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  • How to become more creative – the secrets nobody told you about

    Every single human being possesses a flow of creative energy, including you. It’s not even a question of whether you can be creative or not, since the answer is absolutely yes.

    The much more sensible question is how to learn to identify, nurture and express the creative energy that resides in you.

    In this article, you will learn exactly that – how to become more creative.

    No matter if you see yourself as a creative person or not, whether you are terrified of expressing yourself or you are the boldest artist there is, after reading this article you will acquire many ideas for how to completely awaken the creative part of your personality and then leverage it to your advantage.

    How to become more creative

    It’s impossible to feel complete without being creative

    First, as with anything that requires effort in life, you need a strong reason why you should even bother igniting your creative spark.

    Without a strong “why” you rarely have the stamina needed to start a new habit, project or learn a new skill. And creativity is exactly that – a combination of a habit, skills and little projects.

    Emotions drive attention. Emotions direct the creative juice.

    Among many ways you can benefit from creativity, there are two major ones. The first one is that in the creative society, creativity is well-cherished. Brilliant ideas are the drivers of success.

    By being more creative, you can skyrocket your career. It’s that simple. Having only brilliant ideas is of course rarely enough to succeed, but it’s definitely the best start.

    The second, even more important reason to develop your creativity is to give additional meaning to your life. You are here on this planet to grow, connect, enjoy and create.

    Without creating in one way or another, it’s hard to feel complete. Finding yourself in the creative flow is one of the most divine experiences you can have as a human being.

    Creativity gives you a chance to shine bright, to express your true self and to transform raw energies into subtler ones (in psychology, it’s called the sublimation of needs).

    With creativity, you can even leave a legacy if you manage to impact the masses with your brilliant ideas. And there’s more. Creativity can empower your growth, gives you new ways to connect with other people, and provides a unique way of enjoying life. What more could one ask for?

    The four paths to finding and developing your creative self

    There are four completely different paths (based on two variables) to the development of your creative self. The first variable is about possessing obvious traditional artistic talent or, on the other extreme, considering yourself as not possessing creative personality at all.

    The second variable concerns your environment. Every personality trait (including creative talent) can be enhanced, decreased, woken up or eliminated by life experiences. Your creativity can be encouraged or stifled based on your functioning in a specific environment.

    The creativity matrix

    Individuals in a supportive environment

    Some people are lucky to discover their medium for creating at a young age while their parents provide a supportive environment for their talents to be developed. If a child shows drawing, singing, acting or any other kind of artistic capabilities that are constantly encouraged, we get “natural born artists”.

    A combination of talent and the environment that enables at least 10,000 hours of practice is what creates outliers, the most successful people of humankind. There are rare exceptions, but this is the safest success formula when creative talents are involved.

    Outliers = Talent + Supportive environment that enables 10,000 hours of practice + Other factors

    Then we have people with no obvious artistic talent, but being in a supportive environment helps them find a way to express their creativity. These are the individuals with a very strong growth mindset.

    The core of their belief system is that talent is overrated and that they can learn any skill (artistic or not) if they put in enough effort. They are hard workers who learn how to be creative with enough time and effort. They absolutely have to work much harder than the talented people to achieve the same level of mastery.

    These two groups rarely have a problem being creative.

    Individuals in a non-supportive environment

    Then there are two groups of people who do have challenges with expressing their creative self.

    People that have traditional artistic talent and are in a very critical and non-supportive environment develop strong mistrust in themselves and life, together with severe feelings of shame, guilt, doubt and inferiority.

    Their true self and creative talents get stifled and the desire to shine is suppressed. They know what their talents are, they have the urge to express themselves, but they are keeping themselves locked in an emotional cage.

    The last group of people are the ones with no obvious artistic talent combined with a non-supportive environment. These people most often see themselves as not creative at all and they aren’t particularly bothered by that fact.

    They don’t believe they can express themselves in a creative way, so they don’t even try. But they are just letting parts of their personality go undiscovered, and the creative urges is buried deep in the unconscious mind.

    In which quadrant do you fall?

    The worst enemies to creativity

    Creative crisis – In the dark, the stars shine the brightest

    Creativity and a strong healthy ego are very closely interconnected. If you want to express your creative self, you need to believe in yourself.

    Because only then can you take initiative and put your creations in front of others to be judged, while not really being affected by the judgements. Without a healthy ego, the fear of not being accepted is just too strong.

    There are many ways how self-expression can be blocked. One extreme is symbolic self-castration, with common examples like laziness, procrastination and denial. The other extreme is creative aggression where good taste extends into neediness, exaggeration and narcissism.

    Creative doing is a natural human desire and tendency. When suppressed, it always backfires.

    If you don’t consider yourself creative or if you don’t express your creative talents, you always suffer from some type of existential crisis.

    How does creativity get stifled?

    The question is how creativity even gets stifled. Usually it happens during a child’s upbringing.

    Here are only a few very common examples:

    • You create something and nobody gives you any praise or they focus on the mistakes
    • You are constantly criticized for everything you do (“it’s good, but it could be better”)
    • When you want to explain something, you are shut down (“don’t speak while we eat”)
    • You are not allowed to have your own style or opinion or do things your own way
    • Nobody encourages you to go through failure and to regularly practice to develop your talents
    • You are not allowed to play and you have to grow up too quickly
    • You are labeled as being childish when you don’t act grown up and aren’t serious
    • Nobody is mentoring you and showing you how you can progress in developing your talents
    • Nobody asks you about your wishes, needs and opinions or what you want
    • Your imagination is not nurtured with stories, answering your questions and being open-minded in general

    Creating - How does it make you feel

    Resolving the inner crisis with reframing

    There are two resolutions to this conflict. The first one is best illustrated with the quote: “in the dark the stars shine the brightest”. Research has shown that rejection and isolation can be great fuel for creativity.

    By definition, being creative means being different, and being different very often leads to being rejected, at least in the beginning. A non-supportive environment does exactly that, it rejects your potential instead of encouraging it, merely because you are different.

    If you want to be creative, you must be rejected.

    How can you be creative, if you want to fit in (and gain some approval) at all costs? Creativity means being or finding something that is different, something that doesn’t fit in.

    That means you need a new context for feeling rejected, you need to reframe your thinking in a way that rejection doesn’t dry your creativity (with the desire to fit in), but fuels it (with the desire to stand out).

    In the new mental frame, you must see the need to individuate stronger than the need to belong. Your urge to stand out must be stronger than the need to fit in.

    You have to make your mission to express your creative self greater than any rejection or criticism you might encounter on you path to self-actualization by the society. You need to disinvest yourself from the society’s opinion and invest more into yourself and your independence.

    Society feels threatened by everything different, but the moment you become like them, nobody notices you anymore.

    An inner and outer environment that support your creative expression

    The second way to become more creative is to provide yourself the supportive environment you didn’t have when growing up. That can be achieved from within and by changing external circumstances.

    Providing yourself the supportive environment from within is the so-called self-mothering and self-fathering concept. It might sound a little bit ridiculous, but it works.

    Self-mothering and self-fathering means developing a compassionate and encouraging relation with yourself, where you start to slowly encourage your creative expressions.

    Mindfulness, properly managing your mind, creative visualization, bibliotherapy, exploring your subconscious and play are only a few of the mechanisms how to make a step further in this direction.

    Stay creative when you grow up

    Often the best first step to reconnect with your creative part is to start playing.

    Videogames, sports, dancing, flirting, playing with children, reading fiction books and telling jokes are examples of good ways to loosen yourself up and see that your relaxed and creative nature doesn’t always lead to rejection, but rather to the thing you crave the most – being loved and admired.

    Besides the internal environment, your external environment greatly influences your creativity. If you want to be more creative, you must build yourself a motivational and supportive environment. In the adult age, many external circumstances are under your control.

    You can surround yourself with people who support your creative talents, you can join meetup and hobby groups, you can work in a company with many smart and creative people and provide everything else necessary to nurture your creativity.

    It’s impossible to become more creative if you aren’t willing to make some changes in your life, internal and external.

    To deeply connect with others, you have to polarize. If you want to polarize, you must express your unique creative self. There is no other way.

    Find the right medium

    Undiscovered self – It’s time to find a fitting medium and the right context

    People with no obvious creative talent have the same issue as people with the talent in a non-supportive environment, with one additional burden.

    They are not aware of their desire to create and even if they wanted to create, they have no idea how. Art, innovation and ideas are completely alien to them.

    Usually their conflict seems less severe, at least on the conscious level. They are not creative types, so why bother to creatively express themselves at all.

    To live a full, complete and integrated life you must find a way to creatively express yourself. Either you find a way at one point in your life, or your needs are suppressed in a nasty way; and that always brings some form of negativity in your life.

    If you consider yourself non-creative, the first step you must make is to find the right medium and context that sparks your creativity. The first step is to use the search mode and experiment in what situations and with what kind of channel you can creatively express yourself.

    In other words, if you fall in this group, you have to try dozens of different arts to find the one that best suits your creative self.

    Logically, if you don’t possess traditional artistic talent, you have to find some uncommon one. I helped hundreds of people discover their unusual creative talents. Here are only a few ways how the people I mentored found their creative selves:

    • Connecting difficult family members in a creative way
    • Telling jokes or creating memes
    • Cooking, baking, making sweets
    • Playing games with children
    • Flirting in a creative way or applying bed skills
    • Improving processes in the company in completely new ways
    • Interpreting death or spirituality in a new way
    • Combining knowledge from two different industries
    • Finding new ways to solve big humanitarian problems
    • Organizing unique events
    • Making educational videos
    • Hacking mathematical equations
    • Tattoos, fashion etc.

    In addition to that, there are hundreds of different hobbies you can try. And don’t forget to try all the traditional artistic professions.

    I can guarantee you that if you try hundreds of different things you will find the one that is your perfect fit. All you need is a little bit of courage. After that, your life will never be the same again. You will open the doors to higher vibrations and divine realms.

    Finding a way to express your creativity means finding the right medium. It can be connecting words, colors, moves, curves, numbers, relationships, tones, facts or anything else in new creative ways. But once you find your medium, you also need to find the right context that regularly sparks your creativity.

    Your creative environemnt

    Creativity is a habit and a skill, not a special gift

    Creativity is not a magic wand a few possess. It’s not an unlimited resource that some people have at their own disposal and advantage when they need it to dominate others, without any cost.

    Creativity is a habit. You have to practice to be more and more creative, and you have to nurture your creativity. That means you can be creative only in a specific context, with specific life circumstances and big investments in the form of time and effort.

