Editor’s note: This is a guest post by best selling author, Lisa McCourt.  Lisa is here on Sources of Insight to share with you insightful and actionable steps to be comfortable in your own skin.

If you don’t know Lisa, you’re in for a treat.  Lisa specializes on the topic of self-love and her books on unconditional love have sold more than five and a half million copies.  Lisa’s latest book, Juicy Joy –  Seven Simple Steps to Your Glorious Gutsy Self is all about leading a life that is rich, real, and powerfully satisfying, while embracing your biggest, gutsiest, and most authentic self.  It’s you, at YOUR best.

I asked Lisa to write a guest post to share her best lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin because of her personal experience.   I’m a fan of people sharing what they have learned the hard way or what they have had to work at.  It’s always deeper and more meaningful.   Most of all, it’s keeping it real.

Whether or not you are already comfortable in your own skin, I think you’ll really enjoy this post.  I’m impressed with Lisa’s ability to distill and share such pragmatic wisdom on the fine art of loving yourself, flaws and all.  This is more than a beautiful piece of prose.  It’s life wisdom that you can use to live a little better every day.

Without further ado, here’s Lisa with her top ten lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin …

Imagine being blissfully comfortable in your own skin, knowing with the utmost clarity exactly who you are and feeling eager to lovingly, proudly share that authentic you with the world. Imagine being perpetually sustained by an inner source of joy—not the smiley, fluffy kind of happiness we sometimes associate with the word “joy,” but the rich, meaty, substantial flavor of joy that comes with extraordinary self-knowledge and self-appreciation. That’s the vantage point I want for you. From that vantage point, in the words of Franz Kafka, “the world will offer itself freely to you. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

In uber-consolidated nutshell fashion, here are the top 10 ways to be comfortable in your own skin:

1. Get real.

Do the work to get clear about who you are—not just who you routinely consider yourself to be, the person you habitually show the world—but who you are in the deepest recesses of your authentic heart and soul.

The word “authenticity” is misunderstood sometimes. People think of it as a virtue, like honesty . . . like you owe the world your authenticity and you should feel bad if you’re not authentic. That’s not the case. I’m not suggesting you should become more authentic because it will make you a better person—you already are a phenomenal person. I’m telling you that becoming more authentic is your golden ticket—to joy, to success, to vibrant health and energy, to easily manifesting the life of your dreams. It’s every bit that transformative. You’re not doing this to better serve the world; you’re doing it to better serve you. But—happy bonus!—it happens to be the best way to serve your loved ones and the world as well.

2. Adore YOU.

If you’ve been on a personal development path for a while, I’m probably not the first to suggest that you need to love yourself. But I’m surprised to discover how often my students don’t really seem to know why I’m so insistent on that point. Are you tired of hearing about how you need to love yourself more? Does the thought of it feel kind of like of a burden—one more thing to check off your To-Do list? Does the whole concept feel a bit worn-out and cliché? Maybe you just need to understand what’s in it for you.

Self-love is the fastest route to literally anything you want right now. Money, love, health, romance . . . it all hinges on your level of self-love. The circumstances of your life are always providing you a crystal-clear, precisely accurate measure of how much you love yourself and what you believe you deserve. All you can ever create is what you believe you’re worthy of experiencing. It’s an immutable energetic law. That’s why elevating self-love is the not-so-secret path to elevating everything else.

3. Trust your wants.

Stop trying to justify and rationalize your most heartfelt desires. Your desires are the clearest indicator of who you are. Denying them is denying you. No one needs to understand why you want what you want. You don’t even need to understand it yourself. Just trust it, and trust yourself to manifest it. The reason you don’t already have everything you want is crazy-simple. You don’t love yourself enough yet to deeply believe that you deserve everything you want. My students argue that sometimes, but they always discover it’s true. You might even believe, on a conscious level, that you do deserve a certain thing, but I promise you that if you were fully, wholly believing you deserved it—even in the cobwebby corners of your unconscious belief system—it would already be in your life.

4. Stop trying to vanquish the “bad stuff.”

And stop whining about it, too. Celebrate our unwanted circumstances because there’s so much valuable information for us in them. Get clear on why your unwanted circumstances are here and why you created them. Then use them as a springboard. Once you can start genuinely thanking “the bad stuff”, it’s pretty easy to move past it.

