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In workspace-related sources of knowledge (this page included), we can find a lot of information about goals, efficiency, skills, leadership, change, habits and many more. Not so often the subject of emotions appears. As business world was growing in the past, the more popular were the statements like: “business is business, no emotions”, “you need to be tough if you want to achieve anything” or “suck it up, don’t show that you are weak”. And by “being tough” or “being weak” many people describe not being emotional. Don’t feel, only use your brain. Think cold, make quick, accurate decisions based on data. That’s what looked like the biggest advantage of a successful business person. But we learn. The world evolves, it changes all the time: we want it or not. We observe how people, businesses, societies and countries are transforming, how diverse the companies are, how often we talk about building inclusive environments: at work, at home and in many other places. And when I observe how competencies’ models, leadership styles and organizational cultures change, it appears that emotions are an uncovered element that influences employees’ engagement, level of burnout and countless more aspects of being satisfied, happy and healthy. Regarding Transactional Analysis, we have 4 basic, main emotions: fear, anger, sadness and happiness. The whole palette of emotions that are more descriptive, detailed are derivatives of those 4, but at the end of the day, naming those 4 is the key. A key to understand what we feel, how we act, react, communicate, make decisions or what convictions are perpetuate in our heads. Because an emotion is always a reaction on a certain stimuli, making us experience either stress or pleasure and then through thoughts taking us to the path of a certain feeling. Is 4 enough to really describe what is going on inside of ourselves? When we know that a certain emotion appears? And how to take care of each of them to react adequately, to not start psychological games, to stay out of the drama triangle? Let’s take a look.   Emotion no. 1: fear   The base of fear is an external or internal stimuli that leads to feeling stress. And after the stress comes, the thought that appears in our brain is to be somehow in danger: that’s when the biological fight or flight response starts to work. And the natural, basic feeling in that situation is fear. Fear that we are going to be hurt, maybe by losing something or someone that is important to us.   On a body level we have shaky hands, tension on the face (around eyes and mouth), as well as in the core body, then legs. We can have flushes on the face, sweaty hands (and sweaty body in overall), dry mouth, stomach issues, shaky legs. On a perception level we can have empty head, vision or hearing disorders. In this situation our instinct tells us to run away, to be as far from this whole thing as possible. And from the rational perspective we know that it’s not the smartest strategy in a long run. What is a real need (named as a social need as well) is to get some help/support or to get calm. It will allow our brain and body to get the balance back and think about constructive solutions. What could be helpful as well is an internal strategy to accept our own limits, in overall or in a certain case, depends on the situation. Emotion no. 2: anger   The anger’s root cause is also a stimuli that created a stress. The difference between fear and anger is that after the stress appears, instead of a thought of danger, a though of harm. Maybe somebody violated our boundaries or a contract, and it makes us angry. The instinct of the reptilian part of our brain uses the second part of a fight or flight response: it fights. It attacks their own body, other people (even if they have nothing to do with a certain situation), the company we work in or the whole world. On a body level we start to feel rage in our stomach as in the fear scenario, but it is more like “cooking” feeling, that we feel like we are about to explode from the inside.     The effective way of dealing with that feeling will be to change something, and on an internal level to accept the limits of other people. Nobody is perfect, we all have some flaws that for some people aren’t even noticeable, and for some they look like huge monsters that stop us from living our full potential. Anger can eat us alive, is one of the strongest emotion that influences our judgement, decision making process and can have a huge impact on relationships that we are a part of. Not only with our significant other, but also at work: with our colleagues, managers, clients or other teams that we cooperate with on a daily basis. Be mindful of it, it can save you a lot of time, money and health issues. Emotion no. 3: sadness   Sadness is the third basic emotion that comes from the stress after a certain stimuli works. In this case, on the thought level what we can get is a loss. The thought that something or someone was taken from us, which can make us feel not important, somehow diminished. On a body level we fell tightness in the chest and/or something like a lump in the throat. We cry.     What we usually do instinctively is to use the third reaction that comes from the reptilian part of our brain: we freeze. We close up, taking a step back, sometimes it’s really hard to get closer to us. This is the way that we want to protect ourselves, to not feel any more loss. What we really need is to get some comfort from other person. Sometimes it’s enough that somebody just

It might sound philosophical at first, but a couple of years ago I found this question crucial while thinking about everything I do in my professional life. Even if I’m not a legitimate coach, questions are a tool that I use to uncover what is really the root of the situation, relation, conflict, assumption or reaction. I learned that what we see or assume is rarely the truth. And one of the most important thing is to focus our effort and energy on the real thing or issue, not on something that seems to be true. To be truly focused on what we want to achieve in our professional lives, we need to have a compass that will lead us into the right direction. It’s extremely difficult when we think about the constant change that we experience, unknown tomorrow, transformation of tech, social, politics, generations. Basically every single aspect of our life changes, for some of us less, for some more visible– but it’s present everywhere. How to be mindful, focused and live a meaningful life? Let’s take a closer look on that today. What are my 5 key values? The internal motivation is one of the strongest forces that keep our momentum going. To be somewhere in the optimal spectrum most of the time, we need to have connections between what we believe in or is the most important for us and what we do for living. Do you know your 5 key values? If yes, what are they? Why they are important for you? How those values shape your life and decisions that you make every day? How those elements support you in answering the question that can change other peoples’ lives? If you don’t know them or you just don’t know how to name them, here is a short exercise you can do on your own to map this. Here is a place where you can find the list of values. You can copy and paste it if it’s better for you to work with a piece of paper and a pen (I strongly recommend it). Choose 10 values that are important for you. If you miss something on the list, you can add it on your own: it supposed to be your list, so don’t worry if the ready to go list isn’t full enough for you. Then from those 10 you picked, pick 5 that are the most crucial, that without them you cannot live fairly and calmly. Chose those that are the essence of your existence. Do you have them? Write them down on a post-it or somewhere where you will see them every day. Every time you are not sure about doing something, agreeing on another project or task, you take a look on the list and ask yourself: is it feeding one or more of my values? Action will be easier when you have a compass like that in your hand. What is the problem I want to solve? When we think about giving value to other people: our colleagues, clients, employees (when we are managers), friends, family members or members of our society, we sometimes wonder what is the best thing we can do to make a real change. For consultants, trainers, educators or many other occupations that creates something for others to make their lives better, more functional or easier, there is always a space to consider 2 things, while answering that question. If it’s the first option, the most important question we should ask ourselves is: what kind of problem this person has, so I can support them in resolving it? The crucial thing is to find out the real problem. 80% of cases that I deal with on a daily basis show me that almost never what people are telling us is the true issue. “Alex, we need a communication skills training.” “Alex, my team is not motivated, what can I do as a manager?” “Alex, there is a conflict in my team because people don’t communicate, what should I do?” This is just the top of the iceberg, but those examples are great to show you that most of the time, what we see is not the root cause of the situation. Always go to the roots, ask questions, be curious and don’t agree to go with an easy answer. It’s applicable as well to the private aspect of our lives. When you have a strong urge to eat or drink something with sugar: what is the real problem of your body? Maybe you are just dehydrated? Tired, because you didn’t sleep well? Hungry, because you skipped a meal or two? Lonely, because you work remotely, you live alone and barely meet people? Either it is connected to the business, relations you have in your life or yourself as a person, there is always something underneath the surface. Uncover it and then address the real cause: the effect will be 1000% better, every time. How one more question can help me to be smarter? Being curious, asking questions, getting to the roots of what really happens is what makes our work exceptional. Nowadays we all want quick results, short fixes, immediate answers with easy-to-implement solutions. And yes, we can use more simplicity in this crazy world of billions of pieces of information that we get every minute of every day. But simple doesn’t mean easy or fast. Simple can and should mean meaningful, useful for a certain person, context or organization. Every single question mark on the end of our sentence we ask makes us smarter, because we have another piece of information that brings us closer to answering the real question that a certain person has. It’s not about asking endless list of questions. It’s about asking those that matter, that give us those pieces of the story that we need so we actually know what is the real problem we try to solve or support somebody to solve it on their own. Why I

Many people (myself included) want to do as many things as possible on their own. They want to prove the world that they’re the best experts/partners/friends/managers/business owners/parents. You name it. And that they don’t want or need any support: they can do everything on their own. Are you this person? If yes, I would like to invite you for a journey where we can explore together how we can be even better, do more, achieve more extraordinary results than now by using support system. To get as much as we can out of others (in a good intention of course) to nourish ourselves: who we are, how we think and what we do. The question for today is: how extraordinary you can get using a support system? What potential there is to uncover that you can utilize that you don’t see today and might be groundbreaking? Let’s take a look. “You are the average of 5 people you spend the most of your time with” This statement appears a lot in the area of development, growth or in connection to decision making ability. What do you think about it? Is it true? How your list of those 5 people you have the most contact with looks like? Do you feel that it is a good-influence list or a bad-influence list? Even when we have a strong set of values, we know what we want and we cover our plan, our environment have a huge impact on how we fell and what we do at the end of a day. Imagine that those 5 people support you unconditionally: they say to you that you can do it, they ask questions about how they can help or what do you need to achieve what you aim for. They are always there for you – when there is a success and when you need somebody to lean on when the times are hard. What are the chances that you are going to believe in yourself and actually achieve success with that kind of support system? Now imagine that those 5 people whine all the time. Most of the time they say that life is hard, there is nothing good out there, only suffering, disappointment and mean people. Why to even bother so we know that nothing is going to happen as a result of our efforts? They say: “c’mon, you should be happy with what you have”, “you are too old/too young for that”, “it’s too risky, maybe you should give it a second thought” or “OMG I would never do such a thing”. What are the chances that you are going to believe in yourself and actually achieve success when you deal with that kind off attitude all the time? Exactly. It might seem that you are the same person, you know better what you want for yourself but the truth is that it’s extremely hard to stay OK-OK and keep going when you experience the second scenario over and over again. It requires a lot of energy to resist the environment, to shut up the voices and just do your thing. Isn’t it better to spend this energy on things that are going to bring you closer to your goals and dreams? I know that for me it’s better – even if it’s hard to set the boundary or cut the person out of my life. But in a longer perspective it’s definitely worth it. Exchange “what” with “who” When we think about goals, targets or dreams, we mostly think about “what” we would like to achieve, change or experience. Once we know what we want and how to name it, the first thing that comes to our mind is to create a goal, milestones or others, sometimes smaller things we need to do to go there. What can be different when we exchange “what” with “who”? And why we should even think about that kind of switch? 80% of the things we want have been most likely already achieved by someone else. Do you want to lose 10 kg? There are plenty of people who know how to do it right, healthy and with the lasting effect. Do you want to be an entrepreneur and make a lot of money? There are definitely people all around the planet who are successful in this area. Do you want to be a great parent? Same story here. And it is connected to a lot of different things, occupations, life and/or work directions, decisions, hobbies, sports etc. Why wasting energy on reinventing the wheel, when there is someone who can share wisdom, experiences or do’s and don’ts and based on that we can achieve what we want faster, less painful and with lesser sacrifice (of time, money, energy etc.)? This person can be far away from us, geographically or mentally BUT it can be also our best friend. Or a friend of a friend. The world is really small when we think about it and people LOVE to talk about themselves. When you exchange “what” with “who”, there is an opportunity to save time and energy on things that you can do smarter and redirect energy to different areas, where perhaps no one even was before. Or to use the wisdom of other person and build on that to create your own story. If we put the “support system” concept like that, it opens completely different chapter of how the environment can help you to keep your momentum going, so you can achieve extraordinary results. What the mass can do that the individual cannot without support? When you have those 5 valuable people that you spend the most of your time with, you have a great base to work with. The stronger the roots, the wider you can spread your wings and fly. And strength attracts strength, good energy attracts good energy. The more you use the flow, you keep your momentum going, you have a good influence on others, the more

