Most people just react or do what they have to do, like a robot. It is just monotony. However, helping a client because that is your job, and helping a client because you care for them are worlds apart!

We strive to keep the whole Torah, but going out of our way to focus on a few aspects – especially ones that have deep meaning to us – causes us to put in much more effort. Many core middos and mitzvos pervade our lives. We can align every action we do to a mitzvah such as loving others. We passively live all these values, but to ACTIVELY live a few – to constantly check that our actions match, to ask how we can do better – that yields tremendous growth.

What do you value most? What middos are you working on, or hope to embody? How are you trying to be a better eved Hashem? It could be being more grateful to Hashem (brachos) and other peorle, sensitivity to other’s feelings, love for your family, discipline in your actions, helping people as much as possible – there are 238 positive mitzvos and many positive character traits. Which ones resonate with you most?

You should get excited to find some clarity about how to align your actions and what matters most to you, but that is where the work starts. R’ Tatz says in Living Inspired that we get inspired by something new, as a gift from Hashem to help us in the right direction, but it soon fizzles out. I notice this pattern constantly. Hashem gives us booster rockets, they get you far with a large energy burst. However, to reach the destination – for the growth to be lasting – you have to put in the effort to constantly think and live those values. Take time out each day – in the morning before you get caught up in the day, and also before you go to sleep, to connect with what matters most to you. See how you can follow the values better.

Step back, constantly. What matters most to you? What are you doing that doesn’t fit – how can you fix it? What could you be doing to follow it better?
Similar Posts:

• How Is Your Environment Affecting You? Or, Why You May Want To Live In a Cave
• 3 Critical Steps To Pursuing Growth
• 80/20 Your Middos for Faster Growth!
• Overcoming the Final Hurdle: Remembering Your Goals
• Do You Know YOUR Potential? Or, Why You Shouldn’t Try To Be Moshe
• Using Your Job to Help People!

If you flick the light switch but it doesn’t go on, do you keep flicking it back and forth? I hope you would quickly realize that you should look for another problem.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
-Albert Einstein

(See my podcast on Doing Things Differently.)

The answer I have often heard is to choose something small to work on, and then halve it. And then to halve it again. That way you will have something that will stick. I know I am far more ambitious than most people, but doesn’t that sound like a tiny goal to set for you entire year of growth? The Vilna Gaon said that if we aren’t working on improving our character traits, then what is the point of living?

It isn’t because you are trying for something too large, or that you can’t grow that much at once, but because the only thing you have changed is your commitment. In the secular world, it is called a New Year’s Resolution – something that you resolve to do – focusing on discipline. Focusing on discipline only helps short term. After a few days, all the problems mentioned before start up again. Trying to discipline yourself more when you haven’t improved your discipline won’t help you. “This year I am really going to improve my davening!” will yield the same results as last year! You don’t need a Rosh Hashanah Resolution, you need a Rosh Hashanah Plan!

A few days ago, I wrote about 3 Critical Steps To Pursuing Growth, which I encourage you to read (print it if you don’t have time now). Those are critical steps, and while they may be enough for working on character traits, they aren’t enough for something like scheduling more learning time.

Just because it’s Rosh Hashanah doesn’t mean you can magically add an hour of learning to your schedule! There is a reason (or many!) you haven’t done the learning until now, and you have to overcome all of them. You need a plan to overcome any reasons that may stop you from reaching your new goal.

Take out a piece of paper and list all the possible obstacles to making this happen, including any reasons why it hasn’t worked in the past. They may include not having time, being unsure of where to learn, not knowing who learn with, or things coming up that seem urgent. This list will be unique to you.

Now, what will you do to make it different this year? Address each obstacle. If you don’t know, ask a friend, your spouse, or daven for inspiration. You don’t need to know that it will work, but you need a new approach. After trying for a few days, you may find a better way.

Some things that may help:
• Find a partner to hold you accountable.
• Schedule your learning early in the morning so nothing can come up to derail it.
• Choose something you want to learn.

Go do something right now! Give your partner a call, and schedule your first time. Go ahead and blame me, tell him you read an article that said not to wait until you saw him next. Visit the bookstore and buy whatever you will need.

Don’t rely on your motivation to last – leverage it. Use it to make commitments to others you won’t want to break. Use it to disrupt old patterns and to start new ones. Use your motivation to set up the environment to push you to keep going. Once you do it for 30 days, it will hardly seem as hard as it did in the beginning.

