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Hey guys! How are your EMOTIONS doing this beautiful day?

It’s time for yet another challenge in the line of INCREASING OUR Self-awareness – the fourth week with this theme – and this time daily awareness is the focus! With the help of a structured action plan throughout the day, we’ll try to improve our self-observation ability.

But Alex, Isn’t time to stop this madness – mindfulness, meditation, new age-hippie b.s to stop?

Well, no. At least not quite yet, because we have one week left with this intensified aimed focus, at least under the current title. But more on that later in the week.

WHY?

First of – let us remind ourselves why we are pursuing an increased self-awareness. I’ve been doing this channel for almost a year, and it’s quite frankly been a bit too random “oh what am I in the mood for this week?”. But this year I decided to take on this joint personal development challenge on a more serious note, so I asked myself the question; “where does one begin when wanting to become the best version of oneself?” Well the answer was obvious; “within”. We have to start with building a solid foundation for ourselves, getting clarity in who we are right now – accepting our current state – and then decide who we want to become -> direction and motivation. And so logically, self-awareness is the first necessary step on this lifelong personal development journey.

 “conscious knowledge of one’s own character and feelings.” –  self-awareness

My story

You See, I’ve always been the person in the opposite spectre of mindful, always so devoted to keep my self-occupied with stuff, always being productive or entertained. The thought of being alone in my own head; what a waste, pain, torture, kill me now. And I’m still battling this; wanting to maximize my time every minute I’m awake. So when we start to talk about awareness and mindfulness, it doesn’t come easy for me. And not for you either I can imagine? But we can’t live our lives on 100% capacity all the time, it’s not “lean” thinking, as any Toyota strategist would have noted. It will cause for errors, ques and bottlenecks; reactive thinking that will do more harm than good. And that’s what I’ve come to realise, and that’s why this is a necessary step in our personal development journey, to invest time and energy within. For real. A step I avoided for years before starting…

Emotions vs. Feelings

“Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind.”

But before I get into the details of this week’s challenge, I want to clarify the connection between the self-awareness and awareness and why they are so closely intertwined. Why you can’t reach full self-awareness if you don’t increase your ability to be aware in your everyday life.

We first need to understand, and I can’t believe I haven’t explained this earlier, the difference between feelings and emotions, which will simplify the terminology when talking about awareness and how to go about it. For this I’m simply going to borrow Debbie Hamptons (2015) own words and let her describe it (Yes, I’m hungry) :

Emotions:

“Emotions are lower level responses occurring in the subcortical regions of the brain, the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortices, creating  biochemical reactions in your body altering your physical state. They originally helped our species survive by producing quick reactions to threat, reward, and everything in between in their environments. Emotional reactions are coded in our genes and while they do vary slightly individually and depending on circumstances, are generally universally similar across all humans and even other species. For example, you smile and your dog wags its tail.

The amygdala play a role in emotional arousal and regulate the release of neurotransmitters essential for memory consolidation which is why emotional memories can be so much stronger and longer-lasting. Emotions proceed feelings, are physical, and instinctual. Because they are physical, they can be objectively measured by blood flow, brain activity, facial micro-expressions, and body language.”

Feelings:

Feelings originate in the neocortical regions of the brain, are mental associations and reactions to emotions, and are subjective being influenced by personal experience, beliefs, and memories. A feeling is the mental portrayal of what is going on in your body when you have an emotion and is the byproduct of your brain perceiving and assigning meaning to the emotion.  Feelings are the next thing that happens after having an emotion, involve cognitive input, usually subconscious, and cannot be measured precisely.”

I also found a nice picture that describes the different emotions we can have:

By Machine Elf 1735 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

So, again, how does awareness and self-awareness relate to one and other?

Well, if we first look at the first week, when we were supposed to outline our strengths and weaknesses; the things that makes us feel alive and easily get us into a state of flow, and the later the opposite. You could have quantifiable good results in an area you don’t enjoy – then that’s not necessarily something you need or should pursue. But most likely, you’re good at that one thing because it entails an ability of yours that you might use in a more enjoyable way in a different context. It’s about honing in on what your naturally good at, because logic reason and studies find that we will live a better and happier life then!

We are aware of most of the things we enjoy doing, we have made the connection between a specific type of activity and the feelings and emotions it has created within us. We maybe haven’t thought about it all the times, but if you would have looked for the signs, they would have been there. This is a what you could blame a lower state of awareness for, because if you had paused your life to reach a higher state of awareness, those emotions could have been interpret and verbalised in your mind to more accurate thoughts and feelings. However, when it’s very strong emotions, they translate to strong feelings that are hard to miss. This is also why we in the first week asked for other people’s options about our strengths and weaknesses – we sometimes go blind to the things that should be so obvious to us.

But so by becoming better at being present and aware, we become better at listening to our natural response – unfiltered emotions which are not manipulated by our mind; our biases and lies we keep telling ourselves to protect our self-image. To interpret our true response in different situations and contexts gives us guidance and direction for what serves us and what does not. If we become self-aware of what activates and doings that truly serves us, makes us feel alive, then we then have the clarity to make change.  Our true voice can once again be heard – as it was when we were new-borns.