    The context is everything that encourages your creative routine.

    It includes everything from reminders (habit triggers) to how you organize your environment (minimal transaction costs) and finally to deliberately practicing creative tasks with pure self-discipline and stamina (timeboxing time for practice). And we must also not forget the rewards you enjoy in the end.

    The context is about organizing your life in a way that you regularly find yourself in front of the medium while you can forget about everything else and just create.

    If you want to be creative, you must put in the effort to organize your life circumstances in a way that you can create in the flow without any distractions for a few hours every day.

    You can be the most talented person in the world, but without practice the talent goes to waste. Hard work beats talent every time. Don’t assume some people have a gift that is only a great resource without any investment and costs. There are no shortcuts in life (or only a few).

    Knowing that creativity is only a habit, here are a few ways to nurture and develop it:

    1. Create many different things every day
    2. Regularly practice opening your mind
    3. Practice makes your skills perfect

    Create many things every day

    Create many new things every day

    Once, I visited Leonardo Da Vinci’s exhibition. I was surprised at how many unsuccessful inventions and “ugly” pictures he drew. And he is one of the biggest inventors and artists of all time. I had thought that everything he touched became a masterpiece.

    But I was wrong. He had to sketch hundreds of ideas to develop a few brilliant ones. Pablo Picasso was no different. He created more than 50,000 pieces of art in his lifetime.

    An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cells it occupied. – A.G.

    That leads us to a simple conclusion. If you want to be more creative, you have to create every single day. And you have to create a lot. Here are a few ideas how you can achieve that:

    1. Brainstorm ideas every single day. If you don’t write down at least 10 ideas every day, don’t go to sleep. Much like you don’t go to sleep if you don’t read at least one page of a book.
    2. Don’t judge your ideas when you brainstorm. Write down every single ridiculous idea you can think of. Kick your inner critic’s ass if s/he wants to interfere. New ideas are fragile.
    3. Rank your ideas and then start prototyping. Use your medium and prototype like crazy. Prototyping is the first step to materializing your ideas. Nothing kills a brilliant idea faster than dull execution.
    4. Try to combine new ideas, all the knowledge you possess, and play with ideas in all the ridiculous ways possible. Every day, try to think in a new creative way.
    5. Make sure you use the diffused mode of thinking between creating time. Go for a walk or take a nap. Your mind will still be creating, and soon brilliant ideas will come out of nowhere.
    6. Don’t have problems being wrong. Mistake shouldn’t be the word you’re too embarrassed to use. You’re the product of a trillion mistakes. Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life on this planet using only one tool: the mistake (it’s a quote from Westworld). You should use it too.
    7. Exercise and eat brain foods! Both really do stimulate your brain and creativity.
    8. Last but not least, know that your unique style comes from your limitations, not your strengths. Your unique style gets developed by finding a way of working around your shortcomings.
    9. Mae sure you free your working memeory as much as possible

    Disinvest yourself from the society’s opinion, invest yourself into examining your soul to find the creative spring in you, and then create like crazy.

    Open your mind

    Regularly practice opening your mind

    Your mind is like a parachute. It only works when it’s open. You learned and inherited hundreds of limiting beliefs that you have to unlearn. The only way to unlearn limitations is by practicing and regularly breaking the rules (in a healthy way).

    Here are a few ideas how you can achieve that:

    1. Always be curious and ask yourself and others “why” thousands of times.
    2. Know that everything can be improved and everything can be done in a better way. There is no such thing as a best practice.
    3. Regularly ask yourself: what would happen if I created, did, believed… the opposite. Every single belief you currently have is a cold blocker of imagination, innovation and improvements.
    4. Don’t get stuck on fixed ideas – stay flexible. There are many ways to achieve the same thing.
    5. Sometimes imagine that life is just a dream without any limitations. Imagine how the future will look in 10, 20 and 100 years. Imagine that there are no physical laws.
    6. Always try new things, never chain yourself by sticking solely to things you already mastered.
    7. Think about how you can do everyday tasks you already mastered in a new different way.
    8. In the beginning, be satisfied with good enough, with small first steps, and then you can scale up the quality of your work.
    9. Spend time with smart people, they will further help you develop your creativity.
    10. Constantly learn and read a lot.

    Every creative masterpiece contains an element of surprise. If you want to surprise people, you must create something unexpected. To create something unexpected, you must think in uncommon ways. Dare to be different.

    Practice makes perfect

    Practice makes things perfect

    Talent isn’t something you possess, it’s something you do. And it all starts with mastering the basics. The more you master the basics, the more creative you can become.

    Because when you master the basics, you can devote more working memory to connecting ideas in a new creative way. That’s why you want to always master many different basics – “knowledge chunks” that you store in your long-term memory.

    It might sound complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. Knowledge chunks stored in your long-term memory include information, experiences, motoric skills, cognitive skills and conditioning effects (habits, patterns).

    These are the building blocks that enable you to mix ideas together in a new creative way. The more of these building blocks you possess, the more creative you can be.

    That’s where the 10,000 hours rule (or daily hard work, in other words) comes into place. The more you master the basics and correctly practice new things, the more creative you can become. It’s a double benefit.

    Not only does the practice make you master a specific skill, you can also come up with more creative ideas in that domain.

    The end formula for being more creative is thus pretty simple. Make sure you master different basic blocks of knowledge (practice them until you get bored) and then put in the effort to mix them in new creative ways.

    And don’t forget that keeping your mind open and regularly stretching it will help you more easily find new connections between the building blocks. That’s it.

    All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

    But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

    Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

    Ira Glass

    The last thing you have to know about creative endeavors is, as the quote above illustrates, that beginnings suck. The first steps are usually the hardest, but they also keep the people who are not serious about self-actualization away from creativity.

    Don’t be one of them. Every next step you take becomes much easier. And make sure you don’t compare your beginning with someone else’s middle or the top of their career.

    The secrets to creativity

    The summary – how to become more creative

    1. Make expressing yourself in some creative way, no matter what it is, part of your life mission. Find your “why” to create. Your life will be greatly enriched and your existence here on this planet much more fulfilling.
    2. Reframe your creative crisis if you have issues with mistrust, doubt, guilt and shame. Make the desire to individuate stronger than the need to belong. Foresee that expressing your uniqueness will probably lead to the most honest belonging in the end.
    3. Experiment with hundreds of creative things to find the medium that is your perfect fit. Then learn to organize your environment and life circumstances in a way that you will be able to create in the flow with the right medium every single day.
    4. If you want to be creative, you must produce many new things daily – without judging yourself or minding what the society will think. In hundreds of average ideas, a brilliant one will be born. Have a goal to create at least 50,000 creative pieces in your lifetime.
    5. Ideas are never enough. When you find the right idea, have the courage to materialize it with prototyping, and then finalize the best ones. All you need is a little bit of courage. First be open-minded, then be satisfied with good enough and in the end, create a unique masterpiece.
    6. Every single one of your beliefs is a creativity killer. Thus, you have to constantly practice open‑mindedness by challenging yourself, thinking and doing the opposite, and stretching your ideas to ridiculous proportions.
    7. Creativity is a habit and a skill, which means you have to practice it daily. You have to learn to master the basics and then strive to connect the things you master in a new unique way. It only takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve that.
    8. Last but no least, the best first step to unleashing creativity is to learn how to play again and to not compare yourself with others. Individuate!

  • A simple trick to express negative emotions in a mature way

    I strongly believe that everybody needs a coach or a mentor as leverage to faster personal development and progress in different areas of life. Currently I am working hard with a fitness trainer to improve my posture, strengthen my core muscles and improve my general fitness.

    Before that, I had a coach for more than a year that helped me identify my main cognitive distortions and destructive relationship patterns. He was of tremendous help to me, a wise and calm man who could always show you a new, more positive perspective on life and where to make a move forward.

    The first time I met him, it was immediately obvious that he had gone through a lot in life, but somehow found his inner peace. In the span of the coaching, we had many heated discussions, but he always stayed calm and positive. I was the one who was mad that he didn’t always agree with me or who became more aggressive in communication.

    But then one time, the discussion got really heated. I could see that he almost lost his temper. He took a deep breath and respectfully asked me if we can end the session and continue next time.

    I agreed, of course, half-surprised about what happened and half-satisfied because I felt like I won the power struggle by realizing that he is also only human.

    I couldn’t wait for the next session to see how things would evolve. We started with small talk. Then he apologized for last time, and suggested we continue the discussion on the same topic if I wanted. But honestly I was more curious about what really happened and so I directly asked him.

    What he said changed my perspective on relationships forever. He explained to me that he had had a bad day. And then he shared something eye-opening:

    You know, I can’t guarantee you that I won’t get angry, sad or envious or feel any other negative emotions in our relationship and interaction. But what I can 100 % guarantee you is that my negative feelings won’t do any damage to you or to our relationship.

    Stop and think for a moment how powerful that is. The goal in relationships isn’t to completely eliminate negative feelings, since they are a completely normal human thing. That goal is to make sure negative feelings don’t do any damage to a relationship. That’s the trick.

    Express negative emotions

    It’s normal to feel negative emotions, the problem is when they cause damage

    Every single person on the planet has to deal with negative emotions. Your goal is neither to suppress them nor to completely wipe them out.

    Your ultimate goal is to learn to properly manage your emotions and make sure they aren’t doing the damage – that means (1) becoming aware of the negative emotions before reacting, (2) controlling your reactions and then (3) expressing them in the healthiest way possible.

    But here’s the trick. Even though everyone must deal with negative emotions, some people (including me) have a much tougher job managing them. The greater emotional challenge is experienced or seen in one (or several) of the following ways:

    1. You get upset by the smallest things other people don’t even notice and you have no idea why
    2. Your emotional reaction spikes out of any reasonable proportion, even if you don’t want it to
    3. The emotional explosion just happens, it’s like somebody else is controlling you at the moment
    4. You aren’t even aware that you are hurting the other person while expressing your emotions
    5. You don’t really care if other people are hurting because of your words and actions
    6. You learned to suppress your emotions until they pile up and explode
    7. You have no idea what to do with all the negative energy that takes control of you
    8. You easily feel threatened or humiliated in relationships

    These are all the symptoms that show a big gap between the intensity of negative emotions and a complex set of skills that you need for managing such strong emotions. Nevertheless, if we go further, a lack of emotional control gets expressed in four general ways, based on one of the 4F responses to danger:

    Fight Flight Freeze Fawn
    Explosiveness Worrying Isolation Martyrdom
    Aggressiveness Being busy Running away Slavery
    Bullying Obsessiveness Ignorance Pleasing others
    Teasing Criticism Silence Clingy
    Control Suspicion Poor listening Helpless
    Gossiping, lying, manipulating, cheating, betraying, hypocrisy etc.