If there has been a lot of resistance in the past, don’t just find ways to overcome obstacles, obliterate them with overwhelming force. Take your actions to the next level. If this problem (e.g., not getting out to learn) were a fly, what would be a sledgehammer? Perhaps… commit to teaching a class, ask the Rabbi for a learning session so you will feel worse about cancelling, tell your learning partner that you will give him $20 if you miss. Be creative – and set that up NOW. Leverage your motivation!

Rosh Hashanah isn’t just that yearly time to guilt us into doing something. Rosh Hashanah is an amazing opportunity to daven for help. Go into Rosh Hashanah with a smile on your face and tell Hashem (your loving father) that you actually have a plan this year and you just want some help.

Of course, if anyone asks why you seem so happy, don’t hesitate to tell them to about this blog. In fact, you should probably sign up so you can get updates by email, to keep you thinking about growing.
Have you decided what to focus on and made a plan? If not now, when? -Hillel

p.s. I encourage you to send this post with a link, or just the link, to your friends. Show them you really care!
Similar Posts:

• You Only Need Discipline When You Have A Choice
• To Grow, Ask “Why?”
• How to Find (And Cure) What Is Really Holding You Back
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• How To Work On Your Character Traits

Just Pause

As mentioned in How To Work On Your Character Traits, our brain works on shortcuts. When a situation comes up – e.g., you miss the bus or someone is telling you that you are wrong- our brain looks for the shortcut for how we should respond. It takes the brain less than 200 milliseconds to find it. It takes 2-3 seconds to consciously come to a conclusion. How do you know the shortcut is a wise reaction – you haven’t thought it through yet! Are you sure you want to feel upset and unlucky after missing a bus? Is it wise to start blindly defending your opinion before hearing the other side out? I should hope not. But how do you stop from following the shortcut?

Pause.
Step outside the shortcut.
Your job is to hold on for 3 seconds.

Just don’t react for 3 seconds. Stop any physical reaction and don’t talk. Let the knee-jerk reaction pass.

Now, ask: What would be the wise choice? What outcome do I want? It will be much easier to respond appropriately because you short-circuited the shortcut, and now you are in control.

Be the Watcher

Your brain is addicted to thinking, like a hyperactive puppy running around. It just keeps going and going. That isn’t a problem if you are thinking about Torah or something that makes you happy, but all too often the puppy strays into negative thinking. It falls into a big muddy pit and can’t get out. This can quickly put you in a bad mood and hardly helps you feel positive and energetic!
However, you are not your thoughts. You hold the leash to this hyperactive puppy. Whenever you see it straying (or fall into a pit) use the leash to direct your brain to more helpful thoughts. Think about something positive. “Gam Zeh Litovah – this is also for the good” What could be good about this? Or, what am I grateful for now?
For more information about controlling your thoughts, read the series on Your Thoughts.

Evaluate the Reaction

After any event that you must deal with, e.g., controlling your thoughts, or someone criticizing you, ask these two simple questions:

• What did I do right?
• What will I do differently next time?

The first question is great because it presupposes (an assumption that we choose to believe) that you did something right. We all love doing something right! “Nothing” isn’t an appropriate answer! At the very least, you noticed after the fact that this is an area that could be improved. Great! We want to reinforce any good habits, and make them stick for next time. Feel good about any progress you make - focus on how up the mountain you have climbed so far.

The second question helps you focus on how to act for the outcome you want. If the situations happens again, how can you handle it better? If you answer that, the next time the situation occurs your brain will say “I know what to do now!” and help you carry it out.

Practice pausing, watching your thoughts, and evaluating your reaction and you can be improving around the clock! When might you use these tools?
Similar Posts:

• How To Work On Your Character Traits
• Your Thoughts: Why You Aren’t Happy (And How to Fix It)
• 3 Critical Steps To Pursuing Growth
• You Always Have Control – No Matter What!
• Truthful Optimism
• Do You Know YOUR Potential? Or, Why You Shouldn’t Try To Be Moshe

What Exactly Are You Trying To Accomplish?

The more clearly you know where you are heading, the easier you can pursue it. If you want to become a nicer person, you must have a real, tangible idea of what that means to you. Ultimately, any growth opportunity will change our thoughts, feeling, words, and actions. Abstract ideas are hard to grasp because they aren’t related to a physical, concrete thing. If you can’t understand it, how can you act it? Take your goal – for example becoming a nicer person – and make it more tangible. What would your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions be when you reach your goal? Take inspiration from all that you have read and any people in particular that you know. Use your imagination to get a tangible idea of what you are reaching for.

