard to NOT do every day! Maybe you shouldn’t do it. Or, OR, you just have to have faith that it actually could be worth the steep learning curve before you can reap any kind of reward.

 “a lamp is like awareness—it just lights up the whole room with no particular focus” 

I’m not there, YET. But I’ve started to see and feel just a little glimpse of what it might, could, should be like, after around 6 months of playing around with it. So, I’ve decided to have faith and just continue on with it. For now. The hardest thing is to get started with new things, right?

You do as you like – after all, we live in a free world! That’s why I can post this shi* here 🙂
The objectives:
– Meditate each day for at least five minutes. Remember, the only thing we can control, is to actually sit down and do the routine of trying to observe ourselves. Accept this, and It will ease the process.
– Do some journaling about your experience after each session, and ask yourself how it made you feel.
– In the end of the week, look through your notes and try to reflect on your experience in a more objective matter

The Habit:

The Que: When are you going to do this – find a place or a time when this suits you, and make sure that its’s a clear que that triggers the routine. For me it’s every morning when I step aboard on my morning commute train.

The routine. That’s the actual habit. Just sit down and try to be aware. That’s it. The only way of failing is not sitting down for the time you set up as a goal.

The reward: Before ending the meditation, try to do finish of every meditation with asking yourself what you could be grateful for right now, and go deep, really really try to break out some positive emotions. Because we want to anchor this with some goood emotions!
Good Luck guys:)

/Alexander

 

Full video:

 

 

LEO’S FULL MEDITATION FOR BEGINNERS VIDEO:


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Posting schedule:
SUNDAYS: New Weekly Personal Development Challenge
WEEK DAYS: Depending on the challenge, but at least one Video/Vlog at the Wednesdays
FRIDAY: Evaluation of Week Challenge

Join us, raise your standards, and start the journey to become the person you’ve always wanted to be,

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/With Love, Alexander

Increasing Self-Awareness through Journaling

New week new challenge, and since this January month is totally dedicated to self-awareness, that means that’s what we’re going to work on! In particular, this week will be about shaping a small journaling habit to pursue this goal!

So last week we tried to get more in tune with what our strengths and weaknesses, in order to increase our self-awareness and try to get a better read on what direction we should take in life. Now that was a great start and incredibly insightful, and if you haven’t done that challenge, make sure to do so (check it out here). Now the order of the two doesn’t really matter to any great extent, so you can start with this one if you feel more excited about it!

If we just quickly remind ourselves of what the very definition of self-awareness meant; “conscious knowledge of one’s own character and feelings”.  Now in order to translate that to any practical application, this means one has to be opened and alert to taking in and scanning thoughts and emotions that are occurring within us; in what context and for what reasons? Having this emotional radar constantly on means a heightened awareness to what’s going on in relation to how you are experiencing the situation at hand.

This is usually not the case, not only are so many of us not picking up on the small things that gives ourselves away, but what’s worse is that many of us are even actively supressing all kinds of emotions and related thoughts. Why? Because it’s an easy solution – turning it all of means certainty. We know what we get. But if we want to live life, if we wont to enjoy life and have great experiences every day (not saying everyday stuff can be just that – the small things are often the greatest things) , we have to tune in to our emotions – all of our emotions! Because we can’t selectively choose what kinds of emotions we want to turn off, it’s an all or nothing scenario according to the shame researcher Brene Brown.

This means we need to become aware, be present, taking notice of not only ourselves but the world around us. People, friends, enemies, animals, the environment. Everything. That’s not negotiable, that’s just the deal we have to make with ourselves if we want to live life to its fullest. So becoming self-aware means first becoming aware of what’s going on around us. It’s not until then when we can learn how to deal with all of our motions, to relate to them, to recognize patterns and to draw conclusions from past experiences. It opens up a whole new level of self-awareness – a whole new level of living.

What might be intimidating – could be – is that doing all this will result in an objective look at yourself;

“Part of awareness is accepting who we really are, not just in our mind, but in our behaviour in this world. To accept and say ‘you know what, that was me, I did do that, I am responsible for myself, for my actions, for my emotions, my attitudes, how I treat other people, and you know what I need to evaluate that. I need to ask, is that the person I want to be? Am I happy with that? Am I proud of that? Is there something I can shift in my character, or my behaviour or my believes that will make me a better person? “ – Brendon Burchard (2).

It’s not until we first accept our current state that we can start to fill out that delta that lies between today – who we are – and tomorrow – wo we want to be.

When we start to take notice at this level, we will also become alert to what it is that distract us through the days. When are we being high jacked from our conscious mind in to a reactive state, a state of being walked in a park like a dog. Us being the dog led by Facebook holding hands with Instagram and their kids YouTube and the Fridge. When we become aware, we’ll pick up on how and when we get thrown out of our ability to focus at one task at hand, disturbed from advancing and taking steps in the direction we want to go in life. Self-awareness makes us able to alert our self from falling into those traps, truly feeling the cost of it. Because the cost is great – it’s stealing your life away.

Yes, we can become better at this just by processing all this in our minds. But, if we take this one step further and write down our thoughts – do some journaling – the process will be so much easier. As a bonus,  there are loads of studies on mental benefits like decreasing stress, stimulating creativity, building self-esteem and so forth (Henry, 2014). But it doesn’t take much reasoning – and first-hand experience from a 10 year journaler – to realize that when we actively scan our brains, pick up on what we are feeling in different situations, and then go about writing the gist of that down, it will become more real and it will bring new perspectives. The very act of writing something out and reading it, It’s therapeutic, it’s like talking to someone else about what’s going on. Sometimes the very action of just getting it out of our heads makes us able to let go of whatever it was that made us feel a certain way. We can reason with ourselves, take on different perspectives or just establish that “yes, that was a truly an amazing experience and it really made me feel great.”. Seeing patterns, realizing that perhaps a certain regular activity makes us feel great and should perhaps therefore be an even greater part of your life. Suddenly new opportunities or ideas can appear that makes all the difference. But even more so, sometimes these thing doesn’t happen until we go back and read through what we wrote, and now when we are in another state of mind can get deep insights and clarity, making us understand a situation and ourselves better.

More so, not only does it seem to be a key activity for being self-aware, many of the masters throughout history kept a journal, Leonardo Da Vinci, Einstein, Benjamin franklin. Modelling the ones that did figure things out is key to make our personal development journey as effective as possible. Picking up a few role-models and past mentors along the road. That’s why this week’s challenge will be about creating a journaling habit for five days and then in the end of the week read through what’s been written to do some reflection and decide whether to continue this habit or not.

 

How are we going to do this?

So let’s get down to the practicality of journaling. Personally I do tons of journaling, and as I’ve said have been doing so for the last eight or nine years when I first started to use OneNote as my planning system. That’s where I keep all the things I extract from my head, notes, project planning, goals, work journaling, food journaling, social journaling, there’s no stop to it. But that’s not going to be the task at hand for us this week. We are going to set the bar low and start small – which could absolutely be enough. Now just let me clarify, I’m putting out a proposal here for how to do this, you may tweak it so it suits you. What’s important is to actually get started with some kind of journaling!