As people in overall we focus more on what we lack of, where we are not perfect enough or where other people are “better” than us (whatever “better” means). Thinking about strengths, on things that we are really good at is not a first thing that come to our minds when we reflect on our professional development, have a quality conversation with our manager or we just think about next steps in our careers. From my experience it’s strongly connected to the culture and/or country that we were raised within, because convictions about being strong or weak are very much there. As a person raised in Poland, where there’s always a need to prove that we are good, worthy or educated enough to be partners in any global professional context I can say that it’s a strong one. I know many people raised in different cultures and I can tell that there is a huge gap in mindset in this area, i.e. in compare to people raised in US. But this article is not about cultural differences, even if the convictions we are going to talk about today are strongly tight to those. I would like to take us all on the journey of strengths. Why we have a tendency to focus on the gaps, instead of focus on the strengths? Why we do it to ourselves when it’s so much easier to base on what we do really well? Let’s take a closer look at that. What are strengths? A strength is a superpower. Strength is something that allows us to do things really easily. It’s natural, sometimes we do things even without any energy spent on the process. It can be automatic, with no conscious brain usage – like in the situation when we get into the car, we drive from point A and 20 minutes later we are at the point B without even noticing how we did it. Strength is fun, interesting, we can be passionate about what it’s connected to or it can be linked to our values. When we use strengths everything seem easy, obvious – we are masters in our fields in that state, we can achieve more. One of the best tools that you can use to learn more about your strengths is Gallup Strengths Finder (renamed recently to CliftonStrengths – but describing exactly the same thing). The concept states that we all have 34 talents in us, arranged in a different, unique order, depends on the person. The whole journey starts with a questionnaire that name your TOP 5 talents you have inside yourself. There is an option to uncover the whole list of 34 at once – it’s more expensive and in my opinion it’s not necessarily needed when you start your journey with talents. You can always pay extra and uncover them without filling out a questionnaire again anytime you want. Your choice. After going through the questions, you’ll get a short report with the list of your TOP 5 strengths – those are elements that you are a natural at, you don’t need to spend a lot of energy to reach to those buckets, it’s a part of yourself, like extending your own body and mind. Talents are grouped into 4 categories: executing, influencing others (in a good way, with positive intention), relationship building and strategic thinking. Each strength has its own description to better understand what stays behind it. It’s a starting point for us to think how those elements fit to who we are in different situations at work and life. How you can work with them? Awareness is a first step. Know your strengths, be conscious of the list. To work with them you can use consultants, coaches (like myself) or you can try to bring sense to it on your own. You can use the questions below to make a structure around your thoughts. Use those questions to analyze talents one by one from your list: Starting with those questions you can connect the dots between the results of the questionnaire and your real life. It’s not about changing your life now because you have the results. It’s more about finding the way you can use them consciously, make better choices, be aware of their bright and dark sides and how to react more appropriately in different situations. Strengths are for you so you know what serves you and what doesn’t or what kind of tasks you want and don’t want to do. When I teach about the strengths, I always say: thinking about your TOP 5 is like using the compass. Coming back to the base is the best idea, because it brings us harmony, peace, being sure about our abilities to do something. When you use this knowledge, you can make your life better, because you focus your energy on things that really matter. You don’t waste it on trying to learn something that is really far on your list and you need to invest a huge amount of time, sometimes money or attention to achieve a decent level in it. And at the end of the day, it’s not worth it. Simplify and edit. It’s my approach to many situations in life. When you focus on the talents you have, it’s easier for you to navigate, because you have the compass in your hand and you know how to use it. Why throwing it to the water? Isn’t it lazy to only use strengths? You can think: “okay, but isn’t it lazy to base only on what I’m good at? What about being in a stretch zone, lifelong learning, or working on becoming the best version of ourselves?”. Focusing on strengths doesn’t mean that you don’t develop. It means that you are more mindful about what you choose to learn and develop within. I’ll describe it using my own example. One of my TOP 5 strengths is Achiever. My Achiever likes to finish things, cross elements from my task list,

Fight. Flight. Freeze. Those 3 things our brain does every time when we face a difficult situation, a change or other case that seems threatening to ourselves. And career choices are for many of us something we don’t like doing, they are stressful, difficult. Even when the change is for the best, we feel uncomfortable, maybe in our head that means that we fail, we disappoint other people or ourselves. When I think about all the reasons that people don’t make decision about their career, I can see that we are scared of a change. Because we don’t know what is there waiting for us in a new place. Maybe it’s worse than right now? Maybe where we are now is not perfect, but it’s not SO bad. We know how to operate within the whole system on a daily basis. Maybe the tasks aren’t the most interesting, but at least we know what to do. Sometimes we don’t know what we want to do in our work lives further. We did some studies, started a job, then have another and the time flew. We got pretty comfortable – maybe not super excited all the time, but it’s fine. It’s fine. Not so bad. Those two short sentences can literally kill us from the inside. When I deliver career coaching processes in the organizations, 90% of the cases we talk about start with: “Alex, I feel stuck in my career. I don’t know what to do further, I don’t have any idea, I’m not sure what kind of next steps I can cover to get unstuck”. So let’s answer this, I hope that’ll be helpful for all of you who read. What can you do when you feel stuck in your career?   Thing no. 1: Make a list of everything you can and want do in your career When we do what we like, we are passionate about and what is connected to our values, it’s always easier, more fun and with a better result at the end of the day. Of course nothing is perfect: there are always things that need to be done and don’t thrill us. The most important thing is the ratio: if it’s 80/20 (things we want to do vs things that need to be done), it’s fine. If it’s the other way around, it means that we should take a step back and reflect on what might change to reverse the situation. Because staying longer in that space will lead to the burnout, frustration, mental heath issues, even issues in your private life. Everything is connected, we are holistic species. The first thing you can do when you fell stuck in your career is to make a list of things you love doing. You can do it in Excel spreadsheet, on a piece of paper or in other tool (digital or not). It doesn’t really matter – choose something that will help you to organize your thoughts and it’ll be helpful further in the next steps. Make a list of tasks, projects, micro elements that make you feel good at work. You can support yourself with the questions: We (in general, as people) have a strong tendency to focus on our weaknesses, on what we do wrong or where we are not perfect or good enough. That’s why I encourage you to start with this list, to see how many things you are actually really good at. It’ll improve the process of decision-making regarding the next steps in your career. Thing no. 2: Make a list of everything you can’t and don’t want to do Not-to-do list is as important as the to-do list. Make a list of things you hate doing. You are sick to your stomach just by having the thought in your head about it. The things that, when you think about them, make you want to call in sick. Everything you just have doing or you are bored to death when you even thing about it (not to mention doing it). Every single thing that leads you to the bored or burnout zone. You can support yourself in this part by using those questions: Think about your current or previous work-related experiences. If some elements are repetitive that’s fine: it’s also an information for you that there is a pattern in your choices that you can be more mindful about when choosing the next career space for yourself. Thing no. 3: Create an action plan to make your new career happen All of the questions you can find above are for you to use to make a structure around your thoughts. Be as specific as possible, answer honestly – remember that this list is just for you (unless you decide otherwise). Of course this list isn’t ended – you can always add your own questions or thoughts. It’s a tool for you, make it useful in your specific context and situation. When you have it done, the next step is the action plan. What items from your list do you want to use in your next career step? Underline all of them. Include the talents you have, it’s important to do on a daily basis as frequent as possible the things that don’t require much energy from us, that are natural. What from the list of things you don’t want to do is crucial for you to avoid? Try to not underline the whole list, it might be difficult to create a perfect world. Choose those that are the biggest issue for you, make it 3-5 elements to simplify the process of elimination. Now, there are at least 2 scenarios: either you have a position you want to cover in the nearest future in your head or not. If yes – refresh your LinkedIn profile and your resume and send as many applications to the companies/branches that you find interesting as possible. Don’t get frustrated when you don’t have many responses. Remember that many organizations (especially global corporations)

How we think about professional and personal development differs from person to person, from country to country and from organization to organization. Strengths or gaps? It is very much cultural, rooted in a country script which says what we should or shouldn’t do as members of a certain society. Are you living in a country when you need to prove that you are good enough all the time? Or maybe you live in society where children hear from their parents that they are extraordinary, they can achieve whatever they want from the very beginning of their lives? Is there a difference between the people raised and shaped in each of those systems? Of course it is, but it doesn’t mean that we need to stay that way until the day we die. Basing on what we are really good at instead of focusing on what we can’t do can be a change of thinking paradigm for some of us. Isn’t it right that when we don’t know how to do something, we should participate in a training session, read a book or find a mentor that will teach us? I’m sure that it’s the most natural approach for many people. Is it fun? Does it work every time? Is it worth to invest the time in it? Is the result worth the effort? Let’s see what happens with us in both of these scenarios.   Scenario 1: I constantly fill the gaps Let me give you an example from my experience as a manager. Once I had an employee who was taking care of the creative part of learning materials that we provided for employees. He was amazing at his job. And once I gave him a task connected to the Excel spreadsheet. He’d been doing this task all week, gasping all the time and at the end I still had to correct it. What a manager in that kind of situation can do? I could’ve send him to an Excel training so he will improve his skills, to fill the gap. It would be an intuitive thing to do, since I needed to delegate the task to the team. But what good it would bring? So I’ve decided to not giving him an Excel task. Like ever. Instead of it I created some automations and the spreadsheet worked on its own. Case solved. This is my story, but I know a lot of managers that would use the scenario to fill out the gap. Of course there are many different situations, structures and teams. But when we have people with a really little orientation into analytics, doing a great job in the creative area – what is the point in forcing them to constantly focus on what are their weaknesses? How do you feel when you think about how not good enough you are? Regardless of the area of your life. Not a good enough partner/parent/expert/manager/owner/entrepreneur/friend? Let’s be honest – we feel shitty. It’s always this thing in our head that we are not there yet. Always on the journey, never achieving the goal. And being in that state of mind all the time can be exhausting. Frustrating and demotivating in a longer run. I don’t say that we shouldn’t improve, it’s not a story about it. We should improve, analyze when we can be better but without beating ourselves up all the time for not being perfect.   Scenario 2: I choose to base on my strengths And here’s another angle. I had an employee who really liked covering tasks connected to organizing: training sessions, events, meetings, 1:1s etc. She did it a lot and I thought that maybe it’s a little bit too monotonous and repetitive for her after a while. Once we had a quality conversation and I offered her new chunks that she could learn, like facilitation, project management or analyzing data from HR IT tools. And you know what? She didn’t want any of it! She was perfectly fine where she was at the moment, she loved being a logistic wizard, working with many different people in the most efficient way, making their lives better and easier. From her point of view her tasks weren’t monotonous at all – she was taking every training, every event as a new journey. So I left it like that, checking on a regular basis if something changes. She grew beautifully into an event manager role, being responsible for organizing things for thousands of people all around the world. What is the conclusion of that story? I might have told her that she needed to broaden her scope, do something new. But I’ve decided to leave her with her decision, watching her growing as a person, extremely satisfied and engaged at what she did every day. She was really good in her job, she learned every day, even when I thought that was not possible, doing the same thigs all over again. But I was wrong and now I know – more than ever, that I’ve made a good decision back then. Basing on her strengths allowed her to be fulfilled, happy. How many of us can really tell that we feel happy at our jobs, every day? When choosing to base on strengths, talents, preferences, or those things that we just like doing, our life can look like that. No frustration, no wasted time on things that somebody else can do in 5 minutes and we spend the whole day on finding the solution, no feeling “not good enough” again.   Why strengths are so powerful? That’s why strengths are so powerful. Focusing on what we are really good at, spending time on mastering, connecting the dots with things that are similar to those we already know is a great way to not stay in the same place. To grow all the time. We need to be aware that sometimes there is a point where we are experts in one area and maybe there is nothing