Some examples:  
• Thoughts - What will I be thinking when I see another person, or during a conversation? “How can I help him?” or “What can I do to make him feel more comfortable?” are both good thoughts.
• Feelings - How do I want to feel? “ahavta lireacha kimocha – love your friend like yourself ” seems particularly apt. What does love feel like to you? Recall loving or empathetic moments with family and feel the same emotions now.
• Words - What words will I use? “Good morning!”, “I hope you are doing well!”, “Thank you!”, “That was great!”, “Go for it!” all sound very appropriate.
• Actions - How will I act? Will I hold open the door for people? Smile and wave enthusiastically? Say “Good morning!” to everyone I walk by?

This may seem inauthentic to you. “OK, I should smile at people. But how do I really become a nicer person?” If you think how nice people think and do what nice people do, then you are a nice person. The Ramchal says that your external actions affect you inside – acting like a nicer person makes you a nicer person. With repetition, the actions and thoughts become part of your personality. The Rambam says if you are trying to work on any trait, go to the extreme of what you are aiming for. This helps remove all the shortcuts in your brain that reinforce the old behavior.

Finding Motivation

You may feel raring to go work on your growth opportunity. If you don’t, think of why you should be! It’s great to be motivated today, but how do you make the excitement last?
Find the reasons why you are excited, and why you could be excited, and keep reminding yourself. You may want to ask other people for ideas. You are a salesperson trying to convince yourself to pursue this growth. What is so great about this goal? What are the benefits? Write as many as possible! Having powerful reasons will keep you going.

One of my next areas to focus on is thinking appreciatively and gratefully (one of Rabbi Pliskin’s 9 Happiness Principles from Conversations With Yourself.)
The motivation for this shouldn’t be too hard. It will cause happiness. Happiness also leads to better learning (mitzvah!), accomplishing more, and better health (mitzvah!). I will be thanking everyone around me for their help, so everyone involved with me will feel more positive (mitzvah!) and want to help me more.
Wow, that sounds amazing!

Continuous Thought

If you forget about being a nicer person, or you forget to remind yourself of how great it would be, it won’t help you at all. You can spend as little as 5 minutes a day with this great way to keep yourself reminded.

Get a notebook (or anything!) and write:
• A short summary of what you trying to achieve (“Be a nicer person”)
• The best reasons why it is important to you (“I love seeing other people smile!”)
• The longer explanation (the thoughts, feelings, words, and actions)

Every morning and every night right before sleep, enthusiastically or joyously read what you are trying to achieve and why. The emotion really locks in what you are working on. Picture yourself acting the way you want to think, feel, say, and do. In the morning, write some ideas for how you can apply this today. At night, reflect on the day and see how you succeeded and what you would do differently next time. At the very least, rewrite the goal. The more time and emotion you put into reviewing your goals, the faster your progress will be.

For most people, the only way to make sure you do this review is to put the notebook on your pillow and not go to sleep until you spend the few minutes reviewing. In the morning, don’t leave until you do the review. Each 2-minute review gets your brain involved for many hours! Reviewing at night lets your brain work on the idea the whole night!

Final Thoughts

Plans never survive their first encounter with the real world. Look for what works, and what might work better next time towards achieving your goal. Celebrate any success to keep you motivated to keep working!
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• Growth While You Sleep!
• What Does It Mean to Grow? How Do I Grow?
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• Why Your Rosh Hashanah Kabbalos Haven’t Worked (And How to Fix Them)

Growing is striving for new heights. You have to strive, and know what those new heights are, exactly. It’s fun! You need to spend some time in the beginning figuring out what new heights you are striving for, and at least a few minutes each day to keep yourself striving for them. Working on character traits don’t need to take time.

What new heights are you aiming for? Find an opportunity to improve. Don’t worry, there are plenty! Each success gives you a glimpse of more opportunities. You don’t learn chumash or shas and say “All right, I’m done!” You go over it again. And again. And again. And you gain more and more each time.

So how do you find the opportunities for growth? Start paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. Compare them to your standards for performance. We have two levels of standards – what we must do, and what we want to do. I must be at davening with a minyan, and I want to be there before they start to prepare myself, but it doesn’t always happen, especially in the morning. Unless you have put some serious thought in, you may be fuzzy as to where the line is, and what you want to achieve.