First off, even if I just went through a bunch of reasons for why you should start journaling, make sure to personalise your reasons for doing this. Getting clear with YOUR PURPOSE – having a clear why – is key. Secondly, it comes to designing the habit. When we want to implement something new in our life we want to do use the habit loop’s template for creating a long lasting habit, using the three pillars called the Que, the Routine and the Reward. Using this format, we can actually make the action automatous, stored in a part of our brain that will make you able to do the habit even if you lose your memory centre in the brain (Duhigg, 2012).

My philosophy when starting a habit is to set the bar very low to get going, and then if the you’re in the mood for it, go beyond and overachieve. Surprise yourself. Starting out and incrementally raising what you see as the very minimum for what you should do. That’s how I work with all my habits, and it has proven to work very well for me as well as for others. Trick yourself into doing way more than you expected, because getting started is always the biggest barrier!

The Que:

When are we going to write? Forcing something into your life that isn’t designed for your life, isn’t a long term solution. So look at your day and see when it best fits you. Now personally, I just love having parts of this routine early in the morning. So my suggestion for you is to see if there are any suitable times during this time where it could fit you. Perhaps when you sit down to eat breakfast, when your commuting to work, when you’re doing your warm up at the gym – I bet you can figure it out!  But try to anchor it to a certain Que, whether it is a time, place or action doesn’t matter as long as a clear association can be made.

The Routine:

Where are we going to write? So there are some studies suggesting that using a pen and paper activates certain parts of the brain and will stimulate your creativity. But choose whatever medium you prefer best, but also, have easy access to. If your moving around a lot without the possibility of carrying around a lot of stuff, then your phone will properly be your best tool for you. There’s no point of having a fancy book with expensive paper if it’s not with you when you need to write! Here are some medium alternatives:

  • A regular notebook, with or without lines
  • Journaling Books with questions and guidance outlined like “the five minute journal”
  • Writing in OneNote, Evernote or just a plain word document
  • Writing an email to yourself
  • A note in your phone
  • App’s in your phone like “Penzu”
  • A napkin or whatever you can get hold on when you feel the urge to take some notes!

What are we going to write? Now in order for us to become self-Aware that means breaking down events, happenings and actions that made us feel in a particular way and clarifying way that was the case. But to make this clear and actionable, we are going to answer a few questions as a minimum requirement base line. And then, if you feel like overachieving, throughout the day journal when it feels relevant and when something happens that stands out to you. Observe yourself!

The questions you are going to answer:

  • What are you grateful for right now?
  • What are you enthusiastic about today?
  • What are your concerns about this day and how would the ideal version of yourself handle it?

Throughout the day write down what you were thinking when something happened, how you felt, in what context and if you can; try to answer why this was the case.  And at the end of the day answer the following questions:

  • What were your top three moments that happened and how they made you feel?
  • Was there anything you should have done differently if you were to relive this day?

The Reward:

You have to emotionally anchor the routine and create a positive association. Closely connecting the two so they are one and the same “journaling makes me feel great”; so create a reward that fits you! personally I just feel very clear and empty (in a good sense) when I’ve done my journaling, which is great reward for me. But that’s not always the case when starting out, it may take some time to reap the rewards of the actual habit. So a recommendation is to ask yourself after you’ve been journaling; how did it make you feel?  Other types of rewards could be, just praising yourself for doing a good job “great journaling Alex”; or it could be something quantitative like allowing yourself to have breakfast afterwards.

So The objectives are:

  • Journal every day for at least a couple of minutes, as a suggestion answering the outlined questions. When you write, think in terms of what you are feeling and why you believe that is the case; situation, context, etc.
  • In the end of the week, read through the journal and reflect upon what you’ve written. You can do this during our Live Weekly Evaluation session (Sweden, Stockholm, 18.00).

So that’s it, that’s this week’s challenge! It may seem like a small task (or maybe it doesn’t?) but I urge you do to it, it’s fun and you really get to know yourself better. And since I’ve been doing most of my journaling on the computer or in the phone, I’m going to go all old school this week to make it feel a bit fresh!

If you’d like, commit to me in the comments, as it will increase the likelihood of you following through.   And make sure to look out for any related videos I’ll be posting in the week and the Live Weekly Evaluation session on Friday (Sweden, Stockholm, 18.00)! To be sure not to miss any, press this link below and you’ll subscribe to my channel and will be notified when a new video is out!

My name is Alexander Nilsson, Thank you for reading, bye guys.

Subscribe to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/alexanderSnilsson?sub_confirmation=1

 

Soruces:

Henry, A. (2014)Why you should keep a journal (and how to start yours). Available at: http://lifehacker.com/why-you-should-keep-a-journal-and-how-to-start-yours-1547057185 (Accessed: 15 January 2017).

Duhigg, C. (2012)The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. New York: Random House Publishing Group.

 

 

Increasing your Self-Awareness

 

Hey there! What’s up? I’m great thank you for wondering. It’s a New week, new challenges, and in some sense A New Concept! …and it’s time start over! Hu? Well, I’ve thought a lot lately and decided that this year we’ll go about our personal development journey in a more structured way, with a monthly theme with at least one book as a basis. That doesn’t mean you have to read the book at hand, I’ll still be breaking down the gist of what’s important and present an easy and practical challenge that you are able to do throughout the week – even if we have a busy job to attend! My intention is to give you what’s deliver the most value with the least amount of effort. That’s my idea and concept for this – less random and more planned!

I want build ourselves a solid foundation to stand on, starting from within, because it doesn’t matter if

we develop crazy mad skills in how to perfectly structure a conversation for people to like us, or how to give genuine compliments, if we don’t have any sort of clarity in who we are – self-awareness! That is a clear perception in who we are; personality, weakness, thoughts, believes, likings, emotions and what motivates.

Self Awareness allows you to understand other people, how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the moment.” (pathway to happiness, no date)”

If we’re not pursuing our true path in life – being true to ourselves – all those other less important skills and doings won’t matter anyway. They may keep you occupied and give you a sense of meaning, and sometimes that is all we need for a while, but reality will always catch up! The sooner we can start following our true path in life, the sooner we’ll start to feel the true meaning of it all.

So this week’s challenge is going to start on clarifying our passion areas in life. Why start there? Well because when you get a sense of how your life really could look like, the motivation for taking every necessary step towards that life, will be infinite.

The Objectives of this week:

MONDAY: LOOK WITHIN

“Primal Inclinations draw us toward certain disciplines and are key to developing mastery” – Robert Greene

Looking within to connect with that primal part of yourself – sit down for five to ten minutes and think about what really has been easy and fun for you through life. What was it that you most of all enjoyed doing when you were a kid? In what situations do you most often get yourself in a state of flow? (you may sit longer, but the sense of being on a deadline forces our brain to come up with some results). Think about during the day reflect, let your mind work subconsciously, come back to it again in the end of the week to see if there’s anything you’ve forgotten about.

