How environment impacts us
There was carried out an experiment. Two fishes of the same species were placed in different aquaria. One fish to a small one, which was slightly bigger than the fish itself. The other fish was put in a huge aquarium. The result was what one could expect: the fish in the small aquarium were few times smaller than the fish in the big aquarium. Fishes unlike people, don’t have ability to think and to affect their environment, but they are great at adapting.

However, people also are able to adapt to circumstances. If you don’t wear a suit, than after putting it on, getting up hairs, shaving and doing everything else to look perfectly, suddenly something happens. Mind changes. We start to like ourselves more, to be more self-confident. We feel some kind of expectations and we strive to fulfil them.

Human expectations, trust and beliefs
I guess that everyone of you have witnessed this type of event. Imagine, that John is an ordinary man. Nothing spectacular, but doing what needs to be done. One day a friend, colleague or supervisor projects to him trust: “John, I know that you’re working very good, but you should be in a better place, you can do more. In every part of your work I see efforts becoming quality”. Add some more people saying similar phrases and suddenly John changes. He works harder, faster and with more passion. Also, it takes him the same 8 hours a day. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily last a long time, but it is clear that other people expectations and trust impacts us a lot, as well as our own projected to ourselves.

In addition, you can do the same with friends, relatives or children. It’s not manipulation – you don’t need to lie. Just say some good words to a person – he must know that he are doing fine and that others value his work. This way he’ll start to do more and more, finally revealing his full potential.

So, if you try to accomplish small goals, then they look like big ones. This way you can’t accomplish anything solid, great or important. If, however, you try to do big things, meaningful goals, then everything is on the contrary – in your favour.

Change environment, and it will change you
Now that you have made sure that environment has quite large impact on us, we should use it for our own good. It’s very simple – imagine what you want to be. Then reflect this visualization to environment and change it accordingly.

I believe many of you have heard this expression „Fake it till you make it”. If you “pretend” to manage your time well, then you become time management expert. If you start being neat and tidy, then you become an orderly person.

Here are some basic things you should do: your job, house, car and everything else should be neat. You must be with dressed hairs, shaved and clean. On the walls hang sheets telling stories of your achievements and goals you’ve accomplished – principle of expectation – if you succeeded in the past, you’ll succeed again.

Conclusion
Fake you are, who you want to be, till you become it. Accordingly adjust environment, you live in. It’s easy, isn’t? Now, however, it’s easier and more pleasant to go towards your goals.

Procrastination is a disease
Procrastination is one of the mistakes, we can make on our they to success. By procrastinating we are just running from a full-rate life, which we can experience at this moment. Only the small amount of people are able not to postpone tasks every day – most of us are sick.

Why is it the disease? If human always procrastinates, he is just lying for himself. He is running from his wishes and his future. He is trying to stay in his past, to hold status unchanged. Maybe he is afraid of failure. It looks very familiar to psychological invalidity. No matter what it is, do you really want to have it in your life? Consider it – you can choose.

There is no procrastinated tasks
What is a delayed task? It is the task, which should be done tomorrow instead of now? But assignments of tomorrow don’t exist, because tomorrow hasn’t come yet.

What is procrastinating? It’s nothing. In the reality there are only completed and uncompleted tasks.

So, task is completed or not. Black and white. There isn’t a place for grey.

