I’ve got one new favorite book: On Writing by Stephen King. It was a great experience reading it. Not only did I learn a lot from the book, but also I love the writing style. I wish I could write like that!

Moreover, I found that many lessons from the book are applicable not just to writing, but also to life and career in general. They are essential for being successful in what you do.

Here are 17 lessons I learn from On Writing:

1. Do what you love

I know that this advice has been repeated many times. But it’s true. And King put it in a way I’ve never seen before:

For me, not working is the real work. When I’m writing, it’s all the playground…

I love the way he put it. Not working is the real work. Writing time is all the playground. Can you say that about your work? I enjoy what I’m doing, but I still can’t say that not working is the real work. This guy loves his craft at a different level and he’s serious about it. He made similar statements several times throughout the book.

Now, what if you do something that you don’t love? King’s advice is to move to something else:

If there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good. It’s best to go on to some other area, where… the fun quotient higher.

How high is the fun quotient of your work? Is there joy in it? Or is joy the last word you would associate with your work?

2. Practice, practice, practice

Hard practice is a must for being successful. In fact, this is why it’s important for you to do what you love. If you enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll be able to endure the hard practice needed for success.

The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate – four to six hours a day, every day – will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things…

… practice is invaluable (and should feel good, really not like practice at all)…

If you don’t enjoy the journey, it’s unlikely that you will be able to pay the price for success. Joy is a big factor that makes the difference between those who make it and those who don’t.

3. Be serious

If you can take it seriously, we can do business.

Only if you are serious about what you do can you expect to achieve meaningful results. Many people enjoy what they do but they do it only as a hobby. Being serious means being committed to master your field.

4. Ignore naysayers

If you write… someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.

Naysayers are there. It’s just a fact of life. There are always people who try to discourage you no matter how hard you’ve tried. So rather than getting discouraged by them, simply ignore them and move on.

5. Have a supporter

Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference.

This applies not just to writing. Whatever field you choose, you need to have someone who support you. You need to have someone who still believes in you when others don’t.

6. Immerse yourself in the field

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

Do you want to get good at something? Fill your life with it. Live it and breathe it. More than just making you familiar with the field, it sharpens your intuition to the point where you can make sound judgment intuitively (like what Malcolm Gladwell discussed in Blink).

7. Be consistent

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words… only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shutdown before I get my 2,000 words.

The longer you keep to these basics, the easier the act of writing will become.

Being consistent isn’t easy, but it pays off. While what you do daily might seem simple, doing it consistently will make a big difference in the long term.

8. Study the work of others

You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so.

Studying the work of others gives you two important benefits. First, it teaches you about the right way to do things. Second, it teaches you about the wrong way to do things. Both are useful.

9. Study the market

You should also pick up the writers’ journal and buy a copy of Writer’s Market…

… the most important thing you can do for yourself is read the market.

In addition to studying the work of others, you should study the market. You need to know what the current state of the market is. What are the opportunities? What are the challenges? Where is the market going? By understanding the market, you’ll be able to make the right decisions.

10. Spot ideas

Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

To get ideas, rather than trying to find something new on your own, you just need to spot the ideas around you. That’s why one key to innovation is being a good observer.

11. Keep the momentum going

Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to.

When the momentum is there, you can complete your work with much less time and energy. So keep the momentum going and don’t lose it.

12. Get the first draft out as quickly as possible

…downloading what’s in my head directly to the page, I write as fast as I can…

Don’t try to be perfect the first time. Simply get the first draft of your work out and refine from there. Working in iterations is the best way to get something done.

13. Get rid of the inessentials

When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

In your first iteration, there is a good chance that many unnecessary things are still there. That’s fine because your job is to get the first version done as quickly as possible. But in the next iterations, you should get rid of them. Leave only what needs to be there and nothing else.

14. Be your own first customer

I am, after all, not just the novel’s creator but its first reader.

When you become the creator of a work, it’s often difficult to see from the perspective of the customers. But that’s important because otherwise your work might go to the the wrong direction. So be your own first customer. Take a critical look at your work. Is it something that you want to use? Is there anything that you need to change?

15. Don’t do it for the money

Do you do it for the money, honey? The answer is no. Don’t now and never did… I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it.

Money is a bad motivation to have. It could make you ignore your heart and you might end up living someone else’s life instead of your own.

16. Do it for the joy

I have written because it fulfilled me… I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

This is perhaps the most important lesson in the book. If you do something for the joy of it, not only can you endure the difficult journey to success but also your life will be fulfilling. What’s better than that?

17. Do it to enrich others and yourself

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous,… In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.

A nice conclusion of the book. If you live a life that enriches others and yourself, you’re living a great life.

