by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 14, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Challenging ourselves is one of the most important things we can do to increase our quality of life. By doing so, we not only improve as individuals but also enhance the lives of those around us and our communities, as well. You can challenge yourself to:
#1 Grow as an Individual
It all starts with you. The below challenges will all help you grow as a person but there\’s even more than that. Engage in self-searching, learn who you are by writing, work on being more genuine, kind, honest, considerate, spontaneous, spiritual, etc. Much of growing as an individual will be related to the Behavior Needs categories.
#2 Attain Awareness, Knowledge and Education
Not expanding your mind is a waste of life. A complacent, inactive mind is a sad thing. Make your mantra \”I must seek awareness\” and your universe will grow and grow. The more we know the more we realize how little we actually understand. It\’s inherently challenging and exciting! With the Internet, the all-time greatest library of knowledge is at your fingertips. Be curious and seek the truth about whatever interests you.
#3 Challenge Yourself to Become Healthier Physically and Mentally
Without health we have nothing. We can challenge ourselves to lose weight, eat better, exercise, get health care and educate ourselves on how to do so. A healthy body yields a healthy spirit.
#4 Build Wealth
Money, money, money. We all want more but without challenging ourselves we are likely to not earn it. Money can\’t buy happiness but it can help us rest easier and enjoy life more! Set goals and challenge yourself to make more, save more and have more money, money, money.
#5 Become self sufficient
With the world economy struggling, more and more people depend on others to get by. Let\’s face it, it sucks to not be in control of your life. Challenge yourself to take the needed steps to put yourself in a position in which you can be the master of your own domain.
#6 Advance in Your Career
Are you satisfied with your career position? If you answered yes, then good for you! Unfortunately, most of us are not completely happy with our career and would like to make advancements within it. A conscious, well thought out set of goals can challenge us and help us improve our station in life.
#7 Become a Better Friend or Partner
Conventional wisdom says friends, family and health are the most important things in life (I would add \’awareness\’). Having good, real friends is mandatory for being happy, but are we being the best friend we can be? Do we listen enough? Do we reach out to our friends to show them we care? Being a good friend is real work and requires conscious, consistent effort. Challenging ourselves to become a better friend will unquestionably make your life (and your friends lives) more fulfilling.
#8 Seek Inspiration and Be More Creative
All great artists eventually learn one golden rule: you must SEEK inspiration. If Vincent van Gogh waited around for inspiration to strike, we wouldn\’t have his incredible body of work to appreciate and he would have been even more unfulfilled. No matter what you do in life, you\’re in need of being creative and seeking inspiration is a never ending quest that requires real diligence. Challenging yourself to find ways to become inspired is a must.
#9 Gain New Experiences and Have More Fun
The alarm clock goes off, we get up and go through our daily routines, then return home to finish off our day. Routines are effective but can bog us down into a mundane lifestyle. BORING! The truth is, it\’s easy to do the same old thing ~ it can even make us feel safe (a good thing). Why not challenge ourselves to try new things? By dong so we\’ll meet new people, learn new things, have more fun and grow as an individual. Heck, we may even be rewarded with new opportunities that may lead to a more fruitful career.
#10 Achieve Happiness and Peace
Happiness and peace are usually the end results of successful challenges, but they can be challenges all on their own. Why not challenge yourself to be more happy and find more peace? This will help you better understand exactly what it is you need to attain these two prized life goals.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 12, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Many of us spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy — not to mention money — taking care of our bodies, and trying to keep ourselves looking and feeling our best. But when it comes to the mind, less attention (literally) is paid. Taking care of the mind can come as an afterthought, and often we think of the mind as something outside of our own control.
\”Our life is the creation of our mind,\” according to Buddhist scripture. Buddhist philosophy developed an entire science of training the unruly mind to help anyone overcome its constant fluctuations to achieve stillness, and eventually, enlightenment.
But even if it\’s not enlightenment you\’re after, developing a good relationship with your mind is critical to building a life that is successful on your own terms. Here are eight habits of mind to start cultivating right now for less stress, more creativity, less distraction and more enjoyment in life.
