How to Become Better at Self Promotion

We were sitting at a local cafe, watching the sun set over the city skyline and sipping our drinks as a young and talented musician strummed away on her guitar and serenaded us with her dulcet tones. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I ended up talking to the father-in-law of the singer, a fairly successful local businessman, and after we talked about his latest exciting business venture he looked me in the eye and said "And what do you do Zac?". I mumbled a wishy-washy answer and he tried to be interested but I could tell I had lost him. It was then that I realised that I needed to work on selling myself.

Why You Have To Sell Yourself

I used to resist the concept of "selling" myself because I thought people would respect humility and honesty more than gimmicky self-promotion tricks. I wasn't exactly wrong but I definitely was not right.

Selling yourself is not about being smarmy, arrogant, pushy, or over-the-top. It is about marketing yourself, your skills, your goals, your products, in the best possible way at all times. And I mean at all times.

The world is one giant series of markets. Everything we do is an exchange of resources (time, money, energy, love etc). Obvious examples of markets are shops where we generally exchange money for goods or services. But this concept applies to everything in our life.

In relationships we exchange our time and love in order to satisfy our needs for human connection and our desire to be loved. In work we exchange our time and skills for money, recognition and experience. It goes on.

Everything in life can be viewed as a market and if you dream of greater success then you need to start selling yourself.

Confidence Is Everything

Confidence is everything when you are selling.

If you are not confident in what you are doing then everyone else will be able to sense that. And are people likely to "buy" from someone who is not confident in their product? Hell no! Imagine if you were talking to a car salesman and he started saying things like "It's not a great car but its OK…It has a few performance problems but maybe you'd like anyway?" You would not be interested.

The same happens when you are talking about yourself. If you are not confident explaining what you do, what you are about, or why your ideas are great then people will have a hard time connecting with you.

I find generating this confidence can be extremely hard especially when it is something I am new to. For example, when I started this website it was hard for me to be confident and say things "I am a personal development and motivational writer." I doubted myself because it was a new venture whereas in reality I had demonstrated all the necessary skills previously which showed that I was more than capable.

So just because you have taken the plunge and jumped into something new that is no excuse for lacking confidence. I am sure that if you delved into your past you would find many similar examples and transferable skills that you can draw on to find your confidence. Draw on them and be confident. Tell everyone exactly how good you are. Remember no-one else is going to do it for you.

Love Yourself And Everything You Do

This is closely linked to confidence but I felt it deserved a separate section because it is an important part of becoming your ultimate salesperson: You've got to love yourself!

When you look in the mirror you should see someone that you love, someone that you are proud of, someone that makes you smile. Negative thoughts are not welcome here. You must truly love everything about yourself and want to show everyone just how great you are. If you want some tips on how to get started read my article: Learn To Love Yourself

If you are not able to talk yourself up and be proud of your achievements then you will always undersell yourself. And the result of underselling? Mediocrity and missed opportunities.

Find Your Passion

Finding confidence and the ability to love yourself is not easy if you do not like what you're doing. If you have any negative emotions (be it stress, anxiety, hate, resentment) about your current position these will filter through to your attitude. They will bubble to the surface and hinder your self-confidence.

Ask yourself this simple question: "Am I doing something that makes me truly happy?" For most people the answer is no.

Too often people are not following their dreams but instead following a plan imposed by someone else. It can come from parents who want you to work a certain job, peer pressure to seem like the most valuable employee, or societal pressure and ideas about what you "should" do with your life.

But guess what? There is no should in life. Your life is about you being happy. It is about doing what you want to and not what others think you should do. So if you aren't confident in selling yourself to others, or you find it hard to love yourself, it might be time to stop and think about what you want from life. Get out there and find your passion.

The beauty of finding something that you love doing is that not only do you love every second of your life, but you will be operating at such high level of happiness, productivity and confidence that you will naturally attract greater success. People love working with passionate, happy and energetic people, so find your passion and make people enjoy working with you.

Be Shameless

Shame is the enemy of the salesperson. Shame does not make a sale. Shame does not lead to success.

That may be an over simplification but the point is that in the area of self-promotion shamelessness is the critical. If you feel ashamed to promote yourself, talk up your good qualities, or recommended yourself to others than no-one will be interested in you. Why would people want to find out more about someone who is ashamed to talk about themselves?

Consider an example from Tim Ferriss, author of two #1 best selling books (in different genres) who in 2008 was voted as WIRED's "Greatest Self Promoter of All Time". He has done a lot of things right to go from a nobody to a very popular somebody, assisted by his awesome (and shameless) self-promotion.

If you are need to learn how to become a shameless self-promoter then I recommended reading the "Tim Ferriss' Guide to Self Promotion" article on BNET.

Refine Your Elevator Pitch

The elevator pitch is one of the basic skills a good salesperson has. The concept is that if you meet a potential client in a time-limited environment (i.e. when riding an elevator) you need to be able to clarify what you do, why you do it, and why others want it, all in about 30 seconds. Can you do that?

I can't, but I am working on it.