Photo by Reinante El Pintor de Fuego

Note: This is a guest post from Srinivas Rao of The Skool of Life

Tony Robbins once said there are two things that motivate people to make dramatic changes in their lives: inspiration and desperation. As crazy it might sound, there is actually tremendous power in hitting rock bottom or  a low-point in your life. The last year has been one of dramatic positive changes for me because my life more or less fell apart in front of my eyes when I finished graduate school a year ago:

• I literally ran out money and my bank balance was ZERO.
• I had to move back to my parent’s house at the age of 31 (kind of embarrassing)
• I couldn’t find a job for 8 months

I had no choice, but to start making some major changes in my life.  I was at a personal low point. The great thing however was there was nowhere to go but up. My blog served as a great personal development tool to make changes in my life and continues to do so today:

• I have a job that I absolutely LOVE
• I’m more financially responsible than I’ve ever been
• I have a great network of contacts/supporters

Let’s look at how you can use the power of hitting rock bottom to your advantage.

How To Take Advantage of Hitting Rock Bottom

• Reframe the Situation: The first thing you will need to do if you have hit rock bottom is reframe the situation. In my commencement speech that I wrote on my blog a while back I talked about the distinctions between being spiritually/emotionally broke and financially broke. The latter actually is much easier to recover from if you can conquer the former.  The key is viewing your current situation as an opportunity to take your life to a level far beyond where you are at today. I honestly can say that the 8 failures that have lead to me where I’m at today have been incredibly powerful lessons and I actually am starting to realize that many failures are actually just a part of the path to success.
• Nothing to Lose: The beauty of hitting rock bottom is that you truly have nothing to lose. When you hear stories of homeless people spending their time in libraries and filling their minds with knowledge to eventually become millionaires, it makes you realize that you have tremendous power to change your life if you can just tap into it. The beauty of having nothing to lose is that it gives you the power to be completely detached from outcomes, one of the biggest things that gets in the way of accomplishing goals.
• Big Risks/Big Goals: With absolutely nothing to lose, you are in the in perfect position to take big risks and set big goals. When you are not at rock bottom you can actually get caught in the trap of your comfort zone.  When you are at a low point, then you have a tendency to really push the envelope of what’s possible. Many bloggers have been forced into the situation they are in (me included) because of other circumstances. The byproduct is that we now live a life that is far better than what we had originally imagined.

If you are at a low point in your life, I encourage you to give some thought to why this could be a defining moment that completely changes the trajectory of your life. If you’re asking yourself “why am I in this situation, this sucks?”, then you are setting yourself up for failure. You’re going to need to shift your focus and ask yourself the question “How can I use this opportunity to take my life to the next level?”. If you do that you’ll find that dramatic positive change is inevitable.

Srinivas Rao is a personal development blogger/surfer who explores various life lessons inspired by riding waves at his blog, The Skool of Life. He’s also the host/co-founder of BlogcastFM, a podcast to help you take your blog to the next level.

Photo by Niffty

How happy are you now? How is it compared with yesterday? With last week? As it turns out, comparing happiness, even of the same person at different times, is tricky. Why? Because our experiences change our view of happiness.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert explains how our experiences change our view of happiness:

Studies such as these demonstrate that once we have an experience, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened… Our experiences instantly become part of the lens through which we view our entire past, present, and future, and like any lens, they shape and distort what we see.

The question is: how do our experiences change our view of happiness? One good explanation is the experience-stretching hypothesis:

We often say of others who claim to be happy despite circumstances that we believe should preclude it that “they only think they’re happy because they don’t know what they’re missing.” Okay, sure, but that’s the point. Not knowing what we’re missing can mean that we are truly happy under circumstances that would not allow us to be happy once we have experienced the missing thing.

Here is an example. Years ago I would be very happy to get a computer without an Internet connection because I didn’t know how good the Internet is. But now that I do, I would be far less happy if I just got a computer without an Internet connection. My experience of using the Internet has changed my view of happiness. It has stretched my scale of happiness. While in the past getting just a computer would make me happy at the scale of 8 out of 8, now it would be only 4 out of 8. Only by getting an Internet connection along with the computer would I reach an 8.

I can see that this hypothesis is true in my life and I expect it to also be true in yours. There are many experiences that have stretched my scale of happiness. They make me see happiness differently because I now have different expectations.

However, I see a dangerous trap here: what if you experience something that feels very good in the short term but is actually harmful in the long term? The hypothesis says that once you taste it, you won’t be as happy without it. The better it feels, the far less happy you would be without it.

This explains addictions well. Why is it difficult to get rid of an addiction? Because the short term experience is so good that you feel a big pain if you don’t have it. It has changed your view of happiness. You’ve tasted how good it is and now you can no longer be happy without it. The fact that it’s harmful in the long term doesn’t change anything because your future happiness is abstract while your current happiness is concrete.