However, awareness itself is only half the battle, you then have to translate this to action. But it’s not until you have reach that state of self-awareness, that action will follow. When you have a clear mirror image – clearer – of who you are, you can start that change process of becoming the person you truly want to be. Filling in that delta between who you are, and who you want to be.

So am I suggesting you shouldn’t be happy with who you are? I’m happy with who I am, but I also now I have the potential to grow so much more, to live an even greater life – and that’s the journey I will enjoy taking, because it means I over time incrementally will grow every day, and so the journey becomes part of the result; if you constantly live a life where the end goal is the only way to be happy; you’ll never get what you truly seek.

Back to the topic, so we all do this through life, translate our emotions to feelings and thoughts, and have always been doing so. But our sensitivity scale is just so bad in comparison to its capacity! It’s like we have super high definition TV’s, but the signal we receive is just too bad for us to show any high resolution video, its blurry and bad. But if we increase the signal strength and start to transmit… Well I think you get the pictureJ.

So what I’m trying to get at is that when we practice awareness and self-observation, it will in fact translate to a heightened self-awareness which has the potential to change your life. Some even say that awareness itself is curative, because you won’t allow yourself to go in living the life you are when you become truly aware. And I really believe in that too.  So I’m determined we need to start listening to our internal radar in a much greater extend, which in today’s society is going in totally wrong direction with everybody keeping themselves entrained 24/7 – guilty as charged.

If we don’t take the time to feel and accept that we’re not living the life we should, how can change happen? It’s not until we accept our current state, that we can start to ask the right questions, which we then can begin the journey to find the right answers to.

SO HOW WILL WE WORK TO INCREASE OUR AWARENESS, SO WE CAN INCREASE OUR SELF-AWARENESS?
Simple! This week’s challenge will boil down do a nice combination of all the previous challenges!

The Objectives:

Main Objective: Daily awareness – practical application

To once an hour just paus your life for ten seconds and tune in on how your feeling – TEN SECONDS – do you feel stressed, hungry, joy; etc. I don’t say that you should manipulate your state. Just take in and observe – try to be aware! As I’ve mentioned in previous videos, distinguish between thinking and awareness, and remember what I said about feelings vs. emotions.

Now my watch beeps every whole hour, so that’s my que for checking in on myself. If that’s hard for you to arrange, chose a repetitive moment in your day that could work as your que; when you got to the bathroom, when you eat, when you sit down, when you walk through a door post. Just make sure to decide on ONE thing so you actually do it, and then it doesn’t hurt if you get some bonus awaerens in there as wellJ.

Secondary#1: (don’t want the weekly challenges to be overwhelming – less is more than nothing.)

Take some notes and journal about your observation, this so you can look back at the end of the week to reflect and recognize patterns. How often did you feel alive, fulfilled, like you did the things that really means something to you! Or are you a train wreck all the time? This is important, it’s observations like these that can awaken us from the lies we keep telling ourselves. It’s hard to lie to ourselves when it’s “data” presented to us; reading your own words that says that you felt like shit every day for a week.

Secondary#2: Meditation – “The gym exercise”

Do some daily meditation for at least 5 minutes – just trying to be aware and listen to your emotions. But don’t force emptiness, if thoughts pop up, let them pop up. Happens for me 99,9% of the time. But it’s still really nice, and sometimes not. But the meditation can be seen as the GYM practice that prepares you for the awareness in your everyday life!

If you want more info on this look at last week’s challenge http://alexandernilsson.nu/increasing-self-awareness-with-meditation/ )

So that’s this week’s challenge, don’t let it overwhelm you, start with little if that feels better. I know we don’t do things at all when it seems like too much of an effort. ESPECIOULLY on this topic, when you have a hard time grasping the benefits. Because it’s often not until one has started to feel some of the juicy stuff that I’ll bring, one will find the time and motivation to do this, which makes it a bit problematic. So hope you feel motivated!!

Make sure to subscribe and like IF you like what I’m doing, otherwise, don’tJ.

Have a great day, and remember to watch the weekly LIVE STREAM at Friday 17.00 (Swedish time)! There, as always, will I first do a weekly evaluation, and then in the second part of the video have an individual goal evaluation & planning session; looking back at the week and evaluate how we’ve been progressing on our goals, course correct if necessary, but also plan for the week that will come.

My name is Alexander Nilsson, thank you for reading,

Bye guys

(1) Hampton, D. (2015) What’s the difference between feelings and emotions? Available at: http://www.thebestbrainpossible.com/whats-the-difference-between-feelings-and-emotions/ (Accessed: 30 January 2017).

(2) Wikipedia (2011) File: Plutchik-wheel.Svg – Wikimedia commons. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13285286 (Accessed: 30 January 2017).

The video:

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:

——————–

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

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.

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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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