You are here because you want something more. For yourself. For your family. For your life. You want to be better. To improve yourself and become the best version of you there is. And you know it takes a commitment to personal growth to do that. Which is why we are here: to help you invest in yourself.
Of all the things you read on SUCCESS.com this year—about achieving your goals, boosting your confidence, improving your life—these are the articles you liked most:
1. 10 Tips to Achieve Anything You Want in Life
Most of us are no stranger to feeling stuck in life. Launching a new goal is not easy. You have to give up comfort to delve into the unknown. A lot of things keep us from making the leap—things like fear and insecurity. And one thing above all the rest: motivation.
You lack motivation not because you are lazy or don’t have a goal. Even the biggest stars, richest businesspeople or the most accomplished athletes get lost sometimes. What makes them motivated is the curiosity about how much better or faster they can get.
To achieve your goals, you have to stay focused and keep pushing and challenging yourself. Here are 10 tips to help those striving to better themselves.
2. 7 Mental Hacks to Be More Confident in Yourself
On our writer’s first day at the FBI Academy, she didn’t feel like a superhero. In fact it wasn’t until after four grueling months of being placed in dangerous and awkward situations that she built the self-confidence necessary for her career. Boosting confidence is the primary goal of the Academy—before they send agents out with a gun and badge.
Confidence is the cornerstone of leadership. If you don’t believe in yourself, how can others believe in you? Here are seven ways FBI agents learn to boost their confidence—mental hacks you can use to be more confident in yourself, too.
3. 7 Practical Tips to Achieve a Positive Mindset
The “power of positive thinking” is a popular concept, and sometimes it can feel a little cliché. But the physical and mental benefits of positive thinking have been demonstrated by multiple scientific studies. A positive mindset can give you more confidence, improve your mood, and even reduce the likelihood of developing conditions such as hypertension, depression and other stress-related disorders.
All this sounds great, but what does the “power of positive thinking” really mean?
You can define positive thinking as positive imagery, positive self-talk or general optimism, but these are all still general, ambiguous concepts. If you want to be effective in thinking and being more positive, you’ll need concrete examples to help you through the process. Here are seven.
4. 5 Smart Ways to Increase Your IQ (Because It’s Not Set in Genetic Stone)
IQ is in large part a measure of your ability to recognize patterns. And as Ray Kurzweil famously says, “Pattern recognition is the essence of all human thought.” Intelligence is not the same as being book or trivia smart (although those are helpful, too). It’s your ability to manage and manipulate life with your mind. It’s the closest thing to a superhero power you’re going to get in this world.
So how can you increase your IQ? Here are five ways, but it really all boils down to stretching your brain by learning new things.
5. 13 Ways to Improve Your Life
How dramatically we can change our results is largely a function of imagination.
Can a poor person become wealthy? Of course! The unique combination of desire, planning, effort and perseverance will always work its magic. The question is not whether the formula for success will work, but rather whether the person will work the formula. That is the unknown variable. That is the challenge that confronts us all.
We can all go from wherever we are to wherever we want to be. No dream is impossible provided we first have the courage to believe in it.
Here is how you can do that—13 ways to improve your life.
6. 20 Pros and Cons of Social Media Use
We often perceive anyone who shuns social media as old or out of touch. However, they might be the most mentally fit among us. In reality, most people have little awareness of the frequency with which they check their phones. This is concerning because several studies and researchers have associated social media with several psychiatric disorders, including depressive symptoms, anxiety and low self-esteem.
Consider these 10 notable pro and con stances regarding social media use.
7. 11 Tips to Transform Your Morning Routine and Make Your Entire Day More Productive
Who couldn’t use a little boost in their energy and self-control?
Researchers found that self-control and energy are not only intricately linked but also finite, daily resources that tire much like a muscle. Even though we don’t always realize it, as the day goes on, we have increased difficulty exerting self-control and focusing on our work. As self-control wears out, we feel tired and find tasks to be more difficult and our mood sours.
This exhaustion of self-control kills your productivity, and it makes the morning hours, when self-control is highest, the most important hours of the day.
But the trick isn’t just to spend your morning hours working; it’s to do the right things in the morning that will make your energy and self-control last as long as possible.
Whether you naturally wake up feeling alert and productive or wake up with the brainpower of a zombie, these tips will help you transform your morning routine and set a positive tone that lasts the entire day.
8. Secret to a Happy Marriage? Put Your Spouse First
Marriage isn’t a joke. It’s something we need to work hard at if we want it to last a lifetime. Which is why should we treat it accordingly.
It’s simple stuff if you think about it. Honestly it’s just about your focus. Life is busy. Technology overwhelms us. When you throw in kids, pets, work, girlfriends, etc., you have to prioritize—you cannot do it all. Declaring your spouse as your number one priority is the first step; from there it’s pretty simple.
Here are reasons to put your marriage first and small ways to make your spouse feel cherished.
9. 13 Ways to Take Care of Yourself Every Day
It’s 7:30 a.m. and your alarm is blaring. Squinty-eyed, you reach for your phone, fumbling to swipe that horrible noise off, sinking back into the mattress, your eyes fading to black again… until you shoot straight up, eyes wide open, realizing you’ve already pushed snooze three times. You’re late. So you bolt out from under the covers and, like a blur, get dressed and go to work.
