Why is it that we pay so much attention to the things that are going wrong in our life, rather than the things that are going right in our life?  There is so much to be celebrated every single day that deserves recognition.

Every single one of our lives is the result of a virtually impossible, smallest chance probability.  Life itself really is a gift and a privilege.  Beyond that, think about your personal circumstances and the blessings you live with.  If you have a house with utilities, a car, have freedom of expression, and your health, you are in the top tier of accessibility to resources and opportunity

So why don’t we wake up in the morning and think about that?  

A good habit to get into is practicing gratitude and mindfulness.  A good friend of me taught me this trick. After waking up, “when your feet hit the floor, say three things you’re grateful for”.  This trick forces me to reflect on the positivity I have in my life, and have appreciation for those things that I normally wouldn’t give credit to. So, “Life is a gift, wake up every day and realize that".

Play to win. Flip that avoidance mentality and harness the passion that you started with. It is human nature to feel fear as a goal approaches because of our evolutionary predisposition to safeguard assets. With our goal so close, we feel like we have it, and then our mentality becomes that we don’t want to lose it. This is best thought of as the alternative to “playing to win” which is “playing not to lose”.

Now that we understand that, we can replace this fear with a more appropriate emotion, excitement. The best way to do that is to track your goal. Having a visual representation of how much progress you are making on your goal is a good way to remind you of the initial reason for pursuing that goal.  I suggest making a calendar specific to your goal that you can visit every evening. This is beneficial in a few ways. First, the physical nature of a calendar allows you to interact with your goal when you succeed in small ways, either by checking it off or crossing it out. It also helps you focus on daily progress and provide validation in your efforts on an on-going basis, which provides small but frequent surges of motivation. Then, as you near the end, you can look back on all of the work you’ve put in to get to that point, and feel more inclined to attach the final bit than obligated to finish it out.

We all want to be winners, and the best way to get there is to play to win.

Most communication is non-verbal. Between body language, intonation, and other non-verbal factors, our word choice can assume a variety of different meanings based on different situations.  That’s why it is important we are finely tuned to what we are communicating. The alternative though, is people can get away with subtly communicating dissatisfaction, and use that as an outlet to get something off of their chest.

Well, let’s avoid that and not be passive aggressive. There are better ways to handle certain situations than playing it off in a passive aggressive way.

The first thing you can do is to be up front and honest about the way that you feel. A lot of the time people revert to being passive aggressive because it reduces confrontation, but the issue will persist if a mutual resolution is not met, and it can only be met through honest communication. Another thing to try is a classic playground tip, which is to hold your tongue. Give yourself some time to process the emotion, and if you still feel the same way the next day and feel it is necessary to address the problem, then now you can do so in a more dissociated way.

Paul Carrick Brunson is a successful entrepreneur, author, and television host, but is best known for being the world’s best matchmaker. With years of speaking under his belt, Paul shares the 5 tips that will help you speak with more confidence.

To summarize Paul’s five pillars, they are: 1. Have an erect back. 2. Have a natural gaze. 3. Fillers are killers. 4. Pause. 5. Use a slow pace.

Let’s be practical - everything around us is constantly changing.  Nothing is ever how it used to be.  But in its own way, isn’t that beautiful?  Listen to how Lucia Giovannini, a rockstar Italian author, life coach, and academic views this ever changing environment.

This message is to accept and welcome change. The more we resist the natural flow of things around us, the less comfortable we will be as the tide shifts. To counteract that discomfort, try to intentionally put yourself in uncomfortable situations to simulate that change. It will prepare you for it when it comes.

“Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path”.

Storms are destructive, inconvenient, and limiting by nature. So, what good could possibly come out of a storm? Well, with a little bit of optimism and positivity, it is not a stretch to reason that the change brought by a storm can serve a decent amount of good.

Storms make a mess. Their winds pick things up and displace them, and after a storm we must rebuild to restore how things are. We can think of this as an opportunity instead of restoring to the previous state, we can build from anew what we wanted all along. In thinking that way, we can create the life and circumstance that we want in our life.

Obviously, the storm is just a metaphor for trauma in your life. But, by flipping the script, you can weather the storm and see the next steps as an opportunity to build.  Shifting the intent of the storm, and the reason it was introduced in your life, allows you to have more of an open-mind about the purpose the storm is actually serving.   So, “not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path.”

I love it when two opinions I really respect agree on something.  This rarely happens in an academic setting, but fortunately for us it does in the case of Allen Gannett and Jonah Berger.  Allen Gannett, the CEO of TrackMaven, shared in his book, The Creative Curve, that the most important factor to vitality is that the concept has an optimal tension between being novel and being familiar. Basically, this means that people prefer when things are familiar enough to not be overwhelmed but novel enough to catch their attention.

Jonah Barger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business, explains a similar phenomenon in his book, Invisible Influence, but instead relates it to our everyday behavior. He says that what we choose to imitate and what we choose to reject also play this fine line between familiarity and novelty.  

The key takeaway is know your optimal tension.  

This exists in your decision making, when pitching ideas at work or in conversation, all throughout our lives.  We are more likely to have success in something when it is positioned correctly given its environment.  

Find your optimal tension by being observant of the things around you. Start ranking how novel and how familiar certain things seem to you, and compare those to the perceptions of those around you. Noting the differences will help you cater your communication with them so that you can better relate with them.  

Beyond that, you can use this for how you identify personally. What characteristic traits would you use to describe yourself, and where do they lie on the novelty-familiarity spectrum in society? You can then translate that to your stance on certain issues, in your style, and the way you exist to create consistency with your own optimal tension.  

Former CEO and founder of Starbucks Howard Schultz clearly has an acumen for leadership.  Schultz speaks on what he did as a leader to grow Starbucks to astronomical proportions.

That’s great advice from a great leader. This message is to instill mentality. Whether you are the leader of a team or an important part of one, you can instill mentality in your team and lead by example, creating a contagious and consistent message about how the work should be done. Be extra aware of opportunities for you to lead by example, and watch how your team members respond.

Oftentimes the redundancy of our alarm clock causes us to become desensitized to the sound. Not only will a custom alarm clock provide a little variety in the morning that abruptly gets your attention, but it is an opportunity to create something that activates you so that you never have to press the snooze button.

I think I can explain this best by playing my own alarm clock for you. It is a motivational message from my grandma.  And to preface, she actually loves me very much.  Have a listen:

“Brian, wake up!  Get going!  You are just lazy, and very soft.  So you gotta get up, do those pushups, run those miles.  Or else.  What if?”

I’ll tell you this, I haven’t snoozed my alarm one time. But to be honest, I don’t use this alarm every morning. I choose to save it for important mornings where I need extra motivation, so that it works well and I don’t get desensitized to it. What’s interesting though, is I have found that the effect has persisted with other alarms because I always have my grandma’s voice in the back of my mind when I am considering snoozing.

The key to creating a successful alarm clock is to be introspective. I reasoned that when I snooze it’s because I make an excuse about why I shouldn’t wake up.  Find that root cause within yourself, and address it directly in your message.