Make time for stillness.
Meditation has been around for thousands of years, and it\’s perhaps the single most powerful tool out there for gaining mastery over your mind. The mental health benefits of meditation are virtually endless, from addiction recovery to reduced anxiety and depression to enhanced creativity and improved cognitive function. Meditation can actually increase neuroplasticity, making it possible to literally rewire the brain.
\”Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of the brain to change and optimize in a way we didn\’t know previously was possible,\” neuroscience researcher Zoran Josipovic, who has conducted brain-imaging studies on Buddhist monks, told the BBC in 2011.
Pursue meaning over pleasure.
Not all happiness is created equal, and in your own pursuit of joy and bliss, keep in mind that the type of happiness you\’re after can make all the difference. A recent UCLA study found that eudaimonic happiness — that which was linked to having a larger purpose or sense of meaning in life — was linked with healthy gene activity, whereas hedonic, or pleasure-seeking, happiness was not. Those who were happy because they had a sense of purpose in life had lower inflammatory gene expression and higher antiviral and antibody gene expression than others.
\”Eudaimonic happiness is something you build up over a lifetime,\” Shimon Edelman, cognitive psychologist and author of \”The Happiness Of Pursuit,\” told The Huffington Post. \”In a sense, it\’s a great consolation for older people — it\’s nice to know that on that component, people can get more and more happy as they age if they led good lives.\”
Read, read, read.
Consider reading your mind\’s daily greens. Simply reading a book can lower stress levels, help you sleep better, keep your brain sharp, and also stave off Alzheimer\’s.
But before you turn to your Kindle, take note: Reading on screens may drain more mental resources and make it harder to remember what we\’ve read after we\’re done, as compared to reading on paper, according to Scientific American.
\”Whether they realize it or not, people often approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper,\” according to the article.
Let it be.
Sweating the small stuff is one of the most toxic things you can do to your mind — not only can it take over your thoughts, but dwelling on what\’s beyond your control has been shown to be a contributing factor in the development of depression.
You know that unfinished project that\’s been nagging at you? Try just letting it go. According to Arianna Huffington, a great way to complete a project is by dropping it. Huffington recently explained at a Women in Business event in Toronto: \”One of my favorite sayings is \’100 per cent is a breeze, 99 per cent is a bitch\’… That doesn’t mean ignoring my other needs, but it means when I’m in it, I’m really in it. And that means often saying no to good things, to things that you might want to do, but get in the way of sleep, or get in the way of being with your children, or whatever it is that’s also very important to you. Just have a conversation with yourself and say these projects are done, over, and then you have energy for the things you’re really going to commit yourself to.\”
Flex your memory muscle.
Thanks to technology, we\’re taking in more information than ever before, but we\’re also losing our ability to retain that information. A recent poll found that millennials are even more forgetful than seniors, due, at least in part, to their reliance on technology.
Keeping your memory sharp requires some time and attention — but your brain will thank you for it. Certain cognitive tricks and exercises can significantly boost your powers of memory, and make sure that you hold on to those things you never want to forget.
Unplug and recharge.
Constant digital distractions can take a toll on the mind — over-reliance on technology has been linked with increased stress levels, reduced focus and productivity, stunted creativity and poor sleep quality. And Internet addiction is increasingly being recognized as a very real psychological problem.
Many of us never take a break from our devices, even when we\’re supposed to be relaxing (nearly 60 percent of Americans stay plugged in to work while they\’re on vacation). But allotting yourself some tech-free time could make you more focused, less stressed, and happier. “[A digital detox] is almost like a reboot for your brain and your soul,” Cisco executive Padmasree Warrior told the New York Times. “It makes me so much calmer when I’m responding to e-mails later.”
Let your mind wander.
In addition to boosting creativity (and being a generally enjoyable activity), daydreaming can actually make you smarter. According to NYU psychologist Scott Kaufman\’s theory of personal intelligence, mind-wandering is an adaptive trait that helps us to achieve personally meaningful goals, and it helps us to access spontaneous forms of cognition like insight, intuition and the triggering of memories and stored information.