Learning a new foreign language is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions. If you live in a country when English is not a native language, you probably heard a lot that “you need to learn languages, this is the future”. And how on Earth we should do it when the school experience is often really bad (mine was for sure)? My experience was a lot of grammar, no communication (because the course book was constructed like that), and when it was time to have some conversations, the school year was over. And we’ve started all of the grammar part again because the new school year was there. Sounds familiar? In that kind of system we lost all the fun and curiosity of getting to know a new language way before it started. When something is painful or we’re forced to learn it, it’s quite probable that it won’t stick to us. That our brain is going to see this as a punishment and won’t truly engage. So how to charm away this mindset about learning a new foreign language? As a Polish person, learning mainly English through my whole adolescent and adult life and learning French at the moment, I want to share with you 5 things that help me all the time to keep my learning momentum going. No matter what happens. 1. Little things are the big things – keep doing them We all love quick results. Our brain gets a dopamine boost, a wave of endorphins flows through our veins and it’s one of the best feelings ever. We got used to that by having almost everything a click away by using internet as a part of who we are as human beings. Because of that kind of availability, we’re getting upset when we need to wait for something – even if it’s just a couple of minutes. So what can we say about learning a language, which requires a certain number of valuable hours of contact with language to reach each level? It can look like a nightmare. Also, it can unconditionally run the I-don’t-have-time excuse. But there is a way to uncharm the conviction that we have in our heads about it. The key to learning any skill or habit is consistency. It’s the same when we think about going to the gym: we are not going to get fit, thin or muscular after going to the gym once. We need to do it 3-4 times a week at least, for some people it’s every day. Even if it’s doing just 5 pushups after washing the teeth in the morning, it’s a small brick we add to the wall we build. The exact same scenario is applicable when it comes to learning the language. Do it every day, even if it’s just 5 minutes. Read a short article, do Duolingo, learn vocab on the app. Every 5 minutes combines with the time you spend on learning every week or month, and the compound effect starts working. 5 minutes every day is 2,5 hours per month. 2,5 hours per month is 30 hours per year. And see what happens when you invest in it 20 minutes per day (it’s a half of an average episode of a series on Netflix). 20 minutes per day is 10 hours per month. 10 hours per month is 120 hours per year. Based on the article I linked for you 2 paragraphs earlier, it is almost enough to reach A2 level of a new foreign language. How does it sound for you? Better than skipping a half of an episode per day?   2. Make it easy to do Most of the time learning a new language is not about motivation. It’s about the skill – something is difficult, we don’t know how to do it or we are getting frustrated that we don’t learn as fast as we wish. And if it’s hard, we quit. Natural thing. To overcome it (and you can use it not only to learning a language, but basically to everything new you want to do like building every other new habit) we need to make it easy. When something is easy, we don’t need much effort to do it. And when it’s almost effortless, we do just do it without even thinking about it. It’s like with the easiest tasks we have on our task list – most of us start with the easiest ones, even if they don’t bring a lot of value. It convince our brain that we are busy and valuable. Start with an easy level on Duolingo. Learn 10 new words in a vocab app per day. Take one page of a book or article in a language you want to learn and underline all the words that you already know, or they seem to be familiar to those you know. Put them in the app and start from there. Do one exercise from the coursebook and close it. Even if you can do more, start with just one and come back to where you finished the next day. Over time it would be not enough for you, and you’ll do more, but just as a start – don’t push it, until you feel 100% comfortable with what you do at the moment. Then push a little bit harder, do a more difficult and uncomfortable step – but only when you are a master of a previous one. That will bring you peace and safety – 2 things that influence our brain the most. If we want to stay on track, our brain can’t be in danger all the time, because it’ll run flight/fight/freeze mode. Take care of your brain and it’ll take care of yourself. 3. Try different things, don’t blindly go with something that doesn’t work for you Everybody learns at the language school in a group? It must be it. Both my best friends told me that they have an individual tutor or a

We all have better and worse moments in our lives. Especially when something is changing (and let’s be honest – this world we live in right now is connected with many elements that transform all the time), we tend to feel overwhelmed. Do you know the feeling when everything is fine until there isn’t, and when everything seems to go down at the same time? One thing leads to another, and we experience a series of events we would pretty much prefer to avoid. Inflation. Restructuring in the company and a job cut. A breakup. Health problems. Sick kids. Shortage of money. Death. Mental issues. You name it. A lot of things can influence our state of being in control of our lives. And in those moments, we often freeze, wait for the better times and hope for the best. But hope is not a strategy. We need something else to transform overwhelm into a power that can keep us moving, succeeding, achieving our goals. Despite all the thigs that are happening, it’s our choice what we do with the time we have. So what to do with it to create a power, not a burden? Transform your mindset Did you ever made a great decision when you were overwhelmed? Are you the best version of yourself when you are tired or frustrated? Do you thrive when you freeze in difficult times waiting for the better ones to come? Are you the best partner, friend or parent when you feel you don’t have control over what’s happening in your life, or you snap easily? I know I am not the best version of myself while feeling all of those. I don’t make good decisions, or I procrastinate things. I snap on other people, and I’m mean to them. That’s why I really take care of not letting this state of mind happen to me very often – I see how much damage it does to my life. To be better in every aspect of your life you want, you need to transform your mindset. From whining to doing. From looking for excuses to making decisions. From seeing only obstacles to seeing opportunities. From being scared to being courageous. From waiting for others to change to changing yourself. From hope to action. If you have a mindset that says: “now the times are hard, let’s wait until it’s better”, you sit on your hands and hope for the best. But as mentioned before: hope is not a strategy. It is a believe that something will magically change for us. And guess what? It won’t. Only we can do the work, make good decisions about what we do with our time, with whom we spend it and in what we invest. Transform your mindset means making a conscious choice of how we see the world that is around us and how we shape it. Are we victims of what’s happening or are we owners of it? Do you want to be a master or a victim? Use good old “7 WHY” tool Easier said than done, right? That’s where the tools come to support us and make a structure around how we think and what we do as a consequence of those thoughts. The 7 Why method is based on a 5 Why framework, invented and implemented in Toyota in the 1930s, popularized in 1970s. Back then it became one of the most efficient ways to understand what’s actually happening on the shop floor, rather than guess what might be happening in the boardroom. To be honest, we all can use it nowadays – maybe even more than ever. Ask yourself “why” you want to do a certain thing, achieve a certain goal, or get rid of a certain bad habit 7 times to unleash the real truth that is underneath the surface. If you are familiar, you can see the links to the Simon Sinek and his Start With Why idea, which influenced a lot of companies and lives all over the world. Here is an example of how it can look like. 7 steps might look like a lot, but thanks to that, we can really get to know what is the real root of the situation we face. Do you want to transform your life? Do you want to transform your business, your relationship? Do you want to have more energy, passion, time? It’s really powerful when you discover what is really happening within you, sometimes on a really deep level. As you can see in the example above, the first need or goal was completely different than the last thing. This person never learned how to set healthy boundaries to not be used by others at work. She really loved her work at the beginning, and she never procrastinated a thing. So the root of her behavior was completely somewhere else, and procrastination was a consequence, not a source. To transform overwhelm, lack of motivation, procrastination or a fear of change, do 7 Whys and see what is the root of this feeling. Discover what’s really out there, it’ll be so much easier when you know the truth and can actually address that. Think through OKRs’ lens Once you have the real thing you want to achieve, overcome or transform the overwhelm into, now is the time to make a little structure around it to make it happen. You are not going to change your life by sitting on your hands and waiting for the better times to come. You need to take action, consistently, everyday to make happen what you want to have in life. That’s the place where OKRs come to support us on this journey. This is my favorite way to make a real path for my dreams, plans and things I want to achieve. Let’s use 2 examples of how to transform overwhelm into power and a real change: the one from the 7 Why method, and the second one from my private

Think about one thing you wanted to start doing, but you’ve procrastinated it this week. What was it? Was it a task at work? If yes, what was it about? Was it a workout or a morning run? Was it a 5-minute reading time? Was it cooking a healthy meal? Was it a phone call to somebody? Was it an article that you have opened in one tab of your browser since last year? Now think about one thing from last week that you thought about and you’ve started doing it right away. What was it? How much time it took? How did you feel after doing it? Why we do some things right away, and procrastinate others? Even if they are on our task list, in a beautiful New Year’s resolution spreadsheet or a habit building app. Why is it so hard to start doing something we do know that is for our own good, to keep us better in what we do at work, more successful, healthier, smarter, better in relations? And why some people are doing great with everything, can make time for every part of their live and some people just aren’t? You become what you believe It’s not about magical thinking, because there is no such thing as a change happening overnight, without any effort. If you read or see an ad that promises you loosing 10kg per month or being fluent in a foreign language in 2 months, you need to hear this – it’s not going to happen. Even if you really believe in it, it’s just not possible. And it’s not about being positive all the time, because we know that’s not possible too. We have a wide range of emotions, joy is only one of them. And to build awareness, we need to acknowledge that we are going to be sad, angry, scared, frustrated, excited or enthusiastic. It’s all part of who we are as human beings and resenting that is not going to change how it works. But we have control over what we think, how we shape those thoughts in certain circumstances. If you think that you are not smart or competent enough to change the job for a better one, you are never going to apply to any role that is out there on the market. When you sit on the couch, watching another series on Netflix, never going out or meet other people because you think that you are fat, ugly and nobody will ever love you – you rob yourself from the opportunities to actually meet somebody who will. If you think that you can’t say “no” to other people, you do everything for them without even thinking about your own health because you don’t want them to stop likening you – you are never going to say “no” and protect yourself. Not good enough. Not smart enough. Too old to do this. Too young to do that. Who am I to tell others how to live? What do I know – I live in a small city. Too fat. Too skinny. Don’t have talent to do XYZ. You become what you believe. If you believe that you are not going to achieve anything, you are not. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you can do is to change your mindset. If you believe that you are enough, that you can learn, ask for help or guidance and actually succeed – it is going to be easier to start, to make baby steps, see what happens and keep going. It can be hard, but it’s going to be extremely satisfying when you’ll see the results of who you are becoming. Every day a little better than the person who you were yesterday. Scenario 1: Not so easy to start, but easy to keep going Sometimes it’s not easy to start. You don’t believe in yourself, you don’t have money, time, support, or you just don’t have skills to do something. And if something like that is in your head, you wait. And wait. And wait some more. Until the times are better. Until the economy is up again. Until your spouse or friends will be more supportive. Until you learn. And all of the sudden, weeks, months and years pass, and nothing changes. Oh wait, something actually change. You are more and more frustrated and disappointed of your life. Remember this little exercise from the beginning of this article? What was this thing that you’ve started doing right away? The key question here is: why? Was it easy to do? Did it bring a quick result? Was it fun? Was it a part of your passion, something you love doing? Was it a part of your value, of who you are as a person? When things are not so easy to start, it often means that: The rest of the reasons (about the time, money, support etc.) is bs. There are just excuses to not doing things, because it’s uncomfortable, scary or unpopular. If you want to start doing something, find the link to what’s already there in yourself. If you do that, it’s going to be easier to keep going, because the connections will strengthen your self-esteem and confidence that you actually can do it. You’ll make time, you’ll figure out how to raise the money you need. When you really want to do something and it’s close to your heart, you’ll figure out the way. Scenario 2: Easy to start, not so easy to keep going Sometimes we are super motivated, triggered by something and we start doing a thing. We buy pretty clothes, new shoes and we start exercising, like running or going to the gym. We put a pile of books on a bedside table, and we start reading. We start getting up earlier, motivated to join 5AM club.  And generally, after a couple of days we quit. Gym card stays in the drawer, books gather dust, and we start using the

