Growth is hard. It can be so frightening because it requires us to be honest with ourselves. It requires us to deal with emotions we’d love to lock away for just another day. It requires us to push ourselves into uncertainty where we can only guess our next step. It demands from us to put effort into the things we want to build even though we lack energy after a debilitating day.

Probably you don’t realize how often you’ve evolved after a day you consider as “worst day ever”. These terrifying, harrowing days reveal the highest potential to learn from…

Life can be overwhelming. Maybe you went through a break-up recently or you moved to a new place. Maybe you changed your job recently or feel overworked. Maybe you just started a business or a new project that doesn’t work out as you expected it.

You’ve gone through life-changing times. Suddenly you’re in your new life, and so many parts are different from how they were before. Sometimes everything's going so fast you cannot even think clearly about what will happen next.

Nevertheless, you made it to the here and now. Not everyone did.

You don’t need to understand everything…

Throughout the day, we experience many situations where we react on an emotional basis. When we encounter situations we consider bad, we tend to mismanage our lives, and we often don’t consciously realize our behavior.

When we’re soaked up in negative emotions, we tend to say things we don’t mean, act unwisely, and make poor decisions.

Emotionally intelligent people know specific ways to handle emotional charges healthily. They know that every time they feel angry, hopeless, jealous, or regretful is a possibility to transform their lives.

Understanding emotions.

Every mental activity results in a specific physical sensation. This is what we call…

Mornings aren’t always easy, are they? Maybe we went to bed too late, some unmotivating work waits for us the next day, or early appointments are to be kept. Or the snooze button lets us get up too late, and we’re already in a hurry.

A few years ago, after some incisive changes in my life, I formed almost all of these bad habits. I went to bed late. I woke up late. I did work stuff daily that I didn’t enjoy. And most of all — I was in a hurry, every day, all the time. …

Today an old friend and I shared our 2021 goals. I just let my thoughts flow and talked naturally to him. After I had heard myself speaking for a while, I realized that I started to use the words “should”, “could”, “would”, and “must” excessively often.

It felt strange because I had worked on my reactive way of speaking in the past already. Back then, I replaced the reactive word “must” with the proactive phrase “I decide to”.

It seemed that over the year, I again had become accustomed again to talk in a reactive way of saying “must” excessively…

We all have goals we want to achieve. We want to get in our best shape, grow our business, write a book, or win a championship.

In his book Outwitting the Devil, Napoleon Hill points out why having goals and being ambitious is possibly one of the most powerful traits we can obtain. In his dialog with the “devil”, who is a metaphor for our bad habits and unwise way of living, the devil points out: All habits, expect striving for a clear goal, can lead to drifting. …

Have you ever read a book that delivered only one or a few core learnings in the end? Most words of that book were just side stories to underline the essential viewpoints. In the end, a book summary app like Blinkist would provide you with the same information, but in a fraction of the time.

Ok, a great story keeps us entertained. The viewpoints explained provide us with a deeper understanding, but we can translate this to our own time and energy:

We focus on side stories that don’t have the impact we want to see in our lives. …

Isn’t “to survive Christmas” already a messy attitude? Sometimes it’s ok to be in survival mode to get over a tough day. Christmas time is inevitably a part of the year. It’s a part of the 365 unique days that will never come back. Each day in survival mode should be a warning sign.

Anyway, it’s comprehensible: Isn’t everybody behaving differently on Christmas compared to the rest of the year? Everyone takes time off and is at home, we meet our families and the people we rarely see over the year (and maybe don’t really like), we buy gifts and…