AMY HANSEN

Perhaps you’re a people pleaser who says yes to most requests.  Or maybe you’re so busy that you feel like you need to say yes to every opportunity that presents itself to you.

Each time you say yes to one thing means you’re saying no to something else.  It’s a trade off.

If you say to a breakfast meeting that means saying no to your morning workout.  If you say yes to a company dinner that means no to date night with your spouse.

We all have 168 hours in a week.  It’s how you use that time that is different.

1. Make Better Use Of Your Time

Time is fixed.  You will not get more hours in the day.  But you can better manage the time you do have.

That doesn’t mean cutting back on sleeping and hustling through your day.  It means making better decisions about what you choose to say yes to and what you say no to.

When you realize you’re in control of your time and prioritize what’s important, then you will have all the time you need to accomplish what matters most.

Not making a decision is the most detrimental decision of all.  Not making a decision means that you’re deciding to stay where you are. You’ve decided to do nothing.  All because it’s easier to not to make a decision than to face your fears.

Here are some of the most common fears that hold you back from making a decision.

Perfectionism

One of the most common fears is perfectionism.  Whatever you do, it won’t be good enough to meet the incredibly high standards that have been set.

The truth is, nothing is perfect.  Perfect is a subjective word.  Your perfect may be different than my version of perfect.

When you’re focused on making something perfect you are also faced with the fear of failure.  You’re so afraid that you’ll make a mistake that you don’t take any action.  You choose to wait until you think things are perfect so you can proceed.  But that time rarely happens and that’s why you’re remaining stuck exactly where you are.

There is an underlying fear to per...

As an introvert you love your alone time.  It allows you to recharge and be alone with your thoughts.  Doing things by yourself can be relaxing like going for a walk outside or reading a book quietly.  But it’s also imperative that you have human connection.  Building connections with people is what truly matters in life.

Here are five ways you can focus on growing and strengthening personal relationships.

1. Childhood

Think about growing up and some of the good things you have experienced.  Perhaps there were sleepovers with friends, camping, discovering music for the first time, road trips, etc.

A happy life is one that is built upon many happy memories.  A lot of those memories are created with other people, especially growing up.  Relive some of those memories and reconnect with childhood friends.  Go through pictures from when you were younger.  Smile and laugh as you recall good memories that you may have forgotten.

2. Stop Making Excuses

 When you don’t have st...

You may have multiple goals that you’re working toward but you’re struggling to see results.  Here are the seven tips on how to achieve your goals faster.

1. Choose One Main Goal

Challenge yourself to choose one main goal and make it a priority.  This will force yourself to focus on one goal and put all your effort toward seeing it through.  When you have one main goal you’re focusing your energy on making that one thing happen.  However, when you have multiple things you’re working on your mind gets scattered and little progress is made.

2. Stop Splitting Your Energy

Spreading your energy amongst many goals will only slow you down.  Think of it this way, you have two bridges across the water you’re going to build. If you put all your effort into one bridge it will get completed much sooner than if you had to split your time between the two.  The same is true when you focus your efforts on one main goal.

3. Progress Is Motivation

The number one reason why people quit wor...

Living life to the fullest is setting goals and going after your dreams.  It’s living life without fear and regret.  It means not holding yourself back due to self doubt and lack of motivation. It’s doing the things you love and being surrounded by those you love.

Living life to the fullest is not sitting back and watching life pass you by.  Rather, this is someone who has lost their passion for life and desperately needs clarity on what to focus on.  Not knowing what direction to move in, it becomes easier to just simply do nothing.  Do not be the boat floating aimlessly in the ocean without a captain.  Know that you are the captain of your life.

In order to live life to the fullest you must first get clear on where you are.  Think about your life right now and how you feel. Something may feel off or missing. Perhaps you simply feel lost. You’ve lost yourself, your drive, your ambition, and you aren’t sure what goal to set next for yourself.  It’s time to stop feeling lost, fl...