5. Take responsibility.

Own every last drop of everything you’ve ever created. We’re so conditioned to blame our unwanted circumstances on other people, or on the “system” or the world . . . What if it’s really all within your control? Taking full responsibility for the life you’ve created for yourself and the life you’re in the process of creating is hugely empowering. But it requires first getting uber-honest to a degree that’s terrifying for most people. Don’t be “most people.” Understanding that you alone are holding the reins on your life is the first critical step toward learning how to operate them.

6. Stop tolerating.

Tolerating is slow emotional suicide. It sucks the life out of you, drains your energy, numbs you, depletes you, and keeps you immobilized. There’s no reason for you to ever tolerate anything. We sometimes confuse tolerating with accepting—we all know it’s good to accept the things we can’t change, right? If we make very clear distinctions between what can be changed and what can’t, then it’s astounding the kinds of life-altering adjustments people are able to easily, joyfully make when they understand the underlying reasons they’ve been tolerating things.

7. Get out of the spin cycle.

Where in your life are you on autopilot, creating the same situation for yourself (in essence) over and over again? Maybe you keep dating the same romantic partner. Maybe the current model is better looking, or more successful, or slightly more open than the one before, but in essence you’re with a lover who triggers your tried-and-true insecurities, defense mechanisms, and familiar unhealthy spirals. Or maybe you find yourself in the same employment dynamic over and over again—even if you change careers completely. Maybe you’ve attracted a series of supervisors, or a series of friends, who stir up the not-good-enough feelings a parent invoked for you as a child. Escape the spin cycle by learning how to look closely at how these patterns develop and how to benefit from the opportunities they offer.

8. Permanently shift your beliefs.

Focus on the deliberate rewiring of your belief system because your beliefs are determining everything you experience as your reality. That’s not New-Age speak anymore; it’s common knowledge. It’s why researchers always have to use placebo control groups whenever they test any drug. If they don’t have a group taking a sugar pill, their findings won’t be considered valid by the agencies that govern pharmaceuticals. In pain-control experiments, when a new pain pill is tested, fully half of the sufferers who are given a placebo will report having less pain. The mind is that powerful and the scientific community knows it. Changing your mind will change your life.

Many of your limiting beliefs are not unique to you; our culture suffers from a long-standing epidemic of crappy shared beliefs. Most of us, at some level, harbor the same fears, the same tragic self-doubts, and the same profound longings to be liberated from our self-made prisons. In our outer circumstances, we may vary greatly, but at deeper levels, this is seldom the case. If you aren’t living the precisely blissful, richly textured life you crave, take the steps to discover which of your beliefs are keeping you from it and what you can do about that.

9. Dream loudly.

Stop limiting yourself according to what seems practical. Practical goals do not inspire enough passion to propel you toward their certain fruition. As John F. Kennedy wisely surmised, “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.” Be those men (and women.).

10. Live passionately.

Once you’ve done the self-examination work to uncover your most delicious desires, don’t pussyfoot toward them. Hurl yourself recklessly in their direction! Trust that the Universe wildly adores you and is always orchestrating on your behalf. It’s been waiting for you to get pumped and grow a pair so that it could swoop in with divine assistance that will leave you breathless.

The author Natalie Goldberg has a cake analogy I love. When you bake a cake, you have ingredients, right? You have eggs, butter, milk, sugar, flour. The ingredients are the different parts of your life. You mix them all together in a bowl but this doesn’t make a cake. It makes goop. To turn it into a cake, you have to add the energy of intense heat. To turn your life into a life worth living, you have to add the heat and energy of your whole heart and soul. Otherwise it’s just goop.

Being comfortable in your skin and living with authenticity is knowing precisely who you are and passionately adoring who you are—with all the countless accoutrements and benefits that come along with that practice. You are spectacular. Not the elaborate representation of You that you routinely show the world, but the raw, uncensored, vulnerable You underneath all of that. Find that You and learn how to deeply love and honor that You. That’s feeling blissfully comfortable in your own skin, and it’s the secret to everything you’re longing for.

A friend at work suggested I share a practice they’ve adopted on their team.  It’s “Thanks Thursday.”

They’ve made it a habit to thank each other, and show a little more appreciation, at least one day of the week.  It’s all too easy for time to slip by, and to either take each other for granted, or to think the words of appreciation, but not voice them.

What I like about this idea is that it’s anchored to a day of the week.  I think anchoring things to the day of a week, make it a lot easier to remember.  If you wake up on a Thursday, it’s easy to remember, that it’s “Thanks Thursday.”  Oh yeah, and I like that the name has alliteration.

