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  • Healthy relationships are what matters most in life

    Do you have big plans and big goals for your life? Do you want to live the good life, the dream life and are prepared to fight for it? Excellent. If you really want to reach the stars, there is one very important fact you must know.

    The culture of the environment you function in eats your visions, goals and strategy for breakfast. How you act and consequently also the potential you can achieve in life is always the result of your personality and your environment. So you must constantly improve yourself, but you must also make sure you choose the right environment for you to thrive.

    Your success = the best version of you + the right environment (markets, relationships)

    To prosper in life, you need to be a part of something that feels like home and natural to you, and enables you to flourish, develop and grow. You need an environment with ideal conditions for you go after the big goals you have in life.

    You need an environment that supports you in achieving your goals, an environment where you fit in perfectly and that shoots you right among the stars.

    There are many parts of your environment that have an influence on you, like your country, political stability, demographic trends, dominating religion, access to healthcare etc. (here are all of them listed) but there are two environmental factors with the strongest influence:

    • the markets you choose and
    • the relationships you form.

    Markets always win. Markets can make you or break you. And people you let close in your life can make you or break you. Who knows what happens after death, but people can make your life heaven or hell on Earth for sure.

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

    Good relationships can make your life really worth living, and crappy people in your life can make you suffer and drown in misery.

    In this article you will learn:

    • Why relationships are heaven or hell on Earth
    • Different types of relationships and why they matter
    • What you should expect from different relationships
    • How to choose who to spend time with
    • How to find people who will support you in life

    What are healthy relationships

    Let’s start with defining what a healthy relationship is. First of all, mistakes happen in every relationship, there is no such thing as a perfect relationship.

    Nevertheless, a relationship can be deep and strong, or shallow and superficial. And even more importantly, a relationship can be a healthy or a toxic one.

    Here are the signs of a healthy relationship:

    1. Both people have the center on themselves and only then is a relationship formed
    2. You share similar values and interests and you create, have fun and experience things together
    3. There is a high level of tolerance, transparency, trust and respect
    4. You listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs
    5. There are always more dimensions present in a relationship
    6. You encourage each other to constantly improve and achieve personal goals
    7. The investment into the relationship is close to 1:1 from both sides
    8. You communicate with active constructive responses 80 % of the time and you communicate a lot about the important things
    9. You hold each other up when tough times come
    10. In intimate relationships, there must be love and sexual attraction

    Ways of respondingDon’t just read the statements and agree with them. Ask yourself the right questions for every relationship you have in your life.

    What kind of activities are you doing together? Are you treated as an equal and with dignity? Are you asked for your opinion about important life decisions that influence both parties? Are you being constantly criticized? Is there a high level of trust?

    As mentioned, there are always errors in relationships. No relationship is perfect. But there is a limit when too many repeating errors make a relationship toxic.

    If there are patterns like severe criticism, contempt, rudeness, meanness, jealousy, insulting, degrading, blaming, guilt-tripping, criticizing, physically acting out, the person constantly repeating themselves, a relationship is definitely toxic.

    Now, a toxic or abusive relationship has many negative consequences. It can literately suck the soul out of you. It can make you a zombie. Misery loves company!

    First of all, it takes a lot of energy, then it hinders your self-confidence, in abusive relationships there is always an absence of strong foundations of love and support to go after your goals, you become depressed, bitter, you start doubting yourself and sooner or later you start drowning in the victim mindset.

    On the other hand, healthy relationships provide you with strong foundations and roots to go after your goals. With a healthy relationship, you know you have a place to go when things go wrong, you are always encouraged and supported.

    With many healthy relationships, you feel strong, grateful and alive. It’s definitely the best thing you can have in life.

    healthy relationships

    Different types of relationships

    Now that we know what a healthy relationship is, let’s look at the most important relationships you will forge in your life. Love and work, that’s all there is. Consequently, we have personal and professional relationships.

    There are, of course, also different levels of intimacy in every relationship, from professional, to being only acquaintances, to being friends, friends with benefits all the way to real intimate relationships. You can experience different types and levels of a relationship with the same person.

    But you probably already know that from your own experience. All in all, what’s more important is that there are six relationships that shape your life the most:

    Personal relationships

    • Spouse
    • Family (primary/secondary)
    • Friends

    Professional relationships

    • Boss
    • Coworkers / Co-founders
    • Mentor / Mastermind group

    The more ambitious you are, the more you need the right environment that supports your ambitions – professional and personal one; besides market trends supporting you (financial, job markets etc.), you especially need a lot of healthy relationships.

    A person in a healthy environment and with healthy relationships flourishes, a person in a bad environment withers like an unwatered flower.

    When it comes to personal relationships, you must always be aware of your personal power. You can choose most of these relationships in your life. You choose who you’ll spend time with and who doesn’t deserve a spot in your life. Only if you are proactive enough. Actually, you must be superproactive.

    But at the end of the day, relationships are your choice. It’s not love’s fault or the HR department’s to reply to your job application or whoever. You should never blame anyone else for having crappy people in your life (authority figures in your youth are an exception, but more about that later).

    You want to be in a position to know exactly what kind of relationships you want in life and then going after them. Making a persona of ideal relationships might help you with that. Now let’s do a deep dive into the six most important relationships in your life.

    Personal relationships

    In your personal life, there are three pillars of love and nurture that you need: love from your spouse, your family (primary, secondary) and your friends (community). To be happy, especially in the mature ages of life, you need all three pillars, building them as strong as possible, at least in some form.

    healthy relationships - your spouse

    Spouse

    You may be single at the moment (and fool around), but you will end up in a serious relationship sooner or later. If not, you’re probably quite emotionally damaged and need to develop a deeper capacity for love and commitment.

    It’s hard to get real value out of intimate relationships if you are unable to commit. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

    Now, the intimate partner you choose (they’re not brought to you by love or a greater force, you choose them) for the long-term relationship, will have one of the biggest influences on your life. Right after your parents. And I mean a really big influence on your life.

    Your spouse can make you or break you. There is no third option. If you constantly fight, if you feel insecure and share no similar hobbies or values, your relationship will drain the energy out of you day by day before you eat breakfast.

    Being in an abusive, boring or toxic intimate relationship is one of the most frequent ways to become a zombie (next to having an abusive boss).

    So choose your spouse very carefully. Make sure you have similar values, but that there is also an opportunity to grow together. Make sure you have common hobbies and activities you both like, but also different perspectives that enrich you both.

    Remember that couples who do things together, stay together. Make sure there is a physical fit, intellectual fit, emotional fit and spiritual fit. It must feel right. Make sure you encourage each other and provide emotional security when things go tough. And know that you have to constantly put effort into a relationship to develop a deeper and deeper bond.

    We are all people; we all make mistakes in relationships. That’s normal. It’s not about the mistakes, it’s about a relationship being toxic or not; and whether you’re becoming a better version of yourself because of the intimate relationship you have.

    It’s not easy to end a long-term relationship, but it’s often necessary for further personal development and happiness in life.

    First of all, make sure your intimate relationship isn’t toxic and that you’re growing together all the time. If you have a hard time deciding whether you should stay together or not, there is a great book called Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay, written by Mira Kirshenbaum.

    You may not choose who you fall in love with, but you can definitely choose with whom you will stay.

    There are 36 questions in the book that should help you decide if you should end a relationship or not. Here are the top questions from the mentioned book that I find important and may help you decide on the quality of your relationship:

    1. Do you currently share goals and dreams for your life together?
    2. Have you made a commitment to pursue a course of action or lifestyle that definitely excludes your partner?
    3. Do you and your partner have even one positively pleasurable activity or interest (besides children) that you currently share and look forward to sharing in the future?
    4. Does your relationship support your having fun together?
    5. Would you say that to you, your partner is basically nice, reasonable intelligent, not too neurotic, okay to look at, and most of the time smells alright?
    6. Do both you and your partner want to touch each other and look forward to touching each other and make efforts to touch each other?
    7. Do you feel a unique sexual attraction to your partner?
    8. Does your partner bombard you with difficulties when you try to get even the littlest thing you want; and is it your experience that almost any need you have gets obliterated?
    9. Do you have a basic, recurring, never-completely-going-away feeling of humiliation or invisibility in your relationship?
    10. Have you got to the point, when your partner says something, that you usually feel it’s more likely that he’s lying than that he’s telling the truth?
    11. Do you genuinely like your partner, and does your partner seem to like you?
    12. Is there something your partner does that makes your relationship too bad to stay in and that they acknowledge but they’re unwilling to do anything about?
    13. In spite of all the ways you’re different, would you say that deep down your partner is someone just like you in a way you feel good about?
    14. Do you feel that your partner, overall and more often than not, shows concrete support for and genuine interest in the things you’re trying to do that are important to you?
    15. Would you lose anything important in your life if your partner were no longer your partner?
    16. Is there a demonstrated capacity and mechanism for forgiveness in your relationship?
    17. Has your partner violated what for you is a bottom line?
    18. If God or some omniscient being said it was okay to leave, would you feel tremendously relieved and have a strong sense that finally you could end your relationship?

    These are definitely tough and to-the-point questions that should help you to make the right decision. If you decide to break a long term-relationship or if you are single and want to really find the partner of your life, start building up your sexual market value (after taking time for recovery).

    Go to the gym, eat healthy, develop social skills, read a lot and become an interesting person, improve your bed skills, learn how to approach, and so on. Don’t expect “love at first sight” to do it instead of you.

    healthy relationships - family

    Family

    This is a very easy one, if you were raised in a healthy family environment, and a very tricky one if you were raised in a toxic family and you don’t have a deep connection and shared values with your family members.

    In any case, family is important and no matter how difficult the situation is, you have to maximize the love you can get from your family ties.

    Family is important for many reasons. The early relationships with your mother, father and other authority figures in your youth become blueprints for all your relationships later in life.

    Family also gives you the framework for your values; how well you were nurtured influences whether you developed hope, strong will, purpose and industry in life or you’ll be hindered by negative emotions as an emotional midget. Your upbringing also greatly influences your happiness levels.

    You can never truly understand yourself without understanding your family roots.

    Family should be the one that’s there for you in tragic situations, family should be the one helping you the most financially (inheritance) and it should be the greatest support you have in life.

    Healthy relationships with the family

    Healthy family presents foundations and roots in your life, so that you can fly high. Family is legacy handed over to you, and you are the one handing legacy down to your offspring, enriched or impoverished.

    Now, errors are made in every family, there are always disagreements and differences in values. But there is a limit, where errors are normal and when the environment becomes toxic.

    If you have a healthy family, it’s your duty make this pillar of love even stronger, by nurturing good relations with family members and enriching the legacy you will pass on. You have to be grateful, because being born in a healthy family is the greatest security and given advantage in life.

    Toxic family

    One of the hardest questions in life is what you should do if your family was (or is) toxic. Many of the following blog posts will be dedicated to this topic, but in summary it makes sense to put at least some effort into making things better.

    Nevertheless, you have to accept that many things are out of your control and may hurt while giving you no positive outcome. It all depends on whether family members are prepared to see the damage they’ve done at least to some extent or not.

    If you had a painful childhood, you first have to work hard on becoming more self-centered, assertive, letting go of the responsibility for painful events from your youth, and you have to work hard on your own life vision and goals and take full responsibility for your life. You must work hard on your autonomy and make sure you aren’t an extension of your parents.

    Then, if you want to make your family relationships a little less toxic, setting some strict boundaries and a gentle confrontation are usually necessary. The purpose of the confrontation is not to punish family members and dump negative feelings on them, but to tell them the truth, face them and set relationship rules that are acceptable to you.

    Many parents don’t even realize what they’ve done, because they were raised in a pretty similar way. Being honest with them may be a fresh start of the relationship. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to forgive. You have to work hard on making sure that your past stops controlling you and that you can focus on the positive things from your upbringing. In many cases, it even makes sense to go to therapy.

    I suggest you read the book Toxic parents for more insights what you can do.

    And usually there are at least some family members you have good relations with. Maybe you can enrich your relationship with them. If not, you can focus your positive efforts into making a much greater legacy for your secondary family, your kids and your grandkids.

    If you manage to change negative behaviors that were transferred from generation to generation in your family, you’ll do a very important and noble job, and you will definitely positively influence the future.

    I encourage you to find a way to build strong family foundations. Family is different than friends. It’s a circle where people really deeply care for one another, especially in tough situations, no matter the differences and misunderstandings.

    And if you had a toxic family, work hard on improving yourself, read a lot about how to deal with your past and how you can maybe make things better. At the end of the day, you aren’t doing it for them, you’re doing it for yourself.

    healthy relationships - friends

    Friends (community)

    The third pillar of love in your personal life are your friends. When we’re talking about friends, we must have quality and quantity in mind. Quality always comes first when we talk about relationships.

    If you want to be happy in life, you need a few close friends you share interests with, the ones you can really trust and help each other go through life.

    Isolation leads to depression and bitterness, so enough socialization with people you care about must be an important priority in your life.

    Now, a very important fact is that your friends are a source of great joy in life, but they can also be the source of social pressure. You tend to spend time with people who have similar values and interests as you. When you grow and change, your friends may get scared of losing you and thus put pressure on you.

    I’ve seen it many times. For example, you start to eat a healthy diet and they mock you because you don’t want to eat pizza with them. The same can happen if you decide to become a vegetarian or stop drinking alcohol. They may not believe in you if you want to start your own business, because they even don’t know how, being only employees all their life.

    So make sure you surround yourself with friends who support you, encourage you, with whom you do productive activities and not just kill time and have fun together.

    Fun is an important part of every relationship, but you should also have the privilege of growing when spending time with your friends. And if they are blocking you when you’re making changes in life, make sure you calm down their fears and negative feelings. If they still block you after that, it’s maybe time to find new friends.

    Besides quality, quantity also somehow matters. I especially mean always meeting new people, spending time with completely different groups and types of individuals, so your relationships can really be varied and rich.

    Remember you can learn from anyone, and more different types of people in your life only mean that they’ll enrich your personality. To achieve that, the number one relationship value you must have is tolerance.