    Now we know how the experience looks like and how negative emotions are expressed. Another thing that we are interested in is the cause. The emotional abuse itself is the cause behind the uncontrollable and disproportional response or, in other words, being emotionally abusive towards others.

    You act abusive towards others because you were abused in one way or another in the past.

    You have a corrupt blueprint for emotional attachment in relationships that you inherited and learned. Instead of a healthy secure attachment style, you follow an abusive attachment style.

    It can be an ambivalent (fight, flight) or avoidant (freeze, fawn) attachment style or even a disorganized attachment style which is the combination of both.

    It’s a vicious cycle of abuse that goes like this:

    1. You were abused in one way or another when growing up (or even later in life)
    2. You became abusive towards yourself
    3. Simultaneously, you also learned that being abusive is the safest way to deal with other people in relationships
    4. Other people are abusive back in return (usually just in a different way)
    5. You are even more abusive to others and yourself

    It’s a never-ending cycle that can be triggered hundreds of times a day. A situation that happens in the present reminds you of an abusive situation that you experienced in the past (or even a series of them). Naturally you want to protect yourself.

    You don’t know how to protect yourself in a healthy way, and thus you resort to an unhealthy 4F abusive response. It’s called an emotional flashback. In everyday life, you encounter small and big triggers that constantly kick you out of the center.

    Uday Hussein was one of the cruelest men who ever lived on this planet. He was abusive in the most disgusting ways possible. His psychological issues were far beyond the simple advice that an article like this can offer.

    But he was born to Saddam Hussein, how unluckier can you get in life? Think about that (not as an excuse, but as a never-ending vicious circle). He was born and died in the vicious cycle of abuse.

    Now, this is a very extreme case. But the point I am trying to make is that you were put in a vicious cycle of abuse (even if you are only verbally abusive or passive-aggressive in relationships) and that’s a very unlucky situation. Luckily, the things that you have learned, you can also unlearn.

    With hard work, you can step out of the vicious cycle and guarantee a better life to yourself and other people around you.

    Feeling negative emotions

    Stepping out of the vicious cycle of abuse

    Stepping out of the vicious cycle of abuse is not an easy job. If you have serious and severe problems, I suggest that you work things out with a professional therapist. In this blog post, I will only share a few pieces of advice that helped me become less controlling and verbally aggressive.

    As we discussed, there are three stages of processing feelings – awareness, control, expression. These are the three building blocks you can work on to develop emotional intelligence and consequently stop being so abusive in relationships. So let’s look at these three stages and what you can do about them to better control your emotions.

    It all starts with emotional awareness

    It all starts with awareness. Awareness means being consciously aware of what kind of mental and emotional processes are going on in you.

    It’s the capacity that enables you to say to yourself “Oh, I’m becoming angry, sad, depressed etc.” and “These are all the negative thoughts and emotions that this situation is triggering …” before you react to the situation in any way.

    There are two benefits to emotional and mental awareness:

    1. It’s a kind of alert that enables you to prepare and mobilize rational intervention as part of emotional control.
    2. It prevents you from suppressing emotions, which could later backfire.

    Let’s first focus on suppression. Before I started practicing emotional awareness, I would have said even to the best psychologist in the whole world that he is crazy if he told me that things like somebody being late, not replying to my email or looking at the phone several times when talking to me etc. upset me.

    On a conscious level, I was pretty sure that I don’t care, especially not about such small irrelevant “normal” behaviors. But that’s because I suppressed negative emotions. For me, they didn’t exist when these things happened. But they still got me angry on the unconscious level.

    They piled up and consequently I could be moody later that day, or lose temper the next time somebody did something I didn’t like. On the unconscious level, things were piling up, while on the conscious level, an anger burst seemed to come out of nowhere, time and time again.

    Three stages of emotional control

    A unique perspective that will help you be more aware of your negative emotions

    So I developed a new perspective on my emoting process that helps me have much greater emotional awareness. My old perspective was that small things simply can’t get me out of the center, since I’m a sharp strong man.

    Now in my new perspective, I assume that every small discomfort in a relationship causes some negative emotional process in me, and then I try to identify it. That will help you raise mental and emotional awareness.

    When you intentionally stop for a moment and listen to yourself, you become aware. And then there are only two possible outcomes: Oh, there’s nothing, I’m calm and happy. OR. Well, maybe it does irritate me …

    If I can 100 % confirm that it doesn’t bother me, life goes on. If I detect negative internal impulses, I gently express the negative feelings while the monster (negative feeling) is still small.

    And the second benefit of awareness is an increased buffer before you react to a situation. Awareness gives you an opportunity to be more proactive, to mobilize all your rational resources to make sure negative emotions are not being expressed in a toxic way.

    You can’t have control when you only react to a situation. You can only have control when you are aware of what is about to come.

    Negative emotions

    You are in control, not your emotions

    The control part of managing emotions leads us back to the wisdom that my mentor said. You can’t guarantee people that you won’t feel negative emotions and that things won’t upset you, but you absolutely can guarantee that you will not do any damage.

    Awareness gives you a great head start in this scenario. When you become aware that things are going in the wrong direction, you can:

    • Take the conversation in a new more positive direction
    • You can express your frustrations before the negativity escalates
    • You can take a timeout to calm down
    • You can explain your perspective
    • You can try to identify why you are experiencing an emotional flashback etc.

    There is usually an established process or pattern that leads to the point where you lose control. After that, you have zero chance of managing your emotions with pure willpower. When things explode, it’s too late for control.

    When you are one step ahead of your emotions, you can express them in a healthy way.

    But before that there are only two options. Either you control the process and the situation or the process and situation control and lead you towards the explosion.

    So take control of the process. When you start to sense negative emotions and see that things are escalating fast in the wrong direction, say to yourself:

    My job is to prevent hurting the other person and the relationship while dealing with my negative emotions. What is the best way to make sure my negative emotions don’t escalate?

    Then you must find a way to be one step ahead of your emotions. And when you are one step ahead of your emotions, you can express them in a healthy way.

    Finally, express your negative emotions in a healthy way

    Staying quiet about the things that upset you is not a healthy way to express emotions. That’s not what we are trying to achieve. Everything that you suppress escalates and backfires.

    Much like you don’t want to over-aggressively express your emotions, so you don’t want to suppress them either. Thus you have to find ways how to express your emotions in a healthy way.

    You have to experiment a little bit (use the search mode) and discover how you can express negative emotions in a healthier way. Here are a few suggestions:

    • Take a timeout, calm down and then reopen the discussion again
    • Explain to the other person why a certain behavior upsets you so much
    • Write down in a self-reflective journal why things are so hard
    • You are often only one exercise session away from a good mood, so visit a gym
    • You can also simply go for a walk or change your environment in any way
    • Take some time alone and scream in the pillow or just lay down and cry
    • Do emotional accounting or cognitive reframing
    • Get a massage, read jokes or watch a comedy
    • Take 10 deep breaths and then respond

    Usually, improving your communication skills and having courage to open up greatly helps with expressing your negative emotions. The important thing is that you reopen the conversation with the person after things calm down, and that you sort things out.

    The right solution might be explaining your point of view or how you are experiencing the situation, maybe asserting healthier boundaries or deciding on more productive relationship patterns. The key is to express your frustrations without hurting the relationship.

    Take the time out

    If you take a timeout, don’t let your mind take you to dark places

    The most common way to deal with negative feelings while not hurting the relationship is to take a timeout. The timeout doesn’t mean holding a grudge, punishing each other with silence or creating distance and enforcing isolation.

    Timeout is an agreement to take some time for things to calm down and then reopen the discussion with more positive energies.

    You agree upfront when to continue the discussion. That means both parties have to confirm and agree that they want to solve the problem and constructively continue the relationship when things calm down.

    Timeout is a great tool for regaining control over your negative emotions, but there is one problematic thing that I’ve noticed over and over again – it adds a feeling of abandonment to the situation and accelerates cognitive distortions.

    Your mind can always hurt you much worse than your strongest enemy. In the timeout period, there are two options your mind and thoughts can take.

    1. One is towards self-reflection, understanding why your feelings are so strong and finding a creative solution to the problem, making sure that the negative energy doesn’t escalate and the toxic relationship pattern don’t repeat.
    2. The other path is the dark one. Your negative emotions can escalate, your negative thoughts can pile up, you can find many new arguments why you are justifiably upset, and you might come back with even more negative energies, deeply caught in one of the 4F responses.

    So when taking a timeout, you must make sure you don’t let your mind wander in the negative direction. There are many ways to properly manage your mind. The main point is that on the emotional level, you mustn’t confuse a timeout with additional abandonment.

    Feeling calm

    The permanent solution to stop being emotionally abusive and express negative emotions in a mature way

    The biggest problem with all the approaches we talked about that deal with negative emotions is that they are never-ending work.

    Many small things constantly upset you in relationships, you have to pay attention to every detail and small process that erupts in you, and then manage your responses properly. It’s exhausting and it takes tons of willpower and discipline.

    The other, much more rewarding path and permanent solution is to develop a greater capacity for love, better self-esteem and self-confidence, and a healthier attachment style in relationships. Unfortunately, that’s not possible without a long period of therapy, which can which can be a rather big investment.

    But in the end, it is absolutely an investment that pays off great dividends in the form of a more quality life and healthier relationships.

    Thus, my final recommendation would be: if you have too many issues with expressing your emotions and you act abusively in relationships, get professional help. Going to therapy is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of a really strong character.

  • If you’re going through hell, keep going – here is how

    Rare are the people who don’t face some kind of an extreme catastrophe, collapse or agony at least once in their lifetime. Most people go through several of these kinds of crises in their lifetime.

    Breakups, illnesses, accidents, violence, bankruptcy, natural disasters, there are so many ways how life can shake you to the core. Countless are the ways you can find yourself in hell.

    Hell is a big part of how life on the Earth is designed. If you watch Discovery Channel or Animal Planet for a few hours, the hell part quickly becomes more than obvious (I have a lion playing with a half-dead zebra in mind).

    With technology, laws, knowledge, education, morality, social systems and many other mechanisms, we try to build safety nets for as many people as possible to avoid life-threatening or devastating situations.

    Nevertheless, finding yourself in hell several times in your lifetime is still a very likely reality. There are absolutely fewer physical threats than there were hundreds of years ago, but there are many other types of crisis you can find yourself in – from emotional to financial ones.