• If our actions always seem to be perfect, it is time to learn about, ask, or discover a higher level. Your idea of prayer should grow with you – upgrade that 10-year-old’s idea of prayer!
• If our actions are above the “must” then get a clearer idea for the next level.
• If our actions are below the “must” line, these are areas that your motivation or skills haven’t caught up with your standard.

When you have a clearer understanding of each level, you can grow rapidly. If you don’t have any understanding, it’s like trying to hit a target with a blindfold on – you have no direction. Everyone wants to reach for “better” but it doesn’t really tell you where to go. Define the level you are reaching for in terms of your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.

You may have a very large list of opportunities for growth– but you can’t work on all of them at once. Feel free to get a better picture of what the next level is for each of them. Now, pick just a few things to work on. Working on many goals at once just doesn’t work well because it dilutes the importance of each one. The tougher they are, the less you may want to focus on. Less is more. Try working on 4 goals or less so you can focus on each one. Designate one of them the main goal.

Which should you choose? Choose to work on the opportunities that you feel are the most important or the most helpful. For the main goal, choose the one you feel is most important or that will help the others things you are working on. For example, working on listening to other people will help you not get angry – you can’t get angry yet, you don’t know the full story!

Congratulations! Most people don’t ever decide on what areas they want to grow in. Knowing the problem is half the solution. If you are working on character traits or reactions, or any actions you do, you may want to read about the formula for “fixing” negative reactions in my post about how to work on your character traits.

For more on how to strive for, and how to define new heights, stay tuned!

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The Vilna Gaon says that if we aren’t constantly striving to improve our character, what are we living for? Rambam says that until a sin is committed multiple times, it isn’t counted against us. This means being the type of person that transgresses, rather than the actual act, is the problem. These indicate that our character is of great importance.

Nature (your genes) and nurture (your environment) may have an effect on our character, but they do not define our character. This is the essence of free choice: there may be things influencing us, but ultimately, we make our own decisions. Hashem doesn’t ask us to do the impossible, so an obligation to work on our character traits must mean that we have control over our responses. Until you can say that your choices got you here, you can’t say “I choose differently”.

If you know why certain reactions, such as becoming impatient, seem out of your control, then you can actively work on them. If you are trying to explain an idea to someone and they don’t understand, it can be very frustrating. Someone not understanding right away isn’t automatically a cause for frustration – that’s how teachers and tutors make a living! Our reaction has to with our interpretation of the event. The problem is we interpret automatically in our subconscious, and we don’t even notice it.

Why does this happen? Because our brain takes shortcuts. It finds how we usually feel or respond, and clicks the shortcut. If it didn’t, then the next time you brush your teeth or eat something, you would have to pay a lot of attention to exactly how to hold your toothbrush or fork. When people would show me the “proper” way to hold a pen, I would grab a pen to see how I held it, because consciously I have no clue. Shortcuts are vital, but some are very unhelpful.

In order to work on your reactions and traits, you need to find these shortcuts. You can’t delete them, instead you reprogram them to point where you want. You must ask yourself: the next time someone doesn’t understand me for the 5th time, how do I want to respond, exactly? What will my tone of voice be? What will my words be? What will my thoughts be?
Decide that you will speak calmly. You won’t insult or say how you wish they would get it. Think about what your desired outcome is, and how to make it happen. There must be some communication issue, and if they don’t understand, then it is up to you to rephrase it and figure out how to make them understand. You may also want to keep in mind that trying to rush them to understand will just make them anxious and less likely to comprehend.
Unlike a computer, reprogramming your brain isn’t as simple as hitting “edit” and “save”. Rehearsing how you want to respond many, many times until it becomes automatic will definitely help! You will get faster each time, and it will become more and more “normal” to respond that way.

You can catch yourself before you follow a shortcut by pausing and asking how you want to respond. If you want to make more rapid progress, or find yourself getting caught up in the moment, reprogram the shortcuts before they are clicked. These are the basic steps to changing any reaction:

• What reactions do you want to stop? Knowing the problem is half the solution.
• How would you like to feel instead, exactly? What would your thoughts, feeling, words, and actions be?
• Now, visualize yourself in one of those situations that comes up, and react the way you want. It’s just pictures in your head, so you can choose any way you want. Exaggerate how calm and pleasant you will be! Even if you don’t really see it happening, you are reprogramming the shortcut. Athletes constantly repeat their basic practices and visualize amazing performances so they can do their best.
• When that situation comes up, pause and review how you want to react. That stops the old shortcut and helps you strengthen the reprogramming. If you can, remember a time that you successfully reacted properly, for an added confidence boost. Recalling any time you reacted properly will be helpful, even if the situation is unrelated.