How to stop procrastinating

1. Read again the paragraph “Procrastination is a disease”. Do you really want to be sick with it? To stuck in one place? To achieve nothing? Always to be pity about yourself and say “tomorrow is the day I’m going to start doing X”.
2. Instead of “tomorrow” assign a concrete time, for example, Wednesday at 18:00. Commit yourself to it, brace yourself. Impose a reward for completing a task. And just do it.
3. Do you remember that pleasant feeling, that you’ve done something important? A project or a task is very large, elaborate. There isn’t enough information to understand how much work is needed to complete it. We always want to accomplish any task very well, so we procrastinate again and again. After a while we start to feel discomfort – the conscience is eating us from inside for our laziness. Finally, we do a small part of the task. We start to feel great, because the job is moving forward. Also, we understand that it was easier than we previously thought. It looks like it’s more fun and simple than we originally guessed. Remember the pleasant feeling.
4. Maybe you are postponing a concrete tasks. When ask yourself, whether you really want to do it. Why to do something, which deep inside of you looks like a stupid, unpleasant and unessential thing? Maybe somebody else is trying to make you to do it? In this case write down advantages of doing a task. If the list doesn’t reduce your wish to procrastinate to a minimum level, then just drop out this task and don’t do it.
5. It’s hard to complete a task with one attempt. Assign 30 minutes of your precious time for doing the task. After the time has passed, you can stop doing. This way you can avoid procrastination, which is caused by elaboration and size of the task. Also, we see that the task was easier than we thought. We get a pleasure of moving forward with the task and it motivates us to go further with it.
6. Understand that you are to much valuable to be always worried about things you need to do. When next time you’ll feel uncomfortable because of procrastinating, remember that people who loves themselves don’t hurt themselves like that.
7. It’s better to do something than to try to make it perfect at the very first time and have nothing tangible, nothing completed. So, just do something. You’ll have plenty of time to improve it.
8. If you’re going to start reading, start now. If you’re going to learn more in you profession field – begin now. The only time we have is the present. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow hasn’t come yet.

Conclusion
Don’t lie to yourself and don’t trick your conscience. Just do it. Start today, start now. The sooner you’ll start the sooner you’ll get the desired results. Don’t leave for tomorrow, what you can do today.

Visualize that we want to take exercise every morning. At the beginning we feel giant enthusiasm, so, we easily wake up and start taking exercise by power of our will. We have great results for several days or a couple of weeks. Later the enthusiasm vanishes. After it happens we start to lie for ourselves: “I’ll sleep today a bit longer, because I will need all my strength today. I will take double exercise tomorrow”. Finally, determination is gone and nothing is changed.

Now, let’s look to other example – many of us are so habituated to brush our teeth just before going to bed, that we can do it without any efforts despite of huge fatigue. It’s the difference between “doing everyday” and a habit. This article is about the power of habits and their development.

How to develop a habit
Below is a list of things, which are necessary to acquire habits.

1. Write down advantages of having concrete habit. Have that list nearby. It allows to get a burst of motivation. Also, if the habit doesn’t have advantages why to bother developing it?
2. Before starting a habit, decide what reward you are going to get if you succeed. The reward should be additional motivation for doing things. The reward cannot be directly connected with the habit. For example, a habit to wake up every day at the same hour. A reward – having more time is a wrong one. It’s not the reward, but a result of having developed the habit. It makes us think about it as a natural thing and natural things don’t motivate us.
3. Specific time. It can be time, place or any other factor, which is specific. The most important part is that factor would happen only once throughout the day. For example, getting out of bed, 18:00 (specific time), dinner, having a bath and so on.
4. Proceed at least for 30 days. Psychological literature states that biologically humans need 21 day to acquire a habit. Well, for me it’s too short period, that’s why I offer 30 days, which is mostly recommended in popular blogs of personal development.
5. If you want to have a habit which occurs 3-6 times a week, than I suggest to make it everyday habit. It’s hard to do something every two or three days, because there isn’t permanence. But if you choose the right trigger, like the end or beginning of workday, than everything will work just fine.
6. If you failed even for one day, you must start from 0. If you want to develop a habit, you must do it every time a trigger occurs without any breaks for 30 days.
7. Temporality. A mind that we must do something every day for all our life takes away our motivation. For example, it’s hard to start getting up early everyday if you think, that it’s the way it is going to be for your whole life. A solution is very simple – have a habit for only 30 days. Later look at the results, if you like them than decide to proceed with it again for 30 days. After that you can evaluate results again and so on. Also, the longer you proceed with the habit, the harder it will be to break it. So, I doubt that staying with the habit for 90 days, you will want to stop.

It’s just 7 simples steps – everything is simple and effective. Don’t know where to start? Well, the next paragraph contains some ideas, how to use this weapon to change your life to the better side.

