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Day 528. I talked multiple times about resistance, the little voice in your head that stops you. However, sometimes, it is the external voice that is hitting you badly. A surprising fact is generally, those voices come by two, three or four. It feels like a gang of thugs coming to hit you badly.

However, excluding all physical injuries, even when reality hits, the way you react starts in your mind. Because of our natural evolution for hundreds of thousands of years, we are not wired to stay flat, we are wired to kick back, to fight. The fight will generate the level of dopamine, endorphins, and adrenaline necessary to fight cortisol in our bodies. This is the natural fuel our brain generates to get back on our feet.

So, when you’re hit, even badly, regroup, breathe and kick back!

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Day 527. I love personal development and am committed to personal growth. For the last couple of years a recurring theme has surfaced in most if not all personal development publications: leaving a legacy. Basically, think about what you will leave once you’re gone. I thought about it, trying to identify the one or two things that would make me live, work and play differently to leave the so-called legacy and I came to the following conclusion: there’s a deep confusion between doing our best possible work and working to leave a legacy.

Did Galileo Galilei want to leave a legacy? No! He wanted to prove the earth was orbiting the sun. And for that he did his best possible work.

Did Martin Luther King want to leave a legacy? No! He wanted equal rights for all. And for that he did his best possible work.

Did Marie Curie want to leave a legacy? No! She discovered radio-activity and wanted to use it to generate energy. And for that she did her best possible work.

I could go and on and on. All those famous individuals did not have the goal to leave a legacy, they had a goal to reach and delivered masterful work. Because they did masterful work and stand above many other individuals, they left a legacy. Legacy is not something YOU chose, is something you leave and OTHERS chose. Legacy is a product of your masterful work. Forget the legacy, focus on your art and craft, and day in, day out, produce the best for you and others. Legacy will follow by itself.

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Day 526. Life is movement, life is breathing, life is smiling! Whatever happens during the course of the day, keep doing these three things:

• take some time to breathe, feeling the air going deep in your lungs
• smile at others and at events that happen
• keep moving

Life is too short to do every day the same thing, complaining about what does not work. It’s a wonderful gift that we need to celebrate every day. So breathe, smile, and move!

Weathering the storm

Rule number 1: Switch your TV off! – Third Part

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Day 525. So you want to try to go on a TV detox. The main question remains what to replace TV by. Whether you were watching TV one hour or three hours a day, it’s just possible to take this time and transform it in something not only meaningful but helping you to reach your goals, to realize your dreams. Here are 7 ideas to replace your TV time that do not need efforts, just a decision:

• Go to bed and sleep. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention calls sleep deprivation a public health epidemic. It can have horrendous consequences. This article from the Harvard Business Review shows the correlation between sleep deprivation and cheating. So get one hour or more of sleep every night and enjoy the benefits of a good night of sleep.
• Have a drink or a dinner with friends. No need to spend a fortune. This could be just a bring-and-share at your place. You will cultivate friendship and create social bounds. A 2013 study by the London School of Economics found that respondents’ moods improved by more than 8 per cent when they were with friends.
• Write letters or emails to your friends and family. There are so many things you claim never have time to do. Among those are saying our friends and family that you love them and why you love them. Take time to write it, it will make miracles.
• Prepare your next speech for your Toastmasters club. If you belong to any form of nonprofit, like Toastmasters or Rotary, there are tons of things you can do to improve your life or the one of others. On a Toastmaster’s journey, you need to deliver over forty speeches, and this requires some time to prepare. If you invest some time, you can propel your career to new heights.
• Spend some time with your spouse or your kids. Have a chat about your next holidays, the project you want to realize together. Play a game of Risk or chess. Quality time is important for a healthy relationship.
• Read a good book. Maybe you do not like to read or maybe you have not read for a long time. Remember what you liked as a kid and try. Or find a topic that you really like and purchase a book at the local bookstore on that topic. The idea is to rejuvenate something you are passionate about. Passion drives action.
• Make love. If you have a significant other, invest some time to make love, spend time cuddling. Love is the most incredible human feeling and making love is said to be the best activity for health. No cost, huge return!

Those are simple ideas, and I am sure you can come up with hundreds of others. The idea is shifting from being a spectator from being an actor. Nothing good will happen if you stay in your couch watching others having a blast or playing a role. Despite reality show success, people tend to forget that in reality show, there’s the world show. A show is not the real life, it’s fake, it’s just an entertainment. Do not get brainwashed by fake lives, live yours fully!

