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Here are several ways to ensure that you live a boring meaningless sad depressing crappy life

1. Let fear control your life
   There are all kinds of fears including fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of change, fear of uncertainty, etc. If you let fear control your life you will just become a comfort zone zombie. How do you work on your fears? You simply make a conscious decision to gradually get out of your comfort zone.
2. Live for others validation
   Validation is just another word for acceptance. Peer pressure is easy to spot among teenagers. It’s adult version is seeking others validation or acceptance and caring what everyone thinks. Stop caring what everyone thinks.
3. Become a fan
   Every famous rock star has lots and lots of fans. Fans are usually very reactive, they are acting in reaction to the rock star’s actions. The rock star takes the action of getting on stage, and the fans react by cheering. The rock star makes news in the tabloids or magazines and the fans react by admiring him or trash-talking him.
   In the same way, often times we live our lives like fans. When we are out we are looking around at others to entertain us. Instead of creating an exciting life of our own we become fans of the people in reality tv shows. Since we don’t have anything exciting going on in our lives we gossip about others.
   Here is a quick tip to build an exciting rock star lifestyle:
   Travel more, here are some cheap flight and hotel fares to great destinations.
4. Think too much
   Being smart and intelligent is a blessing yet it can be a curse at times. One bad thing about being a smart intelligent human being is the ability to rationalize any action whether it’s good or bad. For example I’m sure you can come up with 10 reasons why you can’t follow the last tip I gave about booking a quick fun trip. I’m sure you can even give me 10 more reasons why you need to put it off. However the sad truth is that most people rationalize, and live very crappy boring lives, is that what you want? Very few people live a life without regrets. Sometimes you need to just stop thinking and start doing.
5. Stick to your little tribe
   Having close friends and a stable social circle is necessary and rewarding. However it can be limiting. In addition to staying in touch with your current friends, you should be always trying to meet new diverse people. Meeting a new people will help you learn more about yourself and develop. Every time you meet a new person it’s like seeing your reflection in the mirror. If there are things about them that you like and admire, you realize that maybe those are some strengths that you have and just need to develop more. If there are things about them you dislike, you learn more about your personal values and you might even discover some of your insecurities. Seeing your reflection in the mirror is just another way of stating that we project our strengths (as likes) and insecurities (as dislikes) onto others.
6. Have a closed mind
   We often hold on to our past perceptions and judgments. This tricks us into thinking that we are all knowing and even makes us feel a false sense of security. Sadly this will lead to a very predictable boring life. Each day will be the same routine, with the same thoughts and mostly even the same actions. Try this for a change, think of yourself as a clean slate. Approach life with the open mindedness of a child.
7. Think inside the box
   It’s interesting, I still remember a very influential English literature teacher in college who always encouraged thinking outside of the box. While he was a very passionate teacher, he failed to tell us one important thing. He didn’t tell us how to cultivate thinking outside of the box or thinking in more creative ways. According to him some people had this ability and others didn’t. An easy way to start thinking outside the box and to increase your creativity is by learning different kinds of performance arts including acting, improv or standup comedy, singing, or how to play a musical instrument. Learning performance arts will increase your creativity in every other area of your life, especially if you are a very smart logical person.
8. Be negative
   It’s easy to be negative. It helps us create more excuses to why we can’t achieve more success in our lives. Different studies have shown that most of our negative thoughts or worries never come true anyways. This is why you should cut off negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones. Positivity will make you happier and more successful in the long run. Most of the very successful people that I’ve met tend to be overly optimistic and very positive. Even in the worst of situations they will still find a positive way to look at things.
9. Hate yourself
   Do you love yourself? Think carefully about this. I always thought my lifestyle was okay, maybe a bit above average but nothing too spectacular. Recently I discovered that I didn’t love myself. To love yourself you must take some time to discover what you really want out of life, and go for it. One of my personal preferences is staying sober and avoiding alcohol. There was a period where I was invited to different social events and was pressured into drinking, and after a few of those events I started developing a light depression, I even started feeling like I don’t deserve anything good in life. Once I started saying no to alcohol, or acted in line with my persona preference, I noticed I gradually started liking myself more. Ofter times loving yourself will mean putting your personal values and preferences before others. To love yourself more you need to take more actions that are in alignment with your personal values.