Cicero taught us that gratitude is the parent of all other virtues.  I can see why.  One of people’s deepest needs is appreciation and acknowledgment.  It’s no wonder that empathic listening (listening until the other person “feels* heard), is the most important communication skill.    An attitude of gratitude also helps us appreciate what we’ve got, while we’ve got it.   There’s a lot of truth in the song, Big Yellow Taxi, that says, “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”

With that in mind, I’ve reached out to various folks today to thank them.  I also want to thank the readers of Sources of Insight.  So many of you have spread the word.

Photo by eflon.

This is a collection of gratitude quotes.  If you want to get your thanks on, or flex your attitude of gratitude, these quotes should help you out.

With these gratitude quotes, you have a collection of wisdom at your fingertips.   This collection includes words of wisdom from a variety of sources including Aesop, Cicero, Paige, Oprah, and more.  While the quote may vary, they teach us a few key things about gratitude.  They teach us that appreciation is a deep need within us.   They teach us that a little thanks can go a long way.  They also teach us that there is always something to be grateful for, or, on the flip side, that things can always be worse.  They teach us that gratitude can be tough to express, as we struggle to find the right words.  Perhaps the most important lesson of all, is that they teach us that gratitude is the key to our own joy and happiness.  If you don’t have enough joy or happiness in your life, just maybe, gratitude is the missing ingredient.

Top 10 Gratitude Quotes
Here are my top ten favorite gratitude quotes:

1. “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” — Albert Schweitzer
2. “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” — William Arthur Ward
3. “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” – Cicero
4. “Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.” — Felix Frankfurter
5. “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.” – Buddha
6. “Gratitude is one of the sweet shortcuts to finding peace of mind and happiness inside. No matter what is going on outside of us, there’s always something we could be grateful for.” — Barry Neil Kaufman
7. “One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough.” — Hafiz of Persia
8. “Silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone.” — Gertrude Stein
9. “Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.” — Kahlil Gibran
10. “What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.” — Oprah Winfrey

A – Z Gratitude Quotes
Here is my collection of gratitude quotes organized A – Z:

1. “Act with kindness, but do not expect gratitude.” – Proverb
2. “A man’s indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively  to the job of gratitude.” — Ruth Benedict
3. “Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.” – Sallust
4. “Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.” — Margaret Cousins
5. “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” — John F. Kennedy
6. “Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” — Brian Tracy
7. “Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.” — Satchell Paige
8. “Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment.” — Bobby Hull
9. “Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph; with time it fades.” — Carmen Sylva
10. “Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more.” — David Steindl-Rast
11. “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” — John Milton
12. “Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
13. “Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you.” — Eileen Caddy
14. “Gratitude is a burden upon our imperfect nature, and we are but too willing to ease ourselves of it, or at least to lighten it as much as we can.” — Philip Stanhope
15. “Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
16. “Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought. It must be born with men, or else all the obligations in the world will not create it.” — Edward F. Halifax
17. “Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.” — Henry Ward Beecher
18. “Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.” — Henry Van Dyke
19. “Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.” — Jacques Maritain
20. “Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.” – Aesop
21. “Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.” — Lionel Hampton
22. “Gratitude isn’t a burdening emotion.” — Loretta Young
23. “Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” — Melody Beattie
24. “Gratitude to gratitude always gives birth.” – Sophocles
25. “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” — Melody Beattie
26. “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” — Denis Waitley
27. “Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.” — Joseph Wood Krutch
28. “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” — Meister Eckhart
29. “It’s a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.” — Roberto Benigni
30. “Joy is a heart full and a mind purified by gratitude.” — Marietta McCarty
31. “Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” — Karl Barth
32. “Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity, for with sharing and love, one learns.” — Marc Estrin
33. “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust
34. “Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly is having to accept it.” –William Faulkner
35. “Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.” — Henry Ward Beecher
36. “No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.” — Alfred North Whitehead
37. “One can never pay in gratitude: one can only pay ‘in kind’ somewhere else in life.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
38. “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” — Carl Jung
39. “One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error.” — Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
40. “Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.” — Henri Frederic Amiel
41. “The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.” — Nancy Friday
42. “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.” — William James
43. “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
44. “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” — Eric Hoffer
45. “There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.” – Seneca
46. “To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.” — Albert Schweitzer
47. “We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.” — Ellen Goodman
48. “When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears.” — Tony Robbins
49. “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” — G. K. Chesterton

Please feel free to share your favorite quote, insight, or action on gratitude.