It also explains why it is difficult to get rid of a bad habit. It might not have become an addiction, but if you feel that you lose something by not doing it, you will most likely continue doing it. It will become a habit, a bad habit.

So how can we overcome this? The best strategy is to prevent your view of happiness from being distorted in the first place. If you know of something that people say is good but you know is harmful in the long term, run away from it. Don’t ever try it. Not even once. You might think that you can handle it, but once you are caught, it will be very difficult for you to escape.

Photo by whatmegsaid

Note: This is a guest post from Walter Adena of LionSlinger.com

Anxiety is a fact of life. Being part of our psychological makeup, this response is automatic when we are faced with situations threatening our sense of well-being. Since this propensity is genetically embedded on our brains, we have no way of preventing its manifestation. However, we can influence our response if we have sufficient awareness and discipline to counter its unhealthy encroachment.

Allowing anxiety to dominate our thoughts can result in stress and depression. Little do we know that most of the fears we cater are unfounded; our minds have taken the habit of conjuring a scenario wherein feared situations arise. Left uncontrolled, these illusory fears will be incorporated unto our reality, thus stifling our view of the truth. If we are to take control of our anxieties, we must stop feeding our thoughts with negative imaginings. Instead, we should put our focus more on the clear facts surrounding us and deduce therein our real worries and concern. This will then reduce the gravity of our anxiety.

Still the question arises: How can we deal with anxiety?

To be honest, dealing with anxiety is not an easy task. Our genetic makeup makes it hard to resist this automatic brain response. However, through practice and willingness, we can change our approach in dealing with anxiety.

First and foremost, we have to understand the nature of our fears. We need to find where it’s coming from and why are we experiencing such feeling. Without this understanding we cannot affect an appropriate response should anxiety dominate our thoughts.

Gaining an understanding of the nature of our anxieties will bring forth clarity on our part. This important factor is the key to alter the influence of fear on our minds.  Once we become aware of our anxieties we are able to allow our reason to intervene; we are then able to make an analysis with regards to the factual substance of our anxiousness. Still, awareness and understanding are not enough, willingness to let go of our unfounded fear is also a necessity. If we don’t have the will to change our perception of anxiousness, little is our chance to reduce our tension.

Validating the source of our anxieties will take time, discipline and persistence. Every time anxiety enters our thoughts it is imperative to enforce our intervention through awareness, then make some validations as to the reality of the objects of our anxieties. Once we deduce the truth from fiction we have to eliminate the lies by reprogramming our thinking; though it may be hard at first practice makes perfect.

In my experience I have been continually bogged down by my worries. What I’ve learned though is that the huge percentage of all my worries is nothing more than the illusions of my mind. All the time I have continually beleaguered myself of fears that really don’t exist. It took me time to realize how much time and energy I have wasted thinking of my senseless worries. Had I immediately weeded out the facts from farce, I could have made better decision.

Before you drown yourself of anxieties, consider the following approaches:

• Ask yourself: What am I anxious about? Does my fear have any substance?
• Make an analysis of the situation and separate the real from the unreal.
• Focus on finding solution rather than brooding over worries.
• Use your common sense when dissecting the cause of your anxieties. (Most of us worry over preposterous things).
• If senseless anxieties forces its way, counter it by engaging yourself on productive activities.
• Seek the path of self mastery.

We don’t have to punish ourselves over our anxieties. The choice is always ours whether we confine ourselves to our self-made fear or seek understanding about the true nature of our worries. There’s a lot more to life than being anxious.

Walter Adena Cabelis is a deep thinking blogger. To learn more about his thoughts, visit him on www.lionslinger.com.

Photo by Roberto Bouza

Note: This is a guest post from David Damron of The Minimalist Path

I wake up every morning knowing I can be something more than I was yesterday. I know I can be anything I want to be as long as I focus on that goal. I attempt to make every day another step towards succeeding at my dreams. There is no better day than today to start being the best you.

Every day that you have, you have the opportunity to make incredible things happen. Sure, there are almost 7 billion people on the Earth, but you can still make a difference either in your life or another. What I am asking of you is that you make one small attempt to make yourself better in some way for the next 7 days and, hopefully, continue this lifestyle change. Before we get into that, let’s answer a few questions…

Why Should You Become a Better You?

I am assuming you are an amazing person right now. You have accomplished many great things and done a lot for others in your life. However, I feel that if we aren’t striving daily to be a better person, we begin to feel comfortable in the daily norm. Like many of you, I hate the daily norm. I love making everyday different than the last and experience something different as often as possible. With that, we should all challenge ourselves to be better so that we continue to grow and develop at whatever point we are in our lives.

What are the Benefits of Being a Better Me?

By attempting to be a better you, you will be happier, more productive, and fulfill more dreams than if you chose to be stagnant. You will start to see new opportunities that once were never a reality nor a possibility. You will meet new and exciting people that may give more meaning to your life. These benefits just touch the surface of the positive impact of attempting to be a better you can have.

