If you've been following my work, you know that I recommend you motivate yourself entirely by values, not by threats. This means throwing out "duty" as a way to get yourself to do an important but unappealing task. By a "duty," I mean an out-of-context rule or...
It's important to celebrate achievements. I'd like to take a moment to celebrate mine, my clients', and yours. First mine. I give talks, put out this newsletter, and run the Thinking Lab because I want to share the life-serving ideas that I have discovered. I have...
Every New Year's Day, I run a “Thinking Day” in the Thinking Lab, to provide coaching for members who are setting goals for the new year. To make sure you set goals from a position of strength, I recommend you systematically review all the past year's accomplishments...
Two days ago, I got my email inbox down to zero, for the first time in at least 18 months. Several times in the last few months, I had gotten down to 40 lagging emails, but never to zero. The story of my getting to zero is a case study in how a change in attitude then...
Paradoxically, celebration and mourning* are similar processes. They involve similar steps and achieve similar purposes. And they are similarly misunderstood and neglected, despite their critical importance to a joyful life. Neither celebration nor mourning concerns...
Self-critical thoughts get a bad rap. You should neither reject self-critical thoughts nor treat them as revealed truths. Instead, treat them like crazy ideas from a brainstorming session. They, too, are products of your current knowledge, values, and skill. Used...
"Empathy" is a widely misunderstood concept. Understanding it properly is the first step to transforming your relationships with other people and yourself. Empathy is not the same as sympathy. Sympathy is a feeling you have in relation to someone else. You feel...
Do you find the term "anxiety" a bit puzzling? It's always been described to me as a non-specific fear. My fears are always specific, so I never knew quite how to differentiate fear from anxiety until I read an article about anxiety by Brooke Castillo that clarified...
I've become a fan of Brooke Castillo's "Self-Coaching Scholars" program. I find her methods to be a valuable complement to the ones I have already developed. She's helped me speed up how I deal with distracting, unproductive emotions, while still maintaining the...
In order to live a happy life, you need to see yourself achieving your values on a daily, weekly, and annual basis. For this purpose, I recommend that you adopt some regular practices. The daily practice is the "3 good things" process. The annual process is an annual...
Forgetting is real. It takes special work to remember an idea or an intention, particularly to remember it at the time you need it. The default is that you don't. This issue is much wider and more important than remembering names of people you meet or items on a...
We're moving into the next phase of the coronavirus crisis. We're getting a glimmer of the long haul. To help you flourish through tough times, I recommend you take proactive action to ensure that you have sufficient pleasure in your life. You need positive...
I am more upbeat than many of the people I’ve spoken with recently. This is true, even though in many cases, my expectations for the post-coronavirus future are more pessimistic than theirs. I’ve seriously entertained some pretty dire outcomes, but instead of letting...
Last winter I got a surprise. I saw for myself that some people are deeply motivated by a desire for destruction, as opposed to a desire to gain values. Perhaps I have led a sheltered life, or maybe I accept the people I meet at face value. But I took for granted that...
Here's a daily practice I learned from Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness. Once each day, write down three good things that happened in the last 24 hours. You can write them before going to bed or first thing in the morning. You can...
Wishful thinking doesn't solve problems. But it can transform your motivation when you are not "in the mood" to do the next task on your agenda. I stumbled upon this fact while on a long trip. At a certain point, I thought I should dig into four annual reports I had...
If you've been following my work, you know that I'm interested in making conversations on controversial topics more constructive and less contentious. I think I'm making progress, but, yesterday I had a contentious conversation with someone who I am in basic agreement...
Your top priority is not necessarily the most important task on your list, nor is it necessarily the most urgent one. It is the one you decide you should do first--prior to the others. Often, as soon as you identify your top priority by naming the reason it's #1, you...
I'm reading my friend Alan Zimmerman's book, The Payoff Principle, which explains the process he teaches for achieving "what you really, Really, REALLY want." He is inspiring me on many levels, including convincing me to take a second look at some practices that have...
Burnout is a common problem. When you "burn out," you lose the motivation to do productive work that you have done in the past — and used to enjoy doing. There are three common sources of motivation: a personally meaningful (selfish) purpose, an inspiring person, or...
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