Beat the Blues – With Natural Optimism

One of the most common causes of people today failing to achieve their best potential is a tendency to become depressed. With global recession, manmade and natural disasters wreaking havoc every day, and the many irritations of living your life in an increasingly complex world, no one can be blamed for occasionally heaving a sigh and wondering if things will ever improve. Fortunately, for most, something comes along to distract you from such gloomy thoughts, you get back on track, and life goes on.

For some people however, they seem to have had too many blows, too many things go wrong all at once, and they feel the classic symptoms of depression – locked in a place that they feel will never improve, they feel worthless, hopeless, guilty and sometimes angry at the situation they have got themselves into.

Perhaps everyone has had this type of feeling on occasion, but most will somehow pull through, and find for themselves, in the midst of the gloom, something positive and useful to do.

It is this ability to find the worth in a negative situation, and to be able to turn a bad experience into something from which you can learn and grow that will separate the world’s survivors, from those who will simply become depressed and go down in the undertow. 

People have different ideas about what is depressing and what might be a disaster for one person might be easily managed by another. That in itself gives a clue to the fact that all experience of depression is in fact subjective – there are no universal events or factors which will give you depression – only your attitude to them. Even events such as bereavements, job losses, loss of your home, major injury or illness do not need to cause you to have depression. You might have grief, and anger or pain, but you will find that depression is not the same as these most natural emotions, depression happens when you get stuck in a place where how you want things to be, simply is not going to happen.

People such as sportsmen, entertainers, salespeople or anyone who is focused on a goal, will often feel depressed if the goal cannot for one reason or another be achieved. If that failure continues to be the only focus of a person’s life, then they will continue to feel a failure and depressed. When a person meets with a failure, in order not to become depressed, they need to move on from the moment, and look for what they can do next. It has been said that it is not how many times a man is knocked down that forms his character – but how many times he gets up. That is the key to beating depression – no matter how low you feel, reach out to others, take what help you can get, realize that life is not about what happens to you, but how you deal with it, and you will start to get your life back on track.

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Learn To Accept Change

It may not be very easy to exactly pin point where personal development would begin or end. But we could comfortably say that anything that involves an aspect that could lead to your own individual transformation can get included in personal development. This all revolves around a resolution that one makes to try and become a better person than they were yesterday. When we get to look inwards, we try and improve the person that we discover, as opposed to when we try and compete with another individual. Personal development is all about you against any form of mediocrity you find in you and would like to see an improvement.

Those who have undergone any form of personal development training realize the importance of beginning by writing down all that you are and what you intend to do about it. It does not have to be anything complex. The simpler it is the easier it becomes to relate with it and accomplish. When you put things down in pen and paper it helps your mind to actually clarify them to make them realties. And since this kind of plan is personal, it should not appear as if it is cast in concrete, so there should be freedom and flexibility as and when circumstances allow.

The good news about a successful self development plan is that you can actually begin today or as soon as you finish reading this article, and it really may not matter how fast or how far you go. You can take your baby steps by building on what you learn on the first day you decide to do something about yourself. You need to learn how to make your agenda into a goal that can be broken down into small achievable steps. The advantage of doing this is that when you achieve one small feat, you have the incentive and motivation to move on to another one with the knowledge that you can actually make because you will have results on your side.

As a good student in the self development school you can save yourself a lot of valuable time and energy learning from the examples and experiences of other people. If people have made mistakes from particular choices you can get to avoid such because experience may never be the best of teacher. Someone said if you let experience be your only teacher, time will teach you the bitterly cold truth, but will take your youth in exchange. One of the easiest ways to learn from other people is by reading self development books and picking all the golden nuggets you find in there to make them your own.