Being a trainer is one of my favorite things in the entire world. I love watching people listen, reflect, try to do things differently, making conclusions and grow. One of the best moments in the process of teaching others is this time at the end of the session, or after it when I get feedback and see that it was something valuable for others. That every person found at least one thing that they’re taking with them to use in a real life. This is the best feeling I can imagine as a trainer. But how to do this? How to create a learning environment, the experience that will allow people you want to teach to have one AHA moments after another, to give them something that will stick with them after the course/class/e-learning/webinar/lecture? How to be a trainer or a teacher that people remember and use what they’ve learned during the learning experience you provide for them? Let’s find out together using 5 elements that definitely helped me during my journey. 1. Trainer is not the smartest person on the planet. A trainer, teacher, coach, mentor – literally every person who teach or support others in any way is somebody who can influence peoples’ lives, inspire, trigger to change a way of thinking or behaving. And all of those figures need to have a certain amount of knowledge and experience to be a partner for other people, to work and support them. But it doesn’t mean that we need to behave like the smartest people on the whole planet. Trainer’s role is to create an environment where people can leave old beliefs or convictions, learn new things, rebuild or build new skills, answer questions that’ll lead to better conclusions. There is a need for trust and safety, because only that way we can take risks of not being perfect, sometimes vulnerable. If a trainer doesn’t create that space, the learning process is not going to be effective. So if we make a training session, workshop or a mentoring 1:1 meeting only about us, maybe we should check our own needs. Maybe one or more hungers are frustrated and that’s how we compensate it? Learning process is for other people: we are guides, companions on a learning journey. And yes, we share our experiences, mistakes, conclusions, things we did differently after we’ve learned. But those are examples that we use to support the flow of the process, not the essence of the whole thing. 2. Don’t assume, ask. We often think that we know for sure what other people need, what they want to learn or how they want to change in their lives. These are assumptions. We assume based on our own needs, experiences, frustrations, struggles. And the intention is mostly good – we want others to have a better, easier life. We believe that based on what we’ve experienced we can share it with others, ease their pain or help them to avoid a certain scenario. A lot of trainers, coaches or speakers started that way. And it’s a great base, to share what we know, what we’ve experienced, because it’s always going to be authentic. But to be great trainers, we need to ask people what they need. Assuming is one of the worst things we can do. Why? Because we are going to spend so much time on creating a workshop/webinar/e-learning course based on what we assume people might need, and after all of this effort (time, money, learning how to create a course etc.) it can appear that no one comes, or signs up, or after the session the participants don’t have any take-outs. Because it didn’t suit their hungers. Ask questions. Even if it’s a one or two short ones. You can do it before, you can do it at the very beginning of the session. Check with your audience, regardless of its number – it can be one person, it can be a thousand. Stay curious, don’t be fooled only by the thoughts in your head. 3. Trainer is for people, not the other way around. This one is strictly connected with the first point. If learning experience you create is about you, you are not serving people, they are serving your ego. When people decide to come to your training or webinar, they invest time – the most valuable currency in the whole world. They are here because they want to learn, they want to make a change or to get the courage they didn’t have before. Trainer should be a person who cares about the learning experience, about the gains for the participants and getting them to achieve their goals. I saw so many trainers that made all of the workshop about themselves, their goals, their career, their experiences. And as mentioned before – it’s fine to share, that’s why we are in this role. But let’s use Pareto ratio – 20% of your life, 80% of participants’. 4. Use knowledge about personalities and preferences. A lot of times when we do an open enrolment webinar or lecture we don’t know before the session who is going to participate. We can have some information about the target group, but if we don’t know those people really well, it’s impossible to cut the experience to measure and create one-size-fits-all situation. But having basic knowledge about personality types and thinking preferences allows us to take into consideration all of the interests and just be mindful about different needs people can have. And in 90% of the cases will have, because we are all individuals. Use the knowledge about personality types (you can use Insight Discovery or DISC Model for instance). The model is secondary, the point is you can tell after a short observation who is in your classroom (virtual or in person). If you work online with a bigger group, you can assume that the representants of all types will be there, so you need to work on the communication process

Sometimes we all feel that it’s just too much. Too many tasks on the list that never ends. Too many expectations from the outside world. Too much pressure to be perfect, to manage doing everything and to not lose any touch of optimism, level of energy or creativity. Too many distractions, phone calls, messages, Teams meetings – all of those things that stop us from being focused and concentrated on what really matters. And where among all those things journaling can find its place? It can help even when we are super organized, efficient, with a good balance in our lives, we can struggle sometimes. Our brains are not programmed to process this amount of data and stimulants we get every day, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we feel just tired of being preoccupied. And journaling is a great tool to ease the pain, improve a lot of areas in your life and what’s most important – keep your mind calm and free of being overwhelmed. How does it work for me? Here are few things I hope will be an inspiration to see what you can life to live it better. Journaling is a part of my morning routine I am a morning person, so a morning routine is one of my favorite parts of the day. I get up at 6AM every day, do my workout session and then have a breakfast and I journal a little bit. I’ve added journaling to my morning routine almost 3 years ago, after participating in Brand Minds Conference where one of the speakers introduced the Miracle Morning idea. I’ve started small, wrote down elements from the exercise. And then, I’ve realized how much it helps me organizing my thoughts and sometimes let off steam and frustrations without hurting other people. It takes me 5-6 minutes every day, not more, and is a great addition to all of the elements that make my morning full and structured. Journaling keeps me organized When I journal, I always create a space to make a list of the gains from yesterday and 3 things I want to achieve today (I wrote more about it here). Those 3 things I want to gain in a certain day help me to be more focused on what is really important for me, and checking if I achieved what I wanted the previous day gives me information about myself. Was I focused enough? What can I do differently today to gain what I want and need? You can add a structure of your day there, the main things you want to do for yourself in different areas. It can be interesting to divide the elements in categories: work, development, health, relations, food etc. That way you will see day by day how you spend your time, and maybe which areas of your life are overinvested and underinvested. You can ask yourself then: why is that? Is it harder for me to do some things than others? What can I do to redirect my energy on those areas that are important, but I don’t spend a lot of time on them at the moment? Sometimes just a change of focus on certain elements can help you in seeing things differently, from another angle. It helps me to regulate emotions We’re all getting stressed, frustrated, without an influence on what we want to have an influence on. We’re getting mad at other people (close to us or really far from us, i.e. the politicians or CEOs), angry, scared, disappointed or sad. And of course, we’re getting mad, frustrated, angry at ourselves. These are all human, normal emotions. We were taught to not to name them, feel them, to get rid of them as fast as possible. Because FEELINGS ARE BAD. FEELINGS ARE UNPROFESSIONAL. Don’t cry, be man. Don’t be a sissy. Don’t get angry, girls are supposed to be nice and smiley. Sounds familiar? Those things we hear as children stay with us and we believe them as adults, the most oftenly – unconsciously. Even the most developed, wise, mindful people on the planet have those thoughts in their heads. Journaling helps me to name what I feel, to take a step back to reflect on that and make a former decision about what I want to do with that emotion. Recognition is a first step of a high level of mental health, to live in a harmony with yourself. It is a way to discover things Sometimes when I write, those thoughts, sentences or bullet points are just coming to my mind and fingers. And pretty often I don’t expect some of them to be there, on the piece of paper or in doc file, they just appear. One thought leads to another and unlock other ideas, connect the dots between things I never thought can be linked together. Journaling can be a great tool to train the creativity muscle, to get yourself carried away by the flow and just let the stream of the thoughts go. It also can be just a fun, easy experience, but it also can be hard, eye-opening or triggering in some way. Regardless of that, you can discover something through it. And you can be closer to yourself, you can free the potential or skills you never knew are there. Once they are discovered, you can decide what to do with them. But if you don’t know what really is inside of you, how you can make a decision about anything? The bottom line For a long time I’ve only read about journaling. We can find online multiple articles about the advantages of it. Or about how much it is a life changer or how it can be applicable to the life of every single person. Now I know that it’s not for everybody, but it works for me, and I gladly share the experience from what I’ve learned from the whole process. Give it a chance. Give yourself a gift

If you have only one pick to name the most stressful time during the whole year, what would you choose? Is December holiday time in your TOP3? The last quarter of the year has something magical in it, and I’m not talking about the magic of the holiday time. We want to squeeze all of the things we wanted to achieve or do throughout the whole year in one month or take care of relations with family in one or two holiday nights. Does it cost you a lot of stress? Do you feel pressured, attacked by tradition or questions you don’t really want to answer? How often do you feel that you would rather spend this time alone or with friends, preferably in some sunny, beautiful place? What if this year we take care of ourselves better? What if this year you feel good before, during and after holiday time, without regret or guilt? Let’s go through 5 things you can do to achieve this state of mind. 1. Stay in OK-OK zone Staying in OK-OK zone means that you think and feel that you are OK, and the others are OK too. It’s really hard for some of us to stay in OK-OK zone around holiday time. We feel pressured, stressed about the whole thing, we spend this time with family that we sometimes don’t even like anymore. We don’t set boundaries because we don’t want to hurt their feelings. So we sit and suffer in silence. What about that scenario: this year I’m going to stay in OK-OK zone. I’m OK with my life and what I do with it, and I believe that other people are OK too – even if they are ask inappropriate questions or behave not ideally. I believe that there is always good intention there, i.e. they want to know more about my life, but they don’t really know how to ask properly about it. You don’t need to answer to all the questions people ask, but you can react differently – not to go offensive, just set a clear boundary. Don’t get drawn into the discussion you don’t want to be a part of. Don’t waste your energy and time to convince somebody to something. Influence what is in your scope of control, let go everything else. The more you are in OK-OK position, the less frustrated, stressed and tired you’ll be. OK-OK gives you freedom of not being tight to other peoples’ emotions, needs, frustrations, fears. Isn’t it worth to change the mindset? 2. Don’t accept invites to the psychological games Psychological game regarding Eric Berne is a form of communication that follows a specific scenario and leads to the predictable ending. Holiday psychological games are repetitive, we can easily name each of them and actually see the signals that they’re coming. A great example is a holiday dinner. Young couples get questions about when they’ll get married. Young married couples get questions about when they’ll have kids and single people get questions about when they’ll find somebody. Each of those questions can lead to a psychological game, it’s an invitation we can accept or decline. When we accept it, we take one of the three roles in the drama triangle: victim, prosecutor or rescuer and the game begins. It drains our energy, makes us feel bad about ourselves and we get into conflicts with others. When we don’t accept it, we protect ourselves and save energy that we can spend on something that really matters. 3. Do more things earlier to avoid procrastination Sometimes we do this to ourselves: we procrastinate buying presents and ingredients for dishes, cooking, cleaning or decorating the house, calling others/sending the holiday wishes or all of the other things each of us do before and/or during holiday time. It comes with a high level of stress, a feeling that we are not good or organized enough, sometimes connected with guilt. And with all of that, we just feel tired and don’t have energy to be a center of entertainment. When we lack energy, we often get comments like: “why you are so sad? It’s Christmas – smile and be happy!”. Do you know that feeling? Do you just want to lock yourself in a quiet room and spend some time alone then? Is it really how we want to invest our time? To avoid that feeling, make a plan to execute milestones earlier, not all at once. Create a spreadsheet or a table on a piece of paper with the things you want to do, the effect you want to achieve and the date you want to do it. No excuses. Be reasonable – once you have a list, check if there are any things you can use support with? Maybe you can “delegate” some of those items to your partner, kids or friends? Reflect on what yourself and others are really good at and maybe as a side effect of the whole thing you’ll create a creative space for them to spend time? 4. Protect your time This one is strictly connected with the previous one, but it goes a bit further. Usually around holiday time we schedule some time off at work, to recharge after the hard year, to come back after New Year’s with a fresh set of energy. And what a lot of us do during this time? Cleaning the house. Cleaning windows. Taking care of others’ free time (i.e. organizing time for kids). Cooking for guests. Catching up on some work, since there is almost no one there, so we can finally focus on what requires a deep work time with no distractions. The list is endless. What we often really miss is time for ourselves. Only for ourselves – when we can read, drink tea or coffee under the warm blanket, rest, take care of our minds and bodies. Sometimes it’s time for a reflection on last year’s events and making plans for the new one. Sometimes