    The main question is: what to do when you find yourself in such devastating situations? What can you do when going through hell?

    The answer is quite simple. If you’re going through hell, keep going. Just make sure you’re going in the right direction. It’s that simple. And this blog post will teach you exactly how to achieve that. So buckle up and let’s learn how to travel through hell like a boss.

    Have a mission bigger than problems

    Possess a vision and mission stronger than any of the problems you face

    First, if you find yourself in the middle of hell, you need an emotionally strong vision and mission that keeps you going day by day.

    I’m not talking about some dreamy vision of how you will enjoy life on a beach doing nothing after the crisis goes away, but a vision that makes you fight for something greater than life. It’s a mission that makes your current hell only a temporary and obsolete situation.

    Your mission can be fighting for your family, a positive change you want to make in the world, a legacy that you must leave behind, something God (or whoever) sent you on this planet to accomplish and so on.

    It must be a strong positive cause and you must feel it in your heart and bones. Your mission must be something worth living and fighting for, no matter how hard life is.

    When you have a clearly defined mission or the so-called powerful why that inspires you beyond any obstacle, you need a visual reminder that will keep your vision and mission alive on a daily basis.

    You need something that you look at every morning (and when you encounter an obstacle) and that reminds you why you must persist. A photo of your family, a mission statement, thank you notes from people you helped or even the Bible.

    When travelling through hell, you need to carry a life mission reminder with yourself, something that can ignite the fighting spirit you possess in a single second. It’s like an emblem that turns any wussy energies into a “never retreat, never surrender” mentality.

    Goal Journey Map Template

    Build a superior strategy to get yourself out of hell

    Extremely rare are the people who get out of hell by pure luck. I’ve seen it, it can happen. People in financial troubles winning a lottery. People meeting a soulmate a few weeks after a nasty breakup. People having such good genes that they miraculously recover from a severe illness.

    But I’ve also seen many people who hoped for a stroke of luck, and yet their prayers weren’t heard. I’ve seen people hoping so strongly for things to get better while drowning in shit and nothing happened. Soon their hope led to them giving up and then transforming into zombies.

    I wouldn’t count only on luck when I find myself in hell. It’s much smarter to build a superior strategy that you follow in tough life situations. A bulletproof strategy that leads to the exit. And if luck knocks on your doors while you’re working hard to get yourself out of a shitty life situation, even better.

    So, just after clarifying your life mission and your fuel (“why”) to work hard to get yourself out of hell, you need to build a superior strategy for how exactly you will achieve that.

    You need to stop and think what would be the best strategy for you to reach the hell’s exit. You need to prepare something like a Goal Journey Map, with a detailed flexible step-by-step plan.

    The things that you need to define in your “getting out of hell” strategy are:

    • Introspection and habit changes – Your firm decision about what you will stop doing (things that got you into hell) and what you will start doing (things that will get you out of hell). In other words, which habits you will change. With self-reflection, you must have a clear picture of what got you into the situation (did you do anything wrong, what have you missed, what you learned etc.) and make sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes.
    • Process phases – If you want to get yourself out of hell, you must always go through several consequential phases. These can be the emotional stages of overcoming failure (shock, denial, frustration, depression, experiment, decision, integration) or different types of objectives and general milestones you must meet to get yourself out of hell (getting educated, changing habits, finding new supportive people etc.).
    • Milestones and the process you will follow – This is the most important part of your strategy. Process is the hard work you put in daily to get yourself out of hell. Process are everyday small steps that lead you to great achievements, meeting milestones and finally reaching the exit. More about the process in the next section.
    • Supporting environment – You cannot succeed alone in life. In the same way, you cannot get out of hell all by yourself. You always need strong support from your environment – trends, people, communities, books etc. Thus, a very important part of the strategy of how to get out of hell is finding and building yourself the right support.
    • Innovations – Many times, you need to innovate your way out of hell. You need to think about all the creative moves you can play, how can you turn setbacks to your advantage, you need to find a new angle of seeing your shitty situation in a more positive way, and so on. In your strategy, you must brainstorm and define all the innovations you can think of that can help you get out of hell faster or with fewer resources.
    • Metrics – Metrics are an extremely important part of the strategy and process you follow. They show your progress, they give you hope that you can reach the exit with small daily steps, and they should inspire you to fight even harder. When you see the first few dollars saved, the first few kilograms lost, the first smile on your face, your wounds getting healed and so on, it all gives you additional motivation to continue fighting and digging yourself out of hell. There are many different metrics you can use to follow your progress.
    • Feedback mechanisms – Together with metrics, you also need a very well set feedback mechanism that gives you all the data from your environment (people, net worth, trends etc.) and your inner processes (feelings, thoughts, body measurements, etc.) to see if you are going in the right direction.
    • Branches and forks – Every strategy and plan must be as flexible as possible. Branches and forks are potential pivots or changes in your strategy that you can make when your progress stops. You can plan some of the potential pivots from the beginning (your plan B, C or Z) or you can brainstorm pivots when you encounter a new setback. A very important part of any plan is a decision about how you will stay flexible on the road out of hell.

    It usually takes 1 – 2 days of calm, relaxed planning to prepare a superior strategy. But when you have the strategy, it gives you additional motivation and zeal to start with all the necessary hard work to get yourself out of burning hell.

    Follow the process

    Follow the process

    As we said, there are two ways you can get yourself out of hell. One is getting lucky and the second is following a carefully orchestrated process based on your superior strategy. The best option is to get lucky while you follow the process.

    The good news is that by following the process, you increase the probability of getting struck by luck, based on the saying the harder I work, the luckier I get. So, let’s focus now on the process and what it really means.

    There are two categories you have to distinguish – first we have the final event, the goal you want to achieve. That’s getting yourself out of hell, in our case. And the second category is the process, the daily hard work you put in to get to the final event. The process are everyday steps that lead you towards the exit.

    The process is what requires discipline, sacrifice, commitment and delayed gratification. The process is your sweat and tears, it’s the life’s test of whether you really want to get yourself out of hell or not.

    Because if you really want something badly enough, you’ll always find a way; if not, you’ll find an excuse. And that leads us back to the powerful “why” that you must have.

    The powerful why or mission is the fuel to follow the process. Here are a few simplified examples of what following the process means:

    Event Process
    Have a strict limit on Do every SINGLE day

    From obesity to a healthy body

    • Phase 1: Exercise
    • Phase 2: Diet
    • Phase 3: Lifestyle changes
    • Overeating
    • Eating after 5pm
    • Sugar and simple carbs
    • Junk food
    • Alcohol
    • Cigarettes
    • Don’t eat for 16 hours
    • Exercise
    • Eat green veggies
    • Eat 3 healthy fatty foods
    • Eat 3 pieces of fruit
    • Drink water
    • Get enough sleep
    From bankruptcy to the first$1,000

    • Phase 1: Costs under control
    • Phase 2: Increase earnings
    • Phase 3: Consolidate debt
    • Phase 4: Save first $1,000
    • Expenses – Use budgeting
    • Emotional spending
    • Cut all expenses
    • Find ways to save more money
    • Develop new competences
    • Contribute ideas in your company
    • Network
    • Ask for a raise

    You can’t get yourself out of hell if you aren’t willing to follow a carefully orchestrated process, which usually means a big lifestyle change. Changing a lifestyle is hard, that’s why your vision and mission must be so great and powerful that you have no problem at all redesigning your life and habits.

    Injured? Consult with your doctor or physiotherapist and prepare a plan for how you will get to your optimal performance. Then do all the exercises every day, take supplements, stretch, follow the plan, measure your progress and make sure you are surrounded with motivational people when you want to give up.

    Nasty breakup? Reconnect with people, analyze what went wrong, read 10 books about intimate relationship management, vent on a piece of paper or in an online forum, and when you are ready, start dating again. Every breakup is an opportunity to connect with new people, you just need to see the steps to getting there with time.

    Whatever your “hell” situation is, there were many people in a similar situation before. Find them, consult with them, read the books they’ve written. Get all the knowledge necessary to build the right strategy and then just follow the process. Follow the process, that must be one of your mantras.

    When things get tough, just repeat to yourself: follow the process, stand up and fight.

    Expectations vs reality
    Source: Wait By Why, Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

    Have realistic expectations

    People usually overestimate what they can achieve in one month and underestimate what they can achieve in one or five years. Getting yourself out of hell is rarely a task that can be achieved in a week or one month. Usually it takes several months, if not years.

    Don’t have unrealistic expectations for how fast you will reach the exit. Unrealistic expectations will kill your spirit and motivation. You must keep the long-term view. Getting out of hell is often a marathon or a long series of many sprints, not only one quick sprint. Small problems that can be solved quickly are not the same as being in hell.

    • It took me 3 years to get out of debt after I had to liquidate a VC fund during the 2008 financial crisis. Three whole years to get myself out of a really bad financial situation.
    • It’s the 4th year since I’ve started working on healing my shoulder/ulnar nerve injury. Things are better every year, but they are yet far from okay. It took me thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of stretching and physiotherapy to even be able to exercise.
    • I’m working hard for the 5th year to lose weight and get rid of fat once and for all, since I was obese as a kid. There’s a lot of hard work, dedication and setbacks to face. After five years of hard work, I’m still not where I want to be. But I keep going.

    Hell is one big place. The devil has many faces. Problems tend to multiply. Going through hell is a very tough and challenging adventure measured in months, if not years. It’s like doing the Ironman, Spartan Race and Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc over and over again.

    But remember, soft times make soft people and tough times make strong people. So, when you get out of hell, you will be the real Iron Man.

    Don't repeat the same mistakes

    Make sure you are going in the right direction

    If you’re going through hell, keep going. That’s true. But you also need to check in regular intervals if you are following the right direction. You don’t want to go in circles, it’s too hot in hell for such nonsense.

    To make sure you go in the right direction, you need two things – (1) completely new habits and (2) a set of metrics that measure your progress.

    Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the formal definition of insanity. It’s also the formula for doing circles in hell (if your bad habits got you there).

    So, the first thing you have to do is make sure you don’t repeat your past mistakes – all the behavioral patterns that got you into hell. If you got yourself into hell based on several small stupid decisions or one big stupid decision or even both, you must stop making stupid decisions.

    Nothing helps if you persist at things that don’t work.

    Maybe wrong decisions got you into hell, maybe it was only bad luck. No matter the reason, you need a set of metrics that clearly show your progress and how you are taking baby steps towards the exit. Only things that are measured can be managed.