TUESDAY-THURSDAY: GET FEEDBACK

“you have to audit who actually are… …because then you’re not gonna bullshit yourself a story tell yourself you can motivate yourself but you’re not gonna bullshit yourself” – Gary Vaynerchuk

You are going to ask at least three persons that knows you very well, about three that you’re good at and three things that really isn’t your strong suite. Ask people in a way that makes you comfortable; but here’s a guideline if you need it:

-Hey, *small talk, small talk* so I’m doing an introspection/soul-searching/self-examination on myself this week, and I wonder if you can tell me 3 things I’m good at, and three things that perhaps isn’t my strong suit. I know this is hard for both you and me, bur I really really need to, and can handle, the truth.

THURSDAY/FRIDAY:  SCENARIO BRAINSTORMING

You now should have a list with the things that come naturally to you, from these things, set the timer for 5-10 minutes and think about how a potential career with these identified areas/skills could look like. Just play around, brainstorm and visualise how a career with these combinations could look like. I’m not saying you have to pursue this, I just want you to set yourself in a state of no limitations and beyond current musts and obligations. Allow yourself to see into that parallel universe where you do things cantered around what you really like. Now I really think this should be your path, but subconsciously your mind will try to protect you from uncertainty, and not allow you to let go of your current certainty. BUT PLAY WITH THE THOUGT – At least that very action you deserve to treat yourself with. And then maybe, when you’ve gotten an idea of one potential future, a seed will been put in the ground. And hopefully, consciously or subconsciously, you’ll start to move towards that future.

For instance, if you’d love dancing your entire life, it’s been a natural part of your life since birth.  But it’s not a big part anymore. However, you’ve also got a knack for helping people, you’ve worked in helpdesk support and always got feedback on what a great sense you have for connecting with people and taking them through a complicated process in what seems like very uncomplicated and structured way. But your current job as a school teacher is with constant battles and way too many working hours doesn’t make you feel fulfilled. Your other passion for creating music. Perhaps is there a way for you to teach people how to dance to the music you’ve created. Whether it could start out as taking on dance lessons again, while looking for opening on face-to-face dance teaching job. While also starting a YouTube channel where you could start creating dance tutorials for how to learn some of your special move, where you also get a chance to spread your music you’ve created and write vlog posts on the latest dance shows – since you also feel closely related to the art of writing.

Now from the very sight of this challenge it’s very simple, 5 minutes a day, 25 minutes total investment in what that might have the possibility to forever course correct the path of your life. Let’s do this! And the reason for not doing it all in one sit-down is because I really think it’s good to linger on things like these, have the focus with you thought the week and think about it. Look at your days and see how much of these things you truly love that is incorporated in what you actually spend the majority of your time on. It’s just so important.

Now you may actually think about how this is interfering with your new year’s goal you’ve been working on to get right. And YES. that may be the case, but that’s great, then you’ve actually realised that you were about to invest a lot of time and energy in to something that really wasn’t’ the most important thing for you to do. Look, life is finite and we have to prioritize what we spend our time on. See it as a blessing that this happened now and not one year from now, or in worst case – never. Just make sure to grab what you’ve learned from that experience, move on and improve your life even more.

If you have any comments, ideas or thoughts on this, please leave a comment!

And if you feel like it, do commit to me “I’m doing this challenge” As it will radically improve the chances of you actually following through.

Best of Luck,

Alexander 🙂

 

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Working on Your 2017 Goals – Weekly Challenge #41

Happy New Year guys!

It’s a new year, and that means new challenges lies ahead of us! I’m super excited about this year and where it will take us and this channel!

Now for the last couple of weeks we have been working on getting clear with our goals for 2017 and coming up with a strategy for how to reach them. And if you haven’t, it’s not too late, sit down today and come up with some goals that truly takes you towards the person you want to be. It’s time to begin that journey if you haven’t already. It’s time to get excited about life again. It’s time to get you some sleeping issues, and not because you get to bed to late, but because you wake up way to early overly excited about the day that is about to embark upon you (don’t underestimate the power of sleeping enough, but if you get to this state, then you know you are on to something great!)! That time is now and you owe it to yourself to pursue your true dreams.

So to make this happen we need to take action RIGHT NOW, and that’s why the first challenge of this week is all about working on our 2017 goal, implementing the habits and actions that will take us there, one small step in the time. Because if you haven’t realised this by now, it’s not about the big numbers and big tasks that is going to be accomplished, it’s about shifting mind-set, establishing routines and to take daily incremental steps in the right direction. That’s what long-term change and sustainable goalsetting is reached.

So the Objectives of this week’s challenge is:

  • Each day take 1-3 actions on your goals, keep track in your planning system and journal about it
  • In the end of the week, make a weekly evaluation; reflect and plan ahead for the coming week!

(Do it together with me at Friday (Swedish time ECT+1hr) if you want company)

Now, I’m going to change things up a little bit this year. I’m not all clear on the outcome yet. But some things are going to change, that’s for sure. And it started this last Friday where we had our first – from now on – weekly accruing Livestream evaluation and planning session.  Now you may do this whenever you want to or suits you the best, but I relay urge to make it happen, and I’m just saying I’m having mine at every Friday. I’ll be starting to talk a little bit about the challenge of the week, then we shift focus and start to work on our individual evaluation and goal setting, to reflect and go through our goals and plan ahead for the coming week.

 

The Plan even further ahead will start to focus in on working on developing true self-confidence and self-esteem. I’ll will try to apply less is more, use more of already available good material, so I can focus on working on upping the strategy and quality of the channel. It any of you guys have any suggestions, I’d love to hear you out on them.

This is also a time to look back at the year that has been, it’s been an amazing year for me, the best in my life so far. And I’ve got much of that thanks to you guys, you may not think that 70+ subscribers are a lot in YouTube standards, but for me, that means something. That mean that I’ve managed to capture something, even if only for second, but enough to make you subscribe to this channel. And that creates a hunger for more, that gives me energy and fuels me as much as seeing myself grow. Now I’ve only begun this apprenticeship journey on my quest to help people and make them realize their true potential. And I’m going to do it in my way, but the details a far from clear yet. But I have faith, and I have purpose that I will find a format that works, so I ask you to have faith in me just as you should have faith in yourself. I Will find a way to educate, inspire and make people grow in an awesome way. Because this isn’t only about me, this is about you, discovering your path, and making this journey together. We find a way in working on our individual goals in a social context. That is what we do here.

– Let this year be the most amazing year so far!

So from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for what we have been through so far, and gladly share my excitement about the future that will come.

Best Regards,

/Alexander

Weekly Evaluation and Planning

Hey guys!

Hope you’ve managed to get some clarity in your goals for 2017 and how to reach them, as this week has been about, finalizing our goalsetting & planning.

This week we’ll implement the new habit of the weekly review, now that’s nothing new for this channel you might say, but in this particular shape it is! Because what I’m talking about concerns your personal development – your weekly evaluation! If you have been listening to my goal setting videos & workshops, you know that I’ve been talking about the importance of having a weekly evaluation to follow up on your goals – a pulse check and course correct if necessary!  But this weekly process doesn’t only concern your goals, it’s a time to reflect on the week that has been and re-ground yourself and get ready for the next week that will come – to schedule!

From now on Every Friday will be a live stream where I firstly go through the challenge of the week in brief, highlights and downers and what the big learnings that can be drawn. That’s the first part of the livestream, the second part is instead focused on each individual – that’s you among others –  effort to reflect on our goals and plan ahead for the week that is to come.