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Day 523 Just for the fun of it… Sunday is like no other day. It’s supposed to be a day without constraints. However, it’s not a day without some routine so you make it as productive as any other day of the week. Hey routine has not to be lame, it can be fun too. Here’s mine: lounging in bed, late breakfast, a long run in the forest with my wife (slow pace, long discussions), some gardening (there’s always something to do or to clean) under a glorious sunshine, checking kids’ homework, waterskiing, surfing or kitesurfing depending on wind condition, enjoying a nice barbeque, going back on water, and if all goes well, we can almost call it a day.

The only parallel with other days? It’s full, of action, of love and of care. Grateful!

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Day 522. Everybody knows smoking kills. However, most smokers cannot stop smoking, due to the fact that smoking is an addictive drug. The reasons behind the addiction are well known and the negative health effects of tobacco are known: cancer, heart disease, aneurysms, bronchitis, emphysema, and stroke, just to name a few. Despite the risks people continue to smoke or start to smoke. The marketing effect is still very strong and smoking is seen as being cool, before it gets into your brain through nicotine.

Because of emotional and chemical reasons behind addiction, logical reasons have little to no effect on stopping. I used to smoke and some days like that while others hate it. What decided me was the two reasons described in Alan Carr’s book Easy way to stop smoking:

• Tobacco is a drug and you are not responsible of your addiction to smoking beyond the first cigarettes you tried that hooked you on nicotine addiction
• Entering the non-smoker’s world is a choice. In other words, you can be happy without tobacco (you are actually more happy without tobacco).

But having discussed with some smokers, even those two reasons are too rational. I came up with five that have some echoes in conversations with smokers, because they do not seem to be as rational as all the good reasons nonsmokers generally give.

• Even on a party where you have drunk a little too much, if you do not smoke the next morning is much, much better. Alcohol and tobacco have an additive effect that gives these terrible headaches and horrible feeling in the mouth and throat.
• If you have to choose between one year of cigarettes at home or two weeks of holidays in the Bahamas (replace by any place you would like to visit)? Why the choice? It’s the same price!
• You can come back home sooner every day. An average smoker loses around one hour of productive work every day due to the pauses he/she needs. Tobacco put a high tax on your productivity.
• You’ll be able to make love more and longer. Tobacco and sex are not good friends. Tobacco causes vascular problems and direct erectile dysfunction. Less tobacco means more sex.
• 15 times more nicotine and you’re dead. A cigarette contains around 30 mg of nicotine. If that does was half a gram, it will kill you, this is how lethal nicotine is.

It’s never a better time to stop than now.

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Day 521. Forrest Gump was comparing life to a box of chocolate, you never know what you will get. This is why you need to always be flexible when it comes to setting expectations. And particularly when you are going to unchartered territories. In many situations in life plunging into the unknown is needed but scary. Doing things that scare you is necessary to progress. How to enjoy that plunge, you may need to change your perspective, your belief system and your expectations. Here are 9 no nonsense, but not natural, reasons to enjoy the plunge.

• That which does not kill us makes us stronger. The famous Nietzsche quote. Some psychologists, like Noam Shpancer in the What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker article, disagree with this statement, claiming that tender love and care toughen you up not mayhem and chaos. Where others claim it’s true, like in this 2010 study titled « Whatever Does Not Kill Us: Cumulative Lifetime Adversity, Vulnerability and Resilience » whose results are available on the phys.org web site. Based on my experience, as long as no life is at stake, this statement is true and will tremendously help you to confront your fears with confidence.
• Time is relative. Einstein coined this in the theory of relativity. In the field of psychology, it’s called time perception. We all have experienced this: a bad event seems to last longer than a nice one, which happen to always be too short. Keep a neuron on this, whatever happens it’s never longer or shorter than the reality of the clock ticking.
• tiny is BIG. Tiny victories needs to be celebrated. If you ever walked in the complete dark in a forest and suddenly saw a light in the distance. What a relief! It’s a tiny hope, but a big relief. So ensure all minuscule victories are celebrated so you can accumulate and learn from them.
• Leverage all senses. We absorb and learn by many of our senses. You cannot, for instance, learn how to ride a bicycle by just reading a book. You learn by trying and falling. Whatever you are trying to do, use a multi sensorial approach. See, write, do, feel, taste or smell if possible. Confront all your different results to enjoy the experience and learn.
• Set hopes, forget expectations. As Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds once said « When you have expectations, you are setting yourself up for disappointment » and as Seth Godin says « expectations are joy killer ». Hope is your North Star and moves you up.
• Get ready to be surprised (positively and negatively). If you are prepared for the unexpected, no hurdles will be high enough to stop you and kill your enthusiasm.
• Note down everything. The American Psychological Association published a research in the Journal of Experimental Psychology explaining why writing about stressful events cause improvements in health and psychological well-being. Take some time everyday to write about your day, your minuscule wins, your mistakes and your learnings.
• Visualize the amount of learning you will be going through. A clinical study by the center of stress management of Carrboro, NC, showed an increase of white blood cell, protecting your body from infection. Many others have proven the positive effect of mental imagery to decrease stress and anxiety, and improve well-being. Tons of references could be found here. Visualizing what you are going to learn and how you are going to grow is a fantastic and exhilarating exercise.
• Be ready to fail BIG. The number fear of not moving is the fear of failure. But not moving is failing. So better failing when trying that failing by not trying. Expect to fail, put failure of one of the possible outcomes. As Jon Bon Jovi said « Success is falling nine times and getting up ten ».