    There are many different life metrics you can measure, depending on what kind of hell you are facing. There are also several things you want to achieve by having a clearly defined set of metrics:

    1. Knowing exactly where you are and having realistic expectations about how fast you can progress
    2. Making sure you’re going in the right direction
    3. Avoiding any fake feeling of progress
    4. Gaining additional motivation when you see that hard work pays off
    5. Having a compass on what to focus on and how to set priorities

    Healthy habits, set of carefully set metrics and consistently following the process is what will get you out of hell.

    Never retreat, never surrender, that is the law

    When you have a carefully defined strategy, process and metrics to follow, the hard work begins. At this point, your mantra should be never retreat, never surrender. Every day, you just make sure that you perform all the actions that will get you one step closer to the hell’s exit.

    When going through hell, there are always tough days, there are always days when you want to give up; especially when you have to take one step back, in order to take two steps forward later. You see other people who are luckier, you have to face unexpected setbacks and challenges, but you must never give up. Never ever give up.

    Every time you encounter an unexpected setback, every time you lose motivation, you have to take a deep breath, adjust your strategy, stand up and keep fighting. Day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, until you reach the exit point.

    Sometimes you’ll slip back to your old habits and sometimes you will feel exhausted. Sometimes you’ll be fed up with all the shit you must overcome and sometimes you’ll cry about how unfair life is.

    But you can always take a day or two off, forgive yourself for not being perfect, look at your past progress, and then stand up and go back to fighting. Every day is a new beginning and thus an opportunity to take one step closer to the exit doors.

    Imagine Sisyphus Happy

    Dig yourself out of hell only with creative, positive and assertive energies

    Negative feelings can be a great motivator to find the way out of hell as quickly as possible. Fear makes you run extremely fast. Anger can make you fight with all your might. But here is one big catch – negative feelings always backfire.

    Buddha said that holding on to anger (or any other negative emotion) is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. In the end, you are the one who gets burned.

    Of course, you are caught in extremely negative feelings when you find yourself in hell. There is almost nothing else but a pile of shit and negative feelings. But you must be very careful about what you do with all the negativity.

    If you suppress it, you will get depressed, bitter and fatigued. If you express it in an unhealthy way (losing temper, trampling other people, doing extreme sports etc.), you will only hurt yourself and others.

    Thus an important part of getting yourself out of hell is learning how to deal with all the negative emotions. If you don’t learn to deal with negative emotions, you can quickly out yourself in even worse situation.

    Thus you must employ different psychological techniques, such as taking walks in nature, practicing proper breathing, writing a self-reflective journal, going to group or even individual therapies, or whatever else it takes to neutralize negative feelings. You have to build your future on positive emotions and actions, not on negative ones.

    It’s easy to smile when you are in heaven. It’s hard to smile when you are in hell. But that’s exactly what builds character. Imagine Sisyphus happy.

    Focus on the positives and manage your mind properly

    Much like you must properly manage your emotions, so you must properly manage your mind in tough life situations. When you are in hell, cognitive distortions tend to pile up.

    It’s simply too hot to think straight. You often only see the negative things and consequently you grant your mind the permission to take you to the darkest corners in hell. You don’t want that to happen, you want to march towards the exit, not into even darker corners.

    That means you have to even more consistently manage your mind. From doing emotional accounting and cognitive reframing exercises to focusing on all the positive things and things you are grateful for as well as employing optimal thinking and the abundance mindset.

    These are all extremely useful mind exercises when you find yourself in hell. They are your core survival tools that help you not go insane and completely lose your mind when the atmosphere gets too hot.

    Some things need time to heal

    In general, there are two types of hell. One type of hell are the situations that only get worse if you do nothing (bankruptcy, obesity etc.). The second type of hell are the situations where only time is the real healer (injuries, breakups, loss of dear ones etc.).

    This second type of hell carries a special life lesson, which is the following: Many things are way out of your control and you must learn to accept them.

    In many life situations and especially in relationships, there is nothing you can do to improve the shitty situation. In such cases your strategy shouldn’t be to fight, but to surrender.

    You can only reframe how you see the situation and/or actively grieve until all the negative feelings pass by. In some cases, only time can get you out of hell. It’s something all human beings must accept.

    When you are neck deep in shit, don’t let your head down.

    If you’re going through hell, keep going

    If you’re going through hell, keep going – The guide summary

    Hope is not a strategy. Giving up won’t get you anywhere. Drowning in self-pity won’t solve your problems. There are no miracles on the horizon. You might have to let some things go, you might have to say “f*ck it” to release some tension, but at the same time you have to stand up and fight (or surrender is some cases).

    Now you have the exact steps for what to do when you find yourself in the middle of hell:

    1. Have a vision and mission that is stronger than any obstacle on your way out of hell.
    2. Build a superior strategy of how you will get to the exit point.
    3. Every day, follow the process and have realistic expectations about how long it will take to reach the exit.
    4. Define a set of metrics that will clearly show your progress, and be proud of every step forward.
    5. Smile and enjoy all the warmth hell provides – learn to transform negative energies into a healthy assertive and fighting spirit. Think of the peaceful warrior mentality.
    6. Don’t let your mind take you to even darker places in hell. Manage your mind properly.
    7. Make sure you never retreat and never surrender, keep on fighting every day. And remember: some situations only get worse if you do nothing, while others demand from you to actively grieve and let go.

    Good luck on your journey!

  • Relationships track – number one resource for extraordinary relationship management

    Relationship track – number one resource for extraordinary relationship management

    Hi and welcome to the relationships track. If you don’t know what tracks are, please read more about them here. In short, tracks are the recommended order of blog posts you should read to really master the topic you selected. Following a track will help you acquire knowledge step by step in the fastest possible way. Now let’s get started.

    Agileleanlife Logo - Relationships track

    If there is one single thing that has the biggest impact on your life, it is absolutely relationships. A single critique from your boss, a fight with your spouse or a friend not returning your calls can destroy your day or even weeks or months in a second. On the other hand, making love with the right person, going on a trip with close friends or creating something exciting with a team of people makes life priceless.

    You become who you spend time with. You think like the people who are close to you. You overtake other people’s emotions and behaviors (identification). Your key relationships can stifle you or encourage you, people close to you can push you towards the stars or make your life a mess.

    You have zero chances to thrive in life if you don’t have an encouraging environment, and people are right in the center of that. You can be on a dream island, but if you aren’t with the right people, it will be more like a horror island. Trust me, I’ve experienced that.

    Even though relationships are super important, it’s really hard to properly manage them and keep their quality and health in check. Usually most relationships turn into relationsh*ts sooner or later. Two former lovers become the biggest of enemies, friends start to gossip about each other and families get into big fights that last for months.

    You want to avoid that and all similar situations, because your life will turn to hell. Every second you have is too precious to waste on lousy relationships and unnecessary fights. You want to be extremely picky about the relationships in your life, you want to very carefully nurture the ones you choose, and on top of that, you want to become an extraordinary conflict solver.

    This track will teach you all that – how to establish, build and grow awesome connections with many different people. The relationships track is divided into four sections:

    Enjoy reading the relationships track and becoming a master of personal and business relationships.

    AgileLeanLife - Relationships track - quote

    General relationship management advice

    Healthy relationships are what matters most in life – Relationships are heaven or hell on Earth. Good relationships can make your life really worth living, but crappy people in your life can make you suffer, really suffer and drown in misery. So you must forge your relationships very carefully; and make sure you only have healthy relationships in your life.

    In this article, you will learn why relationships are heaven or hell on Earth, about different types of relationships and why they matter, what you should expect from them, how to choose who to spend time with, and how to find people who will support you in life.

    The best relationship advice ever – I’m sure that by now you’re convinced that relationships are one of the most important aspects of your life. So let’s continue with the nine best pieces of relationship advice ever.

    Implementing these will completely change how you see relationships and how you manage them. And here’s the thing, relationships aren’t really real, they are only a figment of your imagination.

    • Always have the center on yourself
    • Become the best version of yourself
    • There is no ice to break
    • There is no middle path, find your fit
    • No zombies and bozos
    • Diversity and the 1/3 rule of relationships
    • Build multiple dimensions with superior communication
    • Relationships are like bank accounts
    • No relationship is perfect, the glass is already broken

    Relationships are like glass – but the glass is already broken – There are many versions of the story that symbolizes how relationships are like glass. The stories claim that relationships are fragile and easily broken. That after the damage is done, you can pick up the pieces and put them back together, but you rarely find every piece and the glass never looks the same again.

    Well, these quotes are badly misleading. Because in real life, the glass is already broken. No relationship is perfect and there are always issues and challenges in every single relationship. If you want to have quality relationships in your life, you must have realistic expectations.

    The real secrets to outstanding communication – The only path to outstanding relationships in your personal and professional life is outstanding communication. Consequently, excelling in communicational skills is absolutely one of the most important skills you can possess, if not skill number one.

    In this blog post, you will learn these few core concepts that will make you a great communicator. Not only great, an outstanding communicator. If you decide to implement them in everyday life, your professional and personal relationships will start to blossom.

    A simple trick to express negative emotions in a mature way – Every single person on the planet has to deal with negative emotions. Your goal is neither to suppress them nor to completely wipe them out.

    Your ultimate goal is to learn to properly manage your emotions and make sure they aren’t doing the damage – that means (1) becoming aware of the negative emotions before reacting, (2) controlling your reactions and then (3) expressing them in the healthiest way possible. In this blog post you will learn how to achieve that.

    Why you criticize other people and how to stop doing it – It’s so easy to criticize other people, and so hard to give a single honest compliment. It’s so easy to see yourself in a good light and at the same time focus on imperfections of other people.

    But criticizing people is a complete lose-lose situation that only creates distance, spreads negative energies and causes tensions. Criticism is one of the worst kinds of negative thinking, talking and acting. In this blog post you will learn why you criticize other people and how to stop it once and for all.

    Healthy relationships

    Do not judge: observe, notice and learn – One extremely important skill in dealing with people is learning not to judge, but rather to love, observe, notice and learn. In psychology, there is a concept known as “the outer critic”, whose job is to criticize others to create distance and protect you from being hurt. That’s why we love to judge others.

    But it makes much more sense to enjoy diverse relationships than to get isolated in a homogenous group of people where everybody thinks alike. So you have to learn how to manage your outer critic, and you do that in four steps.