Now there are TONS of different schools on how to go about the weekly evaluation, what questions to ask and in what order to process it. I’ve researched and tried out a bunch of different ones, and In the end, I just think it’s very personal and the only way to find a system that works for you is to start with something, try it out, tweak it, get inspired and eventually you’ll land with something that is perfectly adapted for you. The main idea is simple, elevate yourself from the actions and look at the week and your goals from a bird view perspective. Ask yourself what progress you’ve done and what you haven’t done, and tweak if necessary.

Now to establish a good habit like this, we are using “the habit loop” to design it in a way that will make us crave the habit in the long run:

Weekly Evaluation HABIT:

Que: A time and a place scheduled every week.  (for me it’s going to be Fridays at 18.00 Swedish time, ECT+1h) some people prefer Sundays, but Fridays works best for me. So as soon as I get home from work I’ll be starting to prepare – this will be a holy time scheduled every week!

The Routine: The weekly evaluationGoing through 7 Key area goals, and other important things that may have accord and we need to reflect upon. This Routine will be without any snacks or distractions, the same Album ( TRON – Daft Punk ) and it’s going to be in a maximum of 2 hours. See down below for detailed game plan.

The Reward: Make an awesome dinner with EXACTLY what I want to enjoy to my favourite FUNNY TV-series or with a friend – anchoring the habit with great emotions. I will want to crave this evaluation

 

Based on a few of these I’ve come up with a structure that covers what I think is most important, now this may not be the way that suits you, but your welcome to follow it as a starting point, if your sceptical I’ve put together a playlist with some videos & links that has inspired me to create it the way I have.

 

So the outline for ME today will be:

 

7 Key areas – goal evaluation

  • Have you done what you planned to do this week?
    • If so, why not? Is Course correction necessary; how can you adjust?
    • How did it feel, are you enjoying the process, is it giving you what you hoped it would?
    • Remind yourself of what the Outcome, be specific as specific as possible and then WHY you’re pursuing this goal!
    • What are the next actions and things you’ll do for next week – schedule these!

 

General weekly evaluation:

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  • Go through you mind and EMPTY YOUR HEAD, get things out that you’ve carried around
  • What were your top 5 moments of the week
  • What 3-5 learnings have you experienced this week – growth comes from reflection and adaptation!
  • Plan you schedule for next week, PUT IT IN BLOCKS OF TIME FOR; socializing, workout, etc ( if you havn’t done it already as part of your goals)
  • Is it something in the upcoming week that has been scheduled earlier that isn’t important anymore? Can it be removed?
  • What could throw me of this week, look over the schedule and make time to be mentally prepared for it.
  • Are my priorities in order, or is there something I need to adjust?
  • Empty your planning system from old notes and clutter that’s not relevant, if you want to keep them, store them in a way that doesn’t clutter your daily activites.
  • Celebrate – you just made it through your first weekly evaluation!

 

Links to other guides:

Weekly Planning Workbook

How to Plan Your Week | The Art of Manliness https://youtu.be/KNxLNY6yxRI

David Allens Getting Things Done (GTD) Weekly template

How I Plan My Day Using Evernote (Tony Robbins RPM Method)

 

Plan an EXTRAORDINARY 2017! Here’s how

A Weekly Habit That Will Help You Stay Motivated All Semester

Planning Your 2017 Goals – Weekly Challenge #40

Hey guys!

Week 3 of 3 in this 2017 goal setting challenge :
Finalizing our 2017 goals & Strategy

It’s Christmas day and many of us are spending a lot of time with family and friends – it’s busy time, but hopefully in a nice way! But it is also an important week that we have ahead of us, as it’s the last days leading up to this great breaking point THE NEW YEAR! The chance to leave the old behind and start fresh – igniting the journey towards our new goals!

Now, for the last two weeks’ we have – ideally – come up with our 2017 goals and with that an action plan for how to reach those goals. But, I know that going through this process takes can be hard and often takes more time than we think. And the importance of preparing and creating a good strategy how to go about our goals and making them last more than a couple of week’s requires that we do this properly – it will dramatically increase our chances of reaching those goals.

That’s why we are giving ourselves one extra week of getting clarity with our goals and finalizing our plans for how to reach them. That means that there still is time – hurray!

So basically nothing new this week and by the end of the week you’ll (IF YOU HAVN’T ALREADY, then great job) have seven goals in in the seven life key areas:

• Spiritual (The area which is hardest to grasp if you haven’t done any active work on previously, but the area that makes the most difference. DON’T neglect! Breathing, meditation, stress-management, finding your true self or any religious believes you may have. Find your path, but start actively looking for it)
• Health (improve your fitness level, eat healthier and better, sleep more?)
• Social: Romance, Family & friends (Want to get a partner, hang our more with your friends and family?)
• Personal development (developing skills, reading books, learning a language or some other project that you just know you have to go after – maybe starting a YouTube channel!)
• Business/career (Do you have a clear direction of where you want to go?)
• Finances (Planning on making a bunch of money? Long-term investment plan?)
• Have Fun (What fun things do you want to do this year?)

( The video for that you’ll find here: http://alexandernilsson.nu/how-to-cre… )

And also a written plan, in some kind of planning system like OneNote or Evernote, for how you are going to reach theses goals. Writing down your plan is a must, you need a place where you can actively work with and frequently update and log your progress on your goals:

• Define the conditions of the goal
• Create an action plan; outline all the relevant alternatives for how you could reach the wanted outcome. Break it down to multiple progressive goals with clear measure points/milestones.
• Among all these alternatives, decide upon the one strategy that (and fits your personal preferences best) will take you towards that goal in the most efficient way.
• Set milestone goals; Every week, 30 days, 90 days, etc.
• Define the first three actions & schedule when you’re going to do them
• Schedule a review & planning session during the weekend and make it holy
• Take the first step on you plan!

(The video for that you’ll find here: http://alexandernilsson.nu/2017-goal-… ) So, good luck and make sure to ask if there are any questions!

/Alexander

Posting schedule:
SUNDAYS: New Weekly Personal Development Challenge
WEEK DAYS: Depending on the challenge, but at least one Video/Vlog at the Wednesdays
FRIDAY: Evaluation of Week Challenge

Join us, raise your standards, and start the journey to become the person you’ve always wanted to be,

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/alexande…

YOU FIND ME AT:
Mail: alexander.s.nilsson@gmail.com
Homepage: www.alexandernilsson.nu
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alenils/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alenils
Snapchat: alenils

/With Love, Alexander

How To Create An Action Plan For Your 2017 Goals – WC#39

 

How to reach your 2017 New Year’s Goals

This is a practical step-by-step guide for how create a plan to reach your goals.

So it’s time for part two of this three-week series in this goal setting process of 2017. Last week we made sure to come up with the goals we want to peruse this year. So, if you haven’t seen that video, make sure to do that first (https://youtu.be/U9nYoDhizuQ). Or if you feel eager to get started, make sure you have one goal and apply the process I present. Because this videos are going to be all about HOW TO SET UP A PLAN FOR REACHING YOUR GOALS. Spoiler, it’s not a long to-do-list, because that’s not what’s going make you reach that goal.  Next week will be all about anchoring our plans, taking first actions and having our first weekly goal evaluation process.