Do you have courage in your life? What does it mean to be courageous? Does it mean to not be scared and just do things? Is brave and courage the same thing? Do we even need courage to live fully and happily? The difference between bravery and courage We often use those two words while naming the same thing. It can be about making decisions, even if it’s not safe, about taking risks, being adventurous or having an extreme hobby. But is it really the same? Being brave is about cutting fear off and doing things, sometimes without even thinking about it or reflecting on the risks. Bungee jumping can be an example of it. It’s a matter of the moment, not necessary, but fun – so we do it, as a spark of the adrenaline. Being courageous is about doing things in spite of fear, after a process of logical thinking, taking into consideration pros and cons. It’s about doing things while knowing it can be risky, dangerous, BUT doing it anyway. It doesn’t mean that the process needs to be long – sometimes it’s just a quick assessment of the situation, i.e. when we see a cat that is crossing the street and the car is approaching. We assess the speed of the car, the risk of being hit by it and we go to rescue the cat. If you want to read more about the difference between bravery and courage, here is a great article about it, with more examples and comparisons to understand better the whole concept.   What courage can bring us? Do you know the feeling when we really want to do something, but we don’t? We don’t do it and then, we regret. “Oh, I could’ve done it, it looks so simple”, “oh, I could’ve done it, Sarah did it and look how happy she is now!”. It can be anything, a decision about taking a new job or applying to one, a decision about changing the place of living, about investing time and money in a course or studies, a decision about not eating candy or drinking alcohol when everybody eat or drink it. Courage gives us the opposite feeling compared to the one above. It gives us proud and satisfaction. It can give us freedom, more autonomy at work and/or in life. It can give us new perspectives, chances to be somebody who we are really proud of.   Courage brings us an infinite possibility to be whomever we want. Why courage not bravery? Because creating the person you are dreaming to become requires a strategy, goals, plan and tactics. It’s not a random decision and the results won’t happen overnight. It needs consistency, being ready to fail, learn, try again, and again, and again. And we need courage to do it to. To try again when we fail. If we give up after the first or the second try, most of us is not going to succeed. Hard? Difficult? Scary? Hell yeah. But is going to be worth it to be courageous and try again to live a good, full life that you won’t regret at the end. Do you have courage in your life? Do you set boundaries at work? Do you say “no” when you don’t have capacity (time, energy etc.) to do a certain task or another project? Do you set boundaries at home? Do you say out loud what do you need or when you need help? Are you taking care of your career? Are you seeking for opportunities, taking uncomfortable action to change who you are professionally? Do you take care of your health? Do you say “no” to unhealthy things, like candy, another glass of wine or processed food you don’t even like? Are you able to replace another episode of Netflix series with a short workout session? Do you read? Are you able to replace 10 minutes of scrolling social media with 10 minutes of reading something that will nourish your brain? Do you set boundaries within your friendships? Are you choosing people who have a good influence on you and restrain those who are energy vampires? Do you make decisions to make your life better? It can be about health, relations, development, career, place of living, vacation destination, content you read/listen/watch on the internet. If you answered “yes” to at least one of the questions above, it means you have courage in your life. Good for you! Now you can choose one thing from this list that you can do better, connect it to the one you already have. It’s always easier to glue things together since they stick to each other that way. If you didn’t answer “yes” to anything, choose one thing, one question you really would like to say “yes” to. What can you do to change your current situation? Who can help you? What resources do you need (time, money, other peoples’ support, silence, physical or mental space, knowledge, skills)? What you already have that can be a starting point to this change? A lot of things are inside of ourselves, sometimes all we need is a good goal and a good plan to unlock it. The bottom line Being courageous is not always about bungee jumping, rock climbing or living in different country every three years. It can be all that, but not necessarily. Courage is about seeing the world as a place full of possibilities, opportunities to learn, change, grow, meet new people and say goodbye to things without feeling guilty about it. It’s about taking care of yourself, making space in life for comfortable and uncomfortable – that’s how the great experiences are built. Courage is a friend who sometimes pushes us into the stretch zone, and sometimes protects us from doing stupid things. Regardless of the situation, we know that he/she is always there, which gives us comfort, trust and freedom to live our lives however we want. How about feeling like this

We often ask ourselves and others: “what is the key to be successful?”. And by successful we might mean many different things: to have a success in business, a great relationship, to achieve goals in health, shape or sports zone, to travel the world, to develop certain skills. From my observation, practice and learning, there is one thing that keeps things together and let us thrive: momentum. What is momentum actually? For me this is our inner power, the energy that keeps us going and we stay internally motivated for a long time. It’s a force that keeps us on the surface, even when our limiting believes, convictions and bad habits are calling us, wanting us to quit, to stay in a comfort zone. From many sources of knowledge, including this one, we already know that growth, good change and success in any area of our lives is possible only in a stretch zone. It’s sometimes uncomfortable, unknown, scary. But as we are smart people, we do know that this feeling is necessary to make a real change, to build ourselves, to be better in anything we decide on. And every fear passes, sooner or later, when you get used to the new circumstances. How to keep the momentum going? No matter how hard or difficult to decide it is, or how many discouraging thoughts we have in our heads. Let’s find out. What fuels your momentum? If momentum is a speed, energy that pushes us to do more, to reach for what we dream of, we need to know what feed us, what makes us feeling this way. Is it a space where you feel inspired, calm or invincible? Is it a space with a certain order or elements? Do you need certain food or other nourishments? Are there people who have a good influence on you, give you energy and support in what you do? What about your mindset? What mindset do you need to feel empowered and keep the momentum going for you? What state of mind is a winning one? Think about all the things that have a good, positive influence on you. What inspires you, what brings you good ideas, flow? In what circumstances do you feel empowered or that you can achieve anything you decide on? What people bring you support, positivity, who believe in you? Is a good night sleep, eating healthy, working out, not worrying about the things that you have zero influence on helpful? Find your thing – for each of us it can look different, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Use those question above and make a list of what you feel is the best for you, that serves you in a really meaningful way. Then decide on one thing from this list you can do more, starting today. Begin with only one, experience how your life changes after this shift. Who or what robs you from power? When you have an awareness of what you need to keep your momentum going, the second part of the story is to answer to what or who robs you from the energy you build? What people in your environment are energy vampires (you feel drained after every time connecting with them)? Which elements of space at your work (or living) has a bad influence of you (maybe a mess, lack of structure, too many unnecessary items all over the place)? Do you eat healthy, or your diet is full of candy, processed food, alcohol, snacks? Are you sleep-deprived? Do you exercise regularly? What about water? Do you live unbalanced life? Are you focusing only on 1-2 areas and neglecting all of the others? Make your list. This is as important as the previous one with what keeps you moving. Being aware of our environment is a key to make it better, to improve where we are, how we live and work, what value we bring to this world, how we support others. Choose one thing you are going to get rid of, starting right now. RIGHT NOW. What drains you from energy, robs you from your momentum? Those sneaky thoughts, beliefs, convictions about yourself and the world can be deadly to our goals and dreams. Dean Graziosi always says: “What is the best time to grow a tree? 10 years ago. What is the second-best time? Now.” What completely new you can do to grow your momentum? Sometimes we need more stimuli than we usually do. It depends on our ratio of hungers, but it can also change from time to time in regard to the situation we are currently facing. Habits are good, they are necessary to stay on track, to be focused and I will never encourage you to leave them behind. But there are moments that we need a new trigger, something that will unleash new source of energy, motivation, WHY or HOW to do to certain things that will bring us closer to the goal we want to achieve. Think about what you would do if there were no constrains, imagine that sky is the limit. Things like money, time, energy, health, freedom, other peoples’ support, knowledge resources – there are all limitless. What would you do to grow your momentum, to make it infinite? You got that? Now think backwards: what milestones do you need to achieve to get closer to this vision you just had? And what is the first step you can do? Our brain gives us a lot of different illusions, beliefs that aren’t even true – they’re just projections that (from biological perspective) want to keep us safe (meaning: not being eaten by the tiger). Acknowledge that. Then stop the endless wheel of excuses, procrastination and telling yourself you’re not good enough to do something. You are. It’s a matter of a decision. Do you want a great life or are you just faking it? No matter what you do for living, how you spend your free time, what kind of relationship

We often ask ourselves questions like: “is it a good time to end this relationship?”, “is it a good time to start a new one?”, “is it a good time to change my haircut?”, “is it a good time to start saving money?”. “Is it a good time to change my job?” is on that list too. We wonder “what if”. What if I… had another job? … had another manager? … moved to another city/country? … changed my job entirely and start doing something completely new? All of those “what ifs” are with us when we think about our perfect lives, perfect jobs or perfect managers. But “perfect” doesn’t exist – there will always be something that destroys the “perfect” view of a job we have. Too much work/too less work, too many people/too few people to do everything, too many restrictions/bureaucracies or no structure at all/total mess. But when we think about the current situation we are in, we instinctively feel when it’s time to start looking for something new. How to know for sure? Here are some signals you can look for to answer to this important question and make a decision for yourself. 1. “OMG it’s Monday again” When we live from weekend to weekend it’s like living from paycheck to paycheck. Or from vacation to vacation. Never happy about what it is, always dreaming about a perspective of next thing that should ease our pain somehow. When you are sick to your stomach every Sunday afternoon and at the very beginning of Monday you cannot wait until it’s Friday again, it probably means that you don’t like your job very much. Or your life in overall, it’s another angle to take a look on the situation. All the gifs, memes and stories that are all over the internet convince us that hating Mondays is normal, all people on the planet has the same thing, right? And those who are happy and can’t wait for the new week are either crazy or workaholics. Do you know somebody who loves Mondays? Who are they? What do they do? What decisions do they make? Are they crazy? Source: https://boldomatic.com/p/bZUEfg/i-know-one-person-who-loves-monday If you hate Mondays, it is the first sign that maybe it’s not about the Monday itself – it’s more about what you do everyday from Monday to Friday. How you spend your weeks? Do you do something that you’re passionate about? 2. I can’t stand people in this company Sometimes we work in a company that has a high level of maturity. Mature, experienced people, mature organization, leadership, working processes. People don’t waste time on things that don’t matter, they focus on their job and the value that they want and should bring to the table. There are some new people, sometimes young, sometimes students that want to start their career somewhere. But in overall, people understand what we say to them. And pretty often we work in a mess. Messy environment, processes, structures, communication flow. People are running around in circles, wasting time on things they shouldn’t even think about. They do tasks that are not even theirs. And when you are a smart person and you work in that kind of environment, you just can’t stand some people. Their never-ending questions, over and over again about the same things. Their lack of independence, taking responsibility for what they do or finding solutions to the problems that occur. And it’s not like you don’t want to help – it’s just exhausting for you to work in that kind of organization. When you feel that way, it might mean that you need a change of a scenery and a new place. Of course a new firm doesn’t mean that there won’t be questions. It means that you can do a fresh start, with better contracting that will prevent this feeling of frustration to happen again, at least in that scale. 3. Why it’s such a mess? This one is kind of connected to the previous one. If you have a strong need for structure, you will die in the organization that is messy. Literally. You’ll be frustrated all the time that you waste all of your energy on things that should be structured by a simple policy for instance. I wrote about this several times now, but from my experience there is not a not worse things then wasted time. And wasted potential. I am personally attached to this one since I’m a really structured person and a mess in the work environment drives me crazy. I cannot work when I need to waste time on looking for the right piece of information or the right person. Or taking part in meaningless meetings where there is no takeaway, and people just meet because they suppose to be busy or something. If you have a strong need for structure and the organization that you work within at the moment is super messy, you are on the straight path to the burnout zone. When a basic hunger is not fed, we procrastinate, looking for excuses, not acting our best selves. We self-sabotage a lot, sometimes it’s not even a conscious act, we just do it because of the helplessness of the situation. Especially when we don’t have any, or we have a little influence on what’s happening every day. 4. Why it’s so hard to make a change here? The most common scenario: the bigger the organization, the harder is to make any change. There are more layers of approvals, more bureaucracy, more complex set of systems where the change needs to go through. For some of us it’s fine, we are not in a rush, we can wait. But for some, it’s infuriating. When we see that something isn’t working, and there is a way to change that, we want to act on it and fix the thing. It can be anything: a process, way of communication, product, way of working – you name it. There is always