    • Let go of your ego
    • Practice empathy and tolerance
    • Have positive attitude towards people and operate on positive energies
    • Put data before rhetoric and stay flexible in your convictions

    When asking people for advice – Sharing advice is an important part of every relationship and communication. There’s one really important thing you should know when asking people for advice. In most cases, people will give you advice that justifies their past decisions or reflects their personal experience. It definitely makes sense to listen to what people have to say, but know that your experience will be different and you’ll have to find your own path.

    The second important thing regarding advice-giving is that people usually ask for advice just to get outside confirmation or comfort, not because they really want a piece of advice. Take these rules into consideration when you are giving or receiving advice.

    Personas – Know what you want – One thing in life is sure. The more exactly, accurately and the sooner you know what you want from life, the easier you will get it. Usually the most successful people in the world are the ones who know what they want to do from a very young age on, and have the talent to really do it.

    The best programmers, athletes, businessmen and so on, they all know that they were born to excel at exactly one thing. Knowing what you want in life allows you to focus on that thing only. The same rule applies to relationships. Know what you want, and then you can get it.

    Making personas is a technique where you make a prototype of different ideal relationships. You clarify what’s important to you and what isn’t, so you can more easily choose, select and go after the relationship you deserve.

    Relationship circles – If you’re proactive in relationships, you consciously decide who new you want to meet, with whom you want to spend more time, into which relationships you will put more effort and so on. A very good start to relationship proactivity is to map all the people who are present in your life.

    List all the 150 or so people that interact with on a regular basis and then arrange them in four categories; actually, in four different types of circles, based on how close they are to you: Circle of intimacy, friendship, participation or exchange.

    Without a mobile phone

    When things in relationships don’t go as expected

    How to successfully resolve conflicts – Every single relationship is a bit of a power struggle. Most often the struggle is very subtle and goes unnoticed. These are all the times when you are making small compromises, looking for common ground, gently testing the boundaries and exchanging superficial thoughts and opinions – selecting a place to eat, a movie to watch or gossiping about a third person. But from time to time the power struggle escalates.

    At the end of the day, you can’t agree with everyone on everything and you can’t always find common ground. The bigger the differences in goals, opinions, beliefs, interests, values, ideas, motivations or desires, especially the ones that are very important to you, the fiercer the conflict usually is. That’s when you need extremely good conflict resolution skills.

    Extremely good or bad times are real relationship tests – In normal, or even slightly good or bad times, anyone can be a good friend, a good business partner or a good spouse. Normal times never show the darkest part of a person’s character, unless the person is an asshole by default. Extremes do. Extremes show whose personality really is larger than life and whose character is lower than a snake’s belly.

    Well, everyone makes a mistake or breaks from time to time, but if you consistently see atypical behavior in extreme times when interacting with someone, you can see deep into their soul. Extremely good or bad times are real relationship tests that show what kind of people really surround you.

    How much relationship drama is just too much? – Every relationship is a dynamic mixture of two energies – positive and negative. Positive energies are the energies of connecting, sharing and loving. They bring people closer together. Negative energies (as the second dynamic) are thoughts, words and actions that bring distance and tension into relationships. Negative energies are the energies of disconnecting, excluding, hating and alienating.

    They’re present in every single relationship. Nevertheless, there is a limit to how much negative energy is too much. There is a point when too many negative energies make the relationship a toxic one. Then the relationship becomes abusive, destructive and life destroying. In this article, you will learn where to draw the limit when it comes to relationship drama.

    Emotional flashbacks: when your emotional response is out of proportion – Emotional flashbacks are one of the most frequent reasons why relationships get damaged. You experience an emotional flashback when a trigger in the environment (it can be talking to a person) reminds you of your childhood pain, suffering and traumatic situations. A subject, object, item, place, expression or any other kind of trigger reminds you of all the past events that caused you constant pain.

    From a psychological point of view, an emotional flashback happens as a delayed response to childhood abuse. They are direct messages from your painful past, alerting you to how unfairly you were treated and how much pain you had to suffer. Learn how to manage emotional flashbacks to enjoy deeper and healthier relationships.

    Haters Jelly

    How social pressure really looks like – I am extremely picky about the people I spend my time with. I value time the most. I want to spend my time with smart enthusiastic people, people who constantly improve, develop their talents and want to contribute to the world. I police my every decision very carefully so that I don’t spend time with zombies or people who drag me down.

    Because zombies and energy vampires have a devastating negative influence on your life. They can suck every single drop of optimism from you. Even with only carefully chosen relationships in my life, I interestingly still have to deal with social pressure a lot. And I also put a lot of social pressure on others. This article explains how social pressure really looks like and how to deal with it; and how not to do this stifling thing to others.

    Haters gonna hate – We all have to deal with haters at some point in our life. Whether you like it or not, haters are the consequence of you standing up for something and even more so of you being successful. The more successful and firm you are, the more haters you’ll have to face in your life.

    Crying about it won’t help, so let’s see why haters are gonna hate and what to do when you face irrational haters in your life. Because in the end, there will be haters, there will be doubters, there will be nonbelievers, and then there will be you, proving them wrong.

    Proven ways to stop taking things personally – Sooner or later, somebody in your life will say something to you that you will take personally and you’ll have to deal with it somehow. Taking things personally is about emotions, not logic. When you take things personally, you’re emotionally hurt and offended.

    What you have to do when such a situation happens is to dig a little bit deeper into your emotions and personality to uncover the source of why you’re really taking that specific situation personally. Only then can you detach yourself from the negative situation. Usually there are five main reasons why you take things personally. When you become aware of what’s really happening behind the scenes, you can stop taking things personally. Here are the five main reasons:

    • Deep down, you agree with the critique
    • You experience an emotional flashback
    • You perceive being treated unfairly in the situation
    • You may feel excluded
    • You have unrealistic expectations

    More than 100 signs of power – The more power you have in life, the bigger capacity you have for acting or doing something in a particular way that you want. You have greater control over your destiny and the people who surround you. With more power also comes greater ability to influence crowds as well as key relationships in your life., but with greater power also comes greater responsibility.

    In this blog post you will find a list of more than 100 signs of power that might help you maximize your status. It’s okay to show how powerful you are, just make sure you’re using your power to do good – in relationships and in general to make the world a better place to live for all of us.

    Outstanding communication

    Family and intimate relationships

    You need to love yourself first before you can truly love others – There’s a cliché saying that you have to love yourself first before you can deeply love other people, be it your spouse, family or friends. It’s a lovely saying for sure, but let’s try to analyze it and find the answer to why it’s so important to love yourself first, from a very practical point of view. Because no matter how cliché the saying is, loving yourself matters a lot in building quality relationships.

    Multidimensional relationships – Relationships are always multidimensional and the more dimensions are present, the richer and more varied they are. You often experience or build relationships only on a few of the easiest and most obvious dimensions. But why stop at a certain point if life is offering so much more.

    Only a greater awareness and a bigger investment into relationships can help you build newer and newer dimensions and thus an even stronger bond with someone over time. Learn how to build multidimensional relationships.

    Models: Attract Women Through Honesty – The four most important life areas for the majority of people are love, health, wealth and general happiness. If any of these life pillars collapse, the quality of life dramatically decreases. Out of these four, love is probably the trickiest one, since many factors are beyond your influence.

    But here’s the thing. You can’t force somebody to fall in love with you, but you can definitely improve your odds. The book to go to if you want to improve your odds as a man dating women is Models: Attract Women Through Honesty written by Mark Manson. This article is the books summary.

    No More Mr. Nice Guy – Why women don’t like nice guys (Book Summary) – There is a healthy form of being nice (something we should all do) and a very toxic one (fawning). And the toxic form is the one that backfires almost every time, because it’s nothing but a manipulation strategy.

    Being a nice guy (the toxic form we’ll talk about from now on) is more or less only about seeking approval. What happens in the end is that a nice guy tries to please everyone, but he pleases nobody, not even himself.

    All the possible theories why people fall in love with you – There are more than 7 billion people in the world, and then you insanely fall in love with one single person. It seems like a miracle. Several theories exist why that happens, and knowing them might give you a good idea of what are all the factors that have an influence on the attraction spark.

    All the theories can definitely help you a lot in forming better and deeper relationships, become more attractive on the dating floor and to better understand yourself and your feelings.

    The best sex of your life – Sex is, at the end of the day, one of the most important areas of life, for men as well as women. In this article, you will learn how to have the best sex of your life by applying lean and agile methodologies to your bed skills. I know it sounds crazy, but it works. The article might be a bit biased towards the male perspective, but overall I promise that there will be many new ideas and useful insights for both genders.

    How not to raise a child – I have no idea how to raise children the right way. I don’t have them yet and I never write or preach about things I haven’t experienced on my own skin or somehow succeeded at. But I definitely know how not to raise a child. It always surprises me how parents most often don’t read even a single book about raising children. I don’t have a child and I read a few books on how to raise a child, just out of curiosity.

    At the end, it’s not about being a perfect parent. It’s about not repeating mistakes and knowing how to say sorry. In this blog post, you will find 30+ toxic behaviors that can cause big damage to a child. One big thing or a repeating small toxic behavior, they can both have very devastating effects.

    Meetings

    Relationships in business

    How to find a mentor who will accelerate your success – I’ve seen it over and over again in professional and personal life – finding an outstanding mentor can save you years of hard work, of trying to figure out how things work, what to focus on and how you can achieve your goals as quickly as possible, hoping to enjoy success in younger years.

    Many times, having a mentor makes all the difference between making it in life or not. Learn how to find yourself an outstanding mentor who will accelerate your success.

    Kaizen rules for teams – Today, teams are the ones winning the most important battles in life, not individuals. Members of outstanding families have an outstanding emotional life, outstanding teams in the workplace achieve the best results in business, and so on.

    You simply can’t succeed alone today, you need a team of people around you, supplementing your weaknesses and supporting you through tough times. But in order to have an outstanding team in an outstanding organization, be it company or family, you need to nurture outstanding culture. By following these Kaizen rules, you will definitely build yourself a dream team at work and home.

    The next steps

    This is the end of the relationship track. I’m sure you’ve acquired many ideas and insights into how to manage relationships better. But learning is never enough, you also have to apply the knowledge. Really apply it. It’s better to know one single concept and apply it than to know ten of them and apply none.

    So I encourage you, take action. When you improve relationships, there are many other life areas where you can grow and shine. Check out the other tracks on this site and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter, so you’ll be the first to receive new quality blog posts; including new epiphanies and eye‑opening content on how to successfully manage relationships.