Photo by Zitona.

At Microsoft, a lot of great discussions happen at the whiteboard.  Recently, I was discussing happiness with one of my colleagues.  It was a bit of a brain dump on happiness with the goal of getting to a simple set of insights for designing and driving personal happiness.   Jotting down some quick notes on happiness at the whiteboard, was both a way to quickly enumerate some cornerstone concepts and principles, as well as a way to connect some key happiness dots.

Here are my notes …

• Fulfillment vs. happiness.  One of the most helpful insights about happiness is that there are two questions about happiness: 1) How happy are you? and 2) How happy are you with your life?  It’s the short-term and the long-term view.  The first question is about happiness in the moment.  The second question is about fulfillment.  While you may not feel happy in the moment, you can take steps towards a more fulfilling path for the long run.
• Happiness level.  I remember the first time I saw somebody rate happiness on a scale of 1-10. I hadn’t thought about it as a scale of 1-10 before.  It makes sense that people have different happiness levels.  Some people are more melancholy, while others are more sunshine and rainbows.  We can work against our own happiness if we hold ourselves to a happiness bar that doesn’t match who we are.
• Predicting Happiness.  In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert teaches us that we aren’t very good at predicting our own happiness.  In fact, we’re better off asking a friend about a job they have, or movies they’ve seen, or vacations they have taken.  If they have similar values, chances are we will enjoy the same jobs, movies, and vacations.
• Mental Model. Your idea of what happiness looks like might be one way, but then what life really looks like, might be another way.  For example, if you’re idea of happiness is based on having a pretty little house, with a white picket fence, but you’re reality is completely different, then your mental model of happiness can work against you.  Create a new vision of happiness in your mind.  Throw out the ideals you’ve learned from movies and stories, and adopt a mental model that better supports you.
• Crossed-Expectations.  One of our biggest setbacks in life is crossed-expectations.  We fully expect on thing, but get another.  We get better at reducing cross-expectations by learning how to set our own expectations better, as well as seeing things as they are, not just as we think they should be.
• The When of happiness.  One of the worst ways to define happiness is to have a series of “Whens” — “When this happens, I’ll be happy.”  Pushing happiness out to the future, and hinging it on a condition, is not very effective.  Instead, find a way to be happy as you go, and most importantly, find happiness in the now.
• Happiness as active.  Happiness is a verb.  It’s not static.  Happily ever after is great for fairy tales, but not for real life.  It’s not like you can build up so much happiness that it just lasts forever.  Happiness is more of an active thing.  There are ups and downs.  If you treat it as something that’s more dynamic, then you can better embrace the challenges, and the opportunities.
• Frustration tolerance.  In Feeling Good, Dr. Burns teaches us that a low frustration tolerance will block our happiness.  Things go wrong.  When we’re already late, of course there will be unusual traffic.  When we really need that print out, of course the copier will eat it.  One of the best ways to raise our happiness level is to raise our frustration tolerance.
• Me Centered Universe.  Professor Srikumar Rao in his Personal Mastery Program teaches us that a lot of our problems come from a Me Centered Universe.  We analyze the impact of everything that happens in terms of what it means to us.  We can instead, align what we do to the bigger picture and the greater good.  By shifting our focus, we can reduce our own pain and suffering.
• Rules.  This is similar to our mental model, but it’s more fine-grained.  We have a lot of rules around how things should be in order to be happy.  When we project our rules on how other people should be, or how life should go, we can set ourselves up for disappointment.  while some of our rules may serve us very well on our happiness path, others can very much work against us.  When you aren’t happy with a situation or with somebody, is it your rules?  One way to get over this hump is to ask, if this situation never were to change, what’s the one quality I would need to truly be happy?
• Wins vs. Losses.   It’s easy to keep a score that works against our own happiness.  We get taught to focus on how many we got wrong, not how many we got right.  I tried to balance this out in my Friday Reflection pattern, by asking, “What are three things going well?” and “What are three things to improve?”
• Drive from happiness.  One way to increase your happiness is simply to do more of what makes you happy.  The trick is to know what actually makes you happy.  It’s very easy to fall into the trap of doing what makes other people happy, at the expense of not knowing your own happiness factors.  Treat happiness as a choice, and decide to be happy, then drive from that.
• Own it.  One of the most effective ways to drive your happiness is to own it.  Own your own happiness.  Don’t be a victim and don’t make happiness outside of your control.  Drive your happiness from the inside out.

