L 769

The Power of Less

Focusing on the essential produces the most results for the least efforts. If you try to tackle everything that grabs your attention, you’ll constantly find yourself stressed, overwhelmed and burned out. Simplicity is the art of focusing only on what’s essential to your goals and your personal satisfaction and ignoring the rest.

You must set limits, they don’t set themselves.

The essence of prioritizing is deciding not to do something. Without limits, we mistakenly assume that everything is important and also assume that we will be able to do whatever is necessary to get everything done. If we don’t set limits we tend to waste time and energy working beyond the point of Diminishing Returns.

Parkinson’s Law states that, “work expands to fill the time allotted.” That’s why it’s easy to work until you collapse, surf the internet endlessly and spend too much money on things that don’t really matter.

Focus on only one thing at a time. Multitasking is a myth. Our brains are only capable of truly paying attention to one thing at a time. When we think we are multitasking, all we’re really doing is rapidly switching the focus of our attention from one task to the next. Every time your focus shifts, it takes your mind a while to load the information it needs to operate effectively.

Limit your active goals and projects to no more than 3-4 at a time. It preserves your focus and attention, allowing you to actually accomplish your most important objectives quickly and move on to next.

Establish 3 Most Important Tasks (MITs) everyday and do these before working on anything else. Try to finish these MITs as quickly as possible. Once you accomplish your MITs, the rest of the day is a bonus.

Batch similar tasks together to preserve your focus. Every time you switch the object of your focus, you lose a great deal of productivity – the immoral Cognitive Switching Penalty. To avoid the penalty, it pays to find ways to switch your focus less often. Batching is the practice of grouping similar tasks together, then tackling them all at once. Errands or daily chores are best to batch. Eg. Checking emails once or twice instead of checking every 5 minutes. Or how productive would it be to drive to the grocery store every time you want to buy a single item? Putting what you need on a list, then buying everything at once is clearly more efficient. Doing multiple errands at once, like going to the post office right before you go grocery shopping is even better.

Installing positive habits is easiest when you start small, then build on your early success. Installing habits takes willpower and willpower is very limited resource. For best results, focus only on installing or changing one habit at a time and start with small increments. Even the smallest win motivates you more than the slightest failure. Whatever you do focus on ONE (and only one) habit at a time. Practice that until it becomes second nature requiring no thought or willpower to do everyday.

Consciously minimize your active commitments and don’t be afraid to say ‘no’ to new ones. The truth is your time, attention and energy are limited. When you overwhelm yourself with commitments, you’re shortchanging the most important activities that will contribute the most to your productivity, satisfaction and success. You’re also shortchanging the less important commitments since they’re competing with all of the other critically important projects in your world.

Slow down, pay attention and enjoy the process. Looking back on life, one of the most common regrets people express at the end of their lives is that it all went too quickly, and they didn’t focus enough on what was clearly the most important – family, friends, important contributions and enjoying the small moments of life.

When all is said and done, no one really cares how many zeros you have in your bank balance, what your job title is, or how many followers you have on Twitter. Recent research indicates that memorable experiences do impact your happiness and life satisfaction, so it pays to focus on ways to create memorable experiences. Slowing down and mindfully enjoying your daily experience of life is simple, effective and free.

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L 742

Remember, you have the capacity to choose. CHOOSE Life! Choose Love! Choose Health!

You do not have to be influenced by destructive heterosuggestion. All of us have suffered from it in our childhood and in our teens.

Auto suggestion is a means releasing you from the mass of negative verbal conditioning.

You must make certain to give your subconscious only suggestions which heal, bless, and elevate to inspire you in all your ways.

L 730

Happiness is not about getting all you want, it is about enjoying all you have.

L 729

” Happiness is crazy mathematics. It multiplies when you start dividing it.”

ख़ुशियाँ भी अजीब गणित है ; जब आप उसे डिवाइड, बाँटना चाहते हैं , उतना ही गुणा होता जाता है ।

Learning 696

Rather than being out of touch with your body, you should focus on your physical sensations.

When someone lets you down, it’s easy to lose your temper. When the author discovered that her son had failed yet again to do his homework, her first impulse was to angrily confront him. But then she opted for a different approach.

Before storming into her son’s room, she stopped and focused on the physical sensations her body was experiencing.

