21 - Things - I - Wish - School 29055 PDF
21 - Things - I - Wish - School 29055 PDF
21 - Things - I - Wish - School 29055 PDF
Taught Me in School
By Henrik Edberg | The Positivity Blog
I’m 37 now. I don’t think about the past or regret things much these
days.
But sometimes I wish that I had known some of the things I’ve
learned over the last decade a bit earlier.
But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German
language classes and using them for some personal development
classes would have been a good idea.
So here are 21 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just
would like to have known about earlier).
This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The
80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that
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80 percent of the value (happiness, money, progress with your work
and so on) you will receive will come from 20 percent of your
activities.
You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a
whole bunch of things.
And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on
those things that really bring you value, happiness, fulfillment and so
on.
2. Parkinson’s Law.
This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity
depending on the time you set aside for it.
For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution
within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and
you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.
The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week
on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the
value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway.
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This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to
focus and give you more free time where you can fully focus on
what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating
stress at the back of your mind.
3. Batching.
One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This
means that you do them all in row.
You will be able to do them quicker that way because there’s less
start-up time compared to if you spread them out. And when you’re
batching you become more focused and fully engaged in the tasks.
A batch of things to do during an hour today may look like this: Clean
your desk / answer today’s emails / check your social media accounts
/ make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for this evening.
4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.
If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness,
opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give.
Because over time you pretty much get what you give.
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5. Be proactive. Not reactive.
This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little
will get done.
You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something.
And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it
happens.
This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable
since you feel like you have more power over your life. Instead of
feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.
When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As
you grow a bit older, you learn from, for example, school to not make
mistakes. And you try less and less things.
This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of
being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean,
what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people
would laugh at you?
Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize
that it is seldom the end of the world.
And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their
own challenges and lives to worry about.
Success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and
failure. It comes from being persistent.
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When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over.
Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get
on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike.
If you can just reconnect to your 5-year old self and do things that
way – instead of giving up after one or two tries/failures as grown-
ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting
things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.
This is, in my experience, a habit that most often makes things worse.
It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes
your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you
can.
8. Assume rapport.
Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all
want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an
awkward conversation.
The best way to handle this (that I have found so far) is to assume
rapport.
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This means that just before you met someone you pretend and think
to yourself that you are meeting one of your best friends.
I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in
class but nobody told me about the reticular activating system.
And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things
you can learn about. What this focus system in your mind does is to
allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts
on.
It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.
So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t
want. And keep that focus steady.
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something like “Assume Rapport” or “Focus on the most
important 20% of activities”.
We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps
that “you need to change your attitude!”.
But the thing that I’ve discovered the past decade is that if you
change your attitude then you actually change your reality. When
you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you
start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you.
You may think to yourself: why haven’t I thought about things this
way before?
When you change your attitude you change what you focus on. And
all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.
This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give
this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create a
huge change in your world.
It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism
might seem like realism.
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And that makes you feel like you’re right a lot of the time. And
perhaps that is what you want. It’s at least what I wanted for a long
time.
But I finally discovered that there are more fun things than being
right all the time.
If you actually try changing your attitude for real for a week or 30
days – instead of analyzing such a concept in your mind – you’ll be
surprised.
But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute
or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I
would probably have practiced gratitude more.
It’s also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the
right things. And to make other people happy.
Something that tends to make you even happier, since emotions are
contagious.
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12. Don’t compare yourself to others.
It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (I’ve got a
new bike!).
But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself
to others who have more than you (Oh no, Bill has bought an even
nicer bike!).
If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control
how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of
emotions.
To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and
how you have grown.
It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot
more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.
13. 80-90% of what you fear or worry about will happen never
really come into reality.
Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just
monsters in your own mind.
And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad
as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.
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But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared
throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to
release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.
It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you
worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big
problem right now you may not even remember in three years.
Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often
just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering.
So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your
mood and as an extension of that: your life.
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Go for good enough. Aiming for perfection usually winds up in a
project or something else very slowly or never being finished.
So go for good enough instead. Don’t use it as an excuse to
slack off. But simply realize that there is something called good
enough and when you are there then you are finished with
whatever you are doing.
If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket.
Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t
make a habit of writing things down.
Because there’s only one time and place where you can be and have
any control over.
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But most of us still spend a lot of our regular days lost in memories,
reliving a sunny vacation or maybe more commonly repeating an old
conflict or negative situation over and over in our thoughts.
Mindfulness counteracts that. And you don’t have to get into a lotus-
position for 30 minutes to reap the benefits.
Instead, do this:
In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can
learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to
grow.
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Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even
better than a success because it teaches you something totally new,
something that another success could never teach you.
One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very
positive experiences.
I have found that when I go too fast, when I try to think, talk, eat and
move around in my world really quickly then things don’t go too well.
But if I slow down just for a few minutes – even if I have to force it by
walking, talking, breathing and eating slower – then my mind and
body calms down too.
20. You don’t have to wait until you feel motivated or inspired.
Don’t fall for the old myth that you have to get a big flash of
inspiration or rush of motivation to get up and get going.
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At first what you do may suck quite a bit and it’s hard going.
21. Taking a small or tiny step forward is one of the most powerful
things you can do.
When I was younger I thought that only taking a small step forward
was a sign of weakness. So I didn’t even try or bother and stayed still
instead.
Now I know that just taking a small or even a tiny step forward is one
of the most powerful things a person can do.
Because it gets you into motion. And just getting started with taking
action – no matter if it’s to improve your health, dating life or income
– is usually the hardest part.
Think about one thing you want in your life. Then ask yourself:
What is one small or tiny step I can take today to get the ball rolling
with that?
Find a small 5-10 minute step you can take. Or if that lands you in
inaction or procrastination then find just a tiny 1-2 minute step
forward.
Focus only on that step forward and take action on it. When you’re
done with it take another small or tiny step later on today or
tomorrow.
Before you know it those steps will add up. And what started with
just a small step will have become a big and life-changing journey.
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