To give you a brief idea how that process actually looks like, here’s condensed plan:

  • Review all the goals
  • Prioritize them in order of importance

Starting with the most important one

  • Define the conditions of the goal
  • Create an action plan; outline all the relevant alternatives for how you could reach the wanted outcome. Break it down to multiple progressive goals with clear measure points/milestones.
  • Among all these alternatives, decide upon the one strategy that (and fits your personal preferences best) will take you towards that goal in the most efficient way.
  • Set milestone goals; Every week, 30 days, 90 days, etc.
  • Define the first three actions & schedule when you’re going to do them
  • Schedule a review & planning session during the weekend and make it holy
  • Take the first step on you plan!

“…never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.” – Tony Robbins

So here we are, we have our 8 defined goals that we feel excited about. Because if you don’t, don’t even bother. So that’s why I really want you to ask yourself one last time before you get started, why did you really chose these goals? Be honest. Be truthful. Remember this is all for you, no one else but yourself is going to make this happen. Can you deeply relate to these goals, to you truly believe them. Can you visualise yourself in one year standing there having achieved them. Are they daring enough? If this would be your last year you had the freedom to set your own goals, would they still be the same? Maybe this is the year when you actually make the leap to follow your true dreams. True motivation and drive from within – clarity with your why – is absolutely key.

Setting goals is the easy part, but to actually follow through and start to move in a direction towards them, that’s when it could get really tricky. But it doesn’t have to be! First, you need to have a vision of what direction you want to go, the clearer the better, but that’s not a must. The big picture goals may be vaguer naturally, because you haven’t figured everything out yet. Faith can take you long, but it’s not enough. That’s why we’ll use progressive goals to incrementally take us towards the direction we want to go. Weekly, monthly, every 90 days; measuring points – milestones – to check our progress. One big goal one year away without checking the pulse until that date, that’s dumb goal setting.

And that is also why it’s so important to have a second look at the goals you’ve determined to follow. Because before you get started, I want you to review your goals and prioritize & rank which are the ones that is most important to you. At least to a quick overview ranking in your head. And then start this goal planning process with the goal that top that list. Perhaps “starting to dance” is a funnier and easier goal to focus on, compared to “Boost social confidence and be able to talk to anyone anywhere”.

8 goals are a lot of goals to give weekly attention to, and you’ll have to divide your time and efforts among them. Perhaps the easiest goal isn’t the goal that will take you closer to who you really would like to become. I’m not saying you can’t have multiple goals; I’m just saying be aware of how you divide your available time – give the most attention to what needs it most. A prioritization which only is possible if you take the time to sit down and think about your life areas and rank your goals thereafter.

What we need to remember is that the goal itself isn’t what will matter, to be able to say that you’ve read 52 books, to walk up on that scale and get a confirmation that you’ve dropped to X amount of kilos, to have earned X amount of dollars – that’ just one euphoric moment that will pass as quickly as a fart in the wind. What will matter is the person you become in the process by perusing these goals, how it is going to shape you and all the possibilities you’ll have when you reach that point. That’s what matters. That’s the real outcome. Logically, what then is equally important is how you choose to peruse that goal.

Let’s get started!

So we now have peace in mind and a bunch of goals, that means it’s time to strategies in how to make that happen. Firstly, you have to realise that there are tons of ways for you to reach your goals, and this is key. You can drop x amount of kilos by restricting your diet and basically eat nothing, you can also keep eating just the way you have been but just add enough exercise to lose that weight. There are many ways of reaching a goal – but the path we choose will determine how we feel about doing it.

So how do we now what way to choose? Well this is trickier, but if we start with defining some sub conditions we need to fulfil, it will thin out the selection some. If we say we have to “drop x amount of kilos and enjoy the process of doing so”, the focus becomes different in contrast to “I’m going to drop X kilos”. If we choose to create a positive association to what we want to accomplish, it will greatly increase our chances of succeeding. Maybe it will exclude jogging as an alternative since you find that to be the most boring activity in the world, a direct violation of your sub condition. Luckily there are other ways to move around! We want to outline a plan that makes us enjoy the process – it may sound foolish and banal, but it’s a detail many oversee or even consider to be an option.

There’s still tons of way for us to reach our goals, so now your task is to write down all the ways you know for how you could go about reaching that goal. And this phase may actually be to plan to plan – that is planning to research for how to lose weight. If you don’t write them all out; WHAT WAYS ARE THERE FOR YOU TO REACH THAT OUTCOME? And try to open your mind, because you’ve properly already locked yourself in one way – but ask yourself first if it really is the best way to go about it? Remember to think in terms of your preferences and context, you may not be work the same way as the person you got the advice from.

But so let’s say you have a bunch of different alternatives, go through them, think about them and decide on one way to take – the path you believe at this current state is the path that suits your context the best. Take in consideration the time you have available, what resources you have, support from others, and how it should be prioritized in relations to your other goals. Remember your amount of time will always be the same, what really matters is how you chose to spend it. SO, spit it all out, and then choose the direction you want to in.

REFLECTION: I first put up a goal of doing meditation every day for a year, but then I realised that what I’m really are after is to be more at peace with my inner self, to able to distance myself in any situation and keep calm. To be able to reach a relaxed state even If had no possession of anything. I know mediation is one way of reaching that state, but I’m sure there are tons of other ways. And to break it down further; there are thousands of different ways of meditating. So what I’ve done is that I’ve said that I have to do some kind of meditation for at least 10 minutes every day for 30 days.

Creating habits that takes us towards our goals and connect emotion to the goal; asking myself at the end of every meditation session – what can I be so grateful for that it almost brings me to tears; 50 minutes after every meditation – how do I feel right know? This may seem fluffy, but it actually shapes a habit with an emotional reward that gets deeply rooted within us if we do it continuously. If you don’t get some kind of affirmation of result of what you’re doing, if you’re not anchoring an emotion – a reward – you’ll quit the habit, unless the reward is very obvious and has that clear connection. So think about what habits you can shape that aligns with your goal, maybe 10 minutes of meditation each morning on my morning commute, or it could be to always take a 30-minute window every evening at six o clock to practice the guitar. Learn about how do design habits that stick (watch here, or read the power of habit), have a que, could be the alarm going of every evening, do the routine (play the guitar) and then have a reward, (the reward can be generated by the routine itself; the feeling of nailing a song, but it it’s a struggle in the begging, create an external reward; maybe one-piece sweet fruit, you get to have dinner or some other emotional release.

Because we need to brake our goals down, “never set one single goal” ( -Brendon burchard). Have progressive goals, we can’t wait one year with actually doing some kind of pulse checking; we need clear milestones and part goals. Not only to keep sight of what we’re going after, but to make it able to course correct if we’re doing something that isn’t’ working. Maybe the training exercise program you’ve chosen doesn’t fit your working ours, maybe the morning meditation is just stressing and would suit you better after lunch since you’ve been at it for quite some time and feel the need for a moment of unplugging from the world. So just to get started, at least write down a 30-day goal, and for this week: creating a plan and taking one action.