Kaufman recently wrote in Scientific American that mind-wandering can offer significant personal rewards: These rewards include self- awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion… From this personal perspective, it is much easier to understand why people are drawn to mind wandering and willing to invest nearly 50 percent of their waking hours engaged in it.
Linger on the positive.
Want to wire your brain for happiness? You can start by savoring those tiny moments of joy in your day, whether it\’s the smell of fresh coffee or a smile from a loved one. Lingering on these positive moments can help to overcome the brain\’s \”negativity bias,\” which causes us to store negative memories in our brains more easily (and strongly) than positive memories.
“[Lingering on the positive] improves the encoding of passing mental states into lasting neural traits,\” \”Hardwiring Happiness\” author Rick Hanson recently told the Huffington Post. \”That’s the key here: we’re trying to get the good stuff into us. And that means turning our passing positive experiences into lasting emotional memories.\”
Build daily rituals.
Habit is one of the most effective ways to make any positive change in your life. By developing habits, good behaviors that may have once required a feat of willpower to put into action become automatic — which is why they can also be so difficult to break.
\”For the things that you decide matter… the only way to ensure that things that aren’t urgent but are important happen is to build rituals,\” The Energy Project CEO Tony Schwartz told the Huffington Post. \”Build highly specific behaviors that you do at precise times over and over again until you don’t have to use energy to get yourself to do it anymore — until it becomes as automatic as brushing your teeth at night.\”
reblogged from the Huffington Post
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 10, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Caring requires the willingness to feel pain. I am not being morose or dramatic. It is a plain fact that we do not like to talk about and a big reason why we try to care less. The more we care the more we risk our comfort –that is if we call denial comfortable.
The willingness to persist in the face of the this healthy pain that will occur inevitably in the course of our caring and continually figure out how to care more is a signpost of true adulthood. And really becoming less apathetic is about becoming a healthy whole adult.
Unfortunately, most of us have not been clued in to this important truth. We learn to withdraw when we feel the pain rather than open and move forward.
Our lives get smaller.
Our fulfillment wanes.
Before we know it we are sleep walking through our life. Then what happens? Maybe nothing, just the tragedy of wasted life. Or maybe something something big shakes us awake. Like the death of someone close to us or a serious illness and all of a sudden we realize what\’s truly important. We start really caring because of the recognition that we don\’t have very much time or might not have very much time. And now, it\’s in our face that if we don\’t start leaning into life we might never have a chance to do it.
There is only one solution to this predicament. We need to stop numbly staying our comfort zone and figure out what is important to us. We need to be willing to care about what is important to us and let nothing get in the way of our caring.
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 6, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Whether you are an artist or an entrepreneur, it can be easy to fall into a groove and forget to play, explore and push your own edges. When this happens things tend to go a bit flat and we become bored, frustrated or half-hearted in our efforts. We loose the creativity and spontaneity that fosters success.
So when things get a bit grey, here are a few simple practices to inject some beauty and wonder into your life. You might be amazed at how taking the time to do one or more of these will allow you to return to your work with more focus, love and genius.
1. Take a walk. Look for new streets to go down. Extra points if it is dawn, dusk or late at night or if there is inclement weather. Go farther then you expected and suddenly your muse may join you. Listen to her conversation in the patterns of your thoughts and the things you notice as you go.
2. Leave an offering. A bottle cap with an owl on it, a human figure built of out twist ties, a flower, a quartz point, a scrap of paper that says “Please visit, I miss you.” Leave your offering somewhere where you know your muse likes to hang out when she is playing hooky from your studio or office.
3. Read poetry out loud. My favorites include “Demasiado Nombres” by Pablo Neruda and “Sunflower Sutra” by Ginsberg, but you know what your muse likes.
4. Set the mood. Sweep the floor, clear your work area and light some incense or a candle. Let your muse know you are expecting her.