  • A short practical guide to creating professional and beautiful mind maps

    Two of the most efficient learning tools are flashcards and mind maps. While flashcards are great for practicing recall (the mother of learning), mind maps are an excellent tool for building semantic trees of knowledge, connecting core ideas and remembering key facts more easily.

    Both tools are scientifically proven to work perfectly and they are fun to use, you just mustn’t be lazy with getting the most from your intellectual potential.

    Mind maps were invented in the 1970s by Tony Buzan, a best-selling author and researcher (mind mapping is a registered trademark of his organization). He also wrote a free eBook on mind mapping that covers all the scientific research and benefits of mind mapping in the learning process.

    Mind maps are efficient, simple, intuitive and fun; absolutely a tool you should use. In this article you will learn:

    The semantic tree of knowledge

    The core idea of mind maps when it comes to learning is that they don’t only help you learn the individual dots (or the so-called knowledge chunks), but also to connect the dots in the right way.

    You can imagine your brain’s neurons that hold information as a city’s infrastructure. When you are learning something new, it’s similar to constructing a new building in the city. You never build a new building on its own, it needs to be connected with the rest of the city, with roads, electricity and other utilities.

    It’s the same when you are learning something new. You always have to connect new knowledge to what you already know. And you have to connect new pieces of information as much as possible among themselves. Like if you wanted to build a new neighborhood.

    That’s how neurons grow and get interconnected. And mind maps are a great tool for having a very structured overview (map) of the topic (city) and to see how specific elements are connected (buildings, infrastructure). That’s why mind maps are so efficient; because our brains don’t think in a linear way, but dynamically and visually.

    On a well-prepared mind map, you can quickly grasp the key concepts and see the connection between them. You see the big picture and individual chunks of information, and you can easily break topics down into smaller chunks to connect them in new ways or prepare a step-by-step learning plan for yourself.

    Mind maps are a great tool for organizing, structuring, brainstorming, arranging, prioritizing, memorizing and learning new complex topics. They are like semantic trees of knowledge you plan to master.

    Connected knowledge chunks

    The different ways how mind maps can be used

    Mind maps are a great tool for semantic representation of knowledge, practicing recall and using image representations for text. But If we take a step further, mind maps are a much more powerful tool that can be used for many other things, besides learning – they are a great tool for boosting your productivity, memorization, creativity and analytical thinking.

    Here are all different ideas for what you can use mind maps for:

    • Understanding complex topics
    • Brainstorming ideas
    • Management planning
    • Business Analysis (PESTLE, SWOT)
    • Any other type of planning
    • Organizational chart
    • Process definition
    • Event planning, meetings and agendas
    • To-do lists
    • Writing projects or note-taking
    • Problem solving and decision-making
    • Presenting

    If you are a little bit creative, you can employ mind maps in many other ways – for book summaries, travel planning, delegating tasks, personas, performing self-reflection, personal diary, and pros-cons analysis. You can also make your own knowledge database based on a collection of mind maps.

    The best thing is that creating mind maps is extremely simple, efficient and inexpensive. There is not much that you need in order to create a mind map, and that’s the beauty of it.

    There are only two things you really need (besides not being lazy):

    • A big sheet of paper and colored pens and pencils (or a software solution)
    • Your brain and imagination (or proper resources if you’re learning a new topic)

    Process of preparing a professional mind map

    Creating a mind map is not rocket science, nevertheless there are a few recommendations and best practices to follow. The first step is to decide about the basic outline and design of your map. Here are a few elements you can decide about:

    • Will you make digital or physical mind map?
    • Mind map structure: Radial map, right map, left map, organizational chart map
    • General mind map design: Fonts, font size, colors, backgrounds
    • How you will present relationships on the mind map
    • Use of specific elements for highlighting purposes (tags, icons, notes etc.)
    • Will you include multimedia elements (photos, sounds, links etc.)
    • Depth of the mind map (how complex will it be and with how many sub-branches)
    • Will you share the mind map with others

    You can find several collections of already prepared mind maps online (more about that later), to get a general idea of what kind of mind maps you can create. Browse a little bit among them and find a design you really like and copy it (great artists steal, right?).

    I did such research and in my experience, certain designs that other people really like make my brain hurt, because they are too graphical. I like my mind maps clean with more emphasis on keywords than graphical richness. That’s why I bought a software solution that enables me to meet these design standards.

    Well, you have to find out what suits you and your brain best. After you have a general idea of what kind of a mind map you wish to create in your head, outlined on a piece of paper or in digital software, it’s time to build your mind map. The process is very simple and intuitive.

    How to create a mindmap
    Click on the image to enlarge

    1. The main topic or central idea is always in the center

    When creating a mind map, you should always start in the center with a landscape oriented paper or digital design space. That gives brain all the freedom needed to expand ideas and express itself in all directions.

    It’s recommended that the central topic is very well seen, with big letters and emphasized background. It also makes sense to include an image or photo for the central topic of the mind map.

    2. Creating main branches, sub-branches and parking list

    A mind map should be structured as a semantic tree of the topic you are exploring. The main branches represent the main chapters of the topic and every sub-branch goes into more detail. With branches, you subdivide the main topic. With that approach, you can easily see how things are structured, related and connected among themselves.

    The idea of branches is not only to have a structured overview of a certain subject, but also to concur with how our brain functions. It’s the so-called radiant thinking. As mentioned before, we don’t learn in linear, but in a fluid way. Your brain maps out an idea using associations and triggers, and likes to connect things together into something visible and structured. That’s what branches are all about.

    While you are creating a mind map, you can have a list of unbranched items (often called a parking list). The parking list includes all the items that you don’t know where to put yet. Then while you are building your branches and sub-branches with keywords, you can see if any of the unbranched items from the parking list fit into the picture. Sooner or later, you will find a place where unbranched items fit perfectly.

    3. Adding keywords and coloring the branches

    You should create branches and sub-branches based on keywords or short phrases. It’s very important to keep the mind map clean and not to clutter it by copy-pasting text or adding long sentences. If possible, use a single keyword for branches and sub-branches. You can help yourself find the right keywords by asking yourself 5Ws – why, what, when, who and where. You can add how and for whom to the list of questions.

    Most often, different branches are visually presented in different colors. Colors add vibrancy to mind maps, it’s easier to distinguish between the branches and in the end, it makes them visually more attractive. You brain also likes images and by using several different colors, the mind map appears more like an image. Remember, your brain loves colors; and images, which leads us to the next point.

    4. Adding multimedia elements

    You probably know that an image or a photo is worth a thousand words. Having an image representation for text or for a certain chunk of knowledge is a well-known and proven learning strategy. Your brain thinks more or less in pictures, even more so if you are a visual learner.

    Therefore, it’s extremely important to add symbols, icons, images and photos to the central topic, branches and even to the more difficult keywords to remember.

    If you make a physical mind map, you can cut an image out of a magazine or something and stick it to the paper. You can even draw it if you have the talent. And if you are using digital mind mapping software, you can simply insert an image where it makes sense.

    5. The final touch – design and tidying up

    In the process of making a mind map, you usually always include a few supporting elements that you don’t need later (notes, visual aids, unparked items etc.). You should delete them and then rearrange your branches properly and give the final touch to the mind map. It’s much easier to do that with digital mind maps, that’s why you should go digital if you don’t have a strong argument against it.

    An important part of the final touch is also designing a mind map properly. You should partly design the mind map already in the previous steps of the process (coloring branches etc.), but as the last step a mind map needs small (or sometimes even bigger) design corrections that make it visually attractive and coherent.

    Design your mind map in a way that you will feel the flow of knowledge.

    Here are a few key recommendations for keeping your mind maps clean and to the point, even though it’s important that you develop your own style:

    • Absolutely use colors, but do it in style, so you don’t get lost in the mind map
    • Use enough spacing between branches and sub-branches to visually separate ideas
    • You can use borders to emphasize specific, more important parts of the mind map
    • Curved lines are supposed to be more interesting for the brain than straight ones
    • You can use different line thickness, arrows and uppercase words to further design your mind map
    • Include as many multimedia elements as possible, but have a clean, uncluttered final map

    Physical versus digital mind maps and mind mapping software

    The very basic decision you have to make is if you should go for a physical mind map or a digital one. That’s a pretty simple decision. Go for the physical mind map only in the following cases:

    • If you need a connection between the brain and the hand (note taking, complex brainstorming etc.)
    • For simple maps, if you don’t plan on updating and rearranging them several times in the process
    • If you have artistic talent and you like to create and showcase your mind maps
    • If you need them in the physical form as a school project or in any kind of presentation (and if the printed digital version is not suitable)

    The problem with physical mind maps is that they can’t be updated easily and even more, they are inflexible. You can’t just rearrange branches on the physical mind map on the spot or redesign them.

    So if you aren’t making a mind map for a school project that needs to be presented on paper, or if there is no other substantial reason for making a physical map, I suggest you go for the digital option. Sometimes you can also make a physical mind map (if you need to use the creative connection between the brain and the hand) and then digitalize it.

    The most popular mind mapping software solutions

    There are many powerful mind mapping solutions out there, some of them completely free and some of them quite expensive. The most popular mind mapping software applications (among the 40+ options that you have) are:

    Most software solutions have very similar functionalities. I suggest you try a few of them (most of them have a free trial) and see which one suits you best.

    Compare features like types of items you can add or attach to your branches (links, images, folders etc.), design capabilities (coloring, adding notes, visualizing relationships), offered export formats, keyboard shortcuts, collaborative mind mapping options, available templates, revision history, integrations, overall user experience and, of course, price.

    Collections of already created mind maps

    There are many already created mind maps that can help you see the semantic tree of different topics. I absolutely suggest you make your own mind maps. You can use other people’s mind maps to get design inspirations, additional ideas for what you can add to your branches or if you just need a quick overview of a certain topic.

    The most popular sites with collections of mind maps are:

    Homework

    Now create your first mind map

    A properly prepared mind map enables you to see the big picture and detail information at once, you can more easily remember complex information and see the relations between knowledge chunks. It encourages imagination, associations, concentration, retention, interest in the subject, it’s a nice visual representation and, in the end, it’s also fun tool to learn. There are numerous ways to employ mind maps.

    Out of pure fun, love for learning and curiosity create a mind map for a topic that interests you. Follow the next steps:

    1. Research software options and choose the one that suits you best.
    2. Explore other people’s mind maps a little bit and decide what kind of mind maps work the best for you (structure, design etc.). You can even prepare a few templates for yourself.
    3. Then choose a topic and start creating. I promise, your brain will love it and your competences will dramatically improve.