Habit examples

1. Read for an hour every day;
2. Quit smoking, drinking coffee, eat junk food or drop other addictions;
3. Start taking exercise;
4. Complete one task every day. Later you can use this habit for rare tasks. For example, writing blog entries twice a week. It’s an infrequent habit, that’s why it’s hard to develop. But using one task habit, you can assign to write an entry for any day of week. So, every time it can be a different day.
5. Talk to stranger every day;
6. Stop watching TV. If you are afraid of not seeing something important, than you can record them. If after 30 days you think that you’ve lost something, than you will have an opportunity to catch up.
7. Write an article or a book chapter;
8. Wake up every morning at the same hour;
9. Learn 3 new words everyday;
10. Stop reading forums;
11. Massage your partner every evening;
12. Write a diary entry;
13. Make 20 sale calls.

How to retain habits
Let’s imagine, that we have a habit of taking exercise every day. It’s hard to retain habits on a vacation or business trip. Often we don’t have time or facilities. It’s nothing to worry about. After getting back to familiar environment, you’ll still have the habit. Knowing this fact makes clear why drug-addicts is suggested to change environment. New environment means new habits. Also, habits can be effective in several places at once. For example, I spend 3 days in one city and 4 in the other, but it hasn’t any impact on my habits. They are valid on both environments. You must develop a habit on every different environment.

The longer you retain a habit, the easier to stay with it. Image that you take exercise for 23 days. It’s hard to stop now, when you know how much is already done and that a reward is so near.

Conclusion
You can break your head to a stone, but drop by drop slashes the stone. It’s the same with habits – after developing them they always pull you to success.

Think up or choose from the list, what are you going to do every day, pick up the time, write down advantages, decide about a reward and start developing!

Firstly – image of your ideal
If you want to use this method, you must describe the perfect you. Take a sheet of paper and write down who you want to be.

Describe, how your ideal takes decisions, how he acts under pressure, what his character is. Define the ideal so particularly that you could determine how he would act in one or other situation.

Act as your ideal
Don’t know what decision to make? It’s not a problem at all, because you know what your ideal would do. But maybe even he can not help you to decide, then at least search for solution as he would do: no crying or moaning, but deciding by counting all pluses and minuses and understanding that you can not influence all of the external factors, for example, the rain.

First example
I would like to illustrate this with a very simple example. Imagine, that you are in your kitchen and have just dropped a greasy morsel of meat on the floor. Now you are able to do the following things:
a) to pretend that it hasn’t happened and leave the meat on the floor;
b) to take and bin the meat, but leave the dirt on the floor;
c) to kick the meat under the fridge, and clean the floor with your slipper;
d) to bin the meat and do proper cleaning of the floor.
My ideal would choose d, what about yours?

It’s a very simple situation, but perfectly shows how having the ideal allows to take decisions easily. As I have written, every fortune starts with a simple and small step.

Second example
Now let’s visualize something more complicated. It’s a deep night, you’re going home and suddenly you see that three men are trying to take a girl away against her will. They are about 50 meters away and don’t see you. You can choose one of the following:
a) to pretend, that you don’t see anything suspicious (anyway it’s not my business);
b) to call the police and leave;
c) to attack one against three – I’m relative of Chuck Norris, so I’ll beat them easily even if they have guns ;
d) to call the police and try to make them to take note of your presence. That would create time for a girl to escape.
What your ideal would do this time? Mine would choose c, but until I haven’t required skills or gun, I would be forced to choose d. I’m quick and fast, at the worst case scenario I would win some time for the police to come.

It’s very simple to use these decision making principles in every day life. Do your ideal checks email every five minutes? Does he every free moment at work goes to facebook? Or maybe firstly accomplishes his tasks and later does important things? Does your ideal watch TV every day? Act as your ideal and become like him.

The ideal isn’t perfect
Firstly, I believe that all of you agree that the perfect human doesn’t exist. Also, we don’t need viceless people. You don’t need to be always the first, the right one, the best and so on. What is really important that you enjoy everyday life, get experience and learn from mistakes. Don’t forget to stop and smell roses, don’t run through your life as its purpose would be to finish it as fast as you can without noticing anything.

