20 Ways to Strive for Excellence in Life

Most of us are trying hard to juggle it all in life: career, work, family, self-care and then some. We believe that in order to be our best selves, we should “get the most out of it”, and be on the ball in all fields of our lives. Although this article deals with excellence, you might be surprised that I am not urging you to be at the top of the game in every single aspect of life. Instead, I would like to invite you to excel in those fields where you really can make a difference, so that when you move on, you shall have left behind a better world for those who follow.

This is an invitation to find your voice and leave a mark in the world; an invitation to surpass the average and aim for higher levels of excellence; an invitation to tap into your talents more deeply than before and turn yourself into a radiating powerhouse. It is time to live your purpose in life and share your unique, beautiful gifts with all other beings.

In essence, excellence is the very opposite of perfectionism. Perfectionism is losing your true self in the demands of society, and trying to emulate a person who is not you and whom you can never become. Excellence, on the other hand, is becoming the center of your own universe, and from that grounded, centered position, shining your light into the world by using your unique talents.

Living a life of excellence takes effort, but at the same time is rewarding and gives you energy so that you can keep up your work. Here are 20 ideas that you can implement to strive for excellence:

1. Identify your values

To make the right choices in your life, you need to know what truly matters to you. Keep a list of your core values, and write your observations on how you and others live according to these values as well. Revisit your list often to focus your energy on what you value most in life.

2. Stand up for a cause

Sometimes we’ll hear something in the news that seems to pull a string deep inside of us—we feel that the cause at hand is truly worth to fight for. Express your opinion, and become active. Whether it is protecting animal rights, fighting street harassment, or ending the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, find what truly makes you tick and throw your weight into the battle.

3. Truly listen

Connect to others by listening to their story. Hold your advice and similar experiences, and go deeper into the experience the other person is telling you, sensing his/her emotions and reactions. In this way, you will learn more about other people; about their needs and values.

4. Feel your emotions

Stop muffling your emotions underneath a big blanket and putting your fake-happy-neutral face all the time. Learn from children, who are sad, happy, excited and tired over the course of less than an hour. Feel what truly goes on within yourself,and simply accept it.

5. Be a cycle

Ebbing and flowing, turning in cycles and circles—that is the rhythm of both our planet and our lives. Society, however, seems to think that life is a ladder that we need to climb, step by step. Instead of trying to go up, up, up all the time, learn to live with the cycles of the moon and the seasons, and feel the waxing and waning energies in yourself.

6. Meditate

Meditation is the single most powerful personal development tool out there, so practice it daily. Cling to your meditation practice when times get busy and the going gets tough: those are the moments when you need it the most.

7. Journal

Let your thoughts out on a sheet of paper or your screen, and use your journal as a place to reflect on your day, your progress in life and all observations from the day that might need to leave your mind so that you can relax.

8. Define your limiting beliefs

What is holding you back? What cultural conditioning is keeping you from stepping out from the crowd? Do you think you can’t do it because you’re too old, because you haven’t gone to college or because you are a woman? Define your limiting beliefs, and then release them into the wide open.

9. Practice gratitude

Learn to be grateful for all positive experiences that come across your path on a given day. Keep a list of 10 things that you are grateful for, every day. When dark days are upon you, be grateful for your health, for life, for your pet… anything that can give you a little spark.

10. Smile

Light up your face and the heart of another person with a smile. Sadly enough, smiles nowadays can be misinterpreted as an attempt to seduce someone, an expression of naivety, or even dumbness. Put smiling back where it deserves to be: an expression of joy and positive feelings and a way to connect with other humans.

11. Show compassion

Stop judging others when they make mistakes or hurt you. Instead, try to put yourself in their shoes, and think: “There I go, being rude/inattentive/etc.”. By thinking along these lines, you understand how all human beings are similar; how we all have are flaws and bad moments that can be forgiven.

12. Learn from your dreams

First, learn how to remember your dreams. Then, start toanalyze the symbols that occur in your dreams and explore your subconsciousness. I don’t believe in the lists of dream symbols that you can find online—I think that every person’s subconsciousness makes different connections between our experiences, and thus brings forth these symbols from a different background in each individual.

13. Teach

Use your unique gift to teach others. Spend time with people who try to learn your language, share a craft that you master, organize a workshop about a new software package at work or volunteer at a local school—the options for teaching are as abundant as the diversity of talents among us all.

14. Face your demons

What happened in your past that left a rotten piece in your heart? When you feel like the time is ready, fasten your seat belt and face your demons. Only when you can address the darker parts of yourself can heal your past and move more freely into your future.