  • Flashcards – the best tool to speed up learning and make it more fun

    The scientifically proven best way to learn is practicing recall by spaced repetition. Recall means that you try to express and explain something you just learned from your memory as exactly as possible.

    You repeat the process of recall in certain time intervals (every day, every weekend etc.), and that’s how you get information stored in your long-term memory. Spaced repetition indicates that it’s better to learn every day for one hour, than one day for five hours (cramming).

    The two best ways to practice recall are (1) self-testing and (2) flashcards also known as cue cards. With self-testing, you try to solve a test based on a subject you’ve just been learning about. You can use many different types of tests to learn and practice – open questions, multiple choice etc.

    Besides testing, flashcards are an extremely effective and popular way to learn. They’ve been used since the 19th century.

    Flashcards are a set of cards where every card has a question written on one side and the answer on the other side. You choose a card, read the question, try to recall as much as possible (known as active recall), and then you compare your answer to the correct answer written on the back of a flashcard.

    You can use the question-and-answer format for any kind of information and subjects you are trying to learn – from new words, to formulas and other specific types of information. The decks can be in physical form (on cardboards) or in digital form using appropriate software.

    People most often use flashcards to learn new languages, but you can use them for studying almost any topic you want. If you are an enthusiastic life-long learner or you want to be a straight-A student, I absolutely recommend you to use flashcards. In this blog post, you will learn the best practices of using them.

    Active recall, metacognition, spaced repetition, self-testing, multi-sensory stimulation, making associations, and practicing fast response – these are all the benefits of learning with flashcards.

    Table of contents – In this blog post you will learn:

    1. How to prepare your own flashcards (physical or digital)
    2. How to learn with flashcards beyond memorizing facts
    3. About flashcards sorting systems and Leitner algorhitm
    4. Using flashcards at every opportunity to learn (even on the bus)
    5. Different flashcards software solutions
    6. Summary of the seven basic principles how to use flashcards for fast learning

    Flashcards - The best way to learn

    Physical or digital, prepare your own flashcards

    You can prepare flashcards in physical or in digital form. It’s definitely more fun to prepare physical decks, but it’s also more time‑consuming and you are less flexible with updates and the way you practice (sorting algorithms).

    I would say that you should go for physical decks for simpler subjects or if you are learning with your kids, otherwise it’s much more productive to use the appropriate software.

    If you decide to go for physical flashcards, buy A4/Letter or bigger cardboards and make approximately A6 size cards out of them (1/4th of an A4 page). Make sure that the cardboard is thick enough that you won’t see through it. You can color-code flashcards for different subjects or sub-categories.

    Probably even better alternative is to buy empty flashcards of the appropriate size and color in every larger stationery store. Well, you can also buy prepared physical flashcards on certain popular subjects. The most popular flashcard apps also have a community that shares flashcard decks among themselves.

    Nevertheless, you have to be really selective when to use other people’s decks and when to build your own. If you are trying to master a new subject, I would absolutely recommend you to build your own flashcards.

    It’s fun, you learn a lot about the subject in the process of making the cards, and you can much more easily manage and manipulate your deck and practice, since you know your deck very well. You can also much more easily connect knowledge chunks among themselves when you recall. Learning is about expressing yourself in new ways, not only memorizing a bunch of facts.

    There are exceptions for when to use other peoples’ flashcards. For example, if you are learning a new language and you find a specific group of expressions you would like to learn. Or maybe if you want to get familiar with certain topics quickly to get an overview. But if you want to really master something, prepare your own flashcards.

    Flashcards - cardboard

    Don’t prepare the flashcards just to memorize facts

    Memorizing facts is a boring way of learning; and if learning is boring, you’re doing something wrong. Here’s the only fact you have to memorize: You can always prepare your flashcards so that they are fun and support real learning, not just memorizing facts.

    Instead of answering only what’s written on the flashcard, add some fun to the learning and recall process. Here are a few examples of what you can do:

    • Connect a new knowledge chunk with what you already know
    • Explain, using your own words, why a new piece of information is true
    • Use mnemonics and analogies
    • Use visual representations or add other multimedia elements (images, sketches etc.)
    • Try to find arguments for and against
    • List as many practical cases as possible
    • Prepare several different cards for the same chunk of knowledge (interleaved practice)
    • Practice flashcards in both directions

    But you have to extend your learning beyond memorizing facts very carefully, not trying to escape recall, memorizing facts and storing crucial things in your long-term memory. You can easily deceive yourself that you are learning when you are really not.

    Thus make sure that every one of your cards in a deck is simple and straightforward. You don’t want your flashcards to be intimidating or to get trapped in the illusion of competence. Your flashcards must be designed in a simple question-and-answer way, and you have to keep the information very independent and straightforward (one correct answer).

    Only when you answer the question correctly (the core fact), you can make your answer much more intriguing and fun by adding things mentioned above (practical examples, interesting facts, analogies etc.). Avoid cluttered flashcards, stay on topic, but use the best learning practices together with using flashcards.

    Put a proper learning (sorting) system in place

    When you have your basic flashcards prepared, you have to decide for a learning system. It’s good to have a system in place and not just practice randomly. The elements of your flashcard learning system are:

    • Using digital or physical flashcards
    • Making your own or using other people’s cards
    • How detailed they are and if you will add any multimedia
    • How often you update your decks (add new flashcards, eliminate the ones you master)
    • Frequency of your spaced repetition (increasing intervals, steady intervals, random)
    • How often you practice a specific card if you answer right, wrong or partially right

    You can use the Leitner system easily with physical cardboards, and most software solutions provide practicing based on this algorithm or they have their own. The main idea of the Leitner system is that you have several boxes, and each next box contains cards you make mistakes with more often.

    You spend more time practicing the boxes with cards that are harder to remember. Specific cards are promoted or demoted in boxes depending on whether you answer wrongly or correctly.

    There are several other algorithms but used mainly by different software solutions. The benefit of software is that it will take care of sorting for you based on the difficulty of questions and how correctly you manage to answer.

    Leitner system for flashcards
    Source: Wikipedia

    Learn everywhere you go, but in spaced repetition

    The big advantage of flashcards is that they are simple and very practical to use. You can take a physical deck board with you anywhere you go, and if you use software, most solutions provide a mobile app.

    That means you can put your mobile phone out of your pocket at every opportunity and practice – on a bus, in the elevator, when you wait in a queue, and so on.

    Whether you are learning with flashcards or not, one very important thing is to base your learning on spaced repetition. You don’t want to have one big crammed session of learning and then just forget about the subject. It’s better to practice for one hour five days in a row, than for five hours on one day. That’s the strategy you have to use when practicing with flashcards.

    Practice regularly, and have periods of rest. In your schedule, timebox time for deliberate practice, in addition practice with flashcards when you have time to kill, and regularly update your flashcards. But make sure you take enough time to rest, and that you space your repetition in proper intervals.

    One more thing. When you are alone, try to answer questions on your flashcards out loud; or if you are in company, explain your answer to the other person. It can be fun to do productive things with other people.

    Using proper software for flashcards

    If you plan on having many flashcards and updating them regularly, making physical cards doesn’t make sense. In such cases, you have to go for software solutions.

    There are many options to go to when deciding for flashcard software. When making a decision which software solution to go for, compare the following specifications:

    • Card customization options (layouts, number of sides, adding multimedia)
    • Spaced repetition and learning systems (sorting algorithms, notifications)
    • User-friendliness and functionalities (attractive interface, option to print cards, card sharing and community, language support, import/export, plugins etc.)
    • Synchronization between devices (mobile, tablets, online etc.)
    • Scalability (if you will be adding hundreds and hundreds of cards)
    • Price (open-source, commercial, free version to try)

    You have dozens of options to choose from. The most recommended software solution practically everywhere is Anki, which also has the most functionalities. Cram, Quizlet, Supermemo, Studyblue and Memrise are also quite popular. I tested a few of them and decided to go with Anki.

    Short Anki review

    Anki is a very powerful flashcard software and probably the richest in functionalities. It provides nice card customization options, you can use spaced repetition, it’s available on all platforms, is scalable and open-source.

    You can use it for free on your PC, but the iOS app will cost you $25. I bought the app, because that’s where I use the flashcards (I make them on my PC, but practice them on a mobile device).

    Anki flashcards

    To be honest, I installed and uninstalled Anki from my computer a few times in the past. You have to invest a little bit of time to master the application, but it can pay off greatly in the long run.

    I find the interface boring and unintuitive somehow, and the community is not as rich as it is with some other competitors. But considering all the guidelines for the proper use of flashcards, it’s definitely the cleanest and most appropriate software.

    Ever since publishing a blog post on how to learn, I decided to use Anki on a regular basis. I am building myself flashcards for practicing advanced English and a few coding languages. I tried a few decks from other people, but they aren’t that useful. Creating your own flashcards is really the way to go. It’s an investment you have to make that forces you to really practice later.

    At some point, I had installed several apps (Anki, Memrise, Cram etc.), loaded many decks from other people in the apps, and convinced myself that I will be able to practice all these cool things every day. But everything becomes unfocused, overbearing and useless.

    One software solution, your own cards. Period.

    Homework

    It’s time to make the first flashcards of your own

    Before installing any software or buying cardboard, you need passion for a topic you really want to master. You always need to have a strong why for everything you do in life.

    I hope you already have such a passion for learning and a topic you love, otherwise find it. Go to the library, walk among the shelves until you find something that will ignite a learning spark in you.

    When you develop passion, the next step is to know that you can’t learn anything without hard mental work. You have to sit down, deliberately practice, memorize and recall, and connect new knowledge chunks with what you already know. You have to interleave your practice and do it in spaced repetition.

    Flashcards are a great tool that can help you achieve all that; but you need passion and you need self-discipline. So when your passion awakens and gets combined with smart learning and hard work, make sure you also make a collection of flashcards on the chosen topic, following all the guidelines we’ve discussed.

    Here they are once again, as revision:

    1. Prepare your own flashcards, you will already learn about the topic a lot in the process.
    2. Practice flashcards in spaced repetition – timebox practicing intervals or use flashcards when you have time to kill.
    3. Have very simple, straightforward and to-the‑point flashcards (one question – answer). Break a complex subject into small knowledge chunks and facts if necessary.
    4. Add photos or mnemonic elements to every flashcard, but don’t clutter your cards.
    5. When you answer a question correctly, take a step further – explain how a piece of information fits with what you already know, list practical examples, think of representative photos of the text, play with arguments etc.
    6. Use a proper sorting algorithm or use software that will take care of sorting for you.
    7. Combine flashcards with other proven learning methods.