Who doesn’t lose, doesn’t win. It’s that simple. Do you think that successful people achieved their happiness with the first try? No, they are the people, who don’t stop after every failure, but continue until become winners.

Therefore, don’t imagine ideal as a perfect man. Often despite a lot of efforts we fail, but actually it’s a step forward. Every failure makes as stronger and smarter. So, don’t give up and you’ll get your fortune.

Laugh
It’s a quite universal drug, curing many diseases like anger, irritation, and of course, stress. Also, it’s a perfect way to start a day. Every morning we can relax and laugh by reading humour webpage.

There are many sources of laugh: hilarious friends, comedies, humour broadcasting or, as mentioned above, funny webpages. Choose what you like and use it steadily.

Sport
While being under stress human body uses more resources than usually. While taking exercise human system uses more resources too. What does it mean? Well, that body uses double amount of usual resources. But after working out is finished, blood is saturated with endorphins, which works like narcotics. It makes us feel calm and happy, and that way stress is reduced.

Moreover, physical load is a great means to remove obsessions from your head. After spending two hours playing basketball, you really don’t think, how bad it is, that today you were late almost an entire minute to your workplace

And thirdly, the body of man, who constantly takes exercise, is more prepared to work under stress and has a better immune system. Have in mind, that immune system takes the most important part in staying healthy.

Imagination
Sport helps to remove obsessions from your head, but it’s possible to do it directly. Brain is filtering every peace of information it gets by using images, which are stored in our heads. Imagine beautiful and white clouds, which are slowly moving through sky, really really slowly. One cloud is like a smile. And it seems, that he is smiling to you. Later, you see small children jumping from one cloud to another. They are very very happy and smiling to you. If you were reading carefully and really imagining, then you should have felt that this visualization have more or less impact to your mood.

We can use this knowledge to reduce stress by changing one image by other. After tension starts to rise, visualize that you are in a desert island, there isn’t any problems, just many beautiful palm trees. The sea is lightly blue and calm. But don’t forget to solve the problem after coming back from that dream.

Breathing exercises
Breathing reflects our inner state. And by using various exercises we make an impact to our psychological and physical state.

There exists many breathing exercises: relaxing, phrenic, thoracic and other.

Yet I’ve tried only one. According to my experience, it’s very helpful to fight first wave of stress, when body is mobilized for steady responses to outside stimulus. But it isn’t effective against long time enduring tension. This exercise allows to calm and act on right decisions while being under high pressure.

That’s how you do it:

1. Make yourself comfortable, straight your back that air could easily flow into your lunges;
2. Take a very deep breath;
3. Breathe out every peace of air;
4. Hold your breath as long as you can. But not longer than needed to correctly complete the next step;
5. Slowly breathe in through your nose. Feel how oxygen is filling your lunges by going trough your nostrils;
6. Repeat 2-5 steps until you’ll calm down.

It works because of the following three reasons: firstly, human system is saturated with oxygen, which is vitally important for our bodies. Secondly, while making breathing exercise we concentrate on our inner processes. It makes our minds to leave the problem and calm down, because we don’t focus on the problem anymore. And thirdly, for some biological reasons human system emits endorphins when our lunges are totally empty. As I described above, endorphin is hormone of happiness and joy, and that’s why it takes and important part in relieving stress.

Repetition
This is a method which not only suppresses tension, but also enables to totally eliminate it from situations of the same kind .

Many humans are afraid of public speaking. After getting to the stage, they start to feel lots of stress symptoms, for example increased beating of heart, faster breathing and so on. But I believe you agree with the idea that if a man did it the thousandth time, when there would be no thrill. And the same thing is true for any other repeated situation, which causes irrational fears.

Why does it work? Because stress is caused by the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined. When situation is repeated many times, it becomes familiar to us. So, we become relaxed, because we know what and how to do.

Other methods
If you know any not mentioned ways to overcome stress, please leave their description as a comment.