If there is one thing that you must realize and take real note of, is that the only consistent thing on earth is change. Learn to accept the fact that change is inevitable and you will be best placed to survive if you can anticipate change and be able to adapt to it as soon as you realize it is there to stay. People all through history have had to change their belief systems and their ideas about many things and systems. You can imagine that if it were not for change, all the development you see today would simply be in the minds of people

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Why You Should Blog

A decade ago, had you mentioned a “blog” to just about anyone, they would have looked at you as though they thought you had gone mad. Even today there are many who don’t even know what a blog is, but their numbers are growing ever smaller compared to those who not only know, but blog enthusiastically themselves. In fact, the word blog has become more and more frequently used both as a verb and a noun. “I blogged about this” or “I wrote about it on my blog” are sentences that are technically possible, if a little self-involved. There is a persistent strain of opinion which holds that blogging is the preserve of the self-obsessed and conceited, but this is to do a tremendous disservice to the medium and many of its practitioners.

There are many different ways one can approach a personal blog. Some find that it is a good place to vent about things that have upset them, while simultaneously a good way of communicating positive feelings. Others may get creative with their blog and build up something of a character around it. Some of the most popular blogs are read by millions worldwide, considered by many to be better than a soap opera due to the interactivity that a good blog can have. Others just enjoy putting up opinions and observations, either inviting or at least not discouraging feedback. If all of this sounds a bit like a glorified diary, you’re close, but not quite there. A diary is, after all, intended to be extremely personal while a blog is very much shaped by its potential for wider readership.

So far we have seen blogs turned into books, films and TV shows, and we have further to that seen the medium itself take several different shapes. “Vlogging” is now an entity in itself, differing from blogging in that practitioners do not so much write about their subjects as speak directly to camera and post the video content on a blog, or on the popular video hosting site YouTube. Everyone with a webcam and a microphone, or with a modern cell phone, can now be the star of their own video show. This medium has the further advantage above blogging of being more demonstrative. Words typed sarcastically on a blog can become damaging by virtue of the fact that typing has no inflection. When vlogged, they are better understood.

Of course, you don’t need to make your blog public. It can be as private or as open as you wish, and you can ring-fence it for only your friends to see. Top bloggers have made careers in the wider media, too, so if you have a gift for the written word it can be advantageous to let your opinions be read by an audience. You may simply want an easily archived journal of your thoughts. The only limits are those which you choose to place yourself – which in itself is good practice. It is generally better to keep some things for your eyes only.

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Rearrange Your House, Rearrange Your Life

The way in which you live your life is governed by so many factors that when you get into a rut it can be hard to know where to look first for improvement. Ordinarily, people tend to make improvements bit by bit, concentrating on improving one area of their life. Sometimes, though, it can be as good a bet to concentrate on something large, something that takes a good deal of effort but will have consequential effects that reach into the rest of your life, and can metaphorically blow away some of the dust in your daily routine while literally blowing away actual dust.

One way of doing this is to literally get your house in order. The human mind is often compared to a dwelling, and this is fitting because many of us spend a lot of time inside both. If you can get your house looking ship-shape and spring cleaned, then the effects can extend into your everyday life and make for a real boost to your personal contentment. Apart from anything, it has been proven time and time again that putting in physical effort releases endorphins and can get you smiling, even if the job itself seems like a gargantuan task to begin with.

It helps to go room by room. If you are somewhat daunted by the prospect of totally rearranging your place of dwelling, then you should start small. Rearranging your bedroom or your kitchen is a process that can take less than half a day and make you feel like you have really accomplished something. If you believe in Feng Shui, it can even be an opportunity to test out some ideas and literally spring clean your life.

As well as the above factors, there is another side benefit – the fact that in spring cleaning rushes you will almost always turn up one or more things that you thought had been lost forever. Some of these things will bring up happy memories, and if the memories they dredge up are less happy it is still an opportunity to do something about it – a small bonfire of the bad parts of the past may be just the thing you need in order to move forward happily and with confidence.

Moving from room to room you will feel as though you are getting a fresh start, another chance to get life rolling again, and you will also almost certainly free up space. We all talk about liking a bit of space in our lives, and although the term is largely metaphorical it can also work literally. If you are sick of weaving your way past things in order to get to your seat, then the difference that is made by opening up floor space can have emotionally beneficial effects as well. When everything is done it can be the ideal excuse to sit back, relax and enjoy some treats that you have promised yourself (possibly as a bribe to encourage you to work). A party may be in order, and one thing is certain – you will sleep like a fairytale character once it’s all done.