I have learned to love plunging into the unknown by thinking about those 9 reasons before and during the plunge. It has never been natural for me, but after some years of successes and failures, I forged those rules and applied them to any new activities. I hope they will work for you and will contribute to your comfort zone expansion.

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Day 520. Some mornings are better than others. When you wake up to what seems to you a tough day ahead, think about those 7 smiles you can have just to remind you that it’s you and only you who have the power to see things through a positive lens.

• You are alive. We have only one life and even when life throw a curve ball at us, it’s something to learn about, but hey, smile, you’re alive and it has no price.
• Your morning coffee/tea. It feels good whether it’s cold outside or just dark, this hot beverage is something you like, smile at it, it feels good.
• The morning sun or the morning clouds. Both are natural and necessary for life to exist. Although I love sunny days, I love to see the shape and the color of clouds, it’s full of magic. Smile at them!
• The beautiful building you are seeing every day without seeing it. Habits tend to make things invisible, fight back! Look at this building or monument, and enjoy its details, colors, architecture. It’s a piece of beautiful art.
• People. Smiling at people does cost a dime and is a great experience. Most people will think you are a loony, but I prefer being a smiling loony than a grinning serious guy.
• Your spouse and your kid. You love them, show them. Yes, a family can have its bad moments, you may be bored, but remember how you loved them, it’s in your power to find this love again, smile at them! And if you are alone, smile at your neighbor, who knows, he/she can become closer
• Nothing and everything. No need to have a reason to smile, just smile for the sake of smiling. As we say, if you cannot make it, fake it… soon this smile will pour happiness in your veins.

Scientifically proven, a smile has powerful effects. Be the change in your life and in other’s, smile!

(c) Robin Sharma

Day 519. Yesterday, among the many messages on my twitter flow was this one from Robin Sharma. How many times do we doubt and drop the ball, following the path of least resistance? We all have experienced the feeling of the little voice inside our head saying, « don’t do it, it’ll fail » or « don’t do it, you’ll look like a fool ». This quote and image reminds us that we need to slap down the little voice and jump.

Yes it may fail, yes, we may look like a fool, but we would have tried. How many times did you regret not having done something you would have loved to do but did not for whatever lie you told yourself. Of course we always need to balance things in life, but burying our dreams and our bold ideas is the best way to put aside what makes the beauty of life and what makes the best way to learn. Here are 5 examples of things you may have doubt on but should dare to do.

• Going to see your boss to discuss your next promotion. Nobody’s entitled to a promotion even when you have worked hard. However, going to talk to your boss on what he/she thinks you need to do to be on the next promotion list is the smartest way to learn and to know what to do. Dare! He/she’s a human being like you.
• Skydiving. Man, this is scary, jumping from an airplane at 12 or 15,000 feet with just a parachute. You’re scared because it may kill you. There’s actually more risk to be killed by crossing a busy street than by skydiving. Dare! Book your seat to the nearest club and do it. The feeling is just awesome.
• Giving your point of view. Because you are not outspoken or slightly introvert, you may not be comfortable challenging the ideas shared during a meeting. Furthermore, you’ve never done it so you do not want to look like a fool. Dare! You will surprise for sure, but you will contribute and there’s a good chance you’ll be heard.
• Stepping forward for a stretch assignment. You are busy, you do not have time for more. It’s a wonderful opportunity to learn how to handle more differently. Yes, it may make you uncomfortable, but the only way to increase our comfort zone is by stepping out of it to redefine its borders. Dare!
• Going to a far place you’ve never been too, and preferably where you do not speak the language. Ever been stuck in a country where nobody speaks your language. It’s never a horrible experience because most people are nice with strangers and you will experience kindness from people who owe you nothing. Scary, but much less than you imagine. Dare!

I can go on and on like this. It requires courage, but more than this, it just requires to change your point of view. Horrible outcomes are first to come to mind and this is why we tend not to dare, but imagination can be changed to positive outcome. Like workout, it’s a matter of training. Teach your brain to imagine a positive future and its likely to happen.