While it is a bit of an eclectic collection of happiness ideas, I hope it can help you while you design and drive your own personal happiness and fulfillment in life.

“It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.” — Tony Robbins

It’s tough stuff.   Doing meaningful work means stretching past your limits and taking risks.  As such, the most meaningful work often comes with the greatest challenges.

You become more as you grow past the hurdles.  As you grow your ability to take on bigger challenges, you create new arenas and capabilities for deeper engagement and more fulfillment.  It’s the place where you find your “flow” and get “in the zone.”

Failure comes with the territory.  As one of my mentors put it, if you’re not failing enough, you’re not trying enough.  You learn more when you fail, and a healthy habit is to carry the lessons forward.

By recognizing the value of meaningful work on our inner lives, and what we become in the process of growth, you set the stage for a healthy environment of meaningful progress.  The key is to have a high tolerance for risk and failure and create a learning environment.

In the book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work
, by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, the authors write about focusing on the progress and positive feedback, while embracing the failures along the way.  It’s part of the journey of meaningful work.

Failure is Inevitable Along the Way
The most meaningful work also often comes with the greatest challenges.  Teresa and Steven write:

“By its very nature, meaningful work is hard; people often get the greatest satisfaction from overcoming the most difficult challenges.  Failure is inevitable along the path to innovation.”

Focus on Catalysts and Nourishers
You can’t avoid all the problems.  Instead, you can respond to the problems, and you can focus on the wins along the way.  Teresa and Steven write:

“Thought you should try to minimize obstacles and setbacks under your control, you can never create a problem-free bubble for your people.  You can’t nourish inner work life if you drive yourself and your team crazy trying to avoid all problems.  Rather, focus on providing people with the catalysts and nourishers they need to overcome the obstacles they will inevitably face. “

Failure is a Chance to Start Over Smarter
Teresa and Steven write:

“As legendary industrialist Henry Ford once said, ‘Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’”

Grow your skills by leaps and bounds as you take on more meaningful work, and remember that the most important meaning maker in your life is you.

My Related Posts

• Sustain Virtuous Cycles and Halt Vicious Ones
• The Seven Major Catalysts that Inspire Progress
• Fear of Weakness, Fear of Failure, Fear of Who You Are

Photo by mkd.

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” — Herm Albright

The little wins each day keep you going and add up over time.  The same is true of setbacks.

When things are on a roll, and you are making more progress than dealing with setbacks, you are in a virtuous cycle – a positive loop.  When you’re spending more time dealing with setbacks and not making as much progress, you are in a negative loop.  The key is to watch for and deal with the setbacks that can take you down a vicious cycle.   While you can’t avoid all the setbacks, you can respond more effectively, especially if you watch for them and nip them in the bud.

In the book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work , by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, the authors show us how to keep virtuous cycles going and abort vicious cycles early.

Keep Positive Loops Going and Abort the Negative Ones
Pay attention to the day to day, but look to the big picture to see what’s really going on in terms of progress.  Teresa and Steven write:

”Focusing on inner work life one day at a time keeps you vigilant, but people make sense of each day’s events against the backstory of the days that preceded it.  Myopic focus on a narrow timeframe can blind you to the big picture of what’s really going on with both inner work life and progress.  Because inner work life and progress exert mutual influence, the ideal is to keep positive progress loops — virtuous cycles — going as long as possible, and abort negative ones — vicious cycles — as soon as possible.”

Look at the Right Things Over Time
You have to look for key triggers and events over time to notice the true patterns.  Teresa and Steven write:

“These patterns are often hard to spot unless you keep looking at the right things over time.  In fact, we might never have recognize the progress principles had we not been carefully analyzing daily event descriptions, many of which seemed unimportant in isolation.  It was focusing on the day-to-day, and then stepping back to look for patterns that we revealed what was really happening in the teams we studied.”

Watch For and Deal with Setback Events
Recognize the virtuous cycles and stay alert to the negative signs of setbacks.  Teresa and Steven write:

”Sustaining virtuous cycles requires recognizing them to begin with.  When your private end-of-the-day review indicates a series of days with more progress events than setbacks, and no major signs of negative inner work life, the chances are good that your team is in a virtuous cycle.  If your team is fortunate to have one going, it’s important to stay alert for negative events — especially small hassles — that can sour good inner work life or halt progress.  The most fundamental step is watching for and dealing with actual setback events.”