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Should You Accept Negative Behaviours From Others?

Don’t Accept Negative Behaviours From Others

All of us have some problems in our lives, but the last thing we need to do is hide from them. It seems like a good idea at the time – or at least it seems like the easiest thing to do. But the one certain thing in this situation is that hiding from the problem will mean that it comes back again and again, often worse the next time. Tackling problems head-on can be tricky – emotionally it is testing and this makes focusing difficult. It can be hard to find the inner strength – and all the more so when the problem is with another person. Tackling a problem with a friend or a family member – or any other individual – complicates the issue.

When another person is posing a problem for you it can be tempting to get angry behind their back, and when you are speaking to the responsible person act as if nothing is the matter. The nature of the problem can be anything. If they are a housemate, for example, and never do their part of the work around the house, this can make for a serious problem in dealing with them. If they are wonderful to live with in any other way – funny, supportive and good to talk to – then there may be a fear at the back of your mind. If you confront them over their lack of consideration around the house, will they stop being so much fun to be around? Probably not. Can you take that chance? Well, you probably should. Chances are they just don’t realize how important it is that they get involved.

Other problems can be considerably trickier to deal with, however. If someone is actively abusive – in a physical or emotional way – then confronting them about their behaviour is inevitably going to be a great deal more stressful. Maybe they are behaving this way as a result of some past experience that they have had, but their behaviour is still flat-out wrong. It’s obviously not that straightforward, though – if they are already being abusive in some way, how do you stop them from stepping up that behaviour if they do not like what you have to say to them? You may need support to do this – but seeking or accepting that support is not a sign of weakness.

When it comes down to it, negative behaviour from someone in your life can make your life a lot more stressful and make you depressed. The knock-on effects of this are harder for you, and harder for everyone. If the person concerned really does not know their behaviour is affecting you in a negative way they will not be angry at you for bringing it up, but pleased that you came to them with it and happy to have the chance to alleviate a problem for you. The only way you can get past a problem with someone else is to approach it realistically and sensibly, and it is something that you will look back on with relief rather than anxiety.

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Let’s Go Retro!

A lot of us tend to find life unnecessarily trying from time to time, and this is due in no small part to the repetition of it all. It is a regular complaint from people in various jobs or other situations that they find each day runs into the next, with no variety to break it all up. It feels like Groundhog Day to many of us, as we wish we could just break the cycle a little bit and do something different. Of course, just as many of us have a bad feeling about changing too radically – what if we don’t like the change, it’s too difficult to change back or it’s so costly to make the initial change that we leave ourselves out of pocket for what turns out to be no real reason?

Well, there is another way to change things, a way that doesn’t leave you high and dry from a financial point of view and which you can feel confident about enjoying. It is called “turning back the clock” by more than a few, and various other names by various people what it amounts to is doing the things you always used to enjoy, without entertaining the boring and inaccurate state of mind that says it is uncool to do such things. Think about it – you always used to enjoy something, before life got in the way and stopped you. Now that things have settled and you need something to give your days a bit of a shake-up, what better way of doing that than rediscovering something you’ve always loved?

It doesn’t much matter what it is. If the thing you always used to love doing was a physical exertion like a sport or dancing, you may find that you have got out of condition for it in the meantime. Whether this is enough to persuade you to give up on it is up to you, but you could find that the journey of getting back to where you used to be is as much fun as the feeling of actually being at that point. Maybe it is something like old-school video games. A lot of people say that video games are for kids, but most of those people have either never played one, or last played one when they themselves were kids – and things change a lot in the world of video games, sometimes very quickly.

The key point here is that there are many things which we give up before we really want to – sometimes because we genuinely have to and sometimes because we feel we must. Re-evaluating at some point along the way means that we can look at bringing these things back into our everyday lives, or as a weekly treat. It is a way of changing things up without having to make a jump into the unknown, and allowing ourselves to enjoy a pursuit that we already know how to do. As a side benefit, doing things you used to enjoy can make you feel younger, and we could all do with that from time to time.

