Before you open another door, follow this three-step process:  Stop. Pause. Enter. It might take an extra 10 seconds, but doing this will help you become more conscious of your objectives and help you connect with your spouse, children, boss, mother-in-law, or whomever.

If you’re like me, you have a thousand things you’re thinking about and commitments you’re juggling. You’re probably bouncing from one thing to another, trying to keep it all together. You might feel overwhelmed, overworked, and mentally exhausted. You also might spend a good deal of your mental energy focused on the future — wondering how you should reply to that email from your nosy colleague, thinking about your grocery list, or even daydreaming about your upcoming vacation.

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“Into The Bloom” courtesy of PopArtMachine

I’m sure you’ve noticed that a lot gets said about productivity – not just here on Pick the Brain, but around the web. We’re always keen to squeeze a little bit more out of our day, fighting against all the interruptions and distractions of modern life.

It’s easy to end up struggling much harder than you need to, though, by trying to be productive in the wrong ways, at the wrong times. Working with your body clock and your natural peaks and troughs of energy lets you maximize your productivity all day long … rather than struggling through several miserable hours by sheer willpower, only to end up too tired and tetchy to carry on working.

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I was a touring comedian for ten years and a very successful one at that; in fact, I hold the entertainment industry record of 106-straight weeks touring on the road. At the same time, I managed to retain my anonymity, which was important to me. In those ten years touring, I met tens of thousands of audience members after shows. The most common opening phrase they used? “I wish I could . . .” followed by their goal or dream that they just didn’t know how to go about achieving. In small towns, it was often just “I wish I could move to a big city where I could have some options.” (Small town people often feel trapped and because of it often become so.)

I found myself uttering the same phrase back in college at nineteen. Mine was, “I wish I knew how to figure out what I should do with my life.” Whether you wish for a new career or better life or more money or to lose weight or to become a rock star, it really all boils down to the same wish: You wish you knew how to make better choices.

It’s choices that determine how much money you make, your career, whether you realize your dreams, who you date, how much weight you lose or gain, and so forth. It’s what I really wished for at nineteen, as well. “I wish I could make better choices.”

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You’ll cut back and forth between lanes on the freeway to save a minute or two from your commute. You’ll analyze and obsess over choosing the shortest and fastest checkout line at your grocery store.  And you probably even reply to emails while on conference calls. You do all of these things and more while telling yourself you need to use your other 8 hours as efficiently as possible. But there’s a HUGE difference between using your time productively and investing your time effectively.

Some activities are clear cut. Watching the same Seinfeld episode for the 15th time or playing online poker provides little growth or substance beyond adding entertainment and levity to the day, but what about all of those activities that trick us into thinking we’re using our time smartly when we’re really just wasting time?

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You own the code. This code is not a secret and it doesn’t have to be broken or translated in order to understand its meaning. All you have to do is to make the choice to enter the code into any aspect of your life to begin receiving what you want.

Whether it’s improving relationships, losing weight, finding success at work, or making more money, the code is applicable to all areas of life and uses the exact same logic. The code isn’t hidden in a secret vault; it can be found in clear sight when we choose to look for it and then use it.

Getting Past Go

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to getting what you want is to just get going. Sometimes after you make the decision that “I will [fill in the blank with your goal]” you begin to hear “I can’t do it because…”

These self-limiting tapes perpetuate the lie that either (a) you are not worthy to have what you want, or (b) negative self-talk will begin to convince you that you are not able to do what you want to do. The lie begins to win and its power is seemingly too great to overcome.

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Have you ever started off a project feeling really enthusiastic about it – perhaps even to the point that you were losing sleep? Whether it was a new business direction, or book, or piece of art, or home improvement, or diet … it had you gripped. In the early stages, you found yourself thinking about it in the shower, jotting down ideas in the evening, wondering “what if…”

But somewhere along the way, you simply lost motivation. Perhaps you let your diet slide for a while and just couldn’t get up any enthusiasm to restart. Maybe you stopped writing your novel for months, and stopped caring too. Or you woke up one day and realised you dreaded grinding through any more of the steps in that business plan.

We know what it’s like to be motivated – and we know what it’s like to be unable to sustain that motivation. Here’s how to make sure you stay consistently motivated: so that you don’t burn out or lose interest.

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Image courtesy of Hemmy.net (Creative Photography)

In every economic crisis, there have been those individuals who have emerged from the aftermath even more financially secure. Luck has something to do with it, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. In order to rise up and get ahead, you need to shift paradigms. You need a new way to look at and interact with the world. Fortunately, it’s as simple as re-learning your ABCs.

In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin taught us the ’80s ABCs: “A-always, B-be, C-closing. Always be closing!” But that’s old school. The new ABCs are Always Be Creating. People who create will be the people who succeed and excel. If you can create, you can write your own check.

I know what you’re thinking: work stinks. They’re talking about more layoffs, bonuses are out of the question, and you have to pitch in more for health insurance. Your 401(k) is in shambles, and your house is worth 40 percent less than it was a couple of years ago. The vision you had for your life has been seriously challenged. All you feel like doing when you come home is kicking back, cracking open a Heineken, and watching the tube. That’s understandable, but it’s absolutely bass ackwards.