    Business relationships

    We’ve covered love, so let’s now move to work. You spend almost 1/3 of your time at the job. There is a zero chance of you being successful and happy in life if you work a job you hate with people you despise.

    In business relationships, you have even more room to choose than in personal ones, the only thing you really need is a high enough level of competences.

    The three pillars of healthy business relationships that lead to success are an outstanding relationship with your boss, great relationship with your coworkers, and finding yourself a mentor or a mastermind group that helps you achieve your career goals faster.

    You should consider which business environments would allow you to deliver the most value, develop your competences to the full in the long run, achieve the position and the renown you want and, of course, achieve your financial goals.

    If your business environment doesn’t enable you that, you’ll have to either change it or lower your ambitions. And you don’t want to do the latter in the most cases.

    Like a boss

    Boss

    Your boss can either skyrocket your career or make your life miserable. Thus there is an important rule that you should never work for a boss you don’t respect. With an abundance mindset, you must be aware that there are many jobs and many good bosses. You don’t want to work for an asshole or a bozo.

    Never work for a boss you don’t respect.

    If you’re constantly scared of your boss, if you’re being abused, stressed out and treated unfairly, you will never be happy in life; even more, your life will be a living hell.

    If something like that is happening to you, analyze very clearly if you don’t choose to be abused because it’s something familiar to you (one of your parents was abusive towards you).

    If the answer is yes, start working on yourself, develop your competences, set some boundaries and start looking for a new job if necessary.

    Never assume and hope that things will get better by themselves. If you were in an abusive relationship with your parents, you will almost always attract bosses and partners who will somehow be abusive to you, until you set some boundaries and put the center on yourself.

    On the other hand, a great boss can give you so much. They make sure your potential is being developed, they mentor you and coach you, they make sure you get promoted frequently for your hard work, you get paid fairly, they help you to develop your social network, and so on.

    A great boss can really help you to thrive and develop your career potential to the maximum. So make sure you find someone you’ll be proud to work for and with.

    The boss should sometimes be tough on you to get the best out of you, but make sure it’s tough love, not abuse. As mentioned many times before, deep down you know very well if a relationship is abusive or not and why you cling to it.

    If you are self-employed or a business owner, your customers are your boss; and sometimes other stakeholders. Again, relationships are extremely important, only in a little bit different way – you have to make sure you provide enough value to the markets, you work for customers you really understand and respect, and that you constantly improve and develop together with markets. Everyone has their own boss.

    Relationships with coworkers

    Coworkers or cofounders

    Much like your friends are important in your personal life, so are your coworkers in your professional life. Again, there is a simple rule. Work in a dream team.

    Work with people you respect, admire, can learn from, and about whom you can really say “we are a f*cking dream team, we can achieve anything.” A dream team will elevate you to the stars, a bad team will make you into a zombie.

    There are probably fewer than 20 % good teams, and fewer than 4 % of dream teams. It’s hard to find or build the dream team. But if you aren’t in one, bitching, whining or complaining won’t help. There are only two options you have. Either find the dream team and join it, or help build one where you currently are and work.

    It’s often a tough decision whether you should help build a dream team or join a new one. It depends on your visions, mission, life goals and how much you are willing to invest into a company you work for.

    Changing team culture is a tough and demanding process, it usually lasts years, but it’s also a rewarding one, and it definitely enables you to develop superior people skills. I think in most cases, it makes sense to give it a shot, but if there is no progress after a while, it’s probably better to move on.

    Become an A-player

    Anyway, the first rule of being a member of a dream team is that you are an A-player. Only A-players (or people who work like hell to become A-players) work with other A-players. If you aren’t one yet, start working on it.

    Become a role model for others, mentor others and start fueling your team with positive emotions and constructive thoughts together with your boss. If you want to work in a dream team, your competence level must be high and you must know how to be a good team player and, if necessary, show that to others.

    Psychological safety is the key factor in healthy relationships

    Now, this is the most important part of what makes a team a dream team (even in personal life) – Google did big research on the best performing teams, and their data indicated that psychological safety was critical to making a team work, more than anything else.

    In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.

    There were two indicators of that. Firstly, members of the team spoke in roughly the same proportion, in other words there was equality in the distribution of conversational turn-taking.

    Secondly, all the good teams have high social sensitivity, meaning team members were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, facial expressions and other nonverbal cues. Now ask yourself if you are that kind of a team member and if you work in such a team.

    I worked in an outstanding team and in a bad team. I know that working in a bad team made me depressed, people were doing everything but work, they were gossiping, blocking each other, feeling nothing but anger, envy, disrespect and other negative feelings. After eight to ten hours of that kind of bullshit, you can’t come home with positive energies.

    You’re always also a product of your environment, so make sure you choose people you work with very carefully. And make sure you’re a productive and constructive team player. It’s easy to criticize others, but we are usually very forgiving towards ourselves.

    Start changing your work environment by changing yourself.

    How to find a mentor

    Mentor and mastermind group

    The last really important type of a business relationship is having a mentor; or even more of them, a whole mastermind group. Having a mentor often makes all the difference between making it in life or not.

    The best athletes and businessmen in the world have mentors. Why wouldn’t you?

    Good mentors can help you develop different competences quickly, like business skills, life skills, understanding market insights, they can help you with their social networks, wisdom, by believing in you, showing you the way and bringing out the best in you.

    You should know that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will, and that mentors are by far the best doubt killers. You can find a mentor at your job, hire professional coaches, write directly to people you admire and ask if they are prepared to mentor you, or you can even hire specialists who help you advance in certain areas of life (therapists, personal trainers, etc.).

    If there is one way to accelerate you career success, it’s by finding a mentor. So make sure you do that. Some people even take a step further and build themselves a group of people who challenge them, push them and support them in every way.

    The concept is called a mastermind group. If you’re really ambitious, build yourself a group like that, and I guarantee you that your career will start to flourish at a much faster pace.

    Homework

    Start building healthy relationships today

    Now it’s time to do your homework. It’s time that you change your life strategy from relationships “just happening” to you tactically forging relationships that will help you flourish and prosper in life. And ending those that only make your life miserable.

    Make personas of your ideal relationship

    The first step is to clarify what kind of relationships you really want in life. So make a persona of your ideal spouse, a few different friends, your boss, your mentor and coworkers.

    While doing this fun exercise, also make a persona of your ideal self. For your primary family relationships, brainstorm 5 – 10 things you can realistically do to make them better, instead of outlining a persona.

    Assess your current relationships

    Now you know what kind of relationships you want in your life. In the next step, it’s time to make an assessment of how close your current relationships really are to what you want in life. Take a big piece of paper and:

    • Horizontally, write numbers from 1 to 10.
    • Vertically, list 5 – 10 important relationships in your life.
    • Rate every relationship from 1 to 10.
    • If you rated some relationships between 4 and 7, it means that you can’t decide if they work or not, and that tells you nothing.
    • Rate them again, now only with 1, 2, 3 and 8, 9, 10 marks. This will show you whether a relationship really works or not.
    • All the relationships marked with 1 – 3 clearly don’t work.

    Decide what to do with current relationships

    For the relationships that work (got 8,9, or 10), great. Enrich them even more, nurture them and be grateful for them. On the other hand, when it comes to the relationships that don’t work, there are only three options why.

    1. A relationship isn’t your fit. Irreconcilable differences or whatever.
    2. It may be that it’s time to let go, it’s time for the relationship to end.
    3. Your partner, you or both aren’t investing enough into a relationship and you should start doing that.

    Based on the analysis, you’ll have to decide which relationships do work and which ones don’t. There’s nothing wrong about ending a relationship in a decent and human way.

    Only a few relationships are lifelong relationships. All things come to an end, and there is always the point where you have to move on. So don’t be burdened with guilt and shame when it’s time to move on.

    Now you should know which relationships in your life work, which don’t, which to terminate and which to try to improve. Start working actively on that. And simultaneously start forging new relationships.

    Start forging new relationships

    Prepare a list of your potential mentors. Prepare a list of companies you want to work for. Join different clubs, hobby gatherings, meetups, and so on. Look at your personas and go where people you want in your life are going.

    Brush up on your social skills, meet new people, open yourself up to opportunities. You can find people and form relationships that will make your life heaven on Earth. Constantly add new people in your life and always stay open to healthy relationships that can bring so much into your life.

    And never forget that at the end of the day, you deserve to have only healthy relationships in your life. Even one toxic relationship is definitely too much. But if you have it in your life, it’s probably your choice. If that’s the case, try to figure out why.

  • Only optimal thinking leads to achieving maximum results

    No matter what kind of challenges you have to face in life, no matter how difficult the situation you find yourself in, and no matter how tough things get, there is always a move forward that you can make. Even more, there is always the optimal (the best) move you can make.

    When thinking and using your brain, there are three very basic levels of the mindset you operate from:

    1. Negative thinking and victim mindset (aka suboptimal negative)
    2. Suboptimal thinking (mediocre, average thinking, sometimes even positive thinking)
    3. Optimal thinking (the concept of optimal thinking was introduced by Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D.)

    The victim mindset is based on giving your personal power away completely. There are many different causes that lead to the victim kind of thinking.

    Examples of the victim mindset are hopelessness, helplessness, overwhelming yourself, jumping to conclusions, self-labelling, undervaluing the reward, perfectionism, many different kinds of fears, coercion and resentment, low frustration tolerance, and so on.

    The victim mindset together with negative thinking is always connected to severe cognitive distortions, being overwhelmed with negative emotions, operating with low levels of self-confidence, and usually also to a big gap between the challenge and skill levels.

    The only way to get out of the victim mindset is to start building self-confidence, dealing with cognitive distortions, shaping a superior life strategy and starting with everyday small steps.

    Optimal thinking

    Engaging in optimal thinking can also be a great help with getting out of the victim mindset. Optimal thinking is the opposite of the victim mindset. It means clearly seeing what your options are, which move makes the most sense and not beating yourself up emotionally over things you can’t change.

    Honestly, nobody operates with optimal thinking 100% of time. But that only means that there is always room for improvement.

    The fact is that the more optimally you think in life, the more optimal actions you will take, and that will lead you to the best possible results – achieving your goals as quickly as possible, having a good quality of life and being super productive.

    But there is one catch. Even if the victim mindset is the one that paralyzes a person and makes them a passive player of life, there is another type of thinking that lies somewhere between the optimal and the victim mindset and is called suboptimal thinking.

    Suboptimal thinking may not be that paralyzing and emotionally tough, but it often brings stagnation in life. Suboptimal thinking is usually the one that lets you enjoy your comfort zone and avoid any kind of innovating and consequently also any kind of progress.

    Suboptimal thinking doesn’t lead to you becoming the best version of yourself, achieving the highest quality of life and the best possible results, including maximizing personal happiness. Suboptimal thinking only leads to an average life. If you want to achieve your peak potential in life, you simply have to upgrade your thinking from the negative or average to the optimal.

    Here’s how to do that.

    Ask yourself the right questions

    If you want to engage optimal thinking, you have to start asking yourself the right questions. Only the right question can encourage your brain to start looking for the best solutions. “The best” is the key in optimal thinking. Let me give you an example.

    Practical examples

    The questions below are examples of emotionally torturing yourself with a victim mindset:

    • Why is this happening to me?
    • Why did they give me a task, they know it’s too demanding for me?
    • What if I fail and everybody will laugh at me?
    • Why should I act, there’s no good that can come out of it?
    • Why am I not more successful?

    Now let’s move on to the next level. Questions like the ones below are how you’re encouraging suboptimal thinking:

    • What should I do now?
    • Which option should I choose?
    • What’s a good way to approach a thing like that?
    • How can I solve this problem?

    Well, suboptimal thinking will rarely lead you towards considering or coming up with the best possible solution. As mentioned, only the right questions will lead you to take your thinking a step further. Here are examples of questions that encourage optimal thinking:

    • What’s the best way to do this thing?
    • How can I solve a problem in the best way?
    • Which is the best option for me?
    • What will lead to the best possible outcome?
    • What would the best solution look like?
    • What is the best opportunity in my life right now? Help yourself with the SWOT analysis.
    • Who is the best person to help me make progress in life?
    • What is the best location for me to work?
    • What is the best way to minimize waste?
    • What are my best skills that I can offer to the market?
    • What is the best company for me to work for?

    Now, whatever you’re asking yourself, add “the best” into your question. What’s the best way to find a better job? What’s the best way to earn additional money? What’s the best way to deepen a relationship with someone? What’s the best way to organize your schedule for the upcoming week?

    What’s the best way to reply to an email? What’s the best book you should read next? You name it. By asking yourself the right questions, you won’t only raise your standards, but also start looking for completely new solutions you haven’t thought of before.

    You can also replace the best with other superlatives, like:

    • greatest (talents),
    • highest (priority),
    • smartest (way to work),
    • most (profitable, productive, enjoyable, rewarding, important),
    • maximal (output, productivity, time spend together),
    • optimal (processes, commuting, costs).

    Open your mind and innovate

    Asking yourself the right questions will definitely encourage your brain to think in the right direction. Nevertheless, it makes sense to add some fuel to creative thinking. The optimal solution is rarely the first solution, so you have to open your mind and brainstorm a little bit.

    Below are a few questions that will help you encourage optimal thinking and find the best solution. But remember, the point of the questions is only to open your mind and lead you to the next step, not to give you the final optimal solution.

    • What if I do the complete opposite?
    • What was the best/worst solution for that kind of a problem until now? Why?
    • What if I make it bigger, smaller, faster, slower, add dimension, change color …?
    • How would the problem be solved in movies or cartoons?
    • What if there were no limitations and I had unlimited resources?
    • How can I simplify everything?
    • What would I do if I had nothing to lose?

    All these questions will definitely open your mind, just make sure you don’t start daydreaming and living in illusions. The idea is to find the best practical solution that you can start immediately implementing.

    You can take everything even a step further. You can acquire extra ammo that will help you shoot right towards optimal thinking. Do research, find out how other successful people did what you want to do, analyze best practices (only to get new better ideas, because best practices don’t really exist), equip yourself with additional knowledge, talk with people, and so on.