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Reading for enjoyment

Many of us, in everyday life, spend a hefty proportion of our time reading. The reasons for this reading will vary from person to person. Mostly, though, it will either be for the purposes of keeping up with the news, or for work purposes. This is a perfectly good reason for reading, of course. There is, however, some sense of injustice in the fact that merely living is taking the element of fun out of something that we used to do almost entirely for pleasure. Reading a book just because we want to do so, as a simple pleasure, is something that disappointingly few of us are doing. There are numerous reasons for this, and they say a lot about how the meaner side of human nature has taken hold among many of us.

There is a sense among a sadly growing number of people that reading is simply something for the college kids and the wannabe intellectuals. Who reads for pleasure these days, people will seriously ask, when we have DVDs, cinemas and the TV for our entertainment? There is even an element of distrust shown towards those of us who like to read. It is a massive shame, but it seems that there is a tendency to dumb things down and to actually wear ignorance as a badge of honour. Just to clarify things, there is nothing shameful about cracking a book every once in a while and reading for fun. Don’t be concerned about people looking at you in a slightly dimmer way just because you enjoy the written word. It is something that gives life a bit of flavour. A good book can take you outside the confines of the everyday and turn free time into dream time.

Now, this is not an order to go out and read the classics. If you don’t like Shakespeare you don’t have to read him. If Dickens doesn’t do anything for you, don’t buy his books. It really isn’t about who you read, or even what you read. It’s about why. And the fact is that sometimes reading for pleasure can make a real difference. It relaxes you physically while at the same time exercising your mind. Even a fairly simple and pedestrian novel that won’t win any awards will keep your brain functioning at a higher level, exercise that it needs in order to keep operating at the level you are used to.

So, if you have a favourite childhood book that always used to make you laugh or smile, why not pick that up once more? If a friend is reading something that they deem excellent, ask if you can borrow it when they’ve finished with it. Reading just for the sake of pleasure is something that makes us richer as a people, and something that should survive the prospect of being sneered at. It really is good fun, and we should see it as such. Find a new favourite author and read as many books as you can find, and before too long you’ll be reading a couple of books a week!

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The Internet Can Aid Personal Growth Immensely

There are an awful lot of stereotypes directed at the Internet and its users, although to some extent these stereotypes are becoming less prominent. Regardless of the changing opinions of individuals, however, there is still a hard-wired impression that those of us who choose to spend a fair portion of our life online must be socially inadequate, and in some way not equipped to live a “normal life”. It should not be ignored that the people who express this impression most vocally are rarely much of a role model for anyone – and their unfounded prejudices may well suggest that they are quite the opposite. The Internet can, in fact, work excellently as a tool for personal development.

Think about it this way. If you are growing up in a relatively small town with very clearly defined values and preferences, and happen to grow up with a mindset that is at odds with those values and preferences, life can be pretty lonely. Geography in this sense is incredibly limiting. With the advent of the Internet, however, it has become possible for like minded individuals from locations poles apart to form strong bonds of friendship. There are caveats to this process, of course – taking people at face value is inadvisable – but these caveats are no more pronounced than those which arise when interacting with someone who is physically in the same room as you. It is always important to keep an eye out for people who are keen to dissemble and distract.

Online forums are one way of getting to know people who have similar interests. There are so many forums and message boards on the Internet, devoted to such a wide range of interests, that it would be quicker to name the subjects that are not catered to than those that are. Sports, music, politics, whatever interests you there is likely to be a community or two (or a few thousand) devoted to it. On here, you may get the kind of conversation that you simply cannot have with a geographical neighbour. In addition, it is an excellent way to get a bit of debating practice – by speaking to people whose opinions on your subject of interest differ from yours, you can build a greater understanding of matters, something which aids personal growth immensely.

Social networking sites are often viewed very dimly by media commentators and everyday skeptics. There is a certain selective interpretation of the medium in this – for one thing, the media commentators are a little concerned that they will cease to be as relevant, and secondly the most scathing attitudes to social networking are based on a hugely skewed sample. Yes, there are some complete and utter fools on these sites, and when their pronouncements are frozen for posterity online it is hard not to cringe. But some real deep thinkers also use these sites simply because they have so much difficulty finding like-minded people nearby. By using the Internet wisely, you can find people who are really worth talking to. Like anything else, it is a matter of knowing how to separate the good from the bad.