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As a coach, I often work with people on achieving goals. Starting a business. Changing careers. Getting in shape.

I’ve learned that under every goal, there is an equation the goal-seeker has made up: If I do x, I will feel y. If I run my own business, I’ll feel a greater sense of control over my life. If I find a job I enjoy, I’ll feel happier and more energetic. If I get into shape, I’ll feel more secure about my health and more attractive.

This hypothesis then guides our actions. As a next step, we spend a lot of time and effort on x goal, believing it will be a means to feeling y. Sometimes we are right in our hypothesis, and often not. Research shows that humans are actually quite bad at predicting what will bring us happiness.

The more I work with people on their goals, the more odd it seems to me that we focus our energy on a particular goal, when what we really want is the desired change in feeling. Why don’t we focus on the feeling?

When I work with clients to focus on the new feeling they want to create, they find a wealth of options for getting there, including many that are available right now.

This is what I call “The Goals Shortcut” and its awesome power is that it allows you to feel the way you want to feel right now – not way off in the distant future after a goal has been achieved.

It has five simple steps.

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Let me be clear: I don’t believe in instant confidence as a permanent cure for confidence issues. I think what works in the long run is changing the thinking patterns and belief system which feed insecurities. And this cannot be done in an instant. It take times and persistent action.

I do however believe there are often situations when you don’t have the time to build confidence by addressing the roots and you need an instant boost for your confidence. There are strategies for this, which work a lot like a patch over a wound, with a temporary but also positive effect. This is why from my perspective, this discussion makes sense.

Do a simple search on this topic and you will actually find dozens of tips and tricks for instant confidence. Which always leads me to one simple question: which ones work the best and are truly worth applying?

Having tested a lot of them myself, as well as having seen even more of them at work in my activity as a coach, I’ve selected a couple of them, which I believe to be the most effective strategies for instant confidence. Here they are:

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You might think the reason I chose this title was to grab your attention but the truth is that several experiments* have been conducted on animals with the purpose of discovering how the brain works and how the results can be used to improve humans life – proving once more that animals are a lot more than just Man’s best friend.

Many animals have similar systems to the ones we have, and by applying the results of some of the experiments to  human beings have uncovered several methods of improving human life.

The monkeys that learned fear:

Monkeys that don’t fear snakes were introduced to some snakes while being forced to listen to loud, scary noises. Some monkeys learned to fear snakes as a result of this experiment but what’s more astonishing is that when monkeys that didn’t fear snakes were allowed to see the fear response of monkeys that fear snakes they learned how to fear snakes too!!!

Conclusion: We learn to fear things when we associate them with another event, for example a child might fear darkness after associating it with the noisy sound that happened when his mother slammed the door of a dark room.

Moreover, if a child watched an adult reacting with fear to a certain situation the child will develop fear too!!

The frog that died in the boiling water:

When a group of frogs were thrown in boiling water they jumped out of the pot very quickly and managed to survive. However, when the same frogs were put into cold water that was slowly heated, all of them perished when the water came to a boil, because they didn’t have time to react

Conclusion: We can feel sudden changes but when the change happens over time we don’t feel it until it is too late. People don’t develop bad habits over night nor do they experience severe behavior changes in a short period of time but everything happens bit by bit.

The Rats that failed to swim:

A researcher brought some wild rats, ones that are known to be able to swim for 80 hours continuously, then frightened them by making them believe that they were stuck before throwing them in water.

Many of the wild rats died after a few minutes of swimming! The rats didn’t drown due to lack of ability but at some point they just gave up swimming and died!!

When the rats felt in control they were able to swim for many hours but as soon as they felt that they were not in control they lost hope and drowned.

Conclusion: When we feel in control we can reach our maximum potential, while if we feel out of control we give up trying even if we have the required skills.

The dogs that learned to be helpless:

Few dogs were placed in room that has a switch that can either turn on electric current and shock the dogs or turn it off. When the dogs were first shocked they kept jumping around until one dog pushed the switch and discovered that the electric current stopped.

Later on whenever the electric shock was turned on the dogs rushed to turn it off using the switch. These dogs were split into two groups where the first group remained in the same room while the second one was placed in a similar one that had a faulty switch.

When the second group was shocked the dogs tried to push the switch but nothing happened. The second group of dogs were returned to the first room then were shocked again but this time they never tried to push the switch!!!

The dogs learned to become helpless as a result of feeling helpless after pushing the faulty switch!!

Conclusion: No one is born helpless but we learn how to become helpless when we face certain situations that we fail to deal with. Always try to do something about your problems because if you didn’t act you might develop learned helplessness!!

*this article is not in any way an endorsement of animal testing

Farouk Radwan is a Guest Blogger for PickTheBrain and the founder of 2KnowMyself.com – The ultimate source for self understanding  9,000,000 Million visits and counting…

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