    Thinking hard

    Ask yourself what your role models would do

    When you’re encouraging optimal thinking, you can call your role models for help. One way to do it is to ask your mentor or someone you know and admire what they think would be the best solution for a problem you are facing. People love to help people and I’m sure you’ll get many ideas that will lead towards the best solutions.

    But there may be an even better way to encourage optimal thinking. There must be heroes you admire and don’t really know in real life. Not knowing them gives you an advantage, because you can keep the fantasies about their superpowers. You know, that’s why you should never meet your heroes, because they usually don’t have the superpowers you imagine they do.

    Anyway, you can fantasize how your hero with superpowers would act and what kind of optimal thinking and optimal solution they would come up with. Just ask yourself: what would [x] do?

    Where [x] can be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michel Jordan or whoever your role model is. They can even be superheroes like Batman, Superman or any of your favorite fictional characters. Doing such an exercise will help you with emotional detachment and thinking optimally more easily.

    Now you know how to get to optimal thinking. Ask the right questions. Open your mind and innovate. Get a third-party perspective with rational superpowers. But that isn’t enough. On the way to finding the optimal solution, there are a few important facts you must never forget to really get to the best solution:

    • You have to take all areas of life into consideration
    • You have to balance short-term and long-term outputs
    • Positive thinking is not always optimal thinking, but optimal thinking is always positive

    Take all areas of life into consideration

    There’s a simple rule. You can’t live a happy and successful life if you only focus on some parts of your life and forget about the others. You have to look at your life as a whole, and optimize it on the macro level.

    That means that optimal thinking always considers all life areas and how your solution will increase/decrease the quality of the specific areas. Here are the ten areas:

    1. You (personality, environment, happiness etc.)
    2. Health and primary needs (body)
    3. Relationships and people skills (love and belonging)
    4. Money and wealth
    5. Career, achievements and respect
    6. Emotions (your emotional body)
    7. Competences – intelligence, knowledge and skills (your intellectual body)
    8. Fun, creativity and travel
    9. Spirituality, self-actualization and giving back to the world (your spiritual body)
    10. Technology as a leverage for being more productive in all areas of life

    As you probably know, if one of the life areas collapses, everything else can collapse as well. Your health greatly affects your earning potential and the quality of your relationships. Your income level has a big influence on all other areas of life, and so on.

    You should always thoroughly think about how every major decision influences all ten areas of your life. With optimal thinking, you never take only one or two areas of life into consideration, but you analyze how your move will influence all areas of life.

    Rare are the moves that influence life areas only in a positive way. Your energy and time are limited, and investing more in a certain area leads to deprivation in other areas. But with optimal thinking, you can make sure that no area collapses or gets severely damaged and that your overall position after making a move is better than it was before.

    For example, optimal thinking may lead to you getting a new, better-paying job. But that also means more work and less free time, at least in the beginning. If you have enough free time, that won’t be a problem at all. You’ll have a little bit less time, but the overall quality of your life will improve.

    But if you are already burned out, that kind of a move is probably not optimal thinking. At the end of the day, there is one best solution that considers all the areas of your life and your environment.

    Balance short-term and long-term

    Besides balancing all areas of life when making an important decision, there is one more thing you have to be very careful about. Your decisions should always balance short-term and long-term quality of life. Managing instant gratification and having the long-term view in mind is always an important part of success and optimal thinking.

    You have to deprive yourself of things today, so you can enjoy a brighter future. There is no other way to happy and successful life.

    You have to save money and invest it to enjoy future yields and more money. You have to put strict limits on when is enough chocolate for the day so that you don’t get fat. Periods come when you have to work harder to enjoy promotions in the future, and so on.

    All those kinds of decisions where you curb your desire for instant gratification can only be made if you have the long-term perspective in mind. But having only long-term perspective in mind is also not good enough.

    You aren’t a robot, you’re a human being and you have your own needs. If you don’t regularly satisfy your needs to a certain level, you become bitter and depressed.

    That’s definitely not the optimal decision. Thus there must always be a balance between short-term and long-term sacrifices and rewards when you’re looking for the optimal solution.

    Think positive

    Positive thinking isn’t always optimal thinking

    You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind. Optimal thinking always includes focusing on the positive, considering all the options and the optimal next move, together with accepting limitations and things you can’t change. Optimal thinking is always positive thinking.

    Ignoring the negative won’t make your life better.

    But on the other hand, positive thinking isn’t always optimal thinking. You may use positive thinking to escape the harsh reality. With positive thinking, you may avoid conflicts, you may use it to suppress negative feelings, you may escape into daydreaming and unpractical solutions, and so on.

    For example, with positive thinking you may be nice when you shouldn’t be nice at all, but rather stand for yourself (situations when you’re mistreated).

    Here’s the catch. Action required by optimal thinking is usually not an easy one. It takes some courage, new behavioral patterns, to stop doing certain things and start doing new ones. Not always, but in most cases.

    So there is a question that answers if your positive thinking isn’t optimal thinking: “Are you taking the easy way out?” and “Will you do things differently than how you’ve been doing them until now?”. If your answer to the first question is “yes” and to the second one “no”, you’re probably not thinking optimally.

    For extraordinary results, you need to take extraordinary actions. To take extraordinary actions, you have to think in unorthodox ways.

    Why don’t we always think optimally?

    Being unable to manage your feelings is the number one reason why you usually don’t think optimally. If you want think optimally, your judgment can’t be clouded with severe negative (or positive) feelings.

    You definitely have to listen to your feelings, they are the compass telling you in which direction to go, but you must be careful they don’t overwhelm you to the point that you don’t act or act in a toxic and destructive way.

    If you hurt your body, you go to the doctor. If you’re suffering emotionally, that means something is wrong in your life; that you aren’t on the right path.

    You can use that to get yourself on the right path or let yourself drown in self-pity. It’s no different if your body was bleeding and you’d do absolutely nothing, just feel sorry for yourself until you bled to death. That is far from optimal thinking.

    Besides emotional burdens, there are also other factors that can lead to suboptimal thinking:

    • Lying to yourself that things are better than they are to avoid emotional pain
    • Operating out of the fixed mindset (things are as they are and can’t be changed)
    • Acting based on completely wrong assumptions
    • Trusting current best practices. There is no such thing as a best practice.
    • Having zero knowledge or being stuck in analysis-paralysis
    • Having no feedback loop and not doing any self-reflection
    • Having Anti-Kaizen mentality

    Introducing the search mode into your life, with the goal of making small steps in real life and finding the optimal solution based on the constant feedback from your environment is the hardest, but definitely the best way to employ optimal thinking. If you want to think optimally, you have to know when you are in the search mode and when in the execution mode.

    Finding the best option

    Homework

    How optimally are you actually thinking?

    Well, there is no optimal thinking without doing an exercise or two. This is the most important part after you read something – applying knowledge. So make sure you really do the exercises. I even prepared a spreadsheet to get them done more easily.

    Template

    So what is the best way for you to do the exercises? Download the spreadsheet below, open it and start typing. Alternative way is that you just follow the instructions below.

    [emaillocker]

    • Optimal thinking – Template with 60+ questions to help you with optimal thinking (.xls)

    [/emaillocker]

    Exercise 1: Improving your life strategy with optimal thinking

    To warm up and open your mind, answer a few crucial questions below that will help you to get to know yourself better and shape your superior life strategy:

    1. What is the most important to me in my life?
    2. What are the most important needs I have?
    3. What do I want more than anything?
    4. What are my greatest strengths and talents?
    5. I deserve the best in life. What is the smartest way to get that?
    6. What is my highest priority in life right now?
    7. Who can help me grow the fastest in my life right now?
    8. How can I organize my schedule in the best possible way?
    9. What is the best way to achieve my currently most important goal in life?
    10. How can I make the most out of [your currently toughest] situation?
    11. What’s the best solution to [your currently biggest problem in life]?
    12. What is the best way for me to read more every day?

    Exercise 2: Updating your thinking to achieve your goals faster

    Now it’s time for the second exercise, a little more demanding. List all the areas of life. For each area, write a goal or two you have. Now write down all the negative, suboptimal and optimal convictions and beliefs you have regarding you achieving your goals.

    Analyze how optimally you’re really thinking and for each goal, write down what would be the best way for you to think. Then update your brain “software” and start thinking in this kind of way. When you slip, open the spreadsheet and remind yourself of your new mindset.

    When doing this exercise, make sure that you also answer the following questions for each area:

    • How can I become the best version of myself?
    • In what kind of an environment do I function best and thrive the most?
    • How can I maximize my happiness in life?
    • What is the sport I like the most? How many times is optimal for me to exercise in a week?
    • What is the optimal diet for me in terms of not getting fat and keeping high levels of energy?
    • What is the most important to me in relationships?
    • What is the best way for me to make additional money?
    • How can I offer the highest value to markets at the moment?
    • What is the most profitable project I can undertake right now?
    • What is the best company I can currently get a job at for sure?

    And…

    • What is the most rewarding work I can currently do and get paid?
    • What step can I make to maximize my career status from my current position?
    • What is the smartest way for me to manage my emotions better?
    • What are my most profitable competences?
    • What is the best way for me to develop more profitable competences?
    • How can I maximize my productivity right now?
    • Which fun activities give me the highest satisfaction in life?
    • What is the most creative activity I enjoy in life?
    • How can I give the most back to the community?
    • Which software makes me the most productive? Which apps are the biggest time wasters?

    Exercise 3: Applying optimal thinking in other life situations

    Now as the last exercise, try to use optimal thinking in other life situations. Here are a few examples:

    A problem you have What is the best solution?
    A situation you have What is the best way to handle the situation?
    Strategy What is in my best interest?
    Feeling stuck What is the best opportunity right now?
    People Who brings out the best in me?
    Relationships What is the best for both of us (me and my partner)?
    Learning What is the best way for me to learn more?
    Thinking What is the best way for me to upgrade my mindset?
    Resources Which resources would help me advance in life the fastest?
    Time management What are the three most important tasks I will do today?
    Risks What is the best way to minimize risk?
    Money What is the best way to earn 10x more than I am making now?
    Mentoring Who is the most viable person to talk to about a problem I have?
    Thinking for yourself What is the most important area in my life where I could use optimal thinking and wasn’t mentioned in this post?

    Let’s end with one more question that will help you increase the percentage of use of optimal thinking. When, where and with whom you think in the most optimal way?

    Your thoughts and actions are always a product of who you are and your environment. So think and analyze carefully when, where and with whom your thinking is at its best, when it’s mediocre and in what kind of situations you become a negative-thinking person.

    Now you know how to upgrade your mindset with optimal thinking. Don’t be stuck in an emotional cage with the victim mindset and don’t settle in the comfort zone withe suboptimal thinking. Negative and suboptimal thinking usually slowly lead to becoming a zombie. You can do much better and you deserve it. You deserve to live your optimal life.

    If you are interested in learning more about optimal thinking, there is a whole book dedicated to it (Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self) written by Rosalene Glickman who also introduced the concept of optimal thinking. On their website you can also take the test to identify your dominant level of thinking.

    Enjoy thinking optimally and seeing the results!

    References: Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self by Rosalene Glickman, Ph.D. and Optimal thinking website. Optimal Thinking is a registered trademark of The World Academy of Personal Development Inc.

  • A day without a screen

    I’m a big fan of technology. Technology is a big productivity leverage and general contributor to a much higher quality of life. But as any leverage, it’s a double-edged sword. Technology is like fire, you can cook yourself a meal with it or you can burn yourself. How you burn yourself with technology is pretty simple.

    It’s when you stop using technology to your advantage and start abusing it instead. There are two pretty common ways how people start abusing technology. The first one is about quality and the second one is about quantity.

    In this blog, we will talk about how large quantities lead to abuse, but before we get there let’s just scratch the other type – the so-called quality abuse. It’s pretty simple. You have one of the most capable computers in your head available for use, a product of billions of years of evolution.

    Next to that, you have most of the knowledge ever created by humankind available everywhere you go on your mobile phone. This is so revolutionary, so groundbreaking, and we’re often not even aware of it.

    If you tried to explain to someone from 200 years ago that they would be able to carry all humankind knowledge on a small device in their pocket, they’d think you were nuts.

    But here comes the important question: Why would you use your brain and the internet for browsing funny pictures of cats?

    That’s what 90 % of people do, and with that kind of actions they’re on the wrong side of the double-edged sword. Make sure you’re on the right side by setting up a proper infostructure.

    Now let’s move to quantity.

    Technology detox

    As mentioned I’m a big fan of technology, but I’m an even bigger fan of regular technology detox. The average person checks their smartphone a few hundred times a day. A few hundred times. Doing that continuously day by day, week by week, month by month and even year after year, of course, leaves negative consequences.

    Too much of anything, even good things, becomes toxic.

    There are many negative consequences of abusing technology:

    • Being unable to focus and concentrate
    • Reducing the ability to live in the present moment
    • Stifling your creative potential
    • Losing connection with yourself
    • Running away from real-life problems
    • Damaging your posture
    • Hurting your eyesight, etc.

    The only way to make sure you don’t abuse technology is to set very strict and hard limits, when and how often to take time completely off and away from technology.

    Here are the suggested minimums for technology detox, how often you should turn off all devices that need electricity:

    • A few hours before you go to sleep, if you want to get quality sleep
    • One whole day every two weeks (two days a month, basically)
    • One extended weekend every quarter (3 – 4 days)
    • One or two whole weeks during the summer vacation

    The main catch is that it may sound much easier than it really is.

    Don’t just agree, really try it for yourself

    One thing is to read about “a day without screen” concept and somehow agree with it, it’s a completely different thing to really implement it. We’ve become so addicted to technology that it takes severe discipline and preparation to really follow this trough.

    If you think having a day without a screen is easy, it’s not. There are screens everywhere.

    First of all, you have screens everywhere. In most cases that includes your:

    • Mobile phone
    • Tablet
    • Computer
    • Laptop
    • TV
    • Smartwatch (if you don’t have it, it will probably be your next one)
    • VR headset (if you don’t have it yet, you’ll have it soon)
    • Kindle (discussable whether it’s a screen or not)
    • And probably another device or two

    Now when you wake up, you probably look at your smartwatch, especially to see how many people liked your statuses on social networks. Then you take your smartphone to the toilet and check all the emails. And this is only the beginning of a day.

