Beyond Inspiration, Willpower, and Hard Work

How to Keep Learning, Growing, and Moving Forward

There are moments in life that just happen. When we’re young, we can learn a second language effortlessly. As adults, sometimes we feel inspired and suddenly tap into our creativity. We want to believe that all it takes to achieve important things is willpower. We think, if only we tried hard enough. We push ourselves to get things done through sheer hard work, but eventually we relapse into our old ways. Making progress is anything but linear, and to sustain it, we need a better approach. We must go beyond inspiration, willpower, and hard work. Read more!

Don’t Be Afraid to Make a Fool of Yourself

“A mistake that makes you humble is better than an achievement that makes you arrogant.” – Unknown

When I was in second grade, I was sort of a class clown. I remember feeling proud of myself because I could make the kids laugh, and I thought I was making an otherwise boring class more fun. Of course, that didn’t go well. I was shamed for being disruptive to the class. Many such things shape us in many areas of life—molding us to conform to societal norms and expectations. We grow up to seek external validation and recognition. We go on a quest to be smart. Unfortunately, we become afraid to make a fool of ourselves for the rest of our lives. Read more!

3 Simple Ways to Find Opportunity

How to accelerate your success.

There’s way too much focus on failure. A not so old saying claims you need to fail X amount of times before you can succeed. Success and failure doesn’t have to be so binary. Furthermore, what’s intriguing about unexploited strengths and opportunities is how you can miss them. If you’re too focused on improving your weaknesses, you forget you have unique strengths. How can you find opportunities only by focusing on your weaknesses? With big projects, when do you exactly fail? Why wait until the final failure? Opportunities are vehicles to accelerate your success if you’re able to find them. Let’s explore 3 simple ways to find opportunity. Read more!

How to Enable the Growth Mindset

You have probably heard of the growth mindset. It’s the mindset that helps us embrace the inevitable hurdles we face. But the reality is that sometimes we don’t—it’s elusive when we’re struggling. Can we really have a growth mindset especially when we most need to? How do we enable this growth mindset? There is an excess of advice to be joyful, but we must also face the struggles that come with difficult learning, creative challenges, or starting something new. Read more!

Lessons from the Summer Season

How you can take more action without getting burned.

The summer season is radiant! After much anticipation, the temperature begins to rise steadily. Slowly, we get more light and more heat. In some regions of North America it gets very dry. In others, dark clouds turn into massive storms. Sometimes it’s both. But the sun doesn’t stop. Every day the sun rises relentlessly, and it showers rays of life that appear to expand everything they touch. Everything grows vigorously. Leaves and needles are in a growth spurt. Nature can’t seem to get enough of summer! Summer makes us feel alive. We feel alive because of what happens during this season: we get stretched. There are many lessons from the summer season to be learned! Read more!

Redefining Struggle with Meaning

Struggling has a bad reputation. It makes us feel uncomfortable, and we just want to avoid it. But it doesn’t have to be this way. When we struggle, what we focus on makes a difference: are we focusing on the painful feelings? Or are we focusing on conscious growth? Often times, it’s the moments when we struggle that push us to stand up, to be our best, and to solve difficult problems. We have all heard the saying: “to step outside your comfort zone.” This reasoning implies that we move away from a place of comfort to a place of struggle. I find this phrase a bit misleading, and I’ll tell you why. However, moving into the learning zone seems to me a sound proposition. Let’s see how redefining struggle with meaning can make a significant difference. Read more!

Redefining Self-discipline (and Why it Matters)

Can you imagine what your life would feel like with more self-discipline? What would you do? When you take action on something that matters to you regardless of your immediate impulses—you practice self-discipline. It’s choosing to move forward to act on what you most care about despite hardship, and it feels really good. In fact, we could all use more of it. Every time that we practice self-discipline, we choose to reclaim our life. We pursue our dreams, act on them, and stay motivated when we don’t feel like it. We engage in self-discipline by exercising our willpower and focused attention to choose action over distraction. Read more!

How Playing More Can Make You More Successful

Start, Stick, and Stay at Anything!

I was destroyed in a chess game. It was Halloween 1998 when I saw some friends playing chess over a bench by the courtyard. They asked me if I wanted to play and I said yes! I thought that I was going to beat them through my “natural” intelligence. I lost. Then I lost again. The following summer, I was determined to learn how to play. I don’t know why, but I was motivated to keep playing, and losing, for about 200 more games. That translated to about 60 hours of practice before I could finally win a game! I’ve probably played over one hundred thousand games since. Today I wonder: what happened that made me start, stick, and stay at it? Let’s look at how playing more can make you more successful. Read more!

Cultivating Personal Growth

Lessons from Triple Crown Blackberries.

In my last U-pick adventure, I came across some Triple Crown blackberries. I instantly noticed the abundance of huge red and black fruit hanging from the bushes. If you were holding one between your thumb and index finger, you would notice the little round obsidian seeds, which look much like grapes in a grapevine. When ripe, they are deeply sweet and juicy with a tart kick—which is typical of a blackberry. However, Triple Crowns have an even bolder, more intense flavor packed into their fruit. Read more!

Why Growth Happens over Time

A Lesson from the Athabasca Glacier.

Glaciers are breathtaking. These giants shape the environment through rock abrasion. The Athabasca Glacier carves itself among the Canadian Rockies in an area known as the Columbia Icefield and measures up to 300 meters (980 feet) thick! When I stood there, it was hard for me to grasp the immense, thick layer of ice. It made me wonder how glaciers came to be and what we could learn from them. How exactly does a glacier become such a magnificent, ice-blue wonder? Read more!

How to Use Labels to Empower Yourself

The upside of labels.

Labeling is one of the first things we do as babies. Our brain learns to associate certain objects with words. We label the iconic red-round-sweet fruit as an apple. And after that it’ll be hard to think of it as anything other than an apple. Once we have enough associations stored in our memory, we begin to develop language. We start with one word. Then we move to a two-word sentence and so on. At some point in our lives, we begin to develop our sense of self. Read more!