In my experience, the old saying, “a stitch in time saves nine” tends to be true, and I like to deal with setbacks as quickly, and effectively as possible, to keep a virtuous cycle going, or get back on one.

Photo by shambhavi singh.

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Evita Ochel on finding your inner peace. Evita is is the founder and editor of EvolvingBeings.com.

According to Wikipedia, inner peace, (or “peace of mind”), is “a state of being mentally and spiritually at peace, with enough knowledge and understanding to keep oneself strong in the face of discord or stress.” What a wonderful place to be.

I asked Evita to share her best lessons learned on finding and living with inner peace. I know a lot of people that will greatly benefit from her wisdom on this topic, and I know Evita has plenty of precious insight to share.

Without further ado, here is Evita on finding and living with inner peace …

Many people today are feeling the great change on our planet. The conditions are ripe for awakening to a higher state of consciousness than we have previously known as humanity, on both a personal and collective level. In the midst of this, we have seen what seems like an exponential increase in self-help and personal development resources, especially over the past couple of decades.

As we aim for increased abundance, efficiency or success, we cannot dismiss that the foundation for the most meaningful life comes from something else. This something else cannot be taught or received in the typical sense of the word. It can be inspired or exemplified by others, but ultimately it has to come from within you as a state of being. This is the greatest aspect that differentiates it from the most common personal growth topics. It does not come from a state of doing, but rather from a state of being. What we are talking about here is living from a state of inner peace.

For some whose interests revolve around action and achievement, the thought of inner peace may quite frankly sound boring. It may appear as taking the docile approach or being inactive to what life offers. Ironically, inner peace is anything but docile or boring. Although I feel it is our natural state of being, it takes great courage, discipline and effort to foster, and live out at all times in our modern society. To help explain this further, I will share with you some tips of what I found has worked for me when it comes to making inner peace a state of being from which to live.

Tip #1. Realize You Have Nothing To Prove

Regardless of whether you had a tough childhood, a sibling rivalry, or you measure your worth based on the success of others, each of us tends to have experience in living like we need to prove something. What makes this worse, is that often this driving force can sabotage our life by being completely unconscious. Many of us are very good at convincing ourselves that motivation and ambition are the spice of life, and anything that seems opposite to that is lazy or lifeless. Some people go after a certain career to prove something to their family. Some acquire products to prove something to their friends. Some participate in a certain activity to prove something to themselves. Whatever the action may be, it tends to create a lot of turmoil, pressure and/or anxiety within us.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being motivated to do something. It simply all depends what is the driving force behind that motivation. This life, this race, this game or however you see it, is only and always with yourself. It is about your personal evolution, not anyone else’s. There is nothing to prove to anyone, not even yourself. We all reach the finish line and along the way we all create, express and experience ourselves. The sooner we realize that and make it real in our lives, the more inner peace we attain. Know that you are everything and you can do anything. Therefore, it would be more valuable to put your efforts into creating for the sake of expressing yourself as an infinite being, rather than creating for the sake of proving some final outcome. You are magnificent regardless of what you do, or do not do. Inner peace comes from finding the joy along the way no matter what you are doing, rather than suffering along the way in hopes of reaching some elusive, final happy place.

Tip #2. Learn To Be Still

I find that a big challenge of living from a space of inner peace is that many of us do not allow for the right environment to nurture it, due to the constant noise in our lives. Our minds are on, all the time. Most of us spend the majority of our days in physically noisy environments. To make matters worse, most of us are caught up in a perpetual state of doing. There is always something to do, and there is never enough time. This is the opposite of what inner peace is all about.

This is why learning to be still is one of the central tenets of achieving inner peace. Although it would seem like an easy task to be still or be in silence, the actuality is far from it. This is why as I stated in the introduction, attaining and living with inner peace is not some easy or boring task. It takes discipline and an active creation on one’s part to live beyond the norm of modern-day society. This can make life very exciting and rewarding.

To experience inner peace, we need to have stillness in our life to at least have the chance to consciously “be” with whatever turmoil may be going on within us. When we are running around and “busy” all the time, it is too easy to dismiss or ignore what our inner being is asking for, or trying to tell us. Therefore, the path to inner peace needs to include a balance of some stillness and silence. Reflect on, process and clear out what does not serve you consciously, so you are not living from it unconsciously.