Why in the World Would I Listen to You About Being a Better Me?

That’s a great question and I am glad you asked. I am not perfect. I have many flaws. However, daily, I try to be a better person because I know that by doing so I am adding value to my existence and hopefully, to others as well. I am bringing more value to the great gift of life. If there is anyone that can strive to be a better person, it is me. So, if I am seeing the positives from trying to be a better person, I know you can gain from attempting this small action too. I am no motivational speaker, but I do know that I have the skills to assist others in a modest way. You don’t have to take any of this advice. But, it never hurts to try something new that may just improve your life. The worst case scenario is that I don’t help you in any way and you go back to your already awesome life.

Now that those questions are out of the way, here are 7 daily steps that are basic and useful to becoming a better you in 7 days:

1. Wake up before sunrise. This may be tough for the night owls, but this can be one of the best ways to get in tune with yourself before the chaos hits. Take advantage of being ahead of everyone else and enjoy the coming of the day. This practice will lead to a fresher, more alive you throughout the day if continued. The happier you start your day, the brighter the rest of the day will be.
2. Ask someone if there is anything you can help them with. Try to ask others if there is anything that you can do to make their day better. They will appreciate you more and may inspire them to pay it forward. This action usually leads to self-fulfillment knowing that you have improved the life of another.
3. Get outside and be active. I usually plead the case for getting outside so that more people would be healthier. But, today, I just want to share this action step so that you can get outside and disconnect from the world. By this I mean the digital world. Today, many of us spend all of our day in front of the television or computer screen. The world is vast and incredible and usually it can be experienced just by walking out the front door. Take this opportunity to walk through your town or city and greet all of those you pass. Experience life in the form of nature. Do this for 30 minutes and your mind will be clearer and more alive than when you started.
4. Write down your goals for the next week. Don’t look so far ahead. Enjoy everything that you want to accomplish this week. By writing down your aspirations for one week, you will be more in tune with taking action today instead of procrastinating. Want to simplify your workspace? Write it down along with small daily tasks that will accomplish this goal. Keep it simple and you will achieve great things that will brighten your days to come.
5. Do one thing you love. Love reading? Love running? Love talking? Love relaxing? Love writing? Whatever it is that you love, try doing that for some period of your day. When we experience the things we love, we tend to carry that positive attitude towards the following actions. This will increase your level of enjoyment with life so that you can be better at everything else that you do.
6. Make another person’s day. You would be surprised how much positive impact a small act can have on the person you are kind to along with the impact it has upon yourself. As stated earlier, you can ask someone if they need help. You can also tell them how great they are, write them a secret note (my girlfriend loves finding these in random places), take someone out for a meal, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. It just should be something that will brighten their day.
7. Learn something new. Have you always wanted to know how to say a few words of Mandarin as well as understand what you were saying? Well, learn that one new thing today. Take this chance to educate yourself about one thing you didn’t know before today and you will be that much brighter. Education should not stop when we leave school. By implementing this daily act, you will be capable of improving your ability to adjust to new and improved aspects of culture.

READ THIS BEFORE YOU LEAVE: You may have read these 7 steps by skimming through this article. But what I want to stress is that you take action. Actually try something that you read here. These are not over-arching, difficult tasks. They are incredible ways that you can make major positive changes to your life. So, for me, just give it a shot for a week.

I hope through these 7 steps, you too can see the benefits of becoming a better you every day of your life.

For more from the author of PROJECT M-31: Simplify Your Life in 31 Days David Damron, check out his site The Minimalist Path.

Photo by Elvire.R.

Note: This is a guest post from John Anyasor of HiLife2B

Stop trying to fit in when you were born to stand out.
Unknown

Seemly realistic expectations, assumed logical progression, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement: these are the traits that a nonconformist does not possess. While the rest of the world moves like clockwork doing the things they despise in order to get the things they want, the nonconformist focuses on his own hard and fast rules of life.

Nonconformists are rebels, nonconformists are innovators, and, most of all, nonconformists never give up: their ultimate dreams of success are at stake if they do. They also understand that hard work is universal because no matter what profession you take up (whether it’s a job you hate or a job you like), without commitment, no dream of theirs will ever come to fruition.

So at this point, you may be thinking, “Cool! I want to defy social norms to chase and achieve my dreams too. But John, how do I get started?”

That’s why I’m here, right? In order to become a successful nonconformist, you must implement and master 7 important steps. Are you ready for this?

1. Take the path less beaten

How are you going to stand out if everyone is on the same path? Millions of workers continue on in the rat race everyday, hoping for that sweet payoff history tells us that we’re going to get. Well, let me teach you a bit of history: times change. What worked in the past doesn’t work as well in the present. We go through the same stages of life (school, work, retirement) in the hope that we will one day reach our dreams, but we never do. That is why we must have the courage to do something else; to do something different and unique so we can achieve success that much faster.