We talk a lot about the changes we want to make in our lives, relations, career. We share with others our dreams, goals and visions about how we would like our live to look. And yet, 80% of the cases stop at this stage – talking, dreaming and not taking any action to actually change something. Why? Because we don’t like changes. We don’t like to feel uncomfortable, or to make decisions that put our current situation at work at risk. Even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s frustrating and we are not happy. “Better known enemy than unknown friend”, they say. So we stick to the job we don’t enjoy, years are passing through while we still wish for the best, crossing our fingers under the table (maybe next year will be better?). And what happens? Nothing changes. And we are upset, disappointed and miserable that we didn’t get different income from the same behavior. So today, let’s do something about it in a simple, easy way. These are 3 things you can do to make an actual change in your career that will boost your energy level, bring back your passion and high level of internal motivation. Interested? 1. Choose one small habit that can improve your life and career. A success, whatever it means to each of us is a sum of many small decisions, habits, choices, people who helped or supported us, opportunities we took and investments we made. We see successful people and we often think that they are so extraordinary, special, talented, rich. And there is no such thing. Each of those people worked and worked, and worked, they’ve spent tremendous number of hours on learning, making mistakes, trying again, building a decision-making muscle and succeed at the end of the day. And every person on the planet can do the same thing. Everything starts with one, small thing, a habit that improves our life in overall, and a career as a side effect at the very beginning. Choose one thing you would like to do that you don’t do today. Remember to keep it very small, extremely simple. You can use some of those or create your own example. The important thing here is that this new habit needs to be linked to the existing one, that you already have. So for example if you get up every day at 6:00AM, you can sit at bed for 5 minutes and meditate before you start your day. If you drink a cup of coffee with your breakfast, read 5 pages of a chosen book (it can be anything you want) while drinking it. If you take a shower every morning, before your water is warm enough, do 5 pushups. Better habits mean better health, better health means better energy and better energy means better decisions about your life and career. 2. Cut one thing from your career that drives you crazy. We all have things we don’t like or don’t want to do. Always was, always will be that way. But the ratio should be 80/20 – 80% of the things at work that are inspiring, interesting or developmental and 20% of those that are not really amusing, but we know that they need to be done. If it’s the other way around, there is a straight way to the burnout zone, and we need to quickly do something about it to avoid feeling this way. Try to pick one thing that drives you crazy at work. It can be one task, one project, one report or even one person that notoriously exceeds your boundaries. You can use Influence Matrix to see where it lands regarding influence and importance level. Can you pass it to someone else, maybe delegate if you are a manager? Can you let it go, since it is really not important at all and “it has always been done this way”, so you’ve been doing it? Can you talk to your manager so the task may be transformed somehow? Can you set your boundaries better? Think about one thing that bothers you the most and about the way you can cut it. It’ll give you less negative energy, frustration and will make space for better energy, more potential and enthusiasm or more positive people with a good influence. 3. Find one person with an extraordinary career to follow. A great inspiration is something that can move us forward, to give us a boost of internal motivation, to create a space for our brain to think and act bigger, to have more courage. Sometimes it’s right there – we have those people at work, great managers, colleagues, mentors. Sometimes those people are in our private lives – our friends, family members or mentors from the outside (i.e. local communities). But quite often we live and work in less inspiring environment, so we need to find it on our own somewhere else. Find one person who can be an inspiration for you. It can be somebody from your work or home, it can be somebody you don’t know, and you’ll never have a chance to meet. It doesn’t matter. You can start with a book of this person, a podcast, an interview or an article. Use one of the examples  here and here or ask your colleagues or friends who is inspiring for them and use it as you seem it fit to your current situation. See what you can apply to your life and career, connect it with the point 1 of this article. Sometimes this first spark means more than anything else. The bottom line Simplifying, making things easier, in a faster way, yet impactful. That’s something we all can use more. Focusing on that can bring us a lot of good, positive energy that will transform our actions into the value we give ourselves or others. Choose one thing you can do for yourself, starting today, add to it cutting one thing that you are going to

When the times are tough, we often turn on the “survival” mode. Staying low, not making any sudden moves, waiting for the better conditions. We often don’t invest but just take our time, we withdraw with a fear of losing what we already got. Is it smart? What do we lose acting that way? Can we manage the situation differently? Let’s take a look on what we can invest into to use our time the best possible way and protect our future at the same time. Invest in your skills To invest in your skills is always a good way, no matter what is happening in the world, what kind of war or crisis there is out there at the moment. Regarding a lot of studies, we need to be prepared to learn new things, unlearn the old ones and it basically becomes a real competence of future. There is a prediction that 40% of jobs that exist now, will be automated and replaced by technology in less than 10 years. But the same number (or more) of new ones will be created, and it will require different set of competences and abilities to cooperate with technology and other people, that’s for sure. And that’s why we don’t have a luxury to wait until the times will be better to start learning. Create an image of your future self as a professional. Who is this person? What kind of skills and knowledge she/he has? Then go back to the current situation. What do you already know and what do you need to learn? What are 3 the most important things that you want to invest your time and money into in the next 12 months? And what you want to start with? Pick one thing and start acting on it. Today. Remember that you don’t need to necessarily spend tons of money on education if you don’t want or you don’t have it at the moment. These are many low-cost sources of knowledge, the main goal here is to find the proper one that will support you achieving your developmental OKRs. Here are some possibilities: And of course you can add to that list workshops, training programs, certifications, formal education (master, post-graduation studies, MBA etc.) if you have space, capacity and money to invest more in yourself. It is always the best way to spend your money since you invest now to earn more and live better life in the future. Invest in your health We have only one health and one body. If we are not treating it well, it will fail and we’ll be miserable, disabled and we die sooner than later. There are plenty of examples of people over 80 years old, that are champions in sports, checks, sudoku tournaments and so on. You can find them and get inspired, because there are a lot of them, living long and healthy life all over the world. But it’s not a story about them. It’s a story about you, your decisions that you make about your life. Investing in health, mental and physical is one of the most crucial things we need to spend our time on. And yet, we often forget about it, treat our bodies like trash cans, eating badly, sleeping badly, not drinking water, scrolling social media all the time, nourishing our brains with rubbish. It’s not about perfection. We all can eat candy, pizza or having a wine night from time to time. 80/20 rule should be used here – take care of yourself really well 80% of the time, and have this 20% stock on the unexpected, bad moods, pizza Fridays or whatever. Invest in your health by eating fresh ingredients, get rid of candy, processed food and everything that makes you feel bad after having a meal. Drink water, go to bed and wake up approximately the same time every day. Do regular medical checkups, don’t wait until you are sick. Don’t treat your body like you have more than one. Respect it, learn how to listen to its needs and how to respond to them in the best possible way. You will see the changes really quickly. Invest in your relations We are social animals, we like it or not. Regardless our personality type, whether we are more extraverted or more introverted, we all need to be in a group. This group can be a group of 2, can be a group of 1000. Every person needs something different and the beauty of it is that we can actually choose in which relations we want to invest and when. To invest in relations means to intentionally decide to spend quality time with somebody. Either it is a partner, child, parent, friend or a manager, coworker, mentor/coach at work. Relations are everywhere, in each area of our lives. Even when we go to yoga class, we spend time with people, having the same goal – doing a workout to be healthier, stronger or more flexible. Check with yourself, how you spend time with people. Ask those questions to yourself, be honest with the answers. It’s fine that we are not perfect. It’s not possible to be mindful every minute of every day, but it’s all about our priorities. If we want to really invest the most valuable thing we have – time, we need to be wise about it and put the energy where it is really valuable. For us, for our minds, bodies and relations with other people. The bottom line When the times are tough, it’s natural to want to take a step back, to wait for better times, to not risk more than necessary. But with this attitude, we can lose more than we think, so I strongly encourage you to not waste any more time. Invest in yourself, be smarter and healthier every single day. If you do it when the times are hard, imagine what you could do after, when the times are better.

We live in a time when we have an infinite access to almost everything with one simple click. Of course it depends where you are on the planet, how much money you have and how strong and stable your internet connection is. But yet, we note one of the highest rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness ever. Why is that happening?Because it is too much. Our lives are too complex. We have too many roles to play, too many tasks on our task lists (professional and personal ones) to cover. We need to be perfect in every single area of our lives. We want to have everything, so we work 60 hours per week, and then we are so tired that we don’t have strengths to get up from bed on Saturday morning and spend quality time with our families, friends or on our own. We have too many choices to make, and we are tired of making them all the time. It all sounds pretty tiring. So what can we do about it?   We can make it simpler. Simplify our lives and cut most of the complexity of it, so we can focus on what really matters. How? Let’s find out together. Why we make simple things complicated? It’s easier to add more things to something, than to simplify it. We have so much information to process in our brains every day, countless tasks, decisions to make, projects to finish. It’s a never-ending story. We make things more complicated because we are afraid of the simplicity. We are scared that simple will be worse, less meaningful, weaker. We say that we are so busy, doing more and more and more to not have to confront ourselves with our real thoughts, emotions, needs. To not need to answer hard questions. It is really visible when we think about really busy people at work (they say they busy all the time, no matter if it’s true or not). They are at the meetings all the time. Full calendars, week after week. So busy. But, when we ask them a question: “okay, you are busy, but what kind of value do you bring to the table?” it really often appears that those people bring no value. Don’t create anything, any product, innovation, service, process. Just being busy. And the truth is, “busyness” is not a value or a quality, it’s just a mask. To feel protected, important, needed. The other example can be from home. Let’s say I’m a single mother. I want to be a great mom, employee, friend, daughter, I include myself to organize school picnics, redecorate house. And why I do that to myself when it’s a job for at least 5 people? Because I don’t want to think about my real emotions. That I’m lonely. Exhausted. That I just want one day alone, in silence, with a book and a cup of coffee. Or I just want to prove other people that I can do it all. Prove what? To what people? And why? That’s what we do as humans – we complicate simple things to not confront with reality, because it’s scary, might be painful, might be hard. Sometimes we complicate things because we don’t have competences, skills to deal with the essence of the real issue. And our ego won’t allow us to say it out loud, because IT’S SO UNPROFESSIONAL to admit that we don’t know something. THAT WE NEED TO BE STRONG. That way we start running on and on in circles, without any chance to stop. How to change that? What elements of our lives can be simple again? To start simplifying our lives, we need to choose what actually we want to change and WHY. What kind of value it will bring? And what to choose to make the best of it? I would say every single element of our live can be simple again, but it might be an exaggeration for some of you. Let’s make a list of examples then. And many more. You can use your own examples that you think are important in your context, individual situation that you are at right now. Make things simple to improve your life, not somebody else’s. How to create simple without losing value? As you can see above, simplicity is not a story about losing a value of life. It is about creating different value, focusing energy on right things, instead of doing everything and burn ourselves out on constant want to have more. It is about choosing the right things, that give us the best possible outcome. It’s about being smarter about our time since it’s not infinite. If you are afraid of losing value when you simplify your life, think if this fear is real. Is it your fear, or is it just a social conviction or a belief that somebody put into our heads years ago? The belief: “I need to be busy to be valuable” is a strong one. But it’s not true. Busyness often is just an excuse to do meaningless things, instead of doing what’s really important. Do what’s important, choose it consciously, don’t let life just to happen to you. The bottom line Endless possibilities, endless choices. Wasn’t it what we all always wanted? It appears that it only makes things harder, instead of making it easier. To stop this vicious circle, we need to make better decisions. About what we spend time on, how we structure our day, what we eat, how we build our relationships. We need to spend our time well, doing what serves us, not what hurts us. If you think that’s hard, imagine that yourself on a quiet, sandy beach. You don’t need to do anything. You can choose whatever you want right now. What would you choose? These are the things that you should start from – if they came to your mind, they are really important. Start from there and keep it simple to get