For a long time I held off on honing this skill because I thought it sound a bit…wanky. I didn't want to believe that the world was just a mass of markets and everyone was always selling. I thought that was a cynical view of the world and I didn't believe it so I tried to keep myself out of the process altogether. I was wrong.

The elevator pitch is crucial in our life. It does not have to be in an elevator, and it does not have to be just for you to get a job or promote a business. It can be for anything!

Written a book and trying to get a publisher? You've got one paragraph of your cover letter to explain your book in a way that gets them hooked. Working on your first album? You'd better be able to explain it to those busy music producers in 30 seconds or they wont be interested. And so on. No matter what you do, you need to be able to "sell" it to someone else, and get them interested, with just a few sentences.

Compare what I used to say when I was asked the inevitable (and confusing) question about what I do. I do a lot of things but my response was something like this:

Ummm…well I am Consultant at the moment….I also started my own IT business on the side….and I have my own personal website where I write stuff.

What the hell is that? Firstly I put what I cared about least at the start and then talked down my two other ventures as side projects, as if they barely matter. That surely does not inspire confidence and it definitely does not generate interest in what I want people to be interested in. So I've changed it:

I help people make positive changes in their life through my personal development website and I also am the founder of a software development company that builds websites and iPhone apps.

Which sounds better? :P

The second one is miles ahead. It has a wow factor to it. It summarises what I do and delivers it in a quick one-two style that leaves people asking questions. People will ask for my website address, or they will ask about my software clients, or they will ask something completely different. The point is that they are asking questions. It gets them interested in me and that is the goal of the elevator pitch.

Fake It Until You Make It

By now, if I have done my job well, you have recognised the importance of becoming your number one salesperson and hopefully you have a list of areas you can work on to get there. So my final advice is to fake it until you make it which is basically the same as saying "practice, practice, practice".

Having trouble loving yourself? Stand in front of the mirror and practice. Tell yourself how great you are and force yourself to smile and nod in agreement. I promise that it will become second nature to smile at yourself and the love will start to come naturally.

Struggling with confidence? Do a little role-play in your mind where you turn the situation around and imagine yourself with confidence. As an example, when I used to attend interviews I would pretend that I owned the building I was being interviewed in. I practiced this thought until I walked in with my head high an full of confidence. After all, they were in MY building so they would need to give me respect wouldn't they? It sounds odd but it works.

No matter what area you think you need to improve you can achieve it by practicing success. The key is that you must practice success and not failure or sub-standard performance. You are your number one salesperson already so start thinking like it.

Believe in yourself, believe in your "product", and start convincing others just how important you are. If you do it right they will always want to hear more.

Image: Pixomar

Attention RSS Subscribers: RSS Feed Change

I was trapped. The room was suffocatingly small and a big burly man was sitting between me and the door. Escape was not an option, so I sat in the corner and occupied my mind. That is about as glamorous as I can make it sound for I am actually talking about a very boring meeting I had to attend in a past life. I hate useless meetings and my old job as full of them. Meetings to discuss if we should have a morning tea. Meetings because people wanted to feel important. Meetings to discuss the prospect of future meetings. Argh! But I digress.

The point is that it was in that meeting that I realised just how much I love numbers. As I sat there, bored out of my brain, I developed a series of tests that I could perform in my head to determine if large numbers (i.e. more than 6 digits) were prime numbers or not. My method took less than 15 minutes to define and it was in that moment that I realised just how much I love anything to do with math - numbers, stats, averages, trends, patterns etc.

Which brings me to the whole point of this message - I have updated my RSS feed and I would appreciate if my current RSS subscribers could re-subscribe using the new feed.

RSS Changes?

The reason I am changing is simply to satisfy my data needs. My original feed was the out-of-the-box RSS feed that comes with Wordpress. It is handy but comes with a flaw. I cannot see the numbers subscribers! What good is it having a subscription mechanism where I cannot even keep track of the number of people subscribing?

So I have changed the RSS subscription links to use Feedburner which is what I was already using to manage my email subscriptions. It allows me to track numbers of subscribers easily and with minimal changes to my site.

What Changes Will You Notice

None. You can still subscribe and receive updates in exactly the same way, but if you do so through this link I will now be able to keep track of the number of my subscribers. You will still get my content delivered to you as you always have.

And if you don't switch? Nothing will change either. The original feed will still work. There is no encouragement for you to actually re-subscribe using my new feed other than the warm fuzzy feeling you will get from doing something nice for me. :)

So, for those original RSS subscribers I ask you to please consider re-subscribing. For those who have not subscribed yet, it is never too late! You can subscribe to receive my content updates either through email or RSS. All you have to do is subscribe once and everything will be sent to you fresh of the press.

Please note: for email subscribers no action is required. This is for RSS subscribers only.

How To Harness Your Negative Emotions To Make Positive Changes

Negativity exists in our lives. There is no way around it. No matter how hard you try to live in the moment, focus on positivity, or practice being grateful every day, you will still experience times of negative emotions in your life. But this can be a good thing. Negative emotions signal that you need to make a change in your life. Whether it is stress, anger, fear, jealously, resentment, or any other negative emotion, the point of them all is to warn you that something needs to change.