    Then you spend the whole working day behind a computer or a laptop. And before you go to sleep, you browse news on your tablet and then watch a bit of TV, just to relax and forget about the daily worries.

    Even if it’s weekend, you may not work that much on your computer, but you definitely play a game or two or watch new funny vines or try to relax in some other way (by staring at a screen).

    It may not look 100 % exactly like that – funny vines may be replaced by the daily news, TV with Netflix, playing games with a VR headset, but anyway, you get the picture. There are screens everywhere in your life, and there’s going to be even more screens in your life in the future.

    Fridge, car, closets, clothes, glasses, windows, mirrors, you name it. Everything will have a screen, everything will be connected to the internet and interact with you, which is awesome. But only if you have the discipline and the will to manage all this technology and not let the technology manage you and dictate your life.

    A day without a screen

    With a day without a screen, something magical will happen to you

    Instead of just agreeing with how abuse of technology can be toxic, really try to have one day without a single look at any screen. Because it’s hard, you have to strategically prepare yourself for that kind of radical action. The best way to do it is to dramatically increase the transaction costs for starting to use any type of screen.

    That means completely unplugging your TV, locking all the devices in a safe and making sure you don’t know the unlock code, but only someone you trust who won’t give it to you for that day. You have to drain batteries from all your devices, make sure there are no “urgent” emails to answer, and so on.

    You have to do it the day before, and you have to make sure that every single electronic device is dead and locked away. It may sound silly, but you’ll see how hard it is.

    But even more importantly, you will see that without any screen something magical will happen.

    You may get confused the moment you wake up. There is no watch, smartphone or whatever to get distracted. What to do? Hug your spouse. Be grateful that you are alive. Stretch a little bit. Pay attention to your body and how you feel.

    If nothing else, you’ll probably have to go to the toilet. Sitting on the toilet, you may again get confused. There is no email or 9gag. Should you read labels on shampoos? Should you think about the meaning of life? Or maybe about what you should do through the day.

    But what should you really do throughout the day? Remember, no TV, no computer, no tablet. It’s really confusing. Since you aren’t a robot and can’t just shut down, this is the point where the magic will start to happen. You will naturally and slowly get drawn to really interesting and inspiring primal human activities.

    You may actually go out into the nature and play. You may start talking to your spouse and reconnect. You may pick up a book and start reading. You may take a notebook and start brainstorming or planning your future.

    Confusion will slowly start turning into clarity. You will become more relaxed. You will be more present. You will start feeling more connected to yourself. You will become more alert to your surroundings and how you interact with the world.

    You’ll be able to think better and more creatively, connect with people on a deeper level, and you will start to feel your batteries recharging. You will feel FUCKING ALIVE. The electronic devices’ batteries will be empty, but yours will be full.

    Here are a few ideas for what you can do when you decide to have a day without a screen:

    And what not to do:

    The first few hours may be very confusing and alien to you. But after a few hours, oh boy. You will completely forget about email. You won’t care about all the likes and messages anymore. You won’t care what will happen in the next episode of your favorite show.

    Because suddenly, you’ll realize what you’ve been missing out on. Real life. Being really connected to yourself, nature and other people is what makes you feel alive. And it’s so awesome. Just try it for one day, as an experiment.

    Nevertheless, it might be a good idea to relay on some old tech, such as a mechanical watch. You still want to know what time it is. There are many options for superwatches, that are mechanical, not digital type.

    Have the best of both worlds

    I see many parents who forbid their kids from using technology. I think that’s silly. Because mastering technology is a really big advantage in life and an important competence. Technology helped me so much in my life advancement and following my goals, and it’ll be even more important in the future.

    Technical literacy has become as important as general literacy. So, you shouldn’t be afraid of technology, avoid it at all costs or see it as a bad thing. Technology is not good or bad. It all depends on how you use it. If you ignore it, it’s definitely bad. And if you abuse it, it’s also definitely bad.

    Mind the quality and the quantity and you’ll be okay.

    All you have to do is set healthy limits. Like with everything in life. You shouldn’t deprive yourself of anything. You should have the best of everything life has to offer.

    Having the best of both worlds means being connected to yourself, nature and other people, and using technology to your advantage – to be more productive, to learn faster and to have fun from time to time. And to communicate with people on the other side of the world.

    The best way to meet healthy limits regarding technology is to set daily limits of technology usage and to plan a day without a screen from time to time.

    As an experiment, open your calendar and select the most appropriate day, when you’ll give priority to the people you love instead of emails, enjoy life in nature instead of watch TV, and listen more to yourself than poke people on social networks.

    Make sure technology isn’t turning you into a zombie. Use technology to your advantage, don’t abuse it.

  • The best relationship advice ever

    Here’s some shocking news to start with. Relationships don’t even really exist. They simply don’t. If you don’t believe me, try to hold a relationship in your hand or move it from one place to another. You can’t. Because relationships only exist in your head.

    Every relationship you have in your life is nothing but a collection of thoughts, including memories and different convictions about a person. Why is this such an important fact?

    Well, because if relationships are only thoughts in your head and they don’t really exist, it can be easily manipulated how you see a specific relationship.

    You know the feeling of being in love and seeing the other person with rose-tinted glasses and after two to three months, reality check comes? Or when you’re shocked if someone does something you never expected they could do? Or how because of the halo effect, you think famous actors have much better personalities than they actually do? (The latter is also why you should never meet your heroes.)

    These kinds of errors happen exactly because of the fact that relationships don’t exist, but are only a construction in your head. There are so many such cognitive errors you can make, from projections, transference, stereotyping, the halo effect, perceptual set, Pollyanna principle, self-serving bias, selective perception, contrast effects, expectancy effect etc. The list of cognitive biases in relationships is endless.

    That leads to a few important facts:

    • Your image, including assumptions about any other person, are wrong, at least to a certain extent; and wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. That’s why the glass in relationships is already broken (more about this analogy later). Becoming aware of errors is painful, and that’s a part of life.
    • The wrong assumptions you have also lead to unrealistic expectations about how a relationship will unfold, which only really leaves you one rational option – enjoy relationships while they last, in the present moment, now. Relax. Relationships are to be enjoyed, not controlled. That doesn’t mean you don’t plan your future with other people, but you should do it only in the agile and lean way.
    • Since relationships are only thoughts in your head, you can avoid pain in a relationship by taking care of your own thoughts. You don’t even need the other person in a relationship to participate to solve any relationship issues (especially with troublesome parents or exes). Change yourself (your perspective) and you will change others.
    • Relationships as individual constructions in your head are one of the best ways to better understand yourself and get to know yourself to the core. Because you will try to simulate your early relationship experiences with every relationship later on (abusive parent, abusive partner).

    This is not real.

    The bottom line is that relationships are easy or hard only because you make them as such in your head; and in every relationship, you try to seek and experience what is familiar to you. And what’s familiar to you are your early relationships with the authority figures from your youth. That’s how your image will be distorted.

    Based on these facts, many people then conclude that no matter who you’re in a relationship with, you will always have pretty similar experiences. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even if you make many cognitive errors in relationships, people are different and every relationship is a unique experience.

    The false image you have about a person always exists, but there’s still also always an actual exchange of energies and actions (thoughts, touches, expressions, intentions etc.) that’s happening in a relationship. Despite the cognitive biases, the energy exchange with every single person is always a unique experience.

    Your image of a person is always wrong, but your experience of a relationship is not. That’s why people remember the most how you make them feel.

    In these terms, people bring out the best or the worst in you. In these terms, who you spend time with and what kind of a person they are matters a lot. Even if relationships don’t exist, we can say that there are positive experiences of a relationship and negative ones.

    You can see relationship with the most rose-tinted glasses possible, but abusive, ignorant, passive‑aggressive or any other similar behavior in a relationship is still toxic. And deep down, you always know if a relationship is toxic or not (making an error is human, but there’s a limit to when a relationship becomes toxic). A passionate love-hate relationship is a toxic one, for example.

    It’s extremely important whether a relationship is a healthy or a toxic one. I’ve seen it over and over again. A very damaged person in a healthy environment and with many healthy relationships starts to blossom. A promising, emotionally healthy and good person in damaging and abusive relationships gets broken and rots away.

    I’ve been in both kind of situations, so I know the difference very well. This is why you have to choose very carefully who you spend time with. It’s one of the most important decisions in your life. There is no middle path; a relationship is either a toxic or a healthy one (as we will see later).

    Before we go to relationship advice, there’s one more important angle to consider. People are animals. Social animals, to be more exact. That means that we compete, collaborate, conquer, make allies, have appetites, trade, pay attention to reputation, have sex, and so on.

    So whether you want it or not, every relationship is a trade. There is no such thing as a free lunch and there are no exceptions. A few decades ago, people had children primary as an economical investment. You get something out of a relationship (or expect to get when you form it) and you have to give.

    No matter how much in love you are, no matter how good of a person you met, it’s a trade. There must be value seen in you and you have to see value in others. The value can be sexual, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, material, social or any other type. No value equals no relationship, at least in the long term.

    Relationship advice

    The best and most honest relationship advice

    Now considering all three facts below, let’s look at the best relationship advice ever.

    1. A relationship doesn’t exist, it’s only a combination of thoughts in your head, which is why you see every relationship with many errors and wrong judgments. So the only win-win situation is to enjoy relationships. Next to that, you always see a person as something familiar to your past experiences.
    2. The tone of a relationship can only be a toxic or a healthy one, and this provides a very real experience of a relationship. No matter your internal image, this is the part of a relationship where you meet the objective truth. Everyone makes mistakes, but there is a limit when a relationship becomes toxic.
    3. Every relationship is nothing but a trade. If you don’t provide value, it’s hard to form deep, lasting and interesting relationships. There are many different types of value you can provide, and by far the best one is your own uniqueness, together with the effort.

    And now here it is, the best and most honest relationship advice:

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

    Always have the center on yourself

    No matter how much in love you are or how awesome of a relationship started in your life, personal or professional, always keep your center on yourself. The moment the center is on another person or the relationship itself, instead of you, the quality of a relationship starts to decline. Always.

    First, you have to be an independent, emotionally healthy individual, with your own life, visions, missions, goals, hobbies and interests. Only then can you form healthy and deep relationships. There is no other way. Without having the center on yourself, relationships will always be toxic in some way.

    Now, having the center on yourself doesn’t mean that you don’t care, don’t make any compromises and don’t invest in a relationship at all. If you don’t have center on yourself, it only means that you’re clinging to a relationship too much and stifling it without letting any freedom in it.

    Overly attached girlfriendSigns of not having the center on yourself:

    • Too fast commitment escalation (you think about marriage on the first date)
    • You get mad if your message isn’t replied in a second
    • You don’t like your partner’s hobbies and friends
    • Everything you do, you want to do together with your partner
    • Extreme jealousy
    • If you need more ideas, go through overly attached girlfriend or boyfriend memes

    It’s no different in business relationships or friendships, you may want to do everything together, you’re jelly of other people, and so on. In any case, the fact is that the more you pull someone towards yourself, the more they’ll try to back off.

    If you want to improve the relationships in your life, start by having the center on yourself. Start building your own dream life, share your visions with other people, and they will love to join you on your journey. There are a few steps you can take to have the center on yourself:

    Become the best version of yourself

    You definitely are worthy and important as an individual, no matter what you do and what your position in life currently is. There is a very simple and crucial rule of healthy self-worth which goes: never place anyone’s head above your own. Your personal strength must come from this kind of a belief.

    Nevertheless, as I mentioned before, every relationship is a trade. The better version of yourself that you are, the more you have to offer. A valuable consequence of constantly improving yourself is that your relationships get much better in general and you open yourself to completely new relationship opportunities.

    There are many ways of how you can improve your value in a relationship. Here are a few examples:

    • Fit and groomed body, good style, strength and endurance can bring more physical value
    • Higher education, hobbies, interests, visions, etc. bring more intellectual value
    • Many social connections, status, people skills, etc. bring more social value
    • Common values, fighting for a good cause, being a good person can bring spiritual value
    • Money and assets bring material value, and so on.

    People spend time with people with common interests and subjects. People spend time with people they’re attracted to because of charisma (charisma comes from having a powerful why in your life). People spend time with people with whom they can exchange value. I know it sounds completely unromantic, but every relationship is a trade.

    There is no ice to break

    There are 7 billion people living on this planet. Many of them have the potential to really change your life forever with how they see life, with many of them you could experience completely unique adventures, and many of them could help you grow faster or create even more awesome things than you’re currently creating.

    The only thing that’s preventing such a thing from happening is the absence of a fat penguin. What? Well the absence of someone who would break the ice for you. You have no idea how many opportunities you miss just because you’re afraid to say hello to a stranger.

    There’s an eye-opening perspective about that. Assume there is no ice to break and that you’re already connected to all the people. We all share the same planet, we’re all made from the same material, we all face our own struggles and fights. Just show genuine interest in people and know that you’re already connected with everybody.

    Just show genuine interest in someone and the relationship will start unfolding.

    Always connect with new people and don’t be afraid to talk to strangers. There is no ice to break. The ice exists only in your head. That doesn’t mean that every opening will be a pleasant experience (especially in dating), but that has nothing to do with breaking the ice, it has to do with finding your fit.

    Rejection is something that you can move on from. Regret will never leave you.

    There is no middle path, find your fit

    In every relationship, there is common ground (values, interests, etc.) and there are differences. If there is no common ground and only differences exist, relationships don’t form. On the other hand, the wider the common ground, the better your foundations for a relationship.

    It’s called finding your fit. Now, the mistake people make is that they jump into a relationship too quickly, before they even know their preferences, and even less a person. Like in Hollywood movies, where you see someone fall in love at first sight and then live happily ever after.

    Life doesn’t work that way. Irrational thinking and actions like that are based on the scarcity mentality – better safe than sorry and alone for the rest of your life. And then you commit to the first person who shows interest in spending time with you. I’ve seen so many people who settled too soon and then they’re too afraid to break up the relationship, staying unhappy forever.