We all have idols. People who we admire, out loud and/or in hiding. They can be our role models in different areas of life – perfect businessperson, entrepreneur, manager, expert, parent, partner, singer, actor, photographer, you name it. A lot of us want to be perfect in every role we have in our lives, even when we know that it is not possible. The best possible version. What if I told you that it is possible? But in a different way. We all can be the best version of ourselves in all the roles that we have at the moment. What does it mean? And how to achieve it? Let’s dig deeper and find out together. What is this best version actually? The best version of yourself is the person that you want, and you can be. The beauty of it is that YOU define who is this person by yourself. Not the society, culture, country, your parents, other people WHO KNOW BETTER. You. Because you live this life, not anybody else. And you should know what is the best for you and how you want to live this life. There are two types of mindsets that influence this subject. And there are not strictly connected to religion, sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. The first one is conservative mindset. This one is all about keeping the status quo. Taking for granted everything that we have been taught: our role in society as men and women, our role in society as children (boys and girls separately), adolescents, adults and elderly people. The cycle of life (school, work, marriage, kids, sickness, death) or the beliefs we have about the position certain elements in life (how we should treat certain things, with what kind of priority they should have): family, work, country, church, house etc. It means that we live certain values, priorities that were given to us, until the end. It’s easier for most people, we don’t need to think about it, because it’s there. We don’t need to create anything new, since it’s all already there. It is what it is, no need to discuss it. The second one is post conservative mindset. This is the place for people who have been in conservative space, took what they needed or wanted to take from it, and move further. They challenge the status quo, don’t agree to what is given, but looking for the best shape of reality that fits them, individually or as a group of people. They want something more from life, don’t want to spend their lives because somebody told them to do it in a certain way. It is harder, since we need to go way beyond our comfort zone to reach out for what’s over there, and we don’t actually know what we’re going to discover. But it’s worth the risk, sometimes a person discovers something, sometimes not – and that’s perfectly fine. It is all about living lifelong learning value: try, fail, make conclusions from it and move forward. To be the best possible version of yourself you can be in both stages. It all depends on what “best version” means to you, individually. Though, I am a huge avocat of the post conservative mindset, since I can see how much more we can do when we challenge ourselves, ask hard questions, reach for more. Again, depends on what “more” means to every single one of us. What to focus on to become this best version? We can really use the structure of process thinking to become the best version of ourselves. These are the steps that can help you in making a plan to achieve what you want. What to avoid to not waste time? We all need time to rest. To reset our brains, to watch a less ambitious movie or make fun of cute cats on Instagram. But there is a line between a need to have a little break and wasting time. When I know that I’m wasting time? When I do something repetitively, every day and it’s not giving me any value (i.e. scrolling social media). When I get distracted all the time, since people ask me to do several things at the same time, and I can’t focus on one thing. When I spend time with people who are energy vampires, and not creating any value to my life, often only whining about the world and other people. So what can we do to avoid it and not wasting time? Cut it. Set healthy boundaries, protect ourselves and our time. If you do it right, it’s not rude or selfish (it can be seen that way at first though since people around you are not familiar with that kind of reaction; but no worries, they’ll get used to it). That’s the way of taking care of yourself, to be better in what you do, more efficient, more satisfied, healthier. Spend time on things that really matter, that get you closer to achieving your goals. Cut everything else, especially if it’s not helpful at all. You will see the difference really quickly. The bottom line To become the best version of yourself you need to make a choice. Now. Who I want to be? What is the best version of myself? What do I need to achieve that? What I need to sacrifice to achieve that? Yes, sacrifice is necessary if we really want to change something. We should replace bad habits with good ones, bad people with good one. Only then our life will be full, happy, healthy and meaningful. Isn’t it a thing that we all want at the end?

There are thousands of articles, books, podcasts and YT videos in the subject: “how to change your life”. A lot of them have its ultimate goal to magically change everything, starting with losing a lot of extra weight, through finding a perfect partner, to having a perfect job. And ideally all of those things should happen overnight. But we are adults, and even if we love good stories with a happy ending, those things never happen just like that. All we can do is to work on them to happen. Make conscious decisions about using our time, spending it well – regardless of what “well” means to each of us. In this article I would like to share 10 things that works for me in making my life better every single day. What makes me feel that I spend my time well, that I choose what serves me the best and what helps to have this though in my head at the end of the day: “yes, it was a good day”. 1. Getting up at 6AM every day First live changer from my list. Getting up at 6AM every single day, not sleeping off on the weekends made my day better structured than before. I discovered that 5AM club is too early for me, and I’ve decided to try 6AM and it appeared perfect. I never had problems with getting up early, but I missed the regularity and I needed to change that. After making this change, I found out how many things I can do before starting my business day and it is beautiful. Yes, it can be harder in the fall and winter, when the days are short and many hours during the day is dark or gray outside (it sure is in Poland), but it is worth it. When you are wondering if this is something you can do, think about one thing that you always say you don’t have time for? This is the thing that you can do when you get up earlier. It doesn’t necessarily be 6AM – it can be 5AM, 5:30AM or 7:30AM. It all depends on your life, all the things that you need to do  during the day, so it’s your choice. Try 15 minutes earlier than usually for a start. And do it every day, sleeping off on the weekends it the worst thing you can do to your body, because you don’t give yourself a chance to regulate your day cycle. 2. Morning workout and meditation Since I work with different time zones in my job and I have naturally more energy in the morning than in the evening, I do as many things as I can in the first half of my day. I built a habit of 5-minute meditation by sticking it to my morning workout, which was already there. You can read more about building good habits by sticking them together in a great book by Charles Duhigg “The Power of Habit”. I do six workouts every week, with one rest day somewhere in between, depends on the weather and other plans I have. After that I meditate for 5 minutes – it is the maximum time that I can focus on my brain for now. It gives me power and energy for the rest of the day, and I don’t need to worry about this area after a hard workday when I need to rest. 3. Short journaling with 2 gains lists I discovered that writing in a journal, even if it’s just one page per day, give me a structure that I need for my thoughts or experiences from the previous day. And I added additional thing after reading a great book by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan  “The Gap and The Gain”. The exercise is really simple. Make a list of gains from yesterday. Write down all the things that you achieved, even if it’s something super small, like reading 5 pages of a book, waking up 15 minutes earlier than usually or taking your vitamins. Every single thing matters. Recognize yourself for everything you do every day. Then make a list of 3 gains that you would like to achieve today. It can be connected to all areas of your life: mental, physical, digital or financial well-being, relations, work, professional development etc. Choose 3 things, no more, no less, and focus on achieving them – you’ll check the accomplishments with yourself the next morning. You can also do this in the evening (the authors are talking about evenings, after finishing the current day and before starting the next one in the morning), but mornings are just working better for me. Choose by yourself, spend 5 minutes on that – it will be worth it. 4. Having daily / weekly / monthly / yearly goals I am a really structured person. I love making plans, paths how to get to the goals, and I hate when people are messy and indecisive. I discovered in another Ben Hardy’s book “Being Your Future Self Now” the idea of having 5-year goals, when you choose 3 areas of your life or 3 elements you would like to achieve and you do everything to get to them. I connected it with my daily goals (gains) and I use the monthly list of experiences (the idea of a Polish author Edyta Zajac – you can find her work in PL HERE) for years now and it works brilliantly for me. So I connected all the dots and I create different goals for different periods of time, with being mindful about my bigger 5-year goals. That way I make sure that I spend my time wisely, and not wasting it for the things that are not bringing me closer to achieving what I want. By making that change, you can do more with less. 5. Having slots for deep work Being distracted is one of the worst habits of our times. We have millions of information

Does it help when we worry? Let’s be honest, there will always be plenty of things that we can be worried about. We can see it clearly now, probably in one of the brightest lights. What can it be? Our health. Health of our family, friends or other people who we care about. Pandemic. Wars. Financial crisis. Inflation. Increased prices and not so increased salaries. Environmental crisis. Endangered species of animals and plants. Social crisis. Deepening social inequalities. Governments that enact laws that discriminate against certain groups of people. Choose the part of the world where you live right now, and you name it. It can differ regarding where we live, which gender we represent or what color of skin we have. But in overall, we worry a lot nowadays. Does it help when we worry? And who is it helping? I learn through the years that worrying too much can eat me alive. When I saw how much time I spend on being worried, thinking over and over again about those things that, to be honest, mostly I didn’t have any influence on, I’ve decided to stop it. In this article I would like to tell you about 3 things, that helped me in transforming the mindset from being constantly worried to become constantly seeking for solutions. 1. Make a list of your worries. How many of the list above you worry about right now? And what others do you have on your mind? Remember, if it is only in your head, it is harder to manage – since our brains have infinite capacity to think about anything, as long as possible. Make a list of all of your worries that are in your head. Then, you can use the Influence Matrix (I wrote about this tool HERE), or you can just rank them, starting from the one that you think about the most frequently, is the most stressful or has other negative impact on you. The last one on the list should be the one with the smallest impact. Do you see all of them? Good. Now, I know that it’s hard, but you need to cut those that you don’t have any influence on. Can I do anything about the war in Ukraine? No. Can I do anything about global financial situation? Not at all. Can I do anything about local inflation rate? It’s a hard no. Decide on what you have ZERO influence on, and just decide to cut it. I guarantee you that it will free so much energy and space in your brain, that you can be confused about what’s going on at the very beginning. But it will be worth it. 2. Transform worries into potential solutions / areas of opportunity. Now, when you cut part of your list, let’s take care of those worries that you have an influence on, wholly, or partially. Pose a question to each of those to reflect on what your can do with it INSTEAD of just be worried. I worry that I will be sick / disabled. Okay, so what can I do to stay healthy and operational as long as possible? I worry about the money. I am living paycheck-to-paycheck and I don’t have any savings. Okay, so what can I do to manage my home budget better? What can I do to cut from monthly costs to save 5 / 10 / 20% of my salary? You got the idea. Transform the worry into something you can actually do, and what is in your area of influence. Small elements, baby steps – it is always the best way to start. When you start small, it is easier to stick to it, since you see quick results and stay motivated to keep moving. While you start doing something what actually supports you, your health, your financial situation, relations with your family or friends, the environment that you live in is changing as well. Being worried is not good for you, nor for your environment. Being in that state often makes you less patient, you get irritated and explode faster, rarely adequately to the situation. And people who are closest to you suffer the most because they have regular contact with you. From my experience, this is one of the fastest ways to lose those who we care about, since no one wants to be around energy vampire longer that necessary. Take a look on how your attitude is influencing relations – your relations with yourself, but also with those who are around. How changing the attitude will influence those relations, maybe improve them or make new ones? You can also check out a great book that is really close to the subject: “How to stop worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie. 3. Create a simple process to check with yourself when you see that a worry is coming. Being self-aware is a starting point. But we also need a plan that will support us in the future, when a new worry shows up (or the old one returns). Sometimes a trigger appears out of nowhere and wakes up old demons, that we think we dealt with already. Make a list of 3-5 steps that you are going to do every single time when a worry comes to your head. You can create your own, use this one that I’ve created or take a part of it and recreate it, so it fits you. Simple, to the point. Try it out and you’ll see how it will change your life. The bottom line We all have a lot of things that we can be worried about. But endless worrying doesn’t do anything good to anyone. So, try to break the vicious circle, take ownership of your own life. At the end, it’s important to remember that the things are happening FOR us not TO us. From my perspective it’s one of the hardest mindset switches to implement, but it’s so worth it. Worth an

Do you remember the last time when you felt great about yourself, empowered? You were walking on the street with your head high, your back straight up, maybe with a smile on your face. Or when you delivered a great value at work, somebody recognized you for that and you told yourself ‘Well, it was worth the time and energy. I’m proud of myself’. And how many times, on each of those great moments, you felt bad about yourself? That you are not good enough, smart enough, thin or tall enough. That you are not sophisticated enough, or rich enough. How many times you achieved something, and right after doing it you thought ‘meh, I could’ve done better’? We beat ourselves too much, instead of being proud of what we achieve every single day. Let’s see what we can do about it. Let’s answer the question: How to feel more empowered? Define the moments when you feel most empowered Each of us is different. We have different personality types, different skills, levels of energy during the day. We are more extroverted or introverted. We like different things, and we structure our time around different elements every day. We have different values, beliefs, experiences that shaped us. We live different lives. Look how many things make us unique in this huge world. It means that there is no such thing as one, beautiful list of elements that you can do to feel better about yourself. You need to be curious. Turn on a developer mode and explore yourself to decide what is accurate to you, in this certain moment of your life. Think about moments / situations when you feel the most empowered and you think the best about yourself. Take a closer look on different categories of your life, take into consideration: Take anything you want because we all can be empowered by something completely different. What empowers me does not necessarily make you feel the same way. Make a list of those moments or elements. Pick 3 of them that you can do again, soon. Then pick 1 of those three and plan it for this week. Your brain needs to see some quick results to believe that this feeling can be true. And once you start, it will be easier to do more of them, to see what works for you and what makes your life better. Check if you are in OK-OK place Transactional Analysis as a concept has many tools. Some of them are more complex, some of them are really simple and easy to use. I am going to introduce to you those simple ones in my articles, so you can implement them right away, without having a degree in psychology. The OK-Not OK Matrix is one of my favorite tools in TA. It is an easy way to check where you are with your beliefs and emotions in a certain moment, since it effects your behavior, decision making process and your way of communication. Check with yourself, in how many daily situations you are OK-OK, and in how many of them you are somewhere else in the matrix. What can you do to move more of those situations or beliefs you have to OK-OK quadrant? Find a person that can support your empowerment It is a common said that ‘we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with’ (here is a great article about that statement: https://maartenvandoorn.medium.com/you-are-the-average-of-the-five-people-you-spend-the-most-time-with-a2ea32d08c72). And it is so true. People can be your biggest support and inspiration. Or they may be energy vampires, who want to bring you down to their level, since they cannot stand that somebody can be successful, wealthy, happy. It is cultural though; I can tell you that we have a lot of the second attitude in Poland. Make a list of those 5 people that you spend the most of your time with. Take a look on that list. Which of those people are good influence, which of those are bad? Giving you energy or sucking you out of it? Inspire you or making you come back to bed and just go to sleep? Then, think about one inspiring or successful (in your own definition of inspiration or success) person that you know, but you are not so close. Maybe you were in the past, but then you changed your job, you moved to another city, or you had a child and stopped going out and meeting people. Make a contact with that person. Write on social media, make a call. Ask ‘how are you’? Have a coffee. Make an influence on this group of 5 people. Be reactive, don’t wait for something to happen to you. Choose what’s happening. The bottom line It is not about feeling inspired, energized or full of ideas every single minute of every day. I would like to encourage you to take a closer, more mindful look on how you live your life. When you live the most of it? When you feel the best? And what can you do to feel that way more often? Ask yourself those questions and decide on what to do next to feel empowered and in charge of your own destination.  