Amazingly, she felt herself calming down. Instead of concentrating on her furious thoughts and rushing toward a confrontation with her son, she focused her attention on how the anger was making her body feel. As soon as she became aware of her own body, she felt tenderness replace her anger.

She realized her anger was making her whole body tighten and her chest felt as if it was about to explode.

By becoming more attuned to how she was feeling, she became more attuned to how her son was feeling. This empathy helped her find the right things to say when she later had a conversation with him.

Remembering the connection between body and mind will help you make better decisions. Unfortunately, most of us remain out of touch with our bodies to the extent that we inhabit an entirely mental world.

We don’t pay enough attention to our physical sensations from moment to moment because we’re always planning what we’ll do next. For example, even when you hug a close friend, have you ever calculated how long you should embrace until you pull away?

This is too bad, since fully experiencing physical sensations, both positive and negative, can offer a sense of being alive and connected with every part of life. Even feeling the rain on your face can awaken your senses if you let yourself focus on the experience for long enough.

Learning 695

Truly  enlightened  people,  those  who experience  deep happiness  daily,  are  prepared to  put  off  short-term  pleasure  for the  sake  of long-term  fulfillment. 

So  they  tackle  their  weaknesses and  fears head  on,  even  if  dipping  into  the  zone  of  the unknown brings  with  it  a  measure  of discomfort.  They  resolve  to  live  by  the wisdom  of  kaizen,  improving  every  aspect  of themselves ceaselessly  and  continuously.  With time,  things  that  were  once difficult  become easy.  Fears  that  once  prevented  them  from all the happiness,  health  and  prosperity  they deserved  fall  to  the  wayside like  stickmen toppled  by  a  hurricane.

Happiness  comes  through  the progressive realization  of  a  worthy  objective.  When  you are  doing what you  truly  love  to  do  you  are bound  to  find  deep  contentment.

Doing  what  you  love,  whether  this  means giving  up  the  work  you  are  presently  doing to  become  an  actor  or spending  less  time  on those  things  that  are  less  important  to  make time  for  those  things  that  are  more meaningful,  requires  a  great deal  of  courage.

It  requires  you  to  step  out  of  your  comfort zone. And change  is  always  a  little uncomfortable  at  first.  It  is  also  more than  a little  risky.  Having  said  this,  this  is  the  surest way  to  design a  more  joyful  life.

Once  you  get  yourself  together, your  world will  be  okay.  Once  you  master  your  mind, body  and character,  happiness  and  abundance will  flow  into  your  life  almost magically.  But you  must  spend  some  time  daily  working  on yourself,  even  if  for  only  ten  or  fifteen minutes.

Learning 691

People often resist happiness, but controlled breathing can help us overcome this fear.

No one said life would be easy, and sometimes it can really feel like an endless swamp of problems, but ask yourself this: Are you really prepared for a life of happiness?

Can you even imagine an entire day without having something to complain about?

Everyone has their own inner resistance to happiness, an oddly human trait that deserves some close scrutiny.

Despite spending a lot of time and energy striving for happiness, human beings aren’t especially comfortable or skilled at feeling good or being at peace.

School teaches us a lot of things, but there are no high school classes on how to deal with success and happiness.

If you were to take the time to look within and uncover why you resist happiness, the answer would likely be related to fear – a fear of achieving your full potential.

Because here’s the thing: when you become the best you can be, that means there’s no more excuse for why you aren’t making your dreams come true.

This is a fear that must be conquered if you truly want success and happiness. Taking the big leap into a life of happiness requires a great deal of confidence.

So let’s explore the ways you can learn to overcome this fear and start taking the right kinds of risks.

The first technique for breaking the fear barrier is breathing.

Back in the mid-1900s, psychiatrist Fritz Perls developed Gestalt therapy, which recognized that fear is, essentially, a sort of breathless excitement.

With some focused breathing, you can transform that fear into a positive and powerful excitement that can be used to make great things happen.

Let’s say you’re about to take the stage for a performance or to give a speech. The common reaction to a scary situation like this is for our breath to become constricted, which only makes the fear stronger.

But if you take a moment to breathe deeply, you can take control and transform the fear into the powerful energy that lets you take the stage and captivate your audience.