Tip #3. Forgive For Your Peace of Mind

I will never forget when I had the great realization in my life that forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person, but is actually a gift we give ourselves. So many people still live with the notion that they will not, or cannot forgive another, for whatever the other may have said or done. In actuality all this means is that they are refusing to forgive themselves, thereby creating pain and tension in their own life.

The key ingredient for peace-filled relationships is forgiveness. When I speak about forgiveness, I am not talking about it from any religious perspective, but from a look beyond and let go of perspective. This becomes easier when we understand that no one ever does anything wrong given their model of the world, and that most people live from a habitual place of unconscious words and actions. From that perspective, how can we find fault or blame in someone who does not realize what they are doing? This is where seeing beyond the word or action helps. One person in the relationship must have more clarity, or more emotional maturity, or simply more consciousness to see beyond what may have been said or done. Deep down, we are love and we want love. Inner peace comes from recognizing that and not holding onto any word or deed expressed by another.

Tip #4. Master the Art of Allowing

Various authors and teachers talk about the art of allowing. Some people have heard about it, some get it, while others yet may find the concept completely foreign. Mastering allowing means letting each person be as they are. Naturally, this is very difficult for us to do as it seems our nature is rooted in wanting to change and control people. We learn this firsthand from our parents, who seem to think they always know what is best for us, and how or what we should be. Very few people grow up fortunate enough to have had parents who allowed for freedom of expression, while being supportive guides along the way, rather than entities who seem to think they own us. As we get into relationships, we then model this behavior on our loved ones. Although it can spill onto our friends, our family members seem to get the worst of the brunt.

What confuses many people about allowing is making it synonymous with tolerating. Mastering the art of allowing means that we respect each person’s right to self expression, but it may include us not being part of that expression. For example, if I had a partner who smoked and I did not want smoking to be a part of my life, there are numerous ways I could approach the situation to maintain a level of inner peace. Starting from clear, honest communication about how and why I feel a certain way, which may be enough for the person to realize that this is not actually a habit they are consciously choosing, or re-evaluating why I feel as I do and whether I want to sacrifice the quality of the relationship over it, to temporary or permanent removal of myself from the situation. Bottom line we have choices in every moment to act from a place of inner peace, or cause ourselves and others turmoil, pain and suffering. The choice is always ours.

Tip #5. Know That Everything is Perfect

I find this last tip the most challenging to explain, and for people to put into practice. When we look around at our world today, very few would exclaim that everything is perfect. I mean look at us. Regardless of where we live, wars, turbulent economies, job losses, illness, famine, poverty and weather cataclysms, paint the backdrop for life on our planet today.

Despite all this, there is something so sacred about the state of the world and our lives. Some people get a glimpse of it at times, and know the deep value of the phrase, “everything happens for a reason”. In the midst of what society calls a crisis or disaster, naturally this is hard to see. And yet, the more we live in a state of true inner peace, the more we look at the world through the eyes of perfection. Normally, none of us know the bigger reason for why something has happened to someone, a group of people or geographical area. This makes a lot of people want to be activists and stand up or fight for some group or cause. It may seem noble, but often all we are doing is identifying ourselves with some future outcome which we believe is better than the now. This does not mean that we should just sit back and do nothing, for clearly a lot of people are hurting and can benefit from our help. Yes, go out and do what you feel your heart calling you to do by all means, but make sure you do not attempt to impose your will on another or think you know what is best for them. Act from a space of personal expression, rather than personal identification. Attachment to, or a strong identification with something brings inner turmoil, anxiety or pain, for we live from a state of fear for self or others. In the end, you are not technically saving anyone, but evolving yourself through choices of personal expression.

What makes this more challenging is that we need to have a certain amount of inner peace to see the world and all that takes place as a perfect state of things. Inner peace drives external perfection, and external perfection drives more inner peace. The two are intricately linked together, where normally as we attain one, we attain the other.

Concluding Thoughts

I know in my life, nothing tastes or feels as good, as living with inner peace. It immediately changes your perspective on everything, giving your life a different pace and meaning. Therefore knowing how good it feels, it is my intention to inspire others to create the same in their life. As I mentioned above, no one can teach you inner peace, or give it to you. Yes, you can read about it and hear about it, but ultimately it has to be your choice and come from within you in all that you are, and all that you do.