People are complex species. And even that we are a part of a certain family, society, country or culture, we are all individuals, having different needs, thoughts and beliefs, based on our unique experiences. And yet, there are several elements that are pretty common and universal and being more aware of them can support us in having high level of motivation, efficiency and health. Today, I have 4 dots for you to connect to have a better, more balanced life – taking care of those simple elements will calm you and I believe will be helpful, especially while living in a constant change and uncertainty that most of us experience right now. 1. Digital well-being Technological changes are present in our lives. Those devices, tools or software are here is support us, to automate necessary but time-consuming tasks, to make our life easier and better. And that’s amazing how many things most of us have access to, without even moving a toe from home.   The latest BankMyCell research shows that almost 84% of the world’s population own a smartphone and almost 92% of the world’s population own a mobile phone (you can find more information about the research here: https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world). And we use it a lot –  3 hours and 15 minutes in average. Though, it is different from generation to generation, i.e. Millennials are on their phones approximately 5,7 hours per day (more statistics about that here: https://kommandotech.com/statistics/how-much-time-does-the-average-person-spend-on-their-phone/). It is insane. Of course, it depends on the person how it’s used (there are many educational apps, i.e. those that support foreign language education are super useful), but let’s be honest – most of us are just scrolling through social media without any bigger goal. And while we think about the excuse ‘I don’t have the time’ for reading, doing sports or spending more time with friends of family, I believe that we can save some time here and invest it somewhere else. So check on your phone – how many minutes / hours you spend on certain apps (and using phone in overall). First thing is awareness, then it’s action. Make a goal about cutting app time which don’t have any positive impact on your life. If you need, you can use the ‘app limits’ option and set daytime limits for certain category of apps on your phone. Do it for a week. Then review and make it a month. You will see how much time you actually have and how many things you can do while not scrolling. 2. Financial well-being To be completely honest with you, financial well-being is for me the hardest of all the areas covered in this article. When we worry about living from paycheck to paycheck, not having an emergency fund in case of anything happen or while we are watching the inflation rate increasing from month to month, like right now, we use a lot of energy on this. We are preoccupied, sometimes can’t sleep while running different scenarios in our heads, pretty often even having long periods of bad mood, which – in many cases, end in depression or other mental disorders. Remember the Influence Matrix that I described HERE and think about all financially connected elements that you are worried about at the moment. Do you have any influence on them? I would say that we don’t have any influence on the rising inflation, but we do have a lot of influence on our personal home budget. Use a simple excel spreadsheet to track your monthly costs in different categories. Home food, eating out, alcohol, cosmetics, gas and car expenses, clothes, apartment stuff, paying debts. Use those that are applicable to your individual situation and put every single expense in the file. It needs to be done daily, in a systematic way, but I can assure you that it’ll be a life changer. If definitely change my life and did allow me to pay debts faster and limit unnecessary costs. You can use a similar template that I use – you can find it below: 3. Mental well-being Mental health is a complex area. It is not only about being healthy or experiencing mental disorders. From my perspective taking care of mental well-being means to take care of ourselves holistically. Being mindful about our spirit and body, since it is all connected. Listening to our emotions, needs and to what is happening in our heads. Are you calm or agitated (meaning overstimulated)? Are you stressed? If yes, why? What kind of symptoms are you feeling in the body? Which of 4 basic emotions do you feel right now? (happiness, sadness, anger, fear) What makes you feel that way? What do you need at the moment? Being with people? Silence? Being alone? Having a task list to feel more grounded and have a purpose? Being recognized for your hard work? A new, exciting stimuli? Sleep? Are those needs covered or frustrated? What can you do to take care of them better – by yourself or with help of other people? What kind of beliefs do you have about yourself and the world that is around you? Are you in OK-OK position (I am OK AND the others / the world is OK)? (I am going to tell you more about the ‘OK-Not OK Matrix’ in the next article). Are those convictions supportive or quite the opposite? What can you do about it? If you don’t feel well, it is getting longer and longer and you don’t know what to do, ask for help. It can be a friend. A manager, colleague or HR person at work. It can be a coach, psychologist of therapist. It really depends on what you need at the moment, what kind of resources you have available and what can you afford. Remember that mental health issues are as important as those connected to our bodies and they need to be treated accordingly, so you can be healthy and live your life as best as

We all know that. Today is not the day. Too much work, not enough time, too rainy to go outside, too tired to pick up any activity, or just feeling demotivated. And all of the sudden, we realize that several weeks or months passed, and we didn’t do anything. For ourselves, our relations, our health, or our development. All of our beautiful plans and wish lists are buried deep somewhere in a drawer waiting for a better tomorrow. It is not possible to be super effective, active and positive all the time. Even the most positive and ambitious people have those days when they just want to stay home and be a human burrito. And that’s perfectly fine. But when it is becoming more frequent or appearing regularly, I would encourage you to take a closer look to find out what is going on under the surface. Here are my personal 5 things that I do when feeling demotivated or having lower level of energy. 1. Find the source of you being demotivated. Every single thought, emotion, reaction or belief has its root. There are many possibilities that you feel or think in a certain way and all of them are very individual. They are connected to our history, experiences from the past (professional and personal ones), beliefs about ourselves and the world that we gained mostly in our early childhood (most of them until the age of 6) listening to our parents or other people who were raising us and other children. Basically all the people who were some kinds of authority for us at the time or we did seek for their attention, love or acceptance. From my experience, we remember the best and we have the easiest access to bad beliefs. Not smart enough. Not pretty enough. Not fast enough. Not thin enough. Not having the best grades. Not good enough (meaning nice, not causing any trouble). (name yours, there are mostly unconscious before we start to think and name them). And all of those beliefs that we gained in our lives, have an influence on what kind of thoughts we have as adults. And it is connected to what do we think about ourselves and the world that is around us. Of course the beliefs are just one factor of us being demotivated but as far as I’m concerned, it is the strongest one – I would risk the hypothesis that those beliefs are responsible for 80% of our lower moments. So I encourage you to have a piece of paper (or a Word document) and ask yourself those questions to find the source of your demotivation: 2. Fill out the Influence Matrix. Once you have all the answers on the question above, you can check their position in the Influence Matrix that I’ve created. This is a simple tool that you can use every time when you are stuck, you feel over worried or tired and you don’t know what to do. The matrix will help you to see in a clearer way the connections between having/not having an influence on a certain situation and its importance at the moment. It might seem similar to Eisenhower Matrix but this one uses different variables and its main goal is psychological support, rather than efficiency itself. Here is the Influence Matrix that you can use to put those elements that you discovered in the previous section. You can draw matrix on your own or you can use ready PDF file that you can download: Example 1: let’s say you’ve discovered that you worry about high inflation rate. Is it important? Yes. Do you have any influence on that? No, literally zero influence. So you put it in the upper-left quadrant. Then, you need to decide what can you do to reduce the high stress level that is connected to the high inflation rate. Maybe you can check on your home budget i.e. by using an easy excel spreadsheet to see how do you spend your money monthly? Based on that you can temporarily quit on some costs, so you have more financial freedom, and you are less stressed at the end of the day. Example 2: let’s say you discovered that you did 0 hours of sports activity last week. Is it important? Yes. Do you have any influence on that? Yes. So you put it in the upper-right quadrant. Then, you need to decide what to do to be more active. Pick one thing at the time, i.e. 15-minute walk after lunch every day. If the weather is bad, play a 15-minute workout on YouTube. No excuses! 3. Choose one thing that you have influence on and pick it up right away. I am a huge advocate of small things. Baby steps. I know from my own experience and from experience of those many people I’ve worked with through the years that we need ambitious goals to achieve extraordinary things. But we also need a simple plan, achievable steps that will keep our internal motivation level high, so we don’t feel exhausted or frustrated that we don’t see effects right away. That’s why I encourage you to pick one thing at the time. When that one becomes a habit, you can add another one, and then another. Seeing quick results will show your brain that the change is possible and worth the effort. Choose one thing from your list and pick it up right away. Not tomorrow. Not on Monday. Not January 1st. Right away. Research shows that if we wait for a ‘magical’ moment (like January 1st, for example), it is less probable that we are going to achieve it since it is only ‘a power of this magical moment’. Not very helpful, especially from a long-term perspective. 4. Glue things together to feel less demotivated. There is an amazing book about building habits: ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg. He writes very specifically about building new habits really closely to the existing

The idea about this space is to encourage all of you to take care of your development and learning more on a daily basis. I see a lot of people with a huge potential who are struggling with ‘finding’ time to do it. Because they are so busy. Because they don’t have time. Because they have kids so how on Earth they find even a minute for that. I say: stop the excuses. I say as well that statement (a lot): ‘You don’t have the time? You make the time.’. Since it is all about making decisions how we spend our time, we can make better ones. Of course, we all live in our individual, unique circumstances but I do believe that we can find a way to work within them. To live our lives fully. How to make more time?   ‘I don’t have the time’ is a strong belief. And it is extremely easy to use, universal, always good. Because people will understand, right? We are all busy nowadays. And yet, as I work with many individuals, teams and organizations, I can see that we have a tendency to use easy excuses to not make an effort. Of course, change is hard. And uncomfortable. It is demanding because we need to invest in it – time, money, effort, learning you name it. But most of the changes that aren’t successful are just too big from the very beginning. We have huge dreams, and that’s good – we should dream big. But we need to cut those dreams into smaller, more achievable pieces. Sounds obvious? Of course it is, but believe me – I see people every day who are doing the exact opposite thing, wishing that the outcome will be different. They are not using the easiest ways, feeling frustrated after first couple of days and just quit trying. I am going to teach you here how to use the easiest ways to achieve great results. What are you going to get here? In this blog I am going to show you the easiest. I will divide bigger tools, frameworks and ideas to smaller, more useful elements that you can use right away. I know that there are countless books, courses, conferences and digital learning spaces all over the internet. And I do know that sometimes it is just too much. We don’t know what to choose so we are not choosing at all. So I’ll be your guide through the infinity of knowledge and propose you those solutions that I believe can work. I am a lifelong learner but also a lifelong reader. Based on that statement, I am going to share with you my thoughts and recommendations regarding books that I read. Again – making a structure on the infinity of books and giving you a WHY on choosing certain position to invest your time well. I am also a manager and I support managers on a daily basis. Using that experience, I am going to share with you a lot of knowledge, tools and solutions that you can use if you want to become a manager, or you are one at the moment. It is really hard to find a good leadership training, so I hope that would support you on the way. Shall we start? If you want to take care of yourself better, it is a space for you. If you want to make more time, it is a space for you. If you feel stuck and you really want to change that, it is a space for you. We need more simplicity, light and inspiration in our lives – so why don’t we start here to gain it together?