Because before you get started you need to realise that having goals like these requires continues follow up. And that won’t happen unless you take the time – PLAN – to have a sit down and do a review of the week that has been, and plan for the week that will come. So sometime through the week, preferably Sunday, you make sure to schedule in a review session in your calendar and make this holy. I’m telling you, all your plans will start to fade away. You may be able to have one or two simple goals clearly in your head.. but that’s it. Also this weekly process will act as a reminder for you, some week’s you may actually haven’t moved ahead on some goals, we all have those week’s! but that why it’s’ so important to constantly review our goals and remind ourselves of them – super important – read through, don’t miss your WHY: remind yourself of why your pursing the goal.

I know this is a rather complex matter at first sight, and I don’t claim to be any expert myself, I’m but a student to the great teachers like Tony Robins and Brendon Burchard, and it’s there work I have presented here.  however, I have toons of experience of applying this, and I’ve learned by so many mistakes. And I’d love to discuss the matter with you. So the idea is that throughout the week you will create a plan for each and all of your goals in the 8 key areas and take one action on one of them.

SO now you’ve got all you need to get ready to create an amazing plan for how to reach your goal!

Here’s the sum up:

  • Before getting started on the plan, get clear with your current situation; will you have time to peruse your goals – how can you make time? Are your goals more important?

The plan:

  • Taking one last look at why your pursuing the chosen goals
  • Ranking your goals in the order how they should be prioritized

Working on one goal at the time, in order of importance:

  1. Define the conditions of your goals “lose 20 pounds” vs. “Lose 20 kilo and enjoy the process”.
  2. Create an action plan with all the ways – adjusted for your conditions and capabilities – for how you could reach that goal. Write a list of all alternatives that are relevant to you! Think in terms of multiple progressive goals to use as milestones/measuring points – one goal in one year is too distance to get excited about! There are 1000 of different ways to implement a meditation practice – or the bigger goal; to reach mindfulness.
  3. Pick one strategy to start with and break it down a few first actions that you could start with right now; “google training centres close by me” “go buy a pair of jogging shoes”. Set clear measuring points / milestone so you will know if you’re progressing or not. Every week, 30 days, 90 days.
  4. Design/find a suitable habit that relates to the goal and decide exactly when you are going to incorporate regularly.
  5. Write down your three next actions in detail and plan in your calendar when you’ll do this. Always make sure to have a next action defined, never leave it open-ended.
  6. Have a weekly evaluation & planning session (Preferably Sunday)
    1. Check how you’re doing on the measuring points you’ve put up. If not, fine tuning and adjusting to do so. But remember, implementing new habits takes at least 30 days and some results doesn’t show immediately, so have patience and don’t give up too quickly! Don’t draw the conclusion that the goal is wrong just because you’ve chosen the wrong strategy or lacked the effort to make it happened!
    2. Plan the week! If it’s not in your calendar, it’s not going to happened. Put reminders that will go of, plan. If you don’t mark time out for you to progress on your goal, everyday life and other things will happen.
  7. TAKE ACTION – do one small action that will get you started on moving towards your goal!

SO THAT’S THE PLAN! The objective of the week is to create this plan for all of your eight goals. Now I know that’s a lot to ask of you, and kind of goes against my mantra of keeping the challenges quick and easy, but this these goal setting workshops are the expectations. It’s just the foundation of the so much and will determine how we chose to play the year that is to come.

Beside creating the plan, you will also take one first little action on each goal, it may be super small, but just something to get you started!

In order to help you as much as I can, I am going to do a longer livestream on Tuesday, we’re I’ll be working on my own goals, so I thought we’d just sit together in silence and work on creating these plans and if any questions come up, we can try to straighten them up right away.

Also, Make sure you by now have it in a planning program of your choice, I recommend OneNote 2016 (included in the office package, but OneNote APP o preinstalled on Windows 10) also Evernote should do the job ( https://evernote.com/intl/sv/).

Hope you feel excited, and if you have any questions, hit me up!

It’s going to be a legendary week!

/Alexander

2017 Goal Setting: Week 1 of 3 – WC#38

2017 Goal Planning: Week 1 of 3

The new year is right around the corner, and for many of us that means setting new goals. It’s a perfect opportunity to go into a new phase; you feel excited and eager to change. However, most of the times that’s all it turns out to be, empty words on a piece of paper, if even that. Success rate: 5%. Because it’s hard, really really hard, to follow through. At least if you don’t have a strategy for how to make it happen. Still, it’s important seize this rare opportunity; the feeling of a fresh start, momentum and a strong driving force. Only this process of sitting down and write down a bunch of new goals is hard enough, but to actually make them happen is a whole different story..  It’s so easy get overwhelmed by all the things you want to do, no matter how excited determined you felt at the time. That’s why we are going to take our time with this one, doing it properly, which means that the coming three week’s will be all about getting clear with our goals and laying out a plan for how to reach them.

The basis for this goalsetting is a combination of Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, and some other Gurus that now their stuff. The big difference being is that they do it all in one sitting, and that’s one way of doing it. But I know we all are busy folks, especially in these times, and seldom take the time to do this, so that’s why I’ve spread it over three weeks so we can take time to digest and build up some real motivation. The outline is as follows:

Week 1: The first week will be about narrowing down one main goal in seven different key areas, and also deciding the order of priority of these. We’ll also be getting clarity for why these goals will be pursued –  defining our purposes.

Week 2: The second week, we’ll take time to develop a plan for HOW to go about making this happen, we’ll also start the habit of writing down these seven goals each morning to remind ourselves.

Week 3: The last week, we are only going to write down the goals each morning, but also start to make one small thing happen to take us towards those goals, so we get started with each of them!  And then, when the new year comes, we’ll be as ready as we’ll ever be to put in some real effort to reach our goals!

Setting Goals is a powerful thing, so I beg you, don’t underestimate the power of this challenge. Remember that the time you put into planning and doing building the base, is going to determine both the direction and the outcome of your future to an incredible extend. Are you really going to be reactive and let what lands in front of you dictate your actions yet another year? Why let randomness control the direction of your life, when you have the capability of taking control and going where you want to go.

HOW:

So the idea of this week is to create a goal list in seven different areas and find the one important thing in each area to focus on. If we don’t make this prioritization, we’ll just get overwhelmed and nothing will happen! Then later on, when we have gotten started and the routine of actively working on our goals, we can extend what goals we’re going after.

The Seven key areas are:

MONDAY:

  • Spiritual (The area which is hardest to grasp if you haven’t done any active work on previously, but the area that makes the most difference. DON’T neglect! Breathing, meditation, stress-management, finding your true self. Find your path, but start actively looking for it)
  • Health (improve your fitness level, eat healthier and better, sleep more?)

TUESDAY:

  • Social: Romance, Family & friends (Want to get a partner, hang our more with your friends and family?)

WEDNESDAY:

  • Personal development (developing skills, reading books, learning a language or some other project that you just know you have to go after – maybe starting a YouTube channel!)

THURSDAY:

  • Business/career (Do you have a clear direction of where you want to go?)
  • Finances (Planning on making a bunch of money? Long-term investment plan?)