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. ~ William Feather

Perseverance, or persistent determination, is a common personal development topic, and therefore I will not be discussing perseverance in it’s traditional sense. What I will be discussing is smart perseverance. The problem with the traditional concept of perseverance is it’s vagueness. When should you persist and when should you just quit and move on? When is perseverance smart, and when is it just a waste of time?

Smart perseverance simply is a conscious persistent determination. It involves regularly evaluating each one of your goals and actions deciding whether or not you should keep going. The following tips will shed a lot more light on smart perseverance.

1. Pursue Your Heart’s True Desires.

   Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about. ~ Unknown

   A lot of the time we aren’t really going after what we want because of fear or insecurity. We end up pursuing lives that never even feel like they are truly our own, instead they are just what society and others consider appropriate. On your death bed do you want to look back on your life with regrets? This is why you must really go after what your heart desires. It can be difficult to find your hearts true desires because of social conditioning and many of society’s implied rules which you are raised with. You must approach it like an innocent young kid, who sees a world full of endless possibilities. Once you are pursuing your heart’s true desire, smart perseverance takes care of itself. You will be naturally motivated to pursue your desires.

2. Do Not Confuse the Means with the Ends

If asked, what do you want out of life? Most of us would conclude happiness. We all want to lead happy satisfying lives. However sometimes we associate the wrong things with happiness. It’s common in a capitalist society that money is associated with happiness. This is done in tv shows, the movies, and advertising. Money is necessary however it’s important to realize that it’s just a mean to an end. The problem is that a lot of people pursue making lots and lots of money as one of their goals. And once they make the money they realize that longterm money by itself never makes a person happy. Your real goal should be happiness. And once you make this clarification you will realize that there are many more means to happiness than just money. As an example building friendships with fun exciting happy people will always add to the quality of your life, and leave you feeling happier. Giving back to your community will also increase your happiness. Taking time to reflect on all of the great things that you have been blessed with in your life will also make you happier.

3. Do Not Give up Because of Laziness.
   

   Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. ~ Thomas Alva Edison

   An easy happy satisfying life is an ideal. There are no shortcuts to happiness. Life is a journey not a destination. Living a lazy easy lifestyle will never be satisfying in the longrun. In fact it usually leads to feeling a light depression. Living a happy satisfying life is hard work.

4. Do Not Give up Because of Slow or Lack of Progress.

   Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. ~ Dale Carnegie

   This will take care of itself if you are pursuing your heart’s true desires, because your desire will be so strong, that progress will become irrelevant. However there still will be times where you might become discouraged because of the slow or lack of progress. Remember that while in a movie you can see a character progress or change his whole lifestyle in a matter of 2 hours, in real life progress is much slower. This is why most people don’t stick with their goals. Aim for steady slow progress.

5. Success is Closer than You Think.
   

   Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas Alva Edison

   Success might just be around the corner. Even if it’s not, by persevering in pursuing your goal you are building a great lifelong habit. If you give up on your goal, how do you know that you will not give up on your next goal or the one after that? Be careful not to make giving up a habit. If you hang in there and keep working at it, you are building a persistent determined character.

6. Be Flexible & Willing to Change.

   Do not let your current identity or self image limit the pursuit of your goals. Be willing to make changes, to try new things, and to learn new skills. Be willing to look like a fool every now and then. Remember that if you keep doing the same things you will always get the same results. So to achieve a new goal you must slowly make changes and try different things.

7. Start Visualizing.
   Visualization is very powerful especially as you use it more and more. Whatever goal or endeavor you are pursuing, close your eyes and start visualizing yourself as having achieved it. Visualize how happy you feel as a result.

   If, for example, you are pursuing weight loss then visualize a thin version of yourself with your ideal weight and body shape. Visualize how lean your body looks, how well clothing fit you, how confident and happy you are with your amazing body shape. Visualize how energetic you are. Visualize becoming a lot more successful in other areas of your life because of the confidence you now have from achieving your weight loss goal.

   Daily review your goals, and visualize achieving them.

8. Add Emotions to Your Goals

   A goal is just a goal, a few words or sentences. However once you add emotions, it starts becoming part of you. Achieving that goal becomes a strong part of your character. Lets say you set the following goal “I want to lose weight”. This is a very plainly stated goal. What does it look like when you add emotions? “I want to lose weight because I’m sick of always having to buy new clothing that are a size or two bigger. I want to lose weight because I’m sick of looking in the mirror and seeing all those fat rolls.” The more emotional reasons that you come up with for why you must achieve a goal the better. You should regularly review and add to your list of reasons.