Inner peace is a lifelong choice. It is a choice we have the opportunity to make over and over again. This is the other thing that I find so exciting about it. Life is always giving us many opportunities to practice it, in every possible context. You are constantly evolving your mastery of living with inner peace.

In the end, it may sound cliché, but we really need to be the change we wish to see. Instead of changing the external to get what we desire, look within yourself and be the joy, happiness and peace you may be seeking.

“Movement isn’t progress.” — Thomas Leonard

You can dramatically shape a positive inner work life if you know what the key catalysts are.  Catalysts are powerful ways to influence a positive inner work life.   When people have a positive inner work life, they are more creative and productive.  People are also more committed to their work and more likely to work well with their colleagues.

Progress is actually one of the best ways to motivate people, and catalysts influence your progress loop in an interesting way.  First, a catalyst can positively influence your inner work life, before it actually impacts the work itself.  For example, if you knew you were getting a faster computer, you would think positively of your employer before you actually got the computer.  Next, when the catalyst does actually positively impact your work, it then boosts your inner work life again.

In the book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work , Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer share the most crucial catalysts that shape your inner work life.  Their findings are based on studying more than 12,000 “even of the day” narratives by employees across multiple organizations.

The Seven Major Catalysts
Here are the seven major catalysts that affect both the positive perception of progress and the actual positive impact on progress:

1. Setting clear goals.
2. Allowing autonomy.
3. Providing resources.
4. Giving enough time — but not too much.
5. Help with the work.
6. Learning from problems and successes.
7. Allowing ideas to flow.

The opposite of each of these is an inhibitor of progress.  Inhibitors hinder progress or cause setbacks and have a negative impact on inner work life.

Photo by Anil Bhatt.

“If you see a friend without a smile; give him one of yours.” – Proverb

Have you ever seen a fake smile and wondered what was off?  Something was off, and it was in the eyes … “their eyes weren’t smiling.”

When you see a smile that’s contagious and it lights up the room, it’s because the eyes are smiling too.

In the book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions , Guy Kawasaki writes about genuine smiles and the art of making a great smile.

Think Pleasant Thoughts
The key to a good smile is, to think pleasent thoughts.  After all, the eyes are the window to the soul.  Guy writes:

“The key to a great George Clooneyesque smile is to think pleasant thoughts.  If you’re grumpy inside, it’s hard to have a smile that lights up the room.”

Fake Smiles Don’t Use the Eyes
Fake smiles don’t use the muscles around your eyes.  Guy writes:

“A fake smile uses only the zygomatic majory muscle — the one that runs from your jaw to the corner of your mouth.  It’s easy to control this muscle, so it leads to fake or what was called ‘Pan American smiles’.”

Make Crows Feet to Make a Great Smile
To make a great smile that lights up the room, Guy shares a tip — make crows feet.  Guy writes:

“A great smile uses the orbicularis oculi muscle, too. This muscle surrounds your eyes, and it makes you squint and produce crow’s feet.  A real smile is so special that it has its own name:  the Duchenne smile, in honor of Guillame Duchenne, a French nuerologist.”

So if you want to smile for real, and have a great smile, think happy thoughts and make those crows feet.

Photo by whologwhy.

“In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.” — Dalai Lama

One of the best things I learned from Jack Canfield is to make an “irritation list.”   To make an irritation list, you simply write down the things that are bothering you and then you work the list.

Sometimes the best way to improve each day is reduce the things that frustrate you (while raising your frustration tolerance or letting things go)

Using an irritation list is a powerful approach.  Here’s why …  First, it’s a way to clear your head and surface what’s bugging you.  Second, it’s a simple way to think on paper.  When you put your list down on paper, it can help you keep perspective, or gain new perspective.  When it’s swimming around in your head, it’s easy to blow things out of proportion or to lose proper perspective.  Lastly, it makes all the things that irritate you, actionable.  Rather than swimming in your head, you have a simple list of things to act on.  You can act on them, or decide to let them go.

There’s more though.  You start to see patterns and learn what frustrates you or irritates you.  Better yet, you can raise your frustration tolerance, and decide that some things just aren’t going to bug you anymore.  You can also decide to let things go.  And I mean, really let them go.  Not just shove them under a rug, or bury them deep down inside,  to rise another day.

I keep an irritation list for work and an irritation list for home, and while I work towards the best things in life, I hack away at the irritations that crop up along the way.

Photo by eflon.