With personal finance, as with so many areas of life, we have a tendency to swing between extremes. Often, an excess of spending – with accompanying credit card debt, clutter and stress – prompts us to take a good hard look at our finances. We make all sorts of good resolutions: a plan to reduce our debt, a savings account for our emergency fund, and so on … and somewhere along the way, we pick up the idea that we should only spend money on absolute essentials.

We might start off sensibly, cutting down on unnecessary spending to put some money aside for the future. But before long, we end up obsessing about every penny, denying ourselves even tiny treats like a weekly coffee or a magazine, because it’s a “waste of money”.

Are You Enslaved by Your Money?

Usually, being “enslaved” by our financial situation means we’re in debt, struggling to stay afloat. But I feel that there’s another sort of enslavement which we can fall into: forgetting that money is just a tool for us to use in whatever way we want.

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There is a funny concept among the softly-spoken, the meek, the apologetic excuse-makers that there is some ‘kind’ of person who is confident, capable and calm in the face of adversity. The have-nots usually disempower themselves further by making an assumption that confidence is like a genetic trait, written into the DNA of some, and left out of the chromosomes of another. It’s not, it’s a lie.

Confidence is a con – it’s a lie to yourself that you can be whatever you want to be. The trick is that confident people have mastered the ability of self-delusion, and once deluded, the lie becomes real – for being confident is simply imagining yourself as already confident. That will spread a perception among others, who will react to your new-found power as if it’s you, which will reinforce your behavior and presto-change-o, you are one of the confident people.

One cannot imagine oneself taller, and no matter what ‘The Secret’ tells you – you cannot imagine yourself a new sports car, but you can imagine yourself being confident and become it, immediately.

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When you’re nine years old, Aunt Jessie presses her powdered face to yours and whispers, “Now don’t you ever tell anyone what you saw. Your mother would just die.”

This is a scary thing to a child—to be entrusted with a secret that has so much power if could kill someone. Aunt Jessie probably didn’t mean to scare you like that, but words have power. Silence in the face of wrong has power. And when we begin to write our memoirs, we can get caught up in the webs of the past. Sometimes these webs are so tangled that we stop writing.

Memoirists struggle with the issue of revealing secrets as they search how to tell their own powerful, and sometimes shameful, truths. Secrets maintain a great power over us, and we are diminished by them. We become co-conspirators to the family dynamics that we don’t agree with and want to break away from. So we get caught in a conflict—to speak or not to speak. To remain closed and complicit, or to open up and take the risk of losing friends and family or shamed once again into submission. These conflicts haunt people all their lives, solidifying the silence. The way out of being trapped in the past is to write our own truths, but first it helps to get clear about the program that lives in our head.

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Would you like to have more money in your pocket – without having to do any extra work? For many of us, the easiest way to boost our savings is to cut back on how much we’re spending. Whether you’re channeling money into an emergency fund, or whether you’ve got your heart set on that dream vacation, saving an extra few hundred dollars each month might seem out of reach right now. But there are plenty of ways to cut what you spend, without missing out on what you love. I’m listing five big wins below – rather than giving you a bunch of little tips. Even one of these could easily save you $100+ per month.

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Why do you think you feel bad when you see a poor miserable homeless man in the street? Apart from feeling guilty for not helping poor people there are still some sad emotions that you will experience upon seeing anybody who suffers.

Do you know why you experience these emotions? It’s because you experienced some of the man’s pain at the moment you saw him.

We humans usually absorb some of the emotions of the person we are watching or listening to and then experience a change in our own mood even though nothing bad has happened to us, personally.

Emotions are communicated to the people we deal with

Why do you think you feel scared in horror movies when you see actors feeling scared? It’s because their emotions were communicated to you through their gestures and facial expressions.

Why do you think we like confident people? Confident people transfer their emotions to us and make us feel relaxed and calm.

On the other hand people who are anxious unconsciously transfer to us some of their anxiety and this makes us feel uneasy around them.