    In reality, it’s much better to take time and search before you commit. Meet people, talk to them, get to know what you like in other people, etc. You can even help yourself by making a persona of an ideal relationship. Put in the effort to find your true fit, someone with whom things really work well.

    And when you find your fit, know that it only means that you’ve found something that holds true potential. You’ve found something you can build upon and look forward to. It is then that you pass on from searching to hard work in a relationship, and growing and learning together from the differences.

    Now, here’s the main catch in the whole story. You either find a fit or you don’t. A relationship either works or it doesn’t (in a certain moment). There is no other way.

    Homework

    Here’s a very easy task you can do to find out where you stand in your relationships. Take a piece of paper and follow the next steps:

    • Horizontally, write numbers from 1 to 10.
    • Vertically, list 5 – 10 important relationships in your life.
    • Rate every relationship from 1 to 10.
    • For the relationships that you rated between 4 and 7, it means you can’t decide if they work or not, and that tells you nothing.
    • Rate them again, now only with 1, 2, 3 and 8, 9, 10 marks. This will show you if a relationship really works or not.

    All the relationships marked with 1 – 3 clearly don’t work. There are only three options why.

    The first one is that they aren’t your fit. Irreconcilable differences or whatever. The second reason may be that it’s time to let go, it’s time for the relationship to end. The third reason may be that too much was withdrawn from the relationship bank account and it’s time to heavily invest back (more about that soon).

    Know that there’s nothing wrong about ending a relationship in a decent and human way, if the relationship doesn’t work anymore. All things come to an end, and there is always the point when you have to move on. Only a few relationships are lifelong relationships. So don’t be burdened with guilt and shame when it’s time to move on.

    No zombies and bozos

    People will make you or break you. Healthy and deep relationships will make your life on Earth heaven, and toxic people will make it living hell. So you must choose every relationship extremely carefully.

    Here are the rules:

    There are many reasons why people will try to make your life miserable, from clashes of interest, different values and the desire to preserve the status quo, to envy and simply having shitty personalities. Don’t even bother, just understand and then move on.

    When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig likes it. So completely ignore the evil people. Don’t think about them. Don’t talk to them. Don’t write to them. Don’t give them advice. Never gossip about them. It’s you who’s looking for the drama.

    Diversity and the 1/3 rule of relationships

    Let me emphasize again: who you spend time with matters a lot. You have to find people who fit into your life, and you have to find people who love you, support you, mentor you, believe in you, push you, help you to focus, encourage you, and so on. And you must do the same for other people.

    To achieve the universal relationship balance, there is an important formula to follow:

    • Spend 33 % of your time with people who are less competent than you (and mentor them)
    • 33 % of time with people who are on the same level as you
    • 33 % of time with people who are much more successful than you
    • Still, try to learn from everyone you spend time with.

    Next to that, although you have to find your fit to enjoy relationships, don’t spend time only with one type of people who think and act like you. Spend time with as many different people as possible, that’s the only way your relationship experience will be the richest. Never let your ego block you from learning or meeting someone new. I spend a lot of time with entrepreneurs, scientists, writers, athletes, many different people.

    This rule goes for personal and professional life. Science shows that half of the difference in career success (promotion, compensation, industry recognition) is due to one variable: being in an open network instead of a closed one. So network with many different people.

    Build multiple dimensions with superior communication

    Relationships are always multidimensional, and the more dimensions are present, the richer and the more varied they are. So when you spend time with people, try to engage as many dimensions as possible.

    Examples of relationship dimensions are touch, intellectual stimulation, emotional encouragement, sharing economic resources, working towards common goals, having fun together etc. When you’re spending time with someone, you should try to activate as many dimensions as possible. The best way to engage more dimensions in a relationship is to “put down your mobile phone” and listen.

    Want to prolong the battery life on your iPhone? Put it the fuck away when you’re talking to me.

    Yes, the key to outstanding relationships is outstanding communication. In order for every relationship to work, you have to really communicate (in person) and you want to communicate a lot. Put down your phone, look people in the eye and start listening with full attention. Something magical will happen in every one of your relationships.

    Ways of respondingAnd outstanding communication isn’t that hard. You have four types of communication:

    • Active constructive response (80 %)
    • Passive constructive response (10 %)
    • Active destructive response
    • Passive destructive response

    Just make sure you apply the active constructive response 80 % of times in communication with other people, next to really listening to them and showing genuine interest. Oh, and one more important rule I almost forgot. Make the compliment to critique ratio at least 5 to 1. Yes, for every critique, five compliments must follow.

    Relationships are like bank accounts

    Every relationship is like a mutual bank account. By doing something good for the relationship – like offering a massage, listening presently, spending quality time together, sending a loving message, doing hobbies together, etc. you put money in the bank account.

    By doing something bad for the relationship, like being ignorant, passive-aggressive, abusive or disconnected in any other way, you withdraw money from the relationship bank account. The more damaging acts you do, the more money gets withdrawn.

    Every relationship bank account can be full of money, barely above water, in negative numbers or even bankrupt. A lot of “money” means relationship happiness, low numbers mean nothing but low quality of the relationship.

    If everyone is only withdrawing, a relationship will sooner or later go bankrupt. That means a relationship gets terminated. If you do extremely damaging acts like cheating or beating, the bank account will probably go bankrupt immediately, even if it was full before.

    On the other hand, if you’re regularly depositing money, the bank account will be full and your relationship will blossom. The moment you start withdrawing, the relationship starts withering away.

    In the relationship bank account, the same rule applies as it does to the money one – it’s so easy to spend money and it’s so hard to save it. But at the end of the day, that’s what makes the difference between rich and poor people in whichever context, the money or the relationship one.

    Talking about mutual bank accounts, there is one more important rule. Make sure you invest into relationships as much as you get out of them. The investment ratio in every relationship should be as close to 1:1 as possible from both parties. If there is no balance, people get frustrated and even the most beautiful relationship can get in trouble.

    Relationship bank account

    No relationship is perfect, the glass is already broken

    Last but not least, don’t look at any relationship with rose-tinted glasses. Nothing special is going on in your life. You aren’t experiencing anything so unique that other people would be deprived of.

    Remember, you definitely are unique, just like everybody else is. Just like everybody else is. Don’t look at relationships like a fragile glass that can be broken, but like a glass that’s already broken.

    We are all only people with flaws and sins. People will lie to you, disappoint you and sometimes betray you. Rarely intentionally, but sometimes even that can happen. But this is part of relationships and life. Accept it, enjoy relationships while they last.

    Why such a tough reality? Well, it takes a lot of hard work and wisdom to find the right balance between id (animal instincts) and superego (doing the right thing). Even when you do find the balance, periods of life come when you’re thrown off-kilter.

    Before you find this magical balance with enough wisdom and even once you do but are forcibly thrown out of it, id may do a stupid thing. That’s what makes us human. That’s what you do to other people and what other people do to you from time to time.

    When that happens, it may hurt, but if you have the center on yourself (like the first rule dictates), you survive and move on if necessary. Remember, when it comes to life and relationships, the glass is already broken. There is nothing to break, because there is no perfection in life.

    Much like there is no ice to break, there is no glass to break. And at the end of the day, forgive, but never forget. We function based on patterns and so does every relationship.

    And for the end, do you want to know what real relationship tests are? Extremely good and extremely bad life situations. Now knowing the best relationship advice ever, good luck with them in your life. And please share this article with people you love.

  • A thin line between good and bad quality of life

    There is a thin line in life – not only between love and hate, as the most known saying goes, but also in many other aspects that determine your happiness and quality of life at its core.

    In order to live the best life possible, the good life, you want to be on the right side of the thin lines.

    Interestingly, the side of the thin line you stand on is more or less determined by how well you can handle your emotions and how much you think before you act.

    If you want to be on the right side, you have to learn to use your brain and you have to learn to manage your emotions. You can’t be on the right side of the lines, if you are emotionally immature person.

    You have to become a general of your own life, not only a warrior. Someone who has a superior life strategy and knows how to make data-driven decisions and, even more, trains the inner emotional beast to get the best possible outcome out of every situation.

    You can’t follow only your brains or only your heart, you need to pay attention to both. Once you stop listening to one of them, you cross the line and go to the dark side. It’s especially hard to listen to your emotions in the right kind of way.

    A thin line

    Your emotions are the ones fueling your visions, passions and whys; they’re like a feedback mechanism telling you whether you’re following your true north. But emotions also have no shape and can quickly start running all over the place like a headless chicken.

    When you’re drunk on emotion (hate, love or any other severe feeling), your reality becomes distorted and you start making bad decisions. You ignoring your emotions in any way can only cause them to become stronger. Like a small cute monster that turns into an indocile one. And then you get pushed on the wrong side of the thin lines.

    That’s why you need to listen to your emotions, but also train them not to mislead you when you have to make tough rational strategic decisions; decisions that will lead you closer to your goals, even when it emotionally seems impossible to get there.

    Without training your inner beast, you can never be happy in life. Mind and heart must work together in a well-coordinated tandem.

    Training your inner beast is what determines the side of the thin line you stand on. Even though it’s a thin line, standing on one or the other side makes a huge difference in how you live your life. A huge difference – what you get out of life and what you leave behind.

    Genius = Happiness Madman
    Facing bad fears Making stupid decisions
    Being a good person, knowing the limits Buying attention by being a good person
    Having a healthy limit regarding money Being a greedy monster
    Mindfully centered Self-castrated vague person
    A healthy assertive person Overly aggressive person
    Living a life of love Living a life of hate

    A thin line between courage and stupidity

    You ruin your life by making one big stupid decision or several small stupid decisions. A stupid decision, big or small, is something that irreparably harms your quality of life and your capacity to achieve your goals and dreams.

    If you want to live a successful life, you simply can’t afford a great number of stupid decisions. Stupid choices will only bring real misery into your life.

    Ironically, people often confuse stupid decisions with courage. Usually because their ego is at stake or emotions are running too high.

    You marry someone only for their looks. You take too much debt to buy things you can’t really afford to show off. You drive drunk or race cars on the street, endangering others. You jump off the cliff without knowing how deep the water is. You get into a fight. You trash talk your boss. You have unprotected sex with a stranger. Whatever.

    You want to prove yourself, you want to show that you’re better, you want to be the man; and you may have won many times in such a situation with such stupid behavior.

    But then things don’t turn out as planned only once. And you can destroy the quality of your life with one single move; sometimes even permanently.

    You don’t want to lock yourself in a safe. But you also don’t want to make stupid decisions.

    So make sure you don’t make any stupid, irrational decisions. No dangerous pissing contents will bring you long-term happiness.

    Always think twice about the short and long-term impact that your decision will have on your life. No matter how drunk you are.

    On the other hand, you don’t want to be a wussy, suffering from a victim mindset. You don’t want to just bitch, whine and complain how hard life is without doing anything. You don’t want to be a passive player of life. Just a reactive one.

    You want to be bold and courageous. You want to have your own goals. You want to have your own dreams and fight for them; fight for them with all of your heart and brain, fight vigorously for what you deserve in life. That takes courage. But courage does not mean stupid decisions.

    Fear can be a good compass. Fear shows where you have to grow in life. But you have to distinguish bad fear from the good one.

    Good fear is what prevents you from making a stupid decision. Bad fear only keeps you in an emotional cage. Locked. “Safe”. Not living life.

    In the same way, you need experience in life. Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. But bad decisions and validated learning are not the same as stupid decisions.

    You make mistakes when you learn how to drive. You learn so much when you start your own business based on calculated risks. But driving drunk is stupid. Texting while driving is stupid. Taking a big loan to start a risky business is stupid (in most cases).

    A thin line between being a good person and buying attention with kindness

    Being a good person means that you build your social reputation on prestige, not dominance. You use dominance only on rare occasions when it’s really necessary.

    You are a loyal and honest friend, a gentleman that holds the door for the old lady. You have a lot of integrity and morals, and you try to make the right decision, even when your darkest desires are tested.

    Nevertheless, you know you’re only human and can make mistakes from time to time. You have no problems saying you’re sorry and fixing the damage you’ve done to the highest possible extent. You don’t beat yourself up over and over again when you make an honest mistake.

    Being an emotionally healthy good person also means that you know where to draw the line. You know you have to take care of yourself first if you want to give to others.

    You know you must first have things in life before you can share them with people and the world in the next step, be it money, love or any other thing. You’re aware that being a good person means putting yourself first.

    You should have no problem saying no when necessary. You should have no problem protecting yourself. You should have no problem standing up for yourself.

    You should have no problem drawing the line. You should have no problem making money and providing value. And still staying a good person.

    The most you can do for the world is to go home and love your family.

    But being on the wrong side of a thin line as a good person means that you’re good to other people only to get attention.

    You are a needy person, hoping deep down that others will take more care of you somehow, so you try to care for others as much as possible, even to the point when you are damaging yourself and others. You help them even if they don’t need or deserve help.

    You’re being nice with a deep hope that people will finally realize how awesome and what a good person you are.

    So you have a hard time saying no and setting strict boundaries. If you say no, you can only think of how that could backfire and hurt you. But when you don’t know where to draw the line, you aren’t a good person anymore. You’re an attention whore being used by others.

    A thin line in this case is determined by having a center on yourself and not determining your self value based on the gratefulness of people you offer help to.

    The side you stand on is determined by how strong your sense of self is and how aware you are of your own needs, making sure they’re met and that other people don’t exploit you.

    A thin line between being greedy and protecting your material assets

    A healthy assertive person strives to materially protect themselves. They strive to own (or rent) a home where they live, have a sound financial situation and aren’t drowning in debt.

    That may mean owning a piece of land, having a few sound investments, an emergency fund for the rainy days etc. An emotionally healthy person has an emotionally healthy relationship with money and the material world.

    Meditating in a forest and having nothing is not a solution for a happier life, it usually only shows that it’s just too painful for the person to deal with material things. They prefer to run away from the material world rather than embrace it.

    The other side of the same coin is being too greedy. When you are greedy, you try to fill the emotional void with material assets.

    For a happy life, you should deny neither the physical nor the spiritual world.

    The only problem is that you can never really feel the void with material things. It’s like a barrel without a bottom.