You’re at the office (finally), and a million emails have rudely generated in your inbox, so you start shooting off responses, only to reply to the ones that come back seconds later. You only get up when nature calls and your stomach yells for food. Another blur and it’s already dark. Time to climb back under the covers…
Sleep, wake up, work. And repeat. That’s a daily grind that will have you burning out the next time your alarm goes off. There’s more to life than work. How can you make sure you’re getting a healthy dose of “me time”?
10. 8 Things Successful People Never Waste Time Doing
We’re all looking to be successful in life, but sometimes we are wasting our time doing things that are holding us back from reaching our full potential. And, often, we don’t recognize those things until someone points them out.
It’s important to analyze how we spend our days, hour by hour, and regularly look for ways to work smarter, ways to eliminate time-wasters. So, to get started, here are eight things that productive, successful people never waste their time doing (and you shouldn’t, either).
11. 10 Powerful Ways to Stand Up for Yourself in Any Situation
Every day we make dozens of little choices that either benefit us by asserting our ideas or diminish us because we hesitate in making our views or desires known.
Sometimes it seems easier to go with the flow to avoid potential conflict. But the truth is that letting people walk all over you can increase feelings of stress and anxiety, and it might eventually lessen your feelings of self-worth and play to your insecurities.
Learning to stand up for yourself will help you take charge of your life, believe in your own power and embolden you to reach for your dreams. The stronger you feel, the stronger you will become.
Learn to stand up for yourself in any situation with these 10 simple yet powerful steps.
12. 6 Steps to Discover Your True Self
To truly know yourself is the most important skill you can ever possess. When you know who you are, you know what you need to do, instead of looking for permission from others to do what you already know you ought to do. It allows you to bypass tons of frustration caused by putting time into the wrong things. Yes, life is supposed to be full of trial and error, but this lets you find the best areas for you to experiment with in the first place. Once you know yourself, you will become more confident, you will understand your purpose, and you will begin making a bigger impact on the world.
So how can you know who you are and what you ought to do in life? Here are the six steps you need to take in order to know your true self.
13. 18 Signs You Have High Emotional Intelligence
When emotional intelligence (EQ) first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: People with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70% of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into the broadly held assumption that IQ was the sole source of success.
Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as being the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. The connection is so strong that we know 90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities and make personal decisions to achieve positive results.
Despite the significance of EQ, its intangible nature makes it very difficult to know how much you have and what you can do if you’re lacking. So our writer analyzed data from the million-plus people his company has tested to identify the behaviors that are the hallmarks of a high EQ.
14. 16 Rich Habits
Intelligence, talent and charm are great, but more often than not these aren’t what separate the wealthiest among us from the poorest.
Instead, the differences are in our daily habits. Do you realize that these subconscious, second-nature activities make up 40 percent of our waking hours? That means that two out of every five minutes, all day and every day, we operate on autopilot.
Some of the differences between rich and poor are obvious, while others are a little more surprising. Here are the most important Rich Habits you can take up to reach and maintain your wealth potential.
15. What Is Your Dream?
What is your dream? Will you achieve your dream in your lifetime? I’m certain that you desire to. I’m sure you hope you will. But will you actually do it? What odds would you give yourself? One in five? One in a hundred? One in a million? How can you tell whether your chances are good or whether your dream will always remain exactly that—a dream? And are you willing to put it to the test?
Most people have no idea how to achieve their dreams. What they possess is a vague notion that there is something they would like to do someday or someone they would like to become. But they don’t know how to get from here to there. If that describes you, then you’ll be glad to know that there really is hope.
16. 43 Ways to Improve Yourself in Just 10 Minutes
We use the word busy way too much. We say it when friends ask us how we are doing, as if being busy is an emotion. We use it as an excuse to procrastinate on unpleasant tasks. We use it to sound important at work, because being busy somehow equates to being successful.
But you’re never too busy for 10 minutes, which is all it takes to improve yourself just a little each day. You can de-stress using meditation, yoga or reading. Track your unhealthy spending habits. Learn a new language. The possibilities are endless. Stop prioritizing the busy parts of your life and make time for the important things, such as the constant development of your mental, physical and emotional well-being.
We’ve compiled this list of 43 easy ways you can improve yourself in 10 minutes or less.
17. How to Speak Well and Listen Better
There are two sides to every conversation, and both are essential to the art of communication.
How are your conversation skills? Are you a smooth talker, or do you ramble? Are you an attentive listener, or do you tend to interrupt?
Here’s how to master the art of conversation—both sides of it:
18. 6 Tips to Rule the Art of Conversation
The art of conversation is a necessary skill for almost everything in life. Conversations introduce you to people, important people who could be your mentors, employers, employees, partners or friends. Without conversations as the foundation for those relationships, you’ll have a hard time building a social circle, starting a business or advancing your career.
Once a conversation gets going, you should have little problem maintaining that momentum—but for most of us, getting it started is the hardest part. Master these “talking points” to get (and keep) a conversation going.
19. 10 Ways to Overcome Fear and Break Out of Your Comfort Zone
Fear is a natural and essential part of growth. Every time we consciously choose to step outside of our comfort zone, the next uncomfortable thing becomes a little bit easier. Here is advice on how to take those small but powerful daily steps.
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