9. Regularly Review these Words of Calvin Collidge
   

   “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
   Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
   Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb.
   Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
   Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas Edison

Consistency and hard work are two of the least discussed methods for success these days. Much of today’s marketing and advertising is about selling a magic pill, a secret formula, or a newly discovered shortcut that will transform your life within a few minutes hours or days and poof you’ll reach your goal and live happily every after. Whether a company is trying to sell a weight loss product or a home-business starter kit, they are usually promising extreme success very quickly. Advertisers will also associate that extreme success with happiness and fulfillment. They will show how happy Stacy looks after she just lost 20 pounds. They wont bring up how many of her older friends are now a bit jealous of Stacy getting all the attention and prefer not to go out with her to social events. They will not tell you about how Stacy dislikes getting constantly accused by many of her relatives and friends of being way too skinny, or overhearing rumors about herself having an eating disorder. Here is a related article if you are not convinced:
You Think Making Money or Losing Weight Equals Happiness? Think Again

Success only Raises The Quality of Your Life

To clarify, I’m not saying that losing weight isn’t great, it is, in fact I’m currently doing my own weight loss challenge. Maintaining a healthy weight, being in a great shape, and regularly exercising will certainly raise the quality of your life allowing you to do and experience a lot more. However, I must add success will not solve all of your problems, in fact once you have lost the weight you will have a few new problems. The two Stacy problems I mentioned above I actually discovered from hanging out with a great friend of mine after she lost a lot of weight. I’m just clarifying that there are no shortcuts to happiness. Simply achieving a goal will make you happy momentarily, however after a little while you will want the next thing.

Always Wanting What You Don’t Have

Being stuck in this cycle of wanting one thing after the next is perfect for advertisers and marketers because guess what? They will always have something to sell you. By the way I’m really interested in advertising and marketing and think it’s great and necessary for selling a product, especially really good valuable products. For example many of the self help and personal development products that helped me grow the most had very good advertising and marketing behind them which is why I was attracted to buying them in the first place. However as a consumer I try to stay conscious of this process of always wanting what I don’t have, because it allows me to have more realistic expectations when purchasing a product. So next time a product appeals to you as a magic pill or a secret formula, pause and remember past products you have purchased because of this same appeal and how they turned out. This will help you save a lot of the time wasted in going after shortcuts and the secret forumlas. So what will you do with this free time? Consistent Hard Work.

What about the Secret Formulas that do Work?

All the so-called secrets of success will not work unless you do. – Author Unknown

Maybe you are still debating the value of hard work and can even think of a few secret formulas or magic pills that really do work. A great example is the Atkins diet. The Atkins diet is where you avoid any foods with carbohydrates and sugars. If you have tried this diet yourself you will see that it does work and you will lose weight very quickly, however you will discover that it’s very hard work after the first few days. You will constantly crave bread and pasta, and generally have a hard time finding Atkins friendly foods in social events. Even if you lose all of your excess weight on the Atkins diet, it’s very hard (if not impossible) to maintain the weight off as you are gradually reintroducing carbs to your diet. So I guess what I’m trying to convey is that even shortcuts or magic pills that do deliver what’s promised usually require some hard work.

Consistent Hard Work

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential – Liane Cordes

While consistent hard work might not sound very appealing, it is a great way to achieve fulfilling success. Hard work is always guaranteed to pay off, even if you don’t achieve your goal, consistently putting in the day to day work will help you grow a more disciplined self controlled character ready to tackle on your next big goal. Hard work is consistently doing the day to day tasks whether or not you are seeing results. Of course to be able to work hard on something you must really want it. When you make working hard one of your values you are no longer detracted by all of those things you were contemplating or thinking that would be “nice to have”, you end up going after what you really want.