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A couple of weeks ago I had a bad day. Actually, it was a terrible day. Every piece of news I got was disappointing. Did it affect me? I still have bruises from the rock I tried to hide under.

Guess what? In the coming weeks you will have a bad day, too. Whether you are an entrepreneur launching a new product, an employee aiming for a promotion, or simply someone going after a big goal in your other 8 hours, you will experience disappointment and setback. How you respond to disappointment could determine your eventual success or failure. Why? A really bad day can, at best, cause you to lose momentum, and at worst, cause you to lose your will to continue.

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Does Social Anxiety Keep You from Fully Enjoying Life?

Sharon would later cheerfully admit that she had been dreading meeting me; but for now, it was still a sickening nightmare.

Social anxiety is more than just shyness. Just thinking about meeting or mingling with others can cause a pounding heart, shaky voice, rapid breathing, sweating, blushing, an upset stomach… It’s no wonder it sometimes feels easier to avoid other people completely.

For Sharon, even seeing people she’d met many times before – such as family, friends, and colleagues – felt like an ordeal imagined by the Spanish Inquisition. Actually, it was curious:

“I’m okay in a work context or when things are a bit more formal. I know what to talk about. But as soon as it’s kind of unorganized – you know, just mixing with other people – I go to pieces. It’s like I need a well-defined focus or I panic!”

Social anxiety spoils life by getting in the way of what should be fun opportunities to connect with others. Crippling self-consciousness, nervousness, not knowing what to say: all add to the unpleasant mix.

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“Which Direction I (You Are Here)” Courtesy of Vido Drago

Whether you’re studying on a college program, for a career qualification, or just for personal interest, you’ll want to make a success of it. But few of us have the luxury of being able to just study – life has to go on as well.

You’ve probably already figured out that having a plan helps you to study consistently (rather than giving up, or cramming in hours of work just before exams). But how can you make sure you actually stick to the plans which you’ve made?

Be Realistic

Firstly, be realistic. Many of us are prone to over-estimating how much we can get done – and studying is a high-energy, intense activity which requires a lot of concentration. You simply can’t focus at that level for hours at a time.

Sometimes, being realistic about your studying plans might mean looking at the other commitments in your life. Do you need to ditch something else in order to have time to study effectively? Can you cut down on social activities to give yourself a couple of weeknights free for studying?

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“Ghost Stories” courtesy of Nendo/Wallpaper

“I see dead people.”

Do you remember the film that came from? It was the The Sixth Sense and the little boy was Haley Joel Osment.

There is a good chance that you see them too. Really.  They may not have zombie faces or hide under the bed in the shadows but I guarantee – you do see them.

And possibly all the time.

What do I mean?

Well, first I don’t mean that you see ghosts or spirits. I’m talking real people who you have known.

Kooky?

Only for a minute. Read on.

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This article should not be scanned or read quickly, but instead each word must be read carefully, absorbed by your mind so it can be applied properly. The main reason I began the article with such an introduction is that even though it is not that long it contains a summary of extremely important discoveries that I made over the past 10 years – discoveries that when applied have infinitely improved my life.

These discoveries will help you understand exactly why you sometimes feel helpless, unmotivated or indifferent and at the same time, will tell you how to overcome all of these emotions and become unstoppable.

What does being ‘unstoppable’ mean?

Over the past couple of years I kept examining the differences between people that are resilient and others that seem helpless. I was eagerly trying to find out if there was a set of methods or actions that could be followed to make someone really unstoppable and I was right.

Before I tell you how to become unstoppable lets first ask the question, what does being unstoppable mean? Does it mean being superior or omnipotent?

Being unstoppable means that you will be a person who will always be able to reach your goals whatever the circumstances are.

If you become unstoppable you might still feel sad or down at times,  just like anybody else, but the main difference between you and ordinary people is that within few days your energy will be recharged, you will find yourself fighting again for what you believe in and you will continue going until you get what you want.

Being unstoppable means that life problems will never stop you from reaching what you want whatever happens.

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