    You need more and more, no matter how much you have; and you submit all of your life decisions to one single thing – trying to fed yourself at least once. But it never happens.

    Setting a healthy limit is the solution – how much you think you need in life in order to be happy defines the side of the thin line you stand on.

    Having a healthy limit for how much you need puts you on one of the sides, either being a healthy assertive person materially or a greedy never satisfied monster.

    Of course, if you are in business and your business is thriving, you can make a lot more money than you ever need. The key question then becomes: what do you do with all your money?

    Even with billions of dollars, you may feel inadequate, hoping that you’ll make even more money and take all your material treasures with you once you pass away; or, much better, you can do good with your money, a lot of good things.

    The healthy limit for how much you need doesn’t instigate that you shouldn’t be rich or enjoy material abundance.

    The healthy limit only becomes visible when you have to make decisions for what you will do with your surpluses. Think Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Mark Zuckerberg.

    Good vs bad

    A thin line between mindfulness and self-castration

    You can very easily mistake mindfulness (a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique) with self-castration.

    If you don’t know how to assert yourself in the physical and real world, you may start to compensate by building a kinder world in your head. A soft and naïve world you can survive in.

    A soft and naïve world built only in your head, where you don’t have to act, where you don’t have to face your problems and fight for love, money, health and happiness.

    You may build a world in your head where everything is given to you, without even trying, and often even given to others, and then humankind can finally live in peace.

    It may feel as if you’ve found your mindfulness, but that’s just fake mindfulness. It’s a fairytale. It’s running away from the real world.

    It’s running away from facing all the challenges life has prepared for you. In the long term, it only means that you stifle your real nature. You don’t follow your true north and that brings you nothing but bitterness in life.

    Real mindfulness comes from trusting yourself; asserting yourself; knowing that you are strong enough to face any challenge.

    Real mindfulness comes from accepting world as it is; and while doing that, trying to make it a better place with your thoughts and actions. But first accepting it as it is, with all its pluses and minuses. And there are many minuses.

    Real mindfulness comes from properly managing your thoughts, training your inner emotional beast, taking care of your health, following your true north and being a proactive not reactive person.

    Real mindfulness comes from becoming the best version of yourself and being aware of the value you can provide. Real mindfulness comes when you always give 110 % from yourself and you can accept any outcome.

    Meditation, abundance mindset, emotional intelligence and having a center on yourself are all the tools that can help you with real mindfulness.

    The goal of these tools is not to run away, to hide in your own little dream world, but to face the challenges of the world fiercely and still in the most civilized way possible.

    The thin line you stand on is determined by whether you lie to yourself about the harsh reality or accept it; accepting that the glass is already broken and that you have to somehow deal and live with it.

    No true love, no lottery ticket, no positive vibes or whatever else will do the work instead of you; while you enjoy your soft and naïve little world in your mind.

    The thin line is determined by facing the reality or running away from it and becoming a completely unassertive person. A coward.

    A thin line between assertiveness and aggressiveness

    If you aren’t assertive in life you become miserable and depressed.

    An assertive person likes themselves as they are, they have a strong sense of self and their autonomy, they have no problems with their needs being met, they know how to express feelings, where they’re going in life and what they want, they aren’t afraid of conflict and know how to set boundaries, and they take initiative and contribute creative ideas.

    An assertive person is aware of their own toxic fears and feelings, and they try to overcome them. They aren’t too shy or too introverted, they’re constantly developing social skills and emotional intelligence. They are aware that they deserve to have a place in the sun.

    Nevertheless, assertiveness can quickly turn into aggressiveness. You can quickly start pushing yourself and the people around you somewhere they don’t want to go, just to satisfy your ego.

    You can start to manipulate, threaten, intimidate, harm and control people. The thin line between assertiveness and aggression becomes most visible when things go wrong.

    Aggression is always based on severe negative feelings about yourself, others and the situation you are in. You want to get out of it, you want to get to the top, no matter what; even if you hurt yourself or others.

    You can only see one way forward and that is the way that drives you to a better position, ignoring the harmful price and, even more sadly, not seeing any other options.

    Standing up for yourself is the right thing to do. Following your own goals is the right thing to do. But there is a thing called a “win-win” situation.

    It can’t always be achieved, but it can be achieved most of the time. If you are aggressive towards others, others are aggressive towards you, and that is not a life you want to live.

    Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

    The side you stand on is usually determined by your thoughts, emotion management capabilities and intentions. If you have positive thoughts, emotions and intentions, you tend to share, include, connect, and look for the best situation for all parties involved.

    If your intentions are bad and your thoughts are weak, you see everything as a zero-sum game and you don’t want to be the fool in a room. So you exploit others and make them fools.

    Negative intentions usually mean complete absence of the abundance mindset. They mean severe fear and egoistic behavior, with the goal of winning no matter what.

    That is very rarely necessary in life. Even more rarely is that a nice life to live. You can be assertive and follow your own goals without trampling other people. You should empower other people instead, and sleep much better at night.

    Love vs hate

    A thin line between love and hate

    Hate is a passion that is of equal interest to love. And you have a choice. Will you lead a life of love or a life of hate?

    You can switch from one to the other in a second. If you want to live a life of love, you must first love yourself. You can never truly love others if you hate yourself.

    Your ultimate goal should be to not hate anybody – to respect the differences, to respect variety and to understand other people.

    When you don’t hate anybody anymore, you really start loving yourself. You know there is enough for everyone and that you matter and that you are unique and different; but so is everybody else.

    It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

    If you’re on the right side of the thin line between love and hate, you know that there are many things wrong with this world.

    But you also know that you do nothing if you have even more evil thoughts, feelings or even, God forbid, actions.

    You know that the most you can do for the people you love and the whole world is to transcend negative feelings, show love, provide value and create things that will make the world just a slightly better place to live. That is the greatest legacy you can leave behind for your offspring.

    If you’re on the right side of the thin line, you know that with hate, you only bring misery into your life and to others.

    It’s like wanting to throw a burning rock into someone. You only burn yourself.

    A thin line between being a genius and insane

    Last but not least, there is a thin line between being a genius and being insane. To be a genius, you have to be different than others.

    Well, actually being only different is not enough. You also have to be better. Different and better.

    You have to think outside the box, you must possess courage to be yourself, you must be assertive and love what you do. You have to become obsessed with making the world a better place. Just a little bit.

    You can possess entirely the same characteristics as a genius and become insane, only by crossing the thin line just a little bit.

    When you do that, you don’t have a center on yourself anymore and you don’t have good intentions.

    • You are aggressive instead of being assertive.
    • You are greedy instead of healthy ambitious.
    • You hate diversity and other people instead of loving them.

    Then your inner genius turns into insanity. You manipulate, you take only for yourself, you build your life based on fear and intimidation. That is not a life you want to live.

    You want to be a genius. You want to be on the right side of the thin line. This is where life becomes more art than science. This is where it all comes down to one thing.

    What kind of a legacy do you want to leave, what kind of an impact do you want to have on your family and the world? I hope it’s the positive one and you choose to be on the right side of the thin line. If you do, choose to be a good person.

    Which side of the thin line are you on?

    Genius = Happiness Madman
    Facing bad fears Making stupid decisions
    Being a good person, knowing the limits Buying attention by being a good person
    Having a healthy limit regarding money Being a greedy monster
    Mindfully centered Self-castrated vague person
    A healthy assertive person Overly aggressive person
    Living a life of love Living a life of hate

  • How to develop an abundance mindset

    If you want to be happy and successful in life, you must have an abundance mindset; otherwise you may catch yourself in a vicious greed-based competition or in (symbolical) self-castration and procrastination – both making you unhappy. The abundance mindset consists of the three crucial elements:

    (1) Seeing all the possibilities the world has to offer in order to create, connect, grow and enjoy, (2) knowing that you deserve love and prosperity, and (3) realizing that if you’d experience only plentitude in life, it would be boring as hell and you wouldn’t appreciate anything you have at all.

    The opposite of the abundance mindset is a scarcity mentality. The scarcity mentality doesn’t only lead to an impoverishment of life, it also makes you take malicious actions towards yourself and others.

    Knowing that limited resources are a part of life on this planet and experiencing not having every single thing you want can be a great teacher in adult life, and can make you appreciate things you do have. However, learning and personal growth can happen only if they’re supported with an abundance mindset.

    If it sounds confusing, here’s an example from the financial area of life: Being broke is a temporary situation in life. Being poor is usually a state of mind. If you are broke and have an abundance mindset, you’re aware that you have options and that you can do something about it as well as learn about yourself and life while being broke.

    But being poor and drowning in the victim mindset is based on a scarcity mindset and doesn’t bring anything good into your life. Even more: you become blind to learning and personal growth.

    There is a big difference between suffering the scarcity mentality and experiencing a temporary shortage in life, while keeping the abundance mindset.

    If you aren’t sure whether you are suffering from the scarcity mindset, here are the signs of a severe scarcity mentality:

    • Aggressive competition where other people and also you might get hurt (physically, emotionally)
    • Trouble sharing with others (things, power, credit, profit)
    • Greed and gluttony, there is simply never enough
    • Envy and jealousy
    • Desire to control people
    • Being obsessed with how much other people make and what they own
    • Hating it when other people succeed and being happy when misfortune happens to them
    • Self-castration and procrastination
    • Shyness, bitterness, depression and isolation
    • Avoiding any kind of responsibility and commitment (in relationships)
    • Having a victim mentality
    • Scarcity mentality is closely connected to the fixed mindset

    In this article you will learn:

    • How the scarcity mindset develops
    • Why is the abundance mindset so important
    • The difference between the scarcity mindset and a temporary shortage of something
    • What you can do in general to develop the abundance mindset
    • A few tricks to develop the abundance mindset in different areas of life
    • How not to confuse the abundance mindset with foolishness

    A word of caution: this is not a short article. But you know, there is no easy way to switch from the scarcity mindset to the abundance mindset. It’s not like you only have to spend a little more time with people who have the abundance mindset and you will miraculously develop it; or do “10 other things” that most blog posts recommend.

    Well, spending time with people who have the abundance mindset may definitely help you catch the right way of thinking, but first you will probably drown in envy.

    The bottom line is that the abundance mentality can only help you focus on the right kind of things and actions and be happier in life in general. You have to strategically develop your mindset step by step and simultaneously support new thinking with actions.

    If the abundance mentality is not supported by action, it’s not a real abundance mentality. It’s naivety and shutting your eyes to the facts of real life. Yes, it’s a very long and demanding process to switch to the abundance mentality; but also very rewarding.

    But first things first. If you want to overcome any negative internal emotional and mental state in your life, you have to first understand it very well. So let’s analyze how the scarcity or the abundance mindsets really develops. It will help you tackle the problem at its core and deal with it once and for all.

    Abundance mindset

    How the scarcity or abundance mindsets develop

    The essence of the scarcity or the abundance mindsets development as a part of your psyche is how your needs were being met when you were growing up. In the first few years, right after you were born, the emotional availability of your parents was the number one thing that imprinted into your subjective map of reality of how much the world has to offer to you and how much you deserve.

    If there was plenty of love and attention in the early years, you developed trust in yourself, life and people, and later you can see all the abundance the world has to offer in terms of relationships. If you weren’t exposed to that kind of attention and pampering as an infant, emotional scarcity developed. You now assume people aren’t trustworthy and that there isn’t much love for you out there.

    Only love isn’t enough, of course. The second important aspect of your upbringing is whether there was any consideration for what you really want (not what others thought was best for you) and if there was any encouragement present for your needs of discovering the world.

    If you were only an extension of your parents, strictly under their controlling behavior and criticism, if there was no room for your autonomy and initiative, your own ideas, creativity, play and sports, you slowly become blind to all the opportunities the world has to offer.

    You become blind, because instead of seeing yourself as an individual with your own needs and wishes and all the right to meet them in a respectful and healthy manner (one of the purposes of life is constantly fulfilling your needs), you feel guilt and shame following something you really want. Because deep down you aren’t sure if your parents would approve of it. Probably not, if it’s not medical school.

    It’s much easier to become blind to the opportunities than to become aware of your toxic feelings that block your assertiveness and cause symbolical self-castration.

    But there is more, of course. After emotional needs, we have intellectual needs. As you start to talk and become more and more aware of the world, curiosity develops.

    You develop a need to understand the world, to develop your intellect and competence. If you didn’t have an environment that helped you develop your intellectual potential, creative and analytical one, inferiority and identity confusion may develop. Especially now in the creative age.

    You don’t see all the opportunities because you think you aren’t capable of competing with others when it comes to using your mind. Again, it’s easier to become blind and live in denial rather than to face the fact that you are maybe more capable than you think you are.

    The good news is that if your emotional and intellectual needs were properly met, your spiritual needs are usually also well-developed. The spiritual aspect of life gives you a sense of hope, purpose and contribution. The spiritual aspect is based on a deep trust in yourself, your competences, your values, life in general and your mission. You can only imagine how a lack of those hinders you in life.

    Body, emotions, mind and soul. If they were exposed to an abundance of attention, love, information, encouragement and a positive and stable environment, they all greatly contribute to the abundance mindset. It’s a lot to take in. But we aren’t done yet. There are two more important categories of life.

    First, we have the social aspect. We are social beings and as soon as you’re exposed to other people outside of your home, you have a need to belong to different social groups. How well you fit into social groups especially depends on your values. If there are people around you with the same values, you feel like a part of a group. In such a case, you can have many friends and even more, you have a tribe to protect you.

    If your values are so different from the majority that you don’t find a group to belong to, you tend to isolate yourself. Isolation is usually a strong sign of the scarcity mindset. As a kid, there isn’t much you can do. If you don’t feel like you get along well with your schoolmates and other people in your life, you simply must suffer.

    Consequently, you develop the scarcity mindset. In your subjective reality map, there is no group you could belong to, because you never experienced real social belonging.

    Last but not least, we have money and material abundance. Well, emotional and intellectual poverty aren’t discussed as often as the financial one, because the financial one is so much more obvious.