Hard Work Example

Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it. – Author Unknown

The best example of hard work is a healthy approach to losing weight and keeping the pounds off. This approach will usually require that you eat more healthy foods than fast foods or sweats, however it will still give you some wiggle room. While this approach is gradual therefore slower it’s easier and therefore the chances of you maintaining it are higher. Also it will help you build healthy eating habits that you will have for life, leaving you feeling more energized every day you wake up. This approach will usually require some form of exercise, which will help you get red of your stress anyways. As you are exercising gradually you will start burning fat, and eventually building more lean muscle mass. This lean muscle mass will not only help you look better in most of your clothing, it will also decrease your chances of coming in contact with many of the disease related to being fat or overweight. Check out my Project Weight Loss

Working Smart while Working Hard

Working hard doesn’t mean having an unbalanced life where you are constantly working 10+ hour days. While some people are very passionate about their work that they enjoy working the 10+ hours that doesn’t mean that you have to. You should be trying to work smart. One way to work smart is to eliminate unnecessary tasks that are more time intensive yet provide a little or no payoff. A quick way to find out what tasks you can eliminate is to ask yourself in the morning, If I had only 2 hours to get one days worth of work done, what projects/tasks would I skip or not worry about as much? Another way to work smart is to outsource very time intensive boring tasks. A great resource about working smart is the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris where he discuses in detail many techniques for working smart.

image source: Tub Gurnard

This article is part of my Roadblocks to Success series. I will discussing more Roadblocks to Success in upcoming articles.

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We are programmed by society and the media to care about what everyone else thinks, and to always try to fit in. This process is very automated in our brain that we don’t even stop to question it most of the time. This obviously is a big roadblock to success because it prevents us from being who we really want to be and instead we become products of our society and surroundings.

A great example of this is how for the average man, asking a woman out on a date is a big deal. Because if she turns him down, he’ll feel a little hurt or foolish. Why is that? Because he cares about what she thinks of him.

The problem with caring about what others think is that we can’t control it in the first place. They’ll always be people that like you, and people that dislike you. Actually the most disliked people tend to be really wealthy or famous like many of todays movie stars and music artists who are constantly being bad mouthed in the media. Is part of their success due to not caring about the publics opinions? Maybe, I’m not sure, but it’s food for thought. More importantly, caring about others opinion of you assumes that we are all alike. It assumes that we were all born in the same towns, cities, or countries, went to the same schools, had the same parents, had the same circumstances in life etc. This is why what anyone thinks of you is usually based on superficial judgments they made even if they are a good friend or relative.

The long term effects of caring about what others think of us is leading a disappointing unfulfilling life. What’s worse than looking back on your life and realizing that most of the choices you made were strongly influenced by the opinions and judgments of others instead of your own preferences?

Why do we care what others think of us? While one can come up with many good sounding reasons, deep down there are two main reasons. One main reason is usually some sort of insecurity. When we are insecure about our lifestyles, our choices, or our actions, it’s easier to just go along with the flow, and try to please everyone. Otherwise, if we decide to stop caring what everyone thinks of us, and live life however we please, we will start receiving criticism and start generating a lot of attention. A great example of this is feeling too insecure to ask your boss for a raise. You feel that if you ask for a raise you might give you boss the wrong idea, and since your insecure about your quality of work, thinking it isn’t all that great to start with, you decide it’s better to just be quiet instead of generating a lot of attention. The other main reason is a scarcity mentality. A scarcity mentality is where we think there is a limited set number of resources, opportunities or options. Going back to the “asking for a raise” example, an employee might feel that if he starts asking and demanding too much maybe he’ll get fired, and not be able to find any other jobs. Of course this isn’t true because there will always be numerous jobs and opportunities, however we often have this ridiculous scarcity mentality.

How do you stop caring? Not caring what anyone thinks of you is a working process, you just have to make the decision that from now on you will not care. You also have to be conscious of this decision repeating “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me” in your head as you are making choices in life. This will ensure that you aren’t making choices based on others judgments or opinions. Also to clarify, there is a big exception to this rule which is breaking the law. You should certainly care about your countries laws and respect the authorities.

While caring about what others think of us and our actions can be a big roadblock to success, we still need to maintain a balanced perspective. If one stops caring completely about what anyones thinks of him, he will not be able to change or grow. What was it that initiated the last goal you made? I’m sure it had to do with another human being achieving it, working towards it, or recommending it. Simply put, next time someone gives you their opinion you will need to pause and consider whether it’s valuable or not. If that person understands where you are coming from, has a similar background and similar personal values, then their opinion generally will be more valuable. However you should try to be more honest with yourself and make sure that you are not letting others opinions or judgments hold you back from doing what you want in life.

This article is part of my Roadblocks to Success series. I will discussing more Roadblocks to Success in upcoming articles.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. – Calvin Coolidge