2. Value opinions that are different from yours

Notable nonconformist, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said that we tend to value more those with similar opinions to ours than those whose opinions are different. Instead, we should have an open mind and value everyone’s opinions equally. It sounds crazy to a close-minded person that you can make thousands of dollars online instead of by working under someone else for years as an employee, but open their mind and it all becomes possible. It is better to think about what those differences in opinion mean instead of closing your mind altogether.

3. Find AND follow your passion

Most people don’t know what their passion is and decide early on that there’s no point in finding it. It’s unfortunate, because those that DO find their passion, eventually use it as fuel in their life’s work. Those who are the most successful not only find their passion, but follow it to the end. Bill Gates had a passion for computers, started following it early on and now he’s very well off. Tony Robbins had a passion for inspiring people, and now he’s successful as well. Get it yet? Find and follow your passion.

4. Give before you get

As I’ve said earlier, a sense of entitlement isn’t a good habit to cultivate. Whether you want a job, a business, or you just want a personal favor, you must always give before you receive anything. A lot of people tend to just blatantly ask for opportunities. Always follow the “giving mentality”: When applying for a job, what can you bring to the company? When starting a business, what problem can you solve? When asking for a favor, what have you done for that person first?

Focus on giving value, and the rest you seek will follow.

5. Aim unrealistically

When you aim high, the sky is the limit. There really is no downside to aim just a bit out of your perception. The onlookers will tell you that you’ll never reach it. But that’s a good thing. Let that drive your enduring effort to excel at your passion. Who knows? While aiming for the moon, you might land among the stars.

6. Embrace your uniqueness

By chance, let’s say that you disregard my advice and decide conforming is easier. But try as you might to conform, deep down you know that you are a different person. You must embrace the fact that you are different to truly stand out from the crowd. So what if you still have an obsession with Sesame Street? Say it proud and say it loud! In the end, the only happiness you can control is your own. It’s much more difficult to deny who you are than it is to accept yourself.

7. Take up responsibility for your own life

This is probably the most important step on this list. To accept responsibility for where your life goes means to accept all of your shortcomings as yours and yours alone. Do you want to live like the rest, working for money instead of working for enjoyment? Working for mere things, instead of experiences? Make your own decision and don’t let anyone else decide for you. Take the path less traveled where you’ll have no idea where you’ll end up; because you know where you’ll be if you follow the crowd.

What have you done differently than the rest in your life? Thrown away the television set? Done away with the iPod? Share your thoughts below.

John Anyasor is a college student (like everybody else) but he’s taking advantage of the opportunities he has there by pursuing his interests and testing assumptions. He writes on his personal development blog, HiLife2B. There, he gives challenges readers’ minds on life and its improvement. Follow him on Twitter.

Photo by *sean

There is an interesting lecture on Behavioral Finance by Yale professor Robert Shiller. In it, he spoke about how people tend to be overconfident. They overestimate their ability to perform. It happens not just in the financial world, but also in our daily life. One example Robert Shiller gave is that students tend to overestimate how their college’s team will perform in a match against other college.

I have an experience with overconfidence myself. A few years ago, I and some friends worked on a software project. We estimated that we could finish the project in three months. Do you know how much time it eventually took? Fourteen months! That shows how I and my team underestimated the complexity of the project and overestimated our ability to handle it.

So, overconfidence is a common problem. Being pessimistic isn’t good, of course. But being overconfident isn’t good either. Here are two reasons why:

1. You may fail to deliver on your promise
   That’s what happened to me and my team. We failed badly to deliver on our promise. That lesson taught me to be more careful and realistic next time.
2. You may blame yourself too much
   This is the other side of being overconfident. When you are overconfident about something and fail, you may blame yourself too much for the outcome. Robert Shiller mentioned a finding in Searching for a Corporate Savior about how companies often fired their CEOs who didn’t perform as expected even when the entire industry actually declined. The CEO couldn’t be blamed for an industry-wide problem, but the board – who had initially been overconfident with the ability of the”charismatic” CEO – still put the blame on him. This happens at individual level too. You may put all the blame on yourself which make it difficult for you to move forward.

Now that we’ve seen the danger of overconfidence, how can we overcome it? Here are some tips:

1. Acknowledge the role of luck

Many people in the financial market think that they can predict how the market will do. The more they make correct predictions, the more they are confident about their ability. They aren’t aware that in many cases they are just lucky. Hard work is important, but luck does play a big role.

Paul Graham once wrote that Bill Gates is a very smart man, but he is also very lucky. Without the luck factor, he would probably end up near the bottom of the Forbes 400 instead of being one of the richest men in the world. Bill Gates himself said on different occasions about how lucky he is.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell discusses the role of luck at great length.