The length of article exceeded 1000, so I divided it into two parts. Next part is available here.

What is stress?

Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined. The tension also can be evoked by negative factors, injuries, continuous rush and so on.

Stress or just a nervous tension plays an important role in our lives. It mobilizes energy of our body and prepares muscles for sudden responses. It’s a pity, that nowadays we normally don’t need to run from a big, white and angry bear. We simply need to beat some kind of every day problems and tension makes it even harder. While being under stress, brain cannot function under high level processing, because control of body is transmitted to more primitive brains, which can respond faster, but usually inadequate in these days world.

Human system isn’t supposed to be in the maximal level of mobilization for a long time. After some time form of stress changes. You could say that it becomes more gentle: there comes laziness, gloomy mood, no appetite, hardness to sleep.

Stress by itself is a defensive state of body for protecting us from difficulties. Small amount of stress allows us to work more efficient and faster. So, only continuous stress is a problem.

Sleep
Sleep is one of the two described methods, which is used before facing stressful situations. According to researches, a human having good sleep can solve problems more effectively. It means that he overcomes stress faster. Remember, that a short period of stress is beneficial, and only the long one becomes problem.

Also, individuals having a good rest have higher level of energy and more powerful immunity system. It makes human energy last longer even while being effected by physiological changes, caused by tension.

Thirdly, humans having enough sleep always are at a better mood, which reduces probability that the problem will cause stress for your body.

Usually, grown up individual needs 7-8 hours sleep. But it depends from environment, where you sleep. Light and noise increase the need for hours of sleep.

Friends and familiar objects
Recently, I listened to audio program of the famous psychoneuroimmunologist, named Nick Hall. There is described very interesting experiment about how stress affects monkeys. Stress level was measured by physiological factors, for example, how much more erythrocytes are in blood.

The monkey was closed in the cage, which was connected to electricity. After current was on, the level of stress was measured. It was assessed that if there was one more money in the den, which was well known by the tested one, than the level of stress reduces. If there is 12 monkeys familiar to the tested one, than level of stress was quite low in comparison with the original one. The most important factor is the familiarity of the monkeys, otherwise stress doesn’t get lower. Also, it works with familiar things.

I believe that it is why it works: while being in stress we encounter various fears, which forces us to search for safety. What is safety? It’s familiar places and conditions. Well, the conclusion is quite clear – you need to wrap up yourself with familiar things. Put photographs and symbols in your workplace. Often meet friends, even better to meet with many friends at once, because according to research, the more is better.

Other methods
Descriptions of alternative methods you can find in the next part of article, which is placed here.

Don’t try to break wall using your head
Sometimes we find us in situation, when we are trying to solve problem using one approach after another. We try many different methods, eventually we start to use methods, which we’ve already tried for that problem. The worst thing is that we even didn’t notice being stuck in circle of wrong methods. Often we spend much time in this circle. For cases like this I suggest two solutions: have leaflet with information where to search new methods for finding the key to the problem, and don’t forget to take breaks.

Have “questions leaflet”
It’s very primitive, but effective method. Write questions on paper, which may help to find new ways of solving the problem. You can write places where to look inspiration or names of friends which may help. Here goes my own “questions leaflet”:

• Have I already tried using “Google”?
• Do I know any methods, which I haven’t used yet?
• Who from my friends could know the answer or to put me in the right direction?
• Take a 30 minutes break.

Keep the pamphlet in a well visible place, for example, on the monitor edge. It will force your eyes to see leaflet enough often and not to fall in a circle of using wrong techniques .

Let the brain to rest
Tony Buzan in famous book „Use your memory” wrote that a human needs to take break every 10-50 minutes. Interval size depends on human characteristics. But most of us are used to 45 minutes period, which is used in schools, and 45 minutes is what I offer. A break should last from 2 to 10 minutes. Use the break to let your brain to have mental rest. For that matter perfectly fits walk, small exercise or making a cup of tea.