FRIDAY:

  • Have Fun (What fun things do you want to do this year?)

 

Action: So take 5-15 minutes, or just keep taking notes and think about it throughout the day, you’ll probably come up with tons of things, write it all down! But at the end of the day, look through what you’ve written down, and highlight the five most important goals, and then chose the one you want to focus on. Finally, perhaps the most important part, write your reasons for WHY you should peruse this goal. The Purpose of investing your time and energy into this. Ideally you write as much as you can, reasons for why you CAN make it happen, reasons for why you MUST make it happen, and all the GREAT things that will happen if you actually make it happen! It will pay of to not get lazy here.

Setting goals is actually super fun! So let your inner child come out and play, and don’t think about HOW you’ll be able to make it happen, that’s for later. Dreaming is about having faith and trusting in yourself that if you put your mind to it, anything can happen. There are actually two viewpoints to this, some think you should keep your goals realistic, and some say go crazy. From my own experience, I’m with the later. You want to go big, you better dream big. But the key is to divide it into different time horizons – the realistic (S.M.A.R.T) goals are for the more specified HOW planning, the incremental steps to take us towards our dreams, while the big picture is to fill us with deeply rooted motivation and direction. Eating healthy, just because “it’s good for you”, can never compete with the driving force of “turning 100 years old while being in a great physical and mental condition”! Again, that’s why it’s super important to very clearly define to yourself WHY this is so important to you, because if it lacks clarity and purpose, it won’t happen.

So, all this means that in the end of the week, you’ll have seven lists with a bunch of goals, but with one main goal for each area with a clear WHY statement.

You’ll need a place to document and were you later can work with you goals, a place that you store all your things in. Personally I recommend “OneNote 2016”, and honestly don’t know how I would go about living my life without it. There’s also another version only called “OneNote” which is simpler and can be found in Windows store, or you can go with Evernote which is another free, as the others, alternative. Either way, you are going to need a place to store and document all your projects and lists. I see no way around it. It’s also a great place for journaling and logging any kinds of stuff. However, for the initial process of just getting your goals out of your head, a piece of paper and a pen will do the job!

That’s all we’ll do this week, it’s busy times now in Christmas seasons, but I want you to really try to understand the tremendous pay off you’ll get if you invest a few minutes each day to do this. Going through this process in step by step will make us really ground ourselves in the goals that will be the foundation for the entire year – perhaps life – that is to come. If you still find it hard to find time to do this, you can join me, as I’ll be doing an approximately 15-minute live stream each day when I’ll be going through this process, which of course you can look at in replay mood and use only as a timer if that suits you!

And, as I said in the beginning of this video, this will be a three-week series to really make our 2017 goals the real deal and not just some faded dreams to feel bad about a couple of months later. Let’s do this!

/Alexander

You’ll Find OneNote 2016 here:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-s-the-difference-between-OneNote-and-OneNote-2016-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f

 

Getting Rid of Limiting Beliefs – Weekly Challenge #37

Getting Rid of Limiting Beliefs – Weekly Challenge #37

New week, New challenge – and this week we are all about changing our mind-set and the handicapping story we are telling ourselves. The challenge is divided in two parts, where the first two days is about taking notice of our thoughts, what we tell ourselves and how it’s affecting us and the actions we take. Having an active radar turned on to pick up on the limiting things we say. The second part of the week is focused on changing these believes, but I’ll be posting a new video for that on Wednesday.

The objectives: Start with observing all the liming believes you have, turn on the radar for negative self-talk and take note of how much it affects your way of living, choices and opportunities. That’s all I want you to do for the first two days before we actually start changing it. Building up a deep understanding of how it affects us will make for a greater why to motivate us to do something about it. Then on Wednesday I will post the next video for how we will deal with this.

 

How much would you pay for a pill that would make all those things you tell yourself you can’t do possible; whether it’s dancing, controlling your urges, being comfortable in a social high stake environment – 1 000 $? 10 000 $ ? How about a couple of hours of your week to condition your mind for some long-term change? Just like when Roger Banister ran 1 mile (~1,6km) under 4 minutes, something that up until that day was said to be humanly impossible, all of the suddenly changed the mind-set of thousands of people, because someone proved them wrong. Because after that historic happening loads of people has done what was said to be undoable. However, Roger never thought it was impossible, he believed, he visualised, he was determined & he did it. He embraced a growth mind-set and refused to put up any limiting believes.

 

The concept of limiting beliefs is nothing new for most of us, yet we keep letting it affect our life to the tremendous extent it has. I got reminded of this last week when I was reading up on memorization techniques, and Jim Kwik, a memorizing guru, said “our brain keeps eavesdropping on you, if you tell it you can’t remember names, you won’t be able to”. In other words, what you tell yourself becomes a self-fulfilling prophetia. I got even more into this topic when I a couple of days ago started reading Kelly McGonigal’s book the upside of stress ( http://kellymcgonigal.com/books/), where she in the first chapters of the book talks about the potential of changing mind-sets in the areas that have potential to fundamentally change our lives. Her research shows how most people let the negative idea of stress make it way worse than it has to be, because when instead a positive mind-set of stress is embraced there is a whole lot of upside to it! And this change in mind-set doesn’t always need huge interventions and actions, it could actually happen by just watching a GOOD informative video on the positive effect that stress can have – sometimes insights that gives us a whole new perspective have the potential to snowball into tremendous change in the lives we live and the actions we take.

 

In her book, she highlights this phenomenon by referencing to a bunch of studies on aging, and how people that has a positive association to the aging process in terms of getting wiser and becoming happier, in different studies has shown to have a profound effect, for instance one study showed that these people live 8 years longer, another showed that there was an 80% chance of decreased risk of heart attack, another that the recovery after an accident was significantly better, etc. Now, again, it’s not magic dust that makes this happen, but it has to do with how we change the filter with how we look at life which in turns translates to the actions we take and how we live our lives.

 

If you have a mind-set of “I can’t dance” when someone asks you if you want to come dance with them, you’re properly going to say no. But if you with the same coordination and mind got that exact question, but you just somehow had “forgotten” about that mind-set of yours, the likelihood of you joining that activity would be much greater, and in turn you would practice dancing which could lead to you actually developing that skill and getting better and better at it. You see, when we buy into a mind-set it does not only affect your state; “…It’s the mind-set effect, alters your present experience, but it also influences your future behaviour”. It’s the snowball effect, when you believe that growing older is going to benefit you, it will shape the actions you take daily and how your take care of yourself. When we buy in to a mind-set that has the ability to change the course of our lives, the snowball effect can be tremendous.

 

  • Enough with the why; how are we going to do this challenge; what’s the objectives?

 

The first part of this challenge is about scanning our thoughts and realizing where we have these limiting believes. This is a very important process to go through, so we can grasp the full extent of how much this affect us. It will build up that deep rooted cause for change, making it a must, motivating us to the core. So really turn on that radar and observe how your thoughts are going, listen to yourself talk when you interact with people, often it’s something we share openly, as a part of us, who we are and what we identify ourselves with. “Oh I’m so bad with math, oh I can’t dance.”