5. Be unpredictable. Change up the hours you are working, stay later then you normally do or start at dawn. Surprise her by being there when she least expects it – it seems to please her.
K Lenore Siner is an artist and associate coach with Dr. Kate
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by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 31, 2013 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Without any further ado and in their own words, here are some of the biggest mistakes and lessons learned from 13 successful entrepreneurs.
1. “We wasted $1,000,000 on a company that never launched”
Hiten Shah, Co-Founder at KISSmetrics
My co-founder and I spent $1,000,000 on a web hosting company that never launched. We were perfectionist so we built the best thing we could without even understanding what our customers cared about. We have now learned to spend smart, optimize for learning and focus on customer delight.
Hiten has since co-founded two wildly successful analytics companies with KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg
2. “We built the website first and asked our customers about it later”
Robin Chase, Co-Founder of Zipcar
Get to your customers as fast as possible & learn from them to build your product.
With my second company, GoLoco – social online ridesharing – we spent too much money on the website and software before engaging with our first customers. This meant that part of our learning was undoing our first guesses.
Robin is the Founder and CEO of Buzzcar and also the founder and former CEO of Zipcar
3. “One of the biggest mistakes we’ve made at Moz was to build “big bang” projects”
Rand Fishkin – CEO of Moz and Co-Founder of Inbound.org
One of the biggest mistakes we’ve made at Moz was to repeatedly build “big bang” projects that required many months of development time without much visibility into progress. It’s sad because it actually worked a number of times, before we fell flat on our faces with a recent project that started in Q4 of 2011, was initially supposed to roll out in July of 2012, and has now been delayed until (fingers crossed) September of 2013. Missing something you budget and plan for by more than a year is really bad news in the startup world.
Don’t be like us – use agile development, have lots of visibility into progress, and keep your team accountable to each other.
Rand Fishkin is the CEO of Moz and co-founder of Inbound.org
4. “I started too late. I toiled in a job I hated for a long time.”
Leo Babauta – Best-selling author
I started too late – because of fear of failure or a lack of belief in myself. I toiled in a job I hated for a long time, instead of starting a blog or building a business I loved.
Knowing what I know now, I’d have started a decade earlier. Not starting is the worst-case scenario.
Leo Babauta is a best-selling author and an entrepreneur
5. “I tried to do it all by myself”
Leo Laporte – Founder of the TWiT network
My biggest mistake was trying to do it all myself. As a founder I felt like I knew everything I needed to know about media, content, even the technology involved to reach my audience. And I did. I just didn’t know anything at all about making a viable business: finance, marketing, advertising, and human resources.
After a few years of rapid growth my company had stalled out, and I was spending more time fighting fires than I was doing the stuff I loved (and that made us money).
Hiring a business partner then giving her full scope to do her job felt a little like giving up my company but it was a vital step toward success.
Leo Laporte is the founder of the TWiT network and host of The Tech Guy and This Week in Tech
6. “If you’re not 100% excited, say no”
Tim Ferriss – NYT Best-selling author of 3 books
Committing to too many ‘cool’ opportunities and projects. I think it’s important, as Derek Sivers (founder of CDBaby) would say, to either say ‘Hell, yes!’ or a flat ‘no’ to things. They should be definitive and binary.
If you’re not 100% excited, it should be a decline. ‘Kinda cool’ will fill up your calendar and leave you wondering where the last year – or 10 – went.
Tim Ferriss is the best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek and an entrepreneur
7. “I’ve let growth exceed my own ability to fund my business”
Michael Hyatt – NYT best-selling author
In 1992, I made the mistake of borrowing money to fund my growing company. Unfortunately, I did not understand the difference between rapid growth (like cancer) and healthy growth (normal cellular reproduction).
Eventually, our growth consumed our capital and the business failed. I learned an important lesson: Never let growth exceed my own ability to fund it. If I am tempted to seek outside funding, it is a sign of a flawed business model.