    There have been many studies done, clearly showing how much damage poverty makes. The fact is that unfortunately, poverty in most cases leads to the scarcity mindset. Because of poverty, you develop the mindset that there isn’t enough out there and especially not for you.

    The scarcity and poverty mindset don’t develop only because you’re exposed to a deprivation of material things, it’s usually also transferred together with different toxic beliefs about money. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Rich people are corrupt people. If you are rich, you will never go to heaven. Just to name a few.

    This is how the scarcity mentality develops – being exposed to emotional, intellectual, social, encouragement, attention and financial poverty. Consequently, you think there is not enough out there and even more, that there isn’t enough for you.

    Before you get mad, I know, no parents are perfect. Actually, there must be errors made in upbringing, because errors bring friction and internal frictions drive personal growth. But there is a big difference between making a few errors or raising a kid in a toxic environment. There is a big difference between the two.

    You may further argue, for example: how can I expose my kid to material abundance if I’m drowning in debt? You see, it actually isn’t how much you really buy for your kid. It’s how you make your kid feel when you buy him something.

    If buying something for your kid is associated with how much you had to suffer and sacrifice, logically material guilt will develop and with it the scarcity mindset. When I get something I want, people I love have to suffer. Isn’t the internal conflict obvious?

    If we go from financial scarcity to the emotional and intellectual one, I know it often doesn’t happen on purpose, but because parents have to deal with their own shit and they probably lived in the same kind of poverty, so they don’t know how to do better, they lack knowledge and so on.

    Here are just a few examples of what you may have experienced in your home environment and how your scarcity mindset developed. Ironically, sometimes this happened even when parents thought they were doing what was best for you and your future.

    • Parents making all the choices instead of you, without considering your wishes and needs
    • Overprotective and over-controlling parents
    • Depressed parents occupied with their own shit
    • Switching all the emotional attention to a younger sibling when they were born
    • Overly critical parents
    • Parents stifling your curiosity and creativity
    • Here you can find more types of toxic behaviors

    If you were exposed to that kind of environment and consequently developed the scarcity mindset, I am sorry. But now you’re an adult and you can do something about it. As mentioned, becoming blind to opportunities, focusing on the negative and feeling sorry for yourself is much easier than dealing with mistrust, guilt, shame and inferiority.

    But you are reading this blog post, so you have the courage and will to do something about it. The good news is that you can come out of the scarcity mindset stronger and greater than ever.

    Because you will understand both mindsets very well, and you will become much more empathic. If you aren’t completely sure yet, let’s further examine what kind of damage you’re doing to yourself and others with the scarcity mindset.

    Scarcity mindset

    The maliciousness of the scarcity mindset

    Here is a big epiphany. Abundance is not the root of all evil. A lack of the abundance mindset is the root of all evil. There are three reasons why, 3 Cs:

    • Compensation
    • Control
    • Competition

    First of all, with the scarcity mindset you try to eagerly compensate for your early deprivation, whichever kind of deprivation it was – emotional, financial etc. It’s called greed. The scarcity mindset leads to a never satisfied soul that wants more and more of something only to feel fed somehow.

    The scarcity mindset leads to a never satisfied soul that wants more and more of something only to feel fed somehow. The scarcity mindset leads to a greedy soul. It can be greed for money, knowledge, attention, food, getting high or whatever.

    Money is not the root of all evil. Lack of money is the root of all evil.

    And don’t be fooled, there is no direct connection. You may have suffered financial poverty when you were young and later became overwhelmed by financial greed or any other type of greed.

    You may have suffered emotional scarcity in an early age and you may have become a sexual addict or, for example, money is the compensation helping you cope with your deprivation pain. There are many possible combinations.

    In any case, greed causes a lot of damage to you and people around you. With a greedy soul, it’s hard to set limits, it’s hard to ever be happy and satisfied, you just need more and more to somehow quench all the thirst.

    When greed takes over, you have no problem taking from the hands of other people, even in a very aggressive and demolishing way. People often do it not only in immoral, but also illegal ways.

    Then we have control. If you feel like you don’t have enough, because you didn’t get enough when you were young, you want to have as much control as possible over the things you do have – every relationship, every job, every dollar available to you, and so on.

    You cling to it like it’s a matter of life and death, even if you’re only trapped in an emotional cage – in a job you hate; an abusive relationship; money that isn’t yours or whatever.

    When you can’t control something, you go crazy. And you’re trying to control things that need to flow, not stand still. Money needs to flow, love needs to flow, markets need to flow. They can’t be controlled. When you’re trying to do such a thing, you’re going directly against the natural order of things, only hurting yourself and others.

    Last but not least, there is a fierce competition. If there isn’t enough out there and you have to compete with others for that little something, healthy competition becomes an overly aggressive one. Markets can definitely be tough.

    But seeing everyone as an enemy, as someone who is trying to take something away from you and you have to stamp down, is definitely not a nice life to live.

    With the scarcity mindset, nothing but aggressive competition, seeing danger in everything, over-controlling behavior and greed develop. You also don’t see opportunities at all and you feel like you don’t deserve things in life.

    Developing an abundance mindset

    Now it’s time to take action and to see how you can switch from the scarcity mindset to the abundance one. As mentioned, first you have to distinguish if you were exposed to real toxic deprivation in the early years – a lack of something in the combination with severe negative feelings – or were only small mistakes made in your upbringing.

    Secondly, you won’t achieve anything by feeling sorry for yourself or being mad at your parents, life, God or whoever. Now you are an adult and you are responsible for everything in your life. Even your scarcity mindset. The only winning situation is if you start doing something about it. And forgive, but that is a matter of another blog post.

    The important fact is also that you were probably only exposed to one kind of scarcity in your life. Maybe you were raised in a materially rich, but emotionally poor family. Or vice-versa. Maybe only your intellectual potential wasn’t stimulated.

    You have to see the good that was done to you in your upbringing, not only what you lacked. It’s the first step towards the abundance mindset. But it’s also true that the more areas that were influenced by poverty, the more work waits for you. On the bright side, you will learn so much more. So let’s start.

    An error in your subjective map

    The first thing you have to see is that the scarcity mindset is only a big error in your subjective map of reality, supported by a bunch of toxic beliefs and severe negative feelings. With the scarcity mindset, you are focused on what you lack in life most of the time.

    This is strongly corroborated by damaging (unconscious) beliefs and negative feelings of why you deserve such a thing. By focusing on something you lack, you’re either blind to all the opportunities or there is never enough, nothing can satisfy your thirst.

    Besides severe negative feelings (doubt, shame, inferiority etc.), there are many different toxic beliefs that can support your scarcity mindset. Here are a few examples of toxic supportive beliefs:

    • We are here on Earth to suffer, so I must also suffer (emotional scarcity)
    • There are so many people in poverty, so why would I deserve to be rich (material scarcity)
    • Rich people are corrupt and evil people (material scarcity)
    • Happy people are spoiled people who don’t know the hard realities of life (emotional scarcity)
    • Emotions are bad and only make you weak (emotional scarcity)
    • I must take away from others to have more in my life, so others will suffer if I take more (emotional scarcity)

    And:

    • It’s eat or be eaten and I’m not playing this game (material scarcity)
    • It’s eat or be eaten, so I must be tough on the people I love, and they will survive better
    • I don’t deserve to have that in life, because I’m a bad person (material scarcity)
    • Nobody really loves me; everyone just wants something from me (social scarcity)
    • I am not a creative person at all and I don’t know how to use computers (intellectual scarcity)
    • There are no right job opportunities for me and I don’t have good business ideas (competence scarcity)
    • I will never meet the right spouse for me and even if I do, there is not much I can offer in a relationship (emotional scarcity)

    There are hundreds of similar toxic beliefs that can support your scarcity mindset. They help you cling to the scarcity mindset at all costs and prevent you from seeing any different reality – usually because it’s too painful to see what you deserve and can have in life.

    So let’s try to find a few counterarguments that can collapse in ruin toxic beliefs.

    Abundance meme

    Proof of abundance in the world

    Let’s start first with the actual data about the world, the data that you probably somehow don’t see when your scarcity mindset is active. Here is the actual proof of abundance in the world:

    • There are around 7,000,000,000 people in the world, all your potential lovers, spouses, friends, social groups to join etc.
    • There is more than 4,000,000,000,000 USD in circulation (M0). Let’s not even mention all the virtual money and other material assets (land, gold etc.).
    • There are around 1,000,000,000 webpages and more than 130,000,000 books you can learn from – and more than a million books and new webpages published every day.
    • Only in the UK, they throw away 7 million tons of food and drink every year. It’s the first data I found online, I’m not singling out the UK for any specific reason.
    • There are more than 190 million registered companies you can work for in the world, 45,000 of them listed on the stock exchange.
    • There are more than 190 countries you can travel to and around 2,000,000 cities worldwide.
    • There are more than 200 different types of hobbies, more than 1000 different sports, more than 70 religions and belief systems, more than 30 different types of art, and so on.
    • You can buy the cheapest smartphone for around 30$.

    7,000,000,000 people and you would suffer in isolation; 4,000,000,000,000 USD and you don’t have any idea of how to contribute to the markets to make money; 130,000,000 books and you can’t find a book to be curious about; 190,000,000 companies and you don’t know how to find a job; 2,000,000 cities and you don’t like the place where you live; 1,200 different hobbies and sports, and you are bored. It can only happen if you are captured in an emotional cage.

    There is enough – for everyone. Also for you (if you don’t suffer from greed). And you deserve it. This doesn’t mean that poverty is not a real world problem (more about that later). But don’t let your scarcity mindset shift focus now. There is enough. For you as well. Period.

    See all the damage you’re doing with the scarcity mindset

    Now you know that there is enough for all of us in this world. Also for you. Now don’t fight it. Let’s take a step further instead. What is the real benefit of the scarcity mindset you have? Ask yourself honestly: does the scarcity mindset bring any good into your life, the life of the people you love or the world in general? It definitely brings the following things into your life:

    • You have to compensate for a shortage of something with greed in other areas of life
    • You are usually (unconsciously) envious of other people
    • You don’t contribute to the world as much with your talents as you could
    • You become a more and more bitter person and spread bitterness around to other people
    • If you don’t have it, you can’t give it and share it with others
    • Others won’t be better off if you sacrifice yourself, because there is enough for everyone
    • Last but not least, there is no room for failure and error with the scarcity mindset, because the risks are so much higher.

    Do you see all the bad that the scarcity mindset brings into your life? On the one hand, you have to compensate for your fears of not having enough, because you didn’t get enough as a small child. And usually you need to compensate exponentially.

    You may need to constantly feed your hungry soul with more money, sexual partners, social status etc. Because there is never enough. There can’t be.

    On the other hand, if you don’t feed your greed and somehow follow your goals and needs, you may become bitter, shy, extremely introverted, you symbolically castrate yourself not to do anything at all in life and you waste your potentials with procrastination, and so on. No good comes from the scarcity mindset, one way or the other.

    Find me one good thing that comes out of the scarcity mindset. None. So why are you clinging to it so hard?

    It’s not a zero-sum game

    As mentioned, the scarcity mindset develops because you were exposed to some kind of poverty. When there is a lack of something in life, fierce competition always develops.

    The underlying belief is that if you want something in life, you have to take it away from others, even with aggression. You don’t deserve it just because you are. Taking a toy from the hands of your sibling, doing a stupid thing as a kid to get attention from your parents etc.

    Even more. Because you didn’t get what you needed when growing up, you have trouble believing that people will give you what you need in (personal/business) relationships now that you’re an adult – love, attention, respect, payment.

    You don’t believe that people will give you all these things just because you are and you deserve them per se (because you can provide value and thus you are valuable), so you enforce politics, manipulation, control and drama in your relationships.

    You try to make sure you will get what you need, even in a shady way if necessary. You may even be doing it unconsciously, only to win the game, only to be on top of others and make sure you don’t lose.

    It may work if you’re good in domination and fierce competition, but what kind of a life is that, always watching your back to see who will try to out-throne you?

    The scarcity mindset is based on feudalism. There isn’t enough for everyone, so I better enslave others before they enslave me. If I want to have something, I must take it away from other people. But is life really a zero-sum game? Is there really no healthy alternative?

    • Is there really no way you can have enough and also share it with others?
    • Is there really no way to compete in a healthy way and encourage others instead of stifling them? And, of course, protect yourself with domination only when really necessary.
    • Is there no way you can give all the love needed to all your kids equally?
    • Is there really no way to see all the jobs you can work at, all the people you can connect with, all the things you can experience in life, without being scared? There may be a way.

    What do you say about the abundance model?

    Now let’s see how a life with the abundance mindset would look like. The abundance model is based on the following facts:

    • You deserve to take care of your needs in a healthy and respectful manner
    • You focus on all the opportunities you have and on becoming the best version of yourself
    • There are no limits to how much love, creativity and encouragement you can share
    • You can satisfy your material needs based on the market economy, not trampling other people
    • You can share material surpluses you make with the people you love and with communities
    • You use domination exclusively when you must protect yourself and are in danger

    If you aren’t greedy because of the scarcity mindset, you do have healthy limits as to how many material things you need in life. You deserve to live a quality and comfortable life, and you don’t need billions for that. With healthy limits, there is enough for everybody.

    You can make money for comfortable living by providing value to the market. You develop your talents as much as possible and the more value you provide, the more you can earn. There’s nothing wrong with that, if it’s not based on greed, where you want more and more, and outwork yourself to exhaustion and step over dead bodies to make another few dollars.

    Money has a tendency to concentrate, so if you are good, you can make a lot of money. Much more than you need. It’s not like you can limit how much your stock worth will increase. But with the abundance mindset, you shouldn’t have any problems sharing your surpluses with others. You can invest, donate money, build new businesses, there are many ways of doing good with a surplus of money.

    You just have to see how lucky you are. You live in the best times ever. A few hundred years ago, in the slave-based economy, that wasn’t even possible. Now in capitalism, you have the opportunity to be paid as much as you create value. History was based on the primitive scarcity mindset together with fear and violence. That’s why it’s so dark. That isn’t a mindset you want to operate on; and you don’t have to.