• After the situation, be glad that you noticed, even if you only noticed after and responded normally! Most people never notice their opportunities to improve their character.
• Ask yourself: what did I do right? Find something, however small. Focus on any small improvements you made so far. Look at the bottom of the mountain and see how far you have climbed! We thrive on positive reinforcement. When we feel good about out actions – even some of them – we reinforce them
• Ask: what will I do differently next time? “Battle plans never survive the first encounter with the enemy” – If your plan didn’t work, how can you alter your plan to work better next time? We aren’t asking what you did wrong, only how it can be improved for next time.

What shortcuts do you want to change? Where do you want them to point?

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If you are working on character traits – e.g. mindfulness, kindness, empathy, joy, gratitude, or enthusiasm – you don’t need to set aside time to work on them. (Although journaling about the trait, reading about it, or doing a meditation could certainly be helpful!) You just need to focus on them when doing your everyday activities. Isn’t that the overall goal – to have that trait in all your activities?

You can repeat “joy” in an upbeat tone of voice while you are washing the dishes, walking, or doing anything else. Repurpose that “lost time” when you would normally defocus or let your thoughts wander. Do this during spare moments and watch it carry over all your activities!

You may only have a vague idea of what kind of person you want to be or how you want to improve. Choose a trait you want to improve, and think how your normal days would be different. Would you speak differently, talk differently, or think differently?

Choose a trait and start acting it!
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One thought follows the last. We think by associations. If you have a negative thought, the next thought will also be negative. Our brain automatically tunes into thoughts fitting our current emotional state. If you are currently feeling depressed, depressed thoughts will come to mind. If you are happy, happy thoughts will come to mind.

Here are some good ways to start off thinking positively.

• Feel appreciative and grateful. What do you appreciate in your life? A wonderful family, a rewarding job, amazing friends, great neighbors, a nice home, that you found my website? If you appreciate what you have in your life, then you will truly be happy, regardless of how wealthy you are. Try asking 3 people each day what they are grateful for. Just asking makes people think in that direction.
• Speak joyfully and kindly. People act differently depending on who they around. You will be reserved around a serious person. You will feel relaxed and happy around a joyful person. Be that joyful person! Before you do anything such as washing the dishes, you can say, “I will now joyfully wash this dish.” Say it for each one! It’s a lot of fun in front of a mirror. If you are doing something, then at least enjoy it!
• What emotional state do you want? Do you want to be enthusiastic now? Or relaxed? Just thinking about the emotional state you want will remind you of memories of that state. You can spontaneously become enthusiastic. The more you practice, the quicker and more intense the states will be. If you were excited right now, how would you act and speak? External actions affect you internally. Being relaxed and happy will help you learn, think creatively, and remember. Everyone has a hard time remembering when they feel stressed.

You can only think one thought at a time. If something happens that gets you down, you don’t need to cheer yourself up – just interrupt the flow of negative thoughts.

• Focus on the solution. Instead of blaming or complaining about the problem, focus on the solution. When you take responsibility to fix something, that means you think it can be fixed, that you feel empowered . Consider what you want to happen, and work towards that goal.
• Assume the situation is good in some way. Even if it looks bad, negatively thinking only makes it worse! Think about what you can learn from the event. How can it help you grow as a person? Are there any hidden opportunities? In the long run, is it really so terrible? Have you heard “in the future, you will look back and laugh at this.”? Well, try it right now!
• If a person does something that seems negative , try to consider it from a positive perspective. Put yourself in their place – what would you want others to think? Don’t judge others negatively, it will start a string of negative thinking.

You can upgrade your thinking. It may take a while, but the time passes anyway. It will really improve your life.
Personally, for the past year I have been very focused on the solution. Asking “what’s the next action?” works wonders.

Go do something “joyfully”! Try it for anything and everything. It’s fun!

This post is part of a 5 post series about how your thoughts affect your world. View: one, two, three, four, five.

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• Your Thoughts: The Power of Positive Thoughts
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• 3 Critical Steps To Pursuing Growth
• Bad experience? Reframe it!