 

  • OF COURSE YOU CAN’t WHEN YOU KEEP TELLING YORSELF AND OTHERS THAT THAT IS WHO YOU ARE! It’s you and no one else that determine what you can and can’t do!

 

The second part of this challenge is to actually do something about it, but you can start right now by firstly stop telling yourself and others out loud that you are permanently limited somehow. Just ad YET! I can’t dance, YET now that’s the easy part, controlling our impulsive thoughts can be trickier, but when we start to become aware, it’s absolutely possible. I won’t go more into details for how we will try to make this change more permanent, that’ll come on Wednesday. But in brief, it’s a simple process of adopting a growth mind-set and abandoning our limiting believes for good. But don’t neglect the power of this first step and scanning your thoughts. However, if you can’t contain yourself, here’s how you adopt a growth mind-set:

 

“..recognize that the growth mind-set is not only beneficial but it is also supported by science. Neuroscience shows that the brain changes and becomes more capable when we work hard to improve ourselves. Second, learn and teach others about how to develop our abilities. Learn about deliberate practice and what makes for effective effort. When we understand how to develop our abilities, we strengthen our conviction that we are in charge of them. And third, listen for your fixed mind-set voice, and when you hear it, talk back with a growth mind-set voice. If you hear, “I can’t do it,” add, “Yet.” ( source: https://youtu.be/pN34FNbOKXc )

 

I wish you the best of luck, commit to me and the comments if you like to, and make sure to tune in on Wednesday for the next video! Best of luck guys, see you on the other side.

 

/Alexander

 

Playlist I put together on the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tqq66zwa7g&list=PLxw2jMXwRfsliFby2voOcma8QFVGKSQhe

Week Challenge: Remembering People’s Names – WC#36

Week Challenge: Remembering people’s names – wc#36

“A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language” that’s from Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. And you know it is true, if you use this in a balanced and efficient way, it is one of those details that will make people know that you care.

If you’ve been following me lately you now I’ve been reading dale Carnegies classic masterpiece How to win friend and influence people. Honestly, I don’t know how many thought leaders and experts have referenced their learning to this book. In part two of this book, called “Six ways to make people like you”  Carnegies outlines 6 principles for how to make people like you;

  1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
  2. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
  3. Be a good listener. …
  4. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
  5. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Now I’m properly going to be doing a lot from this book, but remembering peoples name is a fun practice and easy to measure, but above all; it’s a pain point for us. Because you’ve all been there way too many times, that awkwardness that occurs when you need to remember the name of the person you just said hello to a few minutes ago, yet you now have no idea. And on the other side of the spectra, when it’s all good, you create a memorable impression, making people realise that you are the kind of person that cares, takes notice and put in the effort to remember their name. You are the kind of person that they will remember.

Think about it, isn’t it worth to invest a few hours for a week to establish a habit that will help relive you from stress and anxiety and make all your social interactions more enjoyable? For me that’s a no brainer, and that’s why this week’s challenge is going be all about remembering people’s names, and by the end of the week should have learned at least ten person’s new names – but most important; founded a lifelong habit of never again forgetting a person’s name again.

On a bigger scale, social skills are just overwhelmingly great for us. I think people that like to be lonely (I am one of them) partly love that because it’s convenient it’s certainty, no risk, you know what you get; that’s a state we like to be at. But speaking from my own experience, I also know that when I push myself to grow these experiences, when I challenge myself to go out and socialise, and do so in what define as successful manner – I love it, deeply.

The last six months I’ve been notoriously writing down my five top moments of the day every evening, and what I’ve come to realize is that 80% of these moments I can attribute to a social interaction. And that comes from a person that always have claimed that I like being alone, am an introvert person, and that being around people sucks all energy out of me.  And that is still true, but not to the same extend. When we develop our social skills, when we learn that it is a skill, a method we can learn and make autonomous, it becomes more fun, it becomes more daunting. It’s like riding a bike, of course it’s a huge effort when we haven’t learned how to do it yet, but soon it becomes more and more effortless. Unless we decide to constantly push ourselves, because we also learn that if we want new kicks and challenges, we need to develop our skills, try out some mountain trails, intervals, meeting new people in new context. That’s the beauty of it, we decide how far we want to take it. It’s all up to you, but remember, relationships and feeling connection to people – love – is properly the strongest and most powerful feeling we can attain in live. If you’re willing to work for it, the pay of is like nothing you’d ever could imagine.

How are we going to do this?

Now there’s a number of different techniques for how to remember people’s names, and I’ve actually done videos on this previously which explained the model we are going to use created by Ron White. It’s a very straight forward five step process:

“1. Focus – your brain. When walking towards the person ask yourself, ‘What is their name?’ This will focus your brain

  1. File – Select an outstanding feature on their face (big eyes, beard, scar, etc)
  2. Picture – Create a picture for their name (Brian = brain, Lisa = Mona Lisa, etc). Get my pictures for names at link above. This is a big step in learning how to remember names
  3. Glue – Imagine the picture for their name on the outstanding feature of their face with action and emotion
  4. Review – review, review. Ask yourself, ‘Who did I meet today?’”

However, for this video I did some more research and found another memory expert named Jim Kwik which had his own system, although very similar, but with some good tweaks too it which I’d like to add:

  1. Start with repeating the name instantly when you say hello, “hello Mike, nice to meet you”
  2. During the conversation, try to say the person’s name 3-4 times, depending on the length of the conversation. Beware, don’t overdo it!
  3. End the conversation with saying the person’s name one last time, “it was nice meeting you Mike”

Now not everybody gets the opportunity to meet ten new people throughout a week, or most of us properly do, but we just don’t care enough to ask what the name of these persons are. I’m talking about the everyday people you meet during you commute, when your shopping, or talking to the seven eleven cashier that hands you your coffee (green tea). Now, you have the opportunity to make this challenge as hard or as easy as you want to, because most of these people have name tags easily readable to you – that’s one way! Or you can just practice approaching new people in a public environment and take this opportunity to practice some talking skills as well. That’s what I’m going to do!  You decide on what level you want to do this.

The objectives:

So the objectives are to talk to peoples who’s name you don’t know, and apply some memory technique of your choosing, so you by the end of the week are able to recall all of them effortlessly! But most important, this is about establishing a long lasting system so you’ll never again forget a persons name!

I strongly believe in the spill over effect, because in the grand scheme of all social skills, remembering people’s names is not in the top of that list, but it’s a quite fun challenge to play around with, and if we get started with something we think is fun, it will make the transfer to adjacent skills much more likely. It’s like when we start doing physical training, it spills over to living a healthier lifestyle overall; eating sleeping etc.

I like these challenges that are really direct and easy to realise if we’ve done them or not. I hope you are in the mood for it as well. If you want to make sure you are going to follow through, commit to me in the comments and let me know you’re going to do the challenge – social accountability increases the likelihood of following through a ton!

Thank you for reading, much love

/Alexander

Links to material I’ve based this on:

Ron Whites video who I learnt it from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8weFiPGFObk

Jim Kwik which has a similar model which I also took inspiration from:

http://fatburningman.com/jim-kwik-10-simple-tricks-to-boost-brain-power-upgrade-your-memory/#