15. Take up a difficult task

Step forward when a difficult task is handed out. Lean into the opportunity, choose the spotlight, be realistic, and discuss with your boss/mentor/guide what you are about to take on. Ask others for advice and help, and don’t beat yourself up when you make a mistake.

16. Celebrate your body

Your body is beautiful, regardless of your size, shape, and medical condition. Celebrate your body by giving it wholesome foods, time to exercise (just like caring for your dog means letting him out for a walk), and additional care, such as massages and sauna visits.

17. Honor your intellect

Find the boundaries of your understanding, and explore from there. Take up an online course, join a conversation group, solve difficult puzzles—anything that gets your mental machinery going and feels like a challenge is a good way to honor your brain.

18. For give

Forget past transgressions and forgive yourself, your loved ones, and everyone else. A very powerful way of letting go of grudges and negative feelings is to practice a meditation on forgiveness and loving-kindness.

19. Focus on being, not on having

Consumerism is the blood of our economy, but with scarcer resources, the time has come to define ourselves based on who we are instead of what we have.

20. Ask yourself every day: “Did I give the very best of myself to the world?”

Stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself: “Did I give the very best of myself to the world today?” If the answer is “yes”, explore what motivated you and how you feel at the end of the day. If the answer is “no”, don’t beat yourself up, but reflect on what happened today that took you out of your balance.

How do you strive for excellence in life?

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/20-ways-strive-for-excellence-life.html

8 Ways to Be Smarter

Intelligence isn't simply a fixed quantity, a learning expert explained in a talk recently. How smart we are is powerfully affected by our situation, and that's something we can control.

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Somewhere along the way in life you’ve probably taken an IQ test and were give some number as an answer. That figure -- seemingly definitive and said to portray some inborn capacity -- may have given you the impression that your level of intelligence, no matter how high or low it might be, is a fixed quantity. You can learn, sure, but basically you’re only as smart as you were born to be, right?

But that’s not what the latest science actually says, learning expert and author Annie Murphy Paul recently explained in a speech, which she helpfully transcribed to her blog. Intelligence, it turns out, is way more complicated than that.

In the lengthy but fascinating talk, Murphy Paul lays out eight ways intelligence is affected by context in which we put it to use and suggests ways that we can rethink intelligence to get the best out of the brain we were born with. The complete speech is well worth a read if you’re interested in the subject, but to get your warmed up, here are the basic ideas she explores in greater detail in the complete post:

Situations can make us smarter. They can be the physical conditions that learners experience by way of how much stress they’re under and how much sleep and exercise they get, and the mental conditions learners create for themselves by the levels of expertise and attention and motivation they’re able to achieve. Situational intelligence, in other words, is the only kind of intelligence there is.

Beliefs can make us smarter. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck distinguishes two types of mindsets: the fixed mindset, or the belief that ability is fixed and unchanging, and the growth mindset, or the belief that abilities can be developed through learning and practice. These beliefs matter because they influence how think about our own abilities, how we perceive the world around us, and how we act when faced with a challenge or with adversity.  

Expertise can make us smarter. Experts don’t just know more, they know differently, in ways that allow them to think and act especially intelligently within their domain of expertise... Expertise takes a long time to develop, of course, but it’s never too early--or too late--go deep in a subject area that interests us.

Attention can make us smarter. There are information-processing bottlenecks in the brain--everybody’s brain--that prevent us from paying attention to two things at the same time. The state of focused attention is a very important internal situation that we must cultivate in order to fully express our intelligence.

Emotions can make us smarter. When we’re in a positive mood, for example, we tend to think more expansively and creatively. When we feel anxious--for instance, when we’re about to take a dreaded math test--that anxiety uses up some of the working memory capacity we need to solve problems, leaving us, literally, with less intelligence.

Technology can make us smarter. The problem is that our devices so often make us dumber instead of smarter... In order for tech to make ourselves smarter and not dumber, we need understand when to take full advantage of our devices, and when to put them away.

Our bodies can make us smarter. All the things that make the heart work better--good nutrition, adequate sleep, regular exercise, moderate stress--make the brain work better too.

Relationships can make us smarter. If you have a spouse or significant other: it’s likely that one of you is “in charge” of remembering when the car needs to go in for inspection, while the other is “in charge” of remembering relatives’ birthdays. This is called transactive memory, and it’s just one of the ways that relationships with others can make us smarter than we would be on our own... a feeling of belonging is critical to the full expression of our ability.

http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/8-ways-to-be-smarter.html?nav=pop