This kind of routine enables you:

• To keep good comprehension and memorization for a long period of time;
• To understand new information easier and quicker, because the older one is already arranged in your head, and your brain is ready to memorize and comprehend new knowledge;
• To have a better long term memorization, because brain uses breaks to sort information, and it allows to keep various details longer in your head.

To conclude, making pauses allows to keep high creativity, to reduce fatigue and helps to work with new information and tasks.
The next advantage is that while taking break, brain gives us many fine ideas about recently made tasks or seen information. I call it “nose lifting from screen” syndrome

Let your brain work instead of you
Sometimes no matter what we do, we just can’t see the right solution. We think again and again, but the light doesn’t go up in our head. When the decision isn’t speedy, you can use very simple method: just leave the problem. Formulate the problem in your head and forget it. Now it’s just a question of time, when you’ll get the perfect idea about the key to the problem.

Most effectively this method works, when just before going to bed you search for solution, but after failure you go to bed. Mostly, just after wake up I know the answer to the problem.

If you have never used or heard about this method, don’t dispose it. It’s widely used approach for finding right answers. Your brain can more when you think.

Desire
The more you want something, the bigger obstacles you can overcome without any hesitation. However, eagerness often is not enough.

Other problem with desire is that often we think, but not want. I mean, how many people are thinking “I need to lose weight”, “I need to learn new language”, “I need to have more money”. There isn’t any more word want. You need to approach your problem from other side. Key is to do things you want. So, you change “I need to lose weight” in “I want to have less weight, because I would feel more comfortable, would have more stamina”. People often makes mistakes trying to seek other peoples goals or doing things they should, but it’s not how it works. You must want things to happen and visualise how great you would feel, if you succeeded.

Fear
There are many possibilities to kill fear. I will try to cover some of them using examples.

Inadequate fear. I want this blog to be public and with my real name, but actually I boggle the mind that every friend of mine are able to read this. So, why I am doing this? Because this type of fear is stupid. If I write about what I feel, who I am and what I am doing trough my life, what is the worst thing that could happen? They will stop being my friends, because they learned who actually I am. That’s just silly. Even if they stopped being my friends, it would just mean that we were on different paths and my blog just made it to happen a little sooner.

Next example, you want to ask a person for a date, but you are afraid of “no”. Why this fear is inadequate? The worst thing which could happen is “no”, but if you don’t ask for a date, you get straight “no”.

So, first method for overtaking you fear is to find out why your fear is inadequate.

Fear of failure. This type of fear often goes along with risk. You want to start your own business, but when your head fills up with minds like what if I will fail, what if I will get in debt and so on. This fear is reasonable, because 5 of 10 new business fails in first 5 years and 4 of them fails in next 5. Well, it’s what I have heard. How to overcome this fear? Firstly, start thinking how your life will look if you succeed. Secondly, make plans, calculation and other things to decide if you have a chance. It includes learning new things. It will make you more confident. Thirdly, today is the age of information and web. You don’t need to be 100% busy in your own business. Start with small steps and move forward. You can still be in your current job, but at the same moment have your own business. Fourthly and most importantly, people regret things which they didn’t do more then things they did and failed. Image that you are 50-60 years old and working in the same job as before 30 years, instead of having your own business. The mind that I could have did one or another thing, but didn’t, would kill me.

Other approach. Often I don’t fight directly against fear. I have developed my mind to the state, that if I am afraid of doing something, but I know that it’s right thing to do, then I must do it. How it works? For example, I want to ask a person for a favour, but last time it slated me for asking. So, I feel fear, because it could happen again. But at the same moment, I know, that I must to do it, because I feel fear. I made fear to be additional motivation to do things: if fear exists, then I just must do it.
If you want to develop this habit, start doing things you are afraid. Begin with small fears, later move to bigger ones. Soon you will start noticing your fear like pointer to things, which you must do as soon as possible.

Summary

There are methods covered in this article to overcome fear:

• Find out why your fear is inadequate. Think, why to fear such thing is stupid;
• Prepare for success: learn, plan and start in small steps. People regret things they didn’t do, but not things they did and failed;
• Make fear your friend and additional motivation.

And don’t forget to really want things, not just think you need them.