Everyone gets into a funk from time to time where something just doesn’t feel right.  Perhaps you’re unhappy about something or just feeling a bit off.  Learn how to get out of that funk and back on track with these six tips.

1. Acknowledge You’re In A Funk

The first step is to acknowledge when you’re in a funk.  Take note of your attitude and mood.  If you seem agitated, sad, or angry, it’s time to get yourself out of that funk.

Nobody likes feeling down or under a cloud of negativity.  Life feels so much better when you’re happy and in positive mood.

2. Know Your Triggers

You may want to take a moment to think about what may have triggered you to go into that funk state in the first place.  Maybe it was something someone said or did.  Perhaps things didn’t go the way you planned and it made you feel bad. Whatever it may be, recognize it and know that this may be a trigger for you in the future.

Your awareness of what triggers you will help you prevent going into a f...

Everyone has heard the phrase be yourself.  Sometimes that can be hard to do when you’re trying to be a people pleaser.  The fear of what other people will think of you can make you act differently.  You think that if you do things this way that these other people will like you more. But you can’t fully be yourself and be comfortable with who you are when you’re trying to please others.

When you are yourself, you’re the happiest.  You’re not trying to please other people.  You’re living life for you.  You’re doing things that make you happy.

Trying to live up to someone else’s standards can be hard.  The pressure of expectations set by other people is no way to live. You’re in constant fear of doing something other people will not approve of.  When this happens you feel like you’ve disappointed them which only makes you feel bad about yourself.

You beat yourself up over doing something that displeases someone else.  You think why did I do that and belittle yourself.  In you...

The goal in life is simply to be happy.  But, the truth is, you can’t be happy about everything in life.  If that were the case then you should be happy when people die, get hurt, or when terrible things happen in the world.  That’s just impossible.  Mentally you can’t be happy about those things because they’re awful.  Yet, you have this expectation that life should be happy. 

In order to make life happy you decide to take control and work hard to fix the world that you live in.  You think if nothing is wrong then you can be happy.  Unfortunately, life doesn’t happen that way.  There are things in life that are out of your control.

The best you can do is work with what you have.  Make the most of your current circumstance.  Be happy and grateful.  Realize that you’re not supposed to have everything go perfectly all the time.

Take a moment to think about the movies.  You wouldn’t watch it to the end if there lacked conflict, drama, or action.  Movies without those things wo...

If you were to think back a few years ago, would you say that you’re the same person as you are now or have you changed?

Hopefully you’ve grown and become a better version of yourself.

As life throws you curve balls and things to overcome you become a stronger person.  You’ve learned things that you didn’t know a few years ago and you’ve experienced things that you’ve had to work through.  All of these things allow you to grow as a human being.

When you’re working towards a goal you have your current bag of tools from what you’ve experienced and learned in the past.  These tools help you take steps toward achieving your goal.

When you visualize achieving your goal, the person standing there in appreciation and awe of what they’ve just accomplished is different than the person who just began working towards that goal.  Each roadblock and misstep along the way has built character.  Lessons were learned and each step was required in order to achieve that final goal.  That ...

Growing up you are not taught to make mistakes.  In school, the goal was to get answers right in order to get good grades so that you could advance to the next grade level.  Mistakes were seen as bad.  Your class paper would come back all marked up in red ink with a grade that didn’t reflect the hard work that you put in.  But, outside of school, messing up can be an incredible learning opportunity.

As an adult, putting work out there that is messy or not quite ready doesn’t sound like a good idea. You may find yourself paralyzed by this fear of not having everything “right” just yet.  So, you hold off on putting your work out into the world because it’s just not quite ready.  You think to yourself this doesn’t sound good or it doesn’t look right so you keep working on it.  One day it will be ready to put out into the world.  But these projects never see the light of day because they are never good enough.  This is mostly because you’re afraid of what other people will think.

O...