But it is how you deal with these signals that is important. Do you respond with more negativity, try to ignore the problem and hope it goes away, or take positive action to eliminate the problem? No prizes for guessing which one is best for you.

Responding to negative emotions with negativity is just plain bad news but it is often what our default response is. When something occurs that makes us angry we choose to react with that anger, lashing out without thinking first. Negative actions (or reactions) just attract more negativity into our lives and the end result is that we create an even worse situation than we started with. Negative actions = negative life.

Ignoring, or running away from, the problem is no better. When we are presented with a negative situation and we choose to withdraw and hide from it then we are giving that negativity room to grow. And just like how super-bugs develop in our bodies, when we give negative emotions excess room we encourage them to prosper. Therefore, inaction is never the solution.

The only real answer is to respond to negativity with positive actions and here is how to do it:

Acknowledge That the Negativity Is A Sign

The first thing you need to do is actually sit down and acknowledge that you are in a negative space. Maybe you've just been dumped and are feeling sad, or maybe you are stressed out and resenting your job. It is OK to feel this way. In fact, it's normal!

Sometimes bad things happen that impact our lives in negative ways. The oft-used phrase "shit happens" nails it on the head. Shit really does happen, and it is fine to experience some negative emotions when it does. The important part is what you choose to do next.

Once you have accepted your negative emotions you need to acknowledge that they are a sign that something needs to change. Do not ignore them. You are feeling that way for a reason. It is time to make some positive changes!

Figure Out What Action Is Required

Now that you are at one with the idea that some change is required in your life you need to figure out what that actual change is. What are your emotions telling you to do. It's normally pretty obvious.

Stressed in your job? Find a new one. Hating your relationship? End it. Bored with life? Sell everything and take a holiday.

Ok it might not be that simple but I can assure you that it is pretty simple. You can go a little deeper by assessing exactly what is negative about your current situation. Try to break it down to the smallest possible level.

For example, once you start doing this you might realise that your job really isn't that stressful normally but it is just this one project that is killing you. So now you know that you only need to fix your current workload and you actually don't need to quit your job, sell your things, and go live in a cave as a hermit. Phew.

Take Action

This is the hard part. Acknowledging the negativity and figuring out what action is required is easy most of the time. Actually doing something about it is where most people will encounter trouble.

The biggest blocker to taking action is a fear of change. People are often scared of change because they do not know exactly what is going to happen once the change occurs. Well I've got news for you - the future is constantly changing and you will never ever know exactly what is going to happen. Never!

The very definition of the future means that it a step forward in time which means that things have changed. Time has progressed and billions of actions have taken place. And this occurs every second! You cannot stop the change process but you can make sure that in your life you are the one in control of the changes.

Inaction and indecision are common symptoms of a fear of change (and fear of failure/success). By not taking action you let everyone else in the world decide what will happen for your life. You give away your power and become helpless. But if you choose to be decisive and start taking action you begin creating the changes that you want instead of being inundated by the changes that everyone else wants.

Keep Adjusting

You wont get it right first time but you will learn a hell of a lot along the way. Maybe the first change you made was not enough. Maybe you really did hate your job after all and just fixing that one project didn't help. So you readjust. You take stock again, assess the situation, and make another change. Another positive change that is.

Or maybe the first change you made was too drastic and you realise that the original situation was better than the one you are in now. That's fine too. Just readjust and try again until you get it right and find a place where you feel happy, excited, and passionate. Remember that the process is cyclical.

The process is also endless which sounds scary but it isn't. It is endless because as your life changes so will your experiences, your goals, and your emotions. What you want (or think you want) in the future will be different to what you want now. But you can only act on the information you have in the current moment, so as long as you keep adjusting as your life goes on you will experience more happiness and positivity, and much less of that dreaded n-word.

Summary (Cheat sheet)

For those less inclined to read longer articles I will play nice and include a (very) simplified summary. But you really should read the whole thing. I promise it's worth it. :)

• Accept your negative emotions are valid.
• Acknowledge them as a signal for change.
• Figure out exactly what the problem is.
• Make a positive change. Make any positive change. Just change something!
• Continually readjust until you hit your target.

That's it! Get out there and start making positive changes in your life!

Gambling Theory Mathematics for Life

I am a bit of a maths nerd and data geek, as well as wannabe professional gambler, and I have come to realise that there are many parallels between the mathematics of gambling theory and life. The basic theories that any serious punter uses to determine their gambling actions can similarly be applied to life. And just like how knowledge and skill can be the difference between winning and losing your wagers, they can also be the difference between a positive and negative life.

My Gambling Background

Before I delve into the mathematical theory of gambling I will share my experiences in gambling to give you a better understand of where I coming from.

Firstly, for many people the word gambling will have negative connotations. They associate it with problem gamblers who pour their hard-earned money into useless gambling games, often with no procedure in place, and generally end up in debt and cause massive problems in their lives. That's not me.

My gambling is not any riskier than stock trading, forex trading, or any other form of investment. What do these people do when making decisions? They gather data, analyse it, determine the likelihood of certain events occurring, and then invest their money accordingly. That is exactly what I do but