Let’s look at some negative thought patterns just to make sure you realize how ridiculous and draining they are. You may already recognize how destructive they are, but think they are beyond your control. I know better – I can’t claim to be perfect, but I have made major improvements. You have more control over your thoughts than you think!

• Feeling Powerless – If you feel something is beyond your control, your only option is to complain to people who can’t help, and then feel frustrated. People don’t like listening to your complaints. I doubt you like to listen to your complaints! If you feel powerless, you will abandon searching for a solution. Someone has probably dealt with this problem before. Search online, explain the situation calmly and clearly (without complaining!) and ask people if they have any advice. Feeling powerless just frustrates you and everyone else.
• Anxiety - Students will feel anxiety about essays, and most working people about taxes. It’s absurd to be anxious for weeks about something that takes a few hours!
• Stress - Do you feel like you have too much work, errands, or things to handle at the office? Well, you still have to do them, the stress is an added bonus! You get to do the work you don’t like, and even get to feel stressed when you AREN’T working on it.
• Worry – The most common worry in America is about money. Worry can force you to take action – to sit down and plan, to work smarter or harder, or to cut back spending. Is worry forcing you to work more creatively? Or, more likely, does worry eat away at your peace of mind and stop you from enjoying time with family and friends?
• Feeling Insulted – You are perfectly human, so yes, maybe you do have that fault! Don’t be so arrogant as to think that you are perfect or don’t make mistakes. Or, if the person is just blowing off steam, you may not have done anything wrong. Someone insulted you – it’s now in the past – do you still want to feel bad about it?
• Impatience – Do you get impatient waiting at a bus stop? If you have to be somewhere by a certain time, then figure out when you would have to take a cab to be there on time and set an alarm. Otherwise, being impatient just you stresses you out – it won’t make the bus come any sooner.
• Hatred – Oh how that person gets on your nerves. You hate them! Did it ever occur to you that now they don’t just annoy you when you see them, but also when you think of them? Your hatred may even be self-reinforcing. What normally would be neutral, since THAT person did it, you automatically view it negatively. When you see them next, your fuse will be shorter and you may greet them with a sour face, setting up another negative experience.
• Frustration – something isn’t working. It’s taking too long. So get frustrated! I used to get horribly frustrated when things on the computer wouldn’t work or take way too long. Often, things crashed randomly. A huge waste of time. Now I just know that annoying things happen, they make you wait. Try to use the time more constructively. Getting frustrated just makes you feel bad. It doesn’t help the situation.
• Regret – do you regret anything that happened in the past? Then go do something to fix it. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time regretting it. With my current motivation and learning skills, school would have been so much different. Oh well, no use dwelling on it It happened, and it’s in the past.
• Reliving past bad experiences – you went through it once, isn’t that bad enough? Do you think reliving it will make you feel happy about it? Try some NLP to have it affect you less: see the event happening to you, instead of being a part of the event. Or, Hear loud circus music as you start reliving that memory again. Why would you want old memories to haunt you?

Wow, that’s thoroughly negative but just a small sampling of the negativity that goes on in our head every day . Do you WANT to continue living with thoughts like these?

Wouldn’t you rather have thoughts that help you lead a happy, productive, and meaningful life? Make it YOUR goal to start thinking in a more positive, empowered way. Write your goal down. Put it on a sticky note in your bathroom. Tell your friends.

Check the next post to get started.

This post is part of a 5 post series about how your thoughts affect your world. View: one, two, three, four, five.

Similar Posts:

• Your Thoughts: Why You Aren’t Happy (And How to Fix It)
• Your Thoughts: The Power of Positive Thoughts
• Your Thoughts: How To Think Positively
• Impatient Because You Value Your Time? Prove It!
• Your Thoughts: For Continuous Progress, Celebrate Improvements
• You Always Have Control – No Matter What!

Distractions – Think Long Term
Most distractions aren’t worth our attention, but we still choose to deal with recurring distractions over and over. Instead of dealing with the same thing repeatedly, prepare NOW so that it becomes less of a distraction.

One easy and common example is a newsletter or update in your email that doesn’t matter to you. The second it takes to delete it isn’t such a big deal, but it adds up. The next time you see one, instead of just deleting it find the “unsubscribe” link in the email, or the “junk/spam” button in your email client.
This takes some extra time now, but it saves in the long run!

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