    The abundance mindset doesn’t mean that you should have unlimited material resources in life. It means that deep inside, you feel that you deserve good things in life; that you see all the opportunities you have and are grateful for them; that you have no problem sharing; and that you act out of prestige not dominance when fulfilling your needs, all in order to achieve a win-win situation in your relationships.

    With the abundance mindset, you know there are many people you can be friends with, you can always make new friends if you desire or a potential spouse. You trust yourself, you know you deserve love and you aren’t afraid of rejections or losing. You are aware that every rejection only means that you have to meet other people who are a better fit for you at the time.

    In relationships, you have no problem giving and receiving. You know there has to be balance. You aren’t envious or jealous, and you don’t compete with the people you love. Because there is enough for everybody.

    If you lose a job, you know you will find a new one. If you need more money to buy yourself something, you know there are many ways of making more money. If you feel lonely, you can always make new friends. With today’s technology, everything is accessible to you. You just have to see it; you just have to change your focus.

    With the abundance mindset, it still hurts when someone betrays you. It’s not easy if a love wears out. It’s not easy when you experience a setback in career or your finances. But it’s not the end of the world. You let yourself emotionally work through failure, and then you focus on the positive and life goes on. Without self-pity. Without aggression. Without self-castration. With gratefulness for what you have experienced in life and what you have.

    You let yourself emotionally work through failure, and then you focus on the positive and life goes on. Without self-pity. Without aggression. Without self-castration. With gratefulness for what you have experienced in life and what you have.

    Do you think that is a model you could live by? Something far away from the zero-sum game mindset? If you think so, let’s look at a few tricks that may help you achieve that.

    Secrets of Life

    A few tricks to develop an abundance mindset

    As mentioned many times, the first step you have to make is to see how much harm you’re doing to yourself and others with the scarcity mindset, then you have to become aware of the alternatives you have and, last but not least, you have to slowly change your mindset and destroy the underlying toxic beliefs, everything supported by action and execution.

    I honestly think that if your scarcity mindset is really strong, therapy is one of the best ways to tackle the problem. But if your thinking is only somehow damaged, there are a few tricks of developing an abundance mindset. To be more positive, here is the best news ever regarding the abundance mindset:

    It doesn’t cost you a single penny to update your mentality from the scarce to the abundance one. All you need is a little bit of courage.

    General tricks

    One very useful thing you can do to rattle the scarcity mindset is to write down all the things you already have in life and are grateful for. You have to focus on what you have if you want to attract even more into your life.

    You have to see that you deserve abundance on all levels and if you appreciate all the small things you already have, you can change your inner state to deserve the big things as well.

    The second thing you can do is to play with your fears. The scarcity mindset is especially based on the following fears:

    • Fear of rejection
    • Fear of abandonment
    • Fear of humiliation
    • Fear of being dependent on other people
    • Fear of missing out
    • Fear of being alone in life
    • Fear of your needs not being met

    Play with all these fears. Face them. Get rejected. Isolate yourself in monk mode. Be vulnerable. Try to curb your temptations. Practice minimalism. But be careful, the idea is not to stifle your needs and wishes even further, the idea is to face your fears, so you can more easily accept the abundance mentality by mastering your fears.

    The next thing you can do is to compare the life areas where you operate out of the abundance mindset with the areas you operate out of the scarcity mindset. Usually there are some areas where you have a strong mindset, you see all the positives and are a real peaceful warrior, and others where you struggle with the scarcity mindset and an emotional cage.

    You may, for example, have no problem earning and enjoying huge amounts of money, but on the other hand, you struggle with intimate relationship, not seeing all the opportunities or having many friends and social groups in life. Or vice versa.

    Find your strong convictions and your weak ones. Compare those two areas in your life. What are your underlying beliefs? Why do you have the abundance mindset in one area and not the other? How can you transfer the abundance mindset you’re enjoying in one area of life to all other areas where you struggle with the scarcity mindset?

    What you can also do is to have a good sense of how to distinguish between temporary states of lack and the general scarcity mindset. Everything in life and nature happens in cycles. Weather seasons. Market movements. An exchange of abundance and lack is always present. Nothing goes up forever.

    Even with the abundance mentality, you usually have to face the pain of shortage of resources from time to time. Remember, being broke is a temporary state, but being poor is a state of mind.

    Your job here on this beautiful planet is to learn and grow. Learning and growing can happen when you’re enjoying abundance and when you have to face limited resources. Both abundance and scarcity are great teachers.

    See the positive side of scarcity. You can learn many things about yourself and life from scarcity, much like you can from abundance. If you had an abundance of everything all the time, life would be boring, there would be no challenges and soon you would get used to it, so it wouldn’t even feel like abundance anymore.

    Scarcity is a part of life, with purpose. It’s a way to be more motivated and grateful for what you have. As you know, it’s quite hard to be grateful for something that you always had, because you don’t have a different experience. But don’t confuse limited resources with the scarcity mindset.

    With the abundance mindset, you should finally realize how little you need to be happy in life.

    Money

    Now let’s move from general advice to money. First of all, read statistics on how much money is out there. Read how much people spend on gambling, entertainment, food, investments etc. When you read about those numbers, you get the right perspective of how rich the world actually is.

    Then tackle your inner money beliefs. Start with sentences like Rich people are… and I am poor, because… and Money is…, and write down everything that comes to your mind. You will start tackling toxic beliefs.

    Ask yourself “why” 5 times, after you complete each sentence. You will get really good insight into your limiting convictions. Remember, being broke is a temporary situation but being poor is a state of mind.

    Have an amount of cash in your wallet that makes you uncomfortable (and you won’t seriously damage your finances if you get robbed). Make sure you never spend it. It must only serve as a reminder that you deserve it and that you can have enough money in life, the only thing preventing you from enjoying abundance is your scarcity mindset.

    When you get used to the amount in your wallet, add a few more bills.

    A similar thing you can do is to ask for a raise (if you deserve it), charge more on an hourly rate, find a better paying job or clients, and so on. You may not earn more working with the same people as you do now, but you can start working with new ones who are prepared to pay you more, if you only provide enough value.

    Or try to find one client that will pay you 10x more than what you’re currently earning per hour. Just try it, to rattle your inner beliefs of how much you deserve.

    Visualize money flowing into your life and having enough money on your bank account. Make sure you internalize how good it feels when you have money in your life. It’s not that it will actually happen if you only visualize it and do nothing.

    The purpose of this exercise is to change your inner state, your inner feelings about money. If you feel uncomfortable when visualizing big sums of money (I don’t deserve it…), it means that your scarcity mindset is controlling you.

    Read a lot about money management. I mean really a lot. By reading, you will update your money mindset by default. You will see how people with the abundance mindset think, what their money management strategies are, and so on. If reading any kind of money makes you throw up, you know you have big problems with the scarcity mindset.

    Also read biographies of people who were poor and became wealthy. Try to see whether their property is based on greed or on a healthy money blueprint, superior management and admissible assertiveness (do they share, do they exploit or provide value etc.).

    Analyze if they are doing good with their money or not. In addition to reading biographies, observe people and money beliefs of people who surround you. How where they raised. Do they act out of the scarcity or the abundance mindset? You will learn so much about yourself.

    Do things that annoy your toxic money beliefs and then analyze them through self-reflection. Don’t give a tip in a restaurant, if it’s not legally mandatory. Or give a much bigger tip than you usually do. Take all the change with every single penny when you make a purchase, if you don’t always do that. Or leave a few coins if you always take every single coin. Do the opposite in very small doses and observe how you feel.

    Career and competences

    Prepare a list of all your skills and strengths. Analyze which talents you can develop further, what the market demands are and how you can provide the most value to the world. Hang a list of your competences somewhere you can always see.

    In the second step, prepare a list of 50 companies you’d like to work for. Go through different directories, lists, companies you buy from etc. For every single company on your list, write down why you want to work there, how you can contribute and help them grow, and so on.

    Prepare a list of 100 business ideas for how you could make additional income in your life. Write down 20 people who can help you get a new job, can vouch for you or you can sell them something. Prepare an outstanding CV.

    Put everything in front of you and see all the options you have in life.

    Relationships

    Now comes the hardest part – relationships. It’s the hardest part because the scarcity mindset is developed out of relationships. The only real step you have to make to develop the abundance mindset is to increase your capacity of love, giving and receiving. Anyway, if that sounds too abstract, here are a few things that help manage relationships when you’re an emotional midget.

    First of all, go to a social skills course or take one online. Being good with people in general is a skill everybody can learn and nothing else. It’s only practice that you have to do and do it a lot – how to shake hands, smile, break the ice and hold a conversation.

    It’s a skill and so learn how to master it, no matter how scared and introverted you are. It will give you the courage to face your deepest fears and negative feelings.

    Secondly, know that we are all already connected. There is actually no ice to break. We all share the same planet, we are all made from the same material, we all have our own struggles and fights. Just show genuine interest in people and know that you’re already connected with everybody.

    Look for shared interests and values. With every new person you manage to truly connect with, you increase your capacity for love a little bit.

    Then always keep in mind that there are approximately 7,000,000,000 people in the world. Among them, there are your many potential friends, lovers, business partners. It’s impossible to be lonely with so many different people on the planet, as long as you don’t allow fears and the scarcity mindset to prevail.

    The toughest part to deal with are rejections. If someone rejects connecting with you, it can definitely hurt, especially if you suffer from the scarcity mindset. But it only means that this isn’t the right timing for this particular connection to be made. Luckily there are 6,999,999,999 or whatever number of other people you can connect with.

    Only rejections can lead you to the right people you have to connect with.

    One way to deal with rejections is to get more exposed to them. Face your fears. Your fears show you where you have to grow in life. Meet new people, open new conversations, be curious and proactive. You may throw up after the first few rejections, but you know, if you’re going through hell, keep going.

    To find the perfect spouse, brush up on your dating skills. It’s as necessary as learning social skills. Don’t be naïve and hope that a love fairy will do all the work instead of you.

    There are so many courses out there on how to be better at dating, you just have to be serious about achieving what you want in life. Raise your sexual market value, learn how to flirt, open new conversations, and so on.

    And as we mentioned, the scarcity mindset is a mindset of fear and control. So you may naively hope that love will do everything instead of you and bring the right person into your life, and then you can keep that person in your life with manipulation, control, only giving and not receiving or vice-versa, and so on. Work hard to start distinguishing between real love and connection and a desire to control people.

    It’s no different than tackling the scarcity mindset in other areas of life. Shift your focus to the positive. Take action. You deserve it.

    Abundance not

    What the abundance mindset isn’t

    There is one more topic we have to cover before we finish. Let’s analyze what the abundance mindset isn’t and how you can apply it into your life in a completely wrong way.

    As mentioned many times before, an abundance mindset is not a mindset based on greed. Greed comes from the scarcity mindset. If healthy competition, collaboration, sharing, positive feelings and prestige are involved, the abundance mindset is in play.

    If manipulation, exploitation, aggression, greed and humiliation are present, the scarcity mindset is in play.

    Positive = connecting and sharing

    Having an abundance mindset doesn’t mean that you delude yourself into thinking that there is no poverty in life and that there is no great gap between the rich and the poor. It exists and it’s a big problem.

    But only if you have abundance in your life, only if you serve as a role model, only if you are in power can you do something about it; and it’s your duty to help make the world a better place for generations to come.

    It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

    The abundance mindset is also not a naïve mindset that life is perfect and that you won’t encounter any problems. The world is tough. There is competition. Some resources are limited.

    There are people who will try to trample you, people who will disappoint you. It’s not that you should forget about it. You have to protect yourself. You have to be assertive in life. But it’s not how you should live the majority of your life.

    • You shouldn’t be a pussy in life, drowning in self-pity and procrastination. Life wants you to fight and become the best version of yourself, and make sure you provide enough value to acquire enough resources to live a quality life as well as share with others. You can achieve that by creating, not exploiting other people.
    • You have to focus on the positive and see all the opportunities you have in life and what the world has to offer to you.
    • You must make sure you don’t become a greedy person who fights to win by trampling down and destroying others.

    There is a fine balance between both extremes – greed and self-castration. Both are run on the scarcity mindset and in the middle lies the sweet spot, based on the abundance mindset. There come times when you have to be tough, sure. There will be times when you have to show that you have a spine of steel.

    But now you know. When people try to hurt you, they act out of the scarcity mindset. Now you understand that better. You can talk to them; you can explain to them what’s happening. And if it doesn’t work, don’t let haters ruin your life. Maybe you are the one clinging to them, because of the scarcity mindset.

    You can choose who you will spend time with. In your personal and professional life, you can definitely find people that will make your journey really worthwhile. You can always find people you respect and they will respect you. You can always find people with the abundance mentality and teach others how to live the positive life.

    Last but not least, you probably know now that the abundance mentality doesn’t mean having unlimited material resources in life. That’s not the point of the story. It’s how you experience the world.

    Homework

    The abundance mindset homework

    You read the whole article, bravo. You’re one of the few people who reached its end. That means you are serious about changing your mindset from the scarcity mindset to the abundance one. Here’s some simple homework you should to do to apply the theory in practice.

    Step 1: Rate from 1 to 10 how much you were exposed to poverty and how much to abundance in your early life in different life areas (emotional, intellectual, financial etc.). 1 means complete poverty and 10 complete abundance.

    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
    General stability of the home environment
    Attention to needs and wants
    Emotional availability of parents
    Intellectual stimulation
    Feeling of social belonging to family
    Money situation

    Step 2: For the areas in which you were exposed to poverty, further analyze your underlying toxic beliefs. Write down beginnings of sentences like Emotions are… and Money makes people… and so on, and write down everything that pops into your mind. After every sentence you write down, ask yourself “why” five times.

    Step 3: Observe yourself to see when you’re acting out of the scarcity mindset. When you don’t allow yourself to fail, when you don’t see all the options you have and what the world has to offer to you, when you’re acting out of negative feelings. Just become aware of your actions out of the scarcity mindset.

    Step 4: Attack. Go to therapy if necessary. Visualize. Do the opposite. Read. Share with others when you don’t want to. Get exposed. Get rejected. Prepare a list of how much the world has to offer. Get creative. Talk to other people. Win. Good luck.