2. Don’t credit yourself too much

Continuing the previous point, be careful not to credit yourself too much when you are successful. Remember that you are probably just lucky.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to work hard. After all, successful people are those who capitalize on luck with hard work. But without luck, hard work won’t mean much either.

3. Comprehend the complexity of a project

When you are about to take a project, dig deep into it to really understand the breadth and scope of the project. Be on the lookout for potential pitfalls. Taking the time to really understand the complexity of a project helps you avoid unpleasant surprises later on.

4. Have a cushion

Even after you comprehend the complexity of a project, you still need to have a cushion. Give yourself extra time and resources for unexpected things. But be careful not to give yourself too much cushion. Otherwise you may become less competitive than your competitors.

5. Be prepared for failure

Some people are so confident in themselves that they can’t think of the possibility of failure.

Robert Shiller told the story of Irving Fisher – a Yale professor in the early 20th century – who said that the stock market in 1929 was in “permanently high plateau.” He invested heavily in the stock market, but ended up losing a lot of money in the 1929 crash. Yale needed to buy his house and rented it out to him for him not to be on the street. Did he change his view after all that happened? No. He still insisted that he was right. He borrowed money from his wealthy relatives, invested it, and lost it all.

So be prepared for failure. Doing so will help you recover quickly.

Photo by pincusvt

Note: This is a guest post from Celestine Chua of The Personal Excellence Blog

Have you ever received negative feedback before? Say, a friend or family member complaining about you. A boss or colleague critiquing your work. A partner or a spouse unhappy with something you did.

I run The Personal Excellence Blog which has a readership of about 3,000 readers a day. Every day, I receive feedback about the articles I write. While most of them are positive, there is the occasional negative feedback every now and then.

Admittedly, negative feedback can be tough to deal with sometimes. It’s much more encouraging to be receiving compliments than disagreements, because the former positively affirms that we’re on the right track, while the latter suggests we are doing something wrong. After years of dealing with feedback whether in school, work, or now running my own blog and business, I’ve become accustomed to getting negative feedback, but even then there’s the occasional feedback every now and then that would sting.

Yet, unless we are living in a holed up world where we don’t have to interact with anyone, receiving negative feedback is part and parcel of our everyday life. People will always have different opinions, and they are entitled to hold their opinions and say what they want to say. The question then isn’t on how we can avoid negative feedback, but to learn to roll and deal with them. If you can learn to handle negative feedback effectively, it will be a crucial skill that will help us in our journey of growth.

Here are my personal 6 steps on how to deal with such feedback.

1. Pause first; Don’t react.

When receiving negative feedback, it’s natural to want to defend yourself immediately. Has there been a time when you received a negative criticism, and your first instinct is to say: “No, this isn’t true..” “You’re wrong..” “No, that’s because…“?

However, no matter how negative the comment was, you have a choice in your reaction. Reacting defensively tells more about you as a person than about the comment itself. Remaining calm and composed helps you deal with the feedback better. If you feel riled up, give yourself some time to cool down first before engaging further.

Whenever I get a negative feedback, I rarely ever respond immediately. If it’s a real-time conversation, I would always pause for a few seconds to process the feedback in my mind. If it’s a delayed communication, such as over email or a comment at my blog, I’ll leave it there for a couple of days while I let it sit in my mind. I found that when I read the same piece of feedback at different times, it conjures up different thoughts and emotions. Hence, referring back to the feedback at different times and aggregating the feelings help me to put things into context. Sometimes we may interpret a comment in a wrong manner and looking it at another time helps us to consider from a different perspective.

2. Understand what the person’s concerns are

Every feedback, whether negative or positive, comes from somewhere. Something you said or did made the person react this way. You can choose to ignore the feedback, but then you’ll never know what was it that triggered the person. This means there’s a possibility of this issue recurring in the future.

Use active listening and understand where he/she is coming from. Some questions to ask yourself include:

• What is he/she concerned about? What are the key issues?
• Why is he/she reacting this way?
• What did you do/say that triggered him/her?

Write down these answers so you can evaluate them in step 3.

Sometimes, the person giving the feedback may not be aware of the real areas of concern. He/she might just be saying ‘I don’t think this is done well’ or ‘I don’t like how you are doing this’, without supporting reasons. This doesn’t mean you should dismiss the feedback, because something did trigger it. It’s up to you to probe the person and discover what the actual reasons are.

I found a tip that really helps in understanding his/her concerns is to put yourself in the person’s shoes. Imagine you as the person and think about how he/she felt. This will make it easier to understand why he/she commented that way. Whenever I do that, it instantly becomes clear why the person said the things he/she said, and helped me to understand his/her concerns.