Michael Hyatt is the New York Times Best-selling author of Platform and also a serial entrepreneur
8. “Spreading myself too thinly over too many projects”
Neil Patel – Co-Founder of KISSmetrics
One of the biggest lessons I learned was not to spread myself too thin. Like other entrepreneurs I love trying to do multiple things at once.
But once I learned to focus all of my time and energy into one business, I was able to make it grow faster than all of my previous businesses.
Neil Patel co-founded KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg
9. “I built a product without understanding the market or the users”
Sandi MacPherson – Editor-in-Chief, Quibb
Last year, I spent 6 months building a product I wouldn’t use very often, in a market I wasn’t familiar with, for users I didn’t understand – big mistake.
It made it extremely difficult to figure out why things were or weren’t working, and I ended up creating a product that no one wanted. I could never become the product expert, which is what every founder/CEO needs to be.
Sandi MacPherson is the Editor-in-Chief of Quibb
10. “I made the big mistake of being a ‘parallel entrepreneur’”
Dharmesh Shah – Co-Founder and CTO of HubSpot
Here’s my biggest mistake: After having bootstrapped a reasonably successful software company ($10M+ in revenue) I mistakenly thought—Hey, I’ve got a team in place, the company doesn’t really need me, and I’m sort of bored and want to do something new. So, I made the big mistake of being a “parallel entrepreneur”. Trying to head up two different startups at the same time.
This was a huge mistake at many different levels. Turns out, startups are an all-consuming thing. You can’t be all-consumed by two companies at the same time – it just doesn’t work. My original startup team (the team I had recruited personally) felt abandoned. My new startup (the one I angel-funded) didn’t feel enough pressure to find product market fit and get revenues.
So, my advice: Don’t do what I did. Don’t ever, ever, ever try to ride two horses at the same time. It does’t work, and you’re going both a disservice. Even with complete, total focus, most startups fail – to divide interests across them basically guarantees failure.
Dharmesh Shah is a Co-Founder and CTO at HubSpot
11. “Protect your company culture”
Derek Sivers – Founder of CD Baby
Protect your internal culture, no matter what. Once it turns nasty, it never goes back. Fire a rotten apple immediately. Note from Belle: Derek wrote a great blog post about this which expands on how he felt after having issues with his company’s culture. Here’s a little snippet: I cut two chapters out of my book because they were too nasty. They vented all the awful details about how my terrible employees staged a mutiny to try to get rid of me, and corrupted the culture of the company into a festering pool of entitlement, focused only on their benefits instead of our clients.
Afterwards, I spent a few years still mad at those evil brats for what they did. So, like anyone feeling victimized and wronged, I needed to vent – to tell my side of the story. Or so I thought. So do you want to know the real reason I cut those chapters? I realized it was all my fault. I let the culture of the company get corrupted. I ignored problems instead of nipping them in the bud.
Derek Sivers is a best-selling author and entrepreneur
12. “I put myself before Facebook, it cost me $100,000,000″
Noah Kagan – Chief Sumo, AppSumo
When I got fired from Facebook, it was my entire life. My social circle, my validation, my identity and everything was tied to this company. As the company grew, I wasn’t able to adapt. One of the reasons why was that I was selfish.I wanted attention, I put myself before Facebook. I hosted events at the office, published things on this blog to get attention and used the brand more than I added to it.
Lesson learned: The BEST way to get famous is make amazing stuff. That’s it. Not blogging, networking, etc.
Noah Kagan is Chief Sumo of AppSumo
13. “People really are everything in business”
Jesse Jacobs – Founder, Samovar Tea Lounge
One thing I’ve learned over 12 years running Samovar Tea Lounge is the importance of having the right people on your team.
It’s worth the extra effort to find the right investors, employees, and vendors who believe in your company’s mission and passionately desire to contribute to it – not just those who want to punch the clock or get their share of profits. People really are everything in business, and the people you align yourself with will either buoy you up or weigh you down.
Jesse founded Samovar Tea Lounges with the mission to enrich people’s lives
reblogged from The Buffer Blog a blog about: productivity, life hacks, writing, user experience, customer happiness and business.
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