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Change You Can Believe In

If you spend more time than you used to complaining and feeling frustrated, chances are that you have fallen into a rut and it is bringing you down. Although we as humans are creatures of habit to a large extent, there is no getting away from the fact that every once in a while following the same routine gets boring. However much you may instinctively dislike change, it can be the answer when things get just that bit too dull – and it broadens your horizons to allow you the chance to appreciate new things.

There is no change that is too small to influence your life in some way. Even waking up ten minutes earlier in the morning can give you a new appreciation of something. But most of us want more sleep, not less, and it is understandable that we are protective of our duvet time. It is for this reason that you should look initially for changes that will be more fun. The definition of “fun” differs for us all, of course. Some people don’t see the point in watching or playing sport; others are left unsatisfied by the cinema. Fun is anything that makes you glad to have the opportunity to do it.

When it comes to dinner time, why not try something you have never eaten before? Pretty often, even when eating in a restaurant, we will skim over the pages of stuff that we are unfamiliar with, and select the same thing we always do. Instead of this, why not stop for a while on a page that you normally flick past and give it your time? Changing something as simple as your meal rotation can give you a little bit of a boost when you need it most.

Food is just an example, of course. Sometimes change for change’s sake is a good thing, pure and simple. If you go through life never trying anything different, you will miss out on one of the most enriching parts of life – variety. I don’t know if you have heard, but it is apparently the spice of life. And it can be a very valuable thing, too. Even changing the desktop picture on your computer can make a difference on a day when you are feeling laboured and unmotivated. Buying a different breakfast cereal can also do the job. The point is not the depth of the change, the point is change itself.

However weighed down you may feel, and however weather-beaten it is making you, there is a real value in facing it down and refusing to become embittered. Changing your outlook can be as simple as deciding that you are not going to keep to the old rules, and making a bold strike for freedom. Try changing one thing every day, no matter how small it is. The difference that it will make, cumulatively, can be the difference between a positive mindset and a negative one. It’s a difference worth making.

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Learning Language Can Be A Good Thing

For many of us, the reason that we want to change our life is because so much of it is stale. The everyday fact of doing the same thing again and again, and having a set routine, means that if there is anything that gets us down about life, it will be a recurring pain for us. To make our lives more enjoyable, what we require is a bit of a shake-up. Changing things around will give us something to get excited about and look forward to. Even a simple break from the norm can make a big difference.

Taking up a hobby is something that people often do to bring a bit more interest to their lives. What that hobby is, is truly limited only by our own imagination. What do you enjoy? If it is something that lends itself to a daily routine – or a weekly one – then it can be introduced into a pattern. Hobbies are alive with variety. All that matters about a hobby is that you find it enjoyable. Aside from that, the world is your oyster. But if it is something that you are taking up in order to introduce an aspect of fun to your life, you should make sure it has some sort of shelf-life.

One hobby that people like to take up is learning another language. When we are in school, it is often obligatory to choose a language as one of your elective subjects. Depending on where we are in the world, there may be a specific language that is compulsory. In Canada it will be French (or for French Canadians, English). In the US, it will often be Spanish. If we are not of a mind to enjoy school, we can come to associate a language with the boredom and restriction of a classroom. But often, once we have left school, we regret not having paid attention.

It may be directed towards future holidays in the country whose language you are learning, it may be directed towards being better able to understand a friend who speaks it as a first language. Or it may just be for the fun of it. Learning another language – off your own initiative – is a beneficial process. It allows you to exercise your brain, and makes you more receptive to the process of learning. When we have sought out an opportunity to learn, it is much easier to follow the learning process than if it is forced upon us.

In learning another language you learn so much more than just the words and the rules of the language. A language is formed by the culture in which it has arisen. So by learning the language you learn a lot about the people who speak it and the country or countries where they live. There can be a lot of secondary learning opportunities. Early on in a subject’s vocabulary you will learn about food, for example. This can play directly into learning about how to make the dishes whose names you have learned. So by learning French, you will learn French culture, French cuisine… the options open up the longer you go on.

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