3. Assess if the feedback is true.

Evaluate the feedback objectively. Do you agree on the feedback? Is there any truth behind it, and would this be an alternate perspective you missed out originally? Is it something you should look into?

Sometimes it’s hard to maintain an objective stance, especially since you are right in the middle of this. I found it’s helpful to seek out friends to get alternate opinions. You can ask them: (a) Their overall assessment of the feedback (b) What they think are the areas of concern (c) If they saw any truth behind it. As your friends, they will be more than willing to listen and help evaluate. Besides, each of them will have his/her own unique perspective to add to the plate.

Often times when I get negative feedback, I would talk it over with some of my good friends and process the feedback with them. We would objectively discuss and evaluate the things that could be work on. It becomes kind of like a mini-troubleshooting discussion, and it can be very enlightening. Having these alternative viewpoints helped to maintain the objectivity.

4. Reply to the person in kindness

Since the person took time to share his/her feedback with you, you should take time out to give a proper reply. Generally, I use the following flow for my replies:

• Reiterate his/her concerns, and confirm this with him/her so both of you are on the same page
• Let him/her know your point of view, whether you agree/disagree, along with supporting reasons why
• Create a open space for discussion
• Align/agree on the conclusions/next steps to move forward. Sometimes it’s possible that there can’t be an agreement met, and if that’s the case it’s about agreeing to disagree
• Thank him/her for sharing.

5. Recognize receiving negative feedback is a positive thing

Ultimately, I see negative feedback as positive, because it shows there are people who want you to become better. As in Randy Pausch said in the The Last Lecture, critics “are the ones telling you they still love you and care”. If the person didn’t care at all, he/she wouldn’t even have provided the feedback, would he/she?

Negative feedback also tells us our opportunities for growth. No matter where we are in life, all of us will have blind spots we don’t know about. These blind spots prevent us from reaching the next stage of growth. While negative feedback may not be pleasant to receive, they give us a different perspective to consider. By learning from more different perspectives, we can grow much faster.

If I look back, the times when I learned and grew the most were when I received negative feedback, not when I received positive feedback. How would things be if everyone around you simply praised and complimented you all the time? It would be nice at the beginning, but after a while you become oblivious on how you can improve. This doesn’t mean positive feedback doesn’t play a role – it helps to encourage and inspire us. Negative feedback has its own role to play too. It is when I receive criticisms about my work that I become more aware of things I was blind to before and how I can better improve next time. Especially when the negative feedback triggers some sort of emotional response, I know that means it has struck some chord inside me, and I would look inside to understand what’s making me feel that way. Often times that helps to trigger a new breakthrough in my personal growth, which I then proceed to share with my readers on my blog, which benefits many more people.

6. Learn from the feedback.

There’s always something to learn from every feedback. Ask yourself:

• What have I learned about myself?
• What have I learned about others?
• How can I improve? What can I do differently from now on?

Your learning can either be about (i) the feedback (ii) how you dealt with the feedback (iii) or both. Whenever I get a negative feedback, I would process it and think about what I can learn from. I could ignore it, but then that means nothing came out of the experience. So far, I have learned new from almost every negative feedback I have received. Add this up over time, and that’s a lot of new things I have learned. No doubt, these have been critical in my personal journey of growth.

Conclusion

I hope my personal tips and learnings will be helpful to you in dealing with negative feedback. It may not be easy to handle negative feedback – but if you learn the art of dealing with it, it’ll go a long way in personal growth.

Celes writes at The Personal Excellence Blog, where she shares her best advice on how to achieve personal excellence. Get her RSS feed directly here. If you liked this, you might like her related article on 8 Helpful Ways To Deal With Critical People.

Photo by Sudhamshu

That’s what James Cameron said at the end of his TED talk and I love it. It’s simple but powerful. Failure is an option, but fear is not.

Unfortunately, people often do the exact opposite: failure is not an option, but fear is. They don’t tolerate failure but they tolerate fear. They despise people who fail but they let fear get in the way of reaching their dreams.

We shouldn’t join them, of course. Let’s be on the right side of the fence.

Failure Is an Option

Here is how to apply this principle in your life:

1. Make room for failure

Nobody wants to fail, but failing is inevitable on your way to success. George Bernard Shaw said:

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

So if you never fail then it probably means that you do nothing. Failing shows that you actually do something instead of just sitting in your comfort zone.

2. Learn from each failure

Though you need to make room for failure, you shouldn’t just fail. You need to fail intelligently. That means each failure should teach you something. Don’t just fail and get nothing out of it. Learn something from each failure that makes you better and better over time.

3. Fail fast

Time is precious, so if you failed then you’d better fail fast. Why? Because it will make you learn and improve faster. It will make you ready for the prime time sooner.

The key here is to shorten your feedback cycle. Find a way to get quick feedback on your effort so that you can adjust yourself soon. What you need to do is testing your idea in the real world as soon as possible. Don’t wait until everything is perfect. Instead, test it once it’s good enough and refine from there. The mantra of the open source world applies here: release early, release often.

Fear Is Not an Option

A big part of fear is fear of failure and that’s been covered above. Here are two more ways to apply this principle:

1. Take risks

Many people hesitate to work on something they aren’t familiar with because they are afraid of the unknown. But fear is not an option, so you should be willing to take risks. Explore new ideas. Experiment with new things. If you are successful, the reward could be huge. Even if you aren’t, you will still come out better than before.

2. Do things you are inconvenient with

Doing things you aren’t convenient with gives you the most opportunities for growth. Since you stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone, you will grow a lot. This isn’t easy to apply (for me, at least), but it’s something we should strive to do from time to time.

***

Is there anything else you learn from James Cameron’s statement? How do you befriend failure and cast out fear?

Photo by notsogoodphotography

Note: This is a guest post from Ayo Olaniyan of Discovering Purpose

Look at the picture closely: Is the glass half full or half empty?

The BBC website published a report Optimistic women ‘live longer’. This was based on a research carried out by a group of US scientists who studied 100,000 women to deduce pessimists had higher blood pressure and cholesterol; optimistic women had a 9% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause after more than eight years of follow-up.

The concept of this post isn’t targeted at women only; I believe the subject of optimism affects every individual going/living through life’s struggles each day. There have been various studies carried out on optimism and while I have a few reservations on extreme optimism, one can’t deny the role optimism plays in enhancing your personal growth.

What is optimism?

Optimism is looking at a more favorable side of events and simply anticipating the best possible outcome in any situation.

Sir Winston Churchill states ‘A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.’ What do you see?

A few months ago, I filled out the VIA Survey of Character Strengths by Martin Seligman (founder of Positive Psychology) and the results showed I was moderately optimistic.

It’s also important to note that there are elements of hope expressed in optimism.

Rick Snyder states ‘hope is a process of goal-directed thoughts that reflects both the belief that one can find pathways to the goal and has motivation based on one’s perceived capabilities or thinking.’

In no particular order, here are 45 benefits of optimism:

1. It gives you a reason for living.
2. It reduces the level of stress experienced.
3. Research shows that it increases longevity.
4. It enables you to handle and put your emotions in check.
5. It promotes happiness.
6. It promotes self respect and integrity
7. It enhances various coping skills developed in order to combat life’s struggles.
8. It forges persistence which is an essential trait required for achieving success.
9. It creates a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
10. It promotes healthy living.
11. It creates a positive anticipation of the future.
12. It increases your level of productivity.
13. It allows you to deal with failure constructively.
14. It allows you to develop the attribute of patience.
15. It makes you proactive.
16. It improves your physiological and psychological well being.
17. It enables you to take a balanced approach to life by dealing with the constant negative thoughts which spring up.
18. It increases the likelihood of effective problem solving.
19. It gives you peace of mind.
20. It enables you to generate an alternative, more hopeful explanation for various difficulties experienced.
21. It ensures you believe in your dream.
22. It creates a positive attitude.
23. It increases your tolerance levels because it lowers the risk of you being irritated by little things.
24. It allows you to develop the habit of being thankful.
25. It increases your level of motivation.
26. It builds successful careers by promoting productivity.
27. It promotes laughter.
28. It doesn’t give any room for self denial.
29. It welcomes any form of constructive change.
30. It creates positive expectations.
31. It sets your mood for the day.
32. It promotes positive relationships.
33. It builds resilience in the face of adversity.
34. It promotes self confidence and boosts self esteem.
35. It ensures you are focused.
36. It promotes bonding between individuals.
37. It reduces the level of your frustrations and worries.
38. It promotes forgiveness.
39. It enhances effective communication.
40. It increases your spiritual development and awakening.
41. It deals with your limiting beliefs which try to keep you from using your abilities.
42. It gives room for self expression.
43. It increases your mental flexibility.
44. It is therapeutic.
45. It improves your social life.

There are several ways optimism can be developed. They are as follows:

• Have realistic goals and expectations.
• Always remember you are human with a lot of imperfections.
• Acknowledge past events, but endeavor to manage the present with a view to creating a brighter future.
• Don’t fall into the trap of feeling hopeless.
• Be true to yourself.
• Network with people who show optimism in their daily lives.
• Believe in your dreams.

Once again, the aim of this post is to remind you of the benefits of optimism.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Ayo Olaniyan is a certified Unitive Life Coach. He is also an Accredited Professional Counsellor with the Counselling Society United Kingdom. He writes on how you can discover your purpose through personal development and self-awareness on the blog Discovering Purpose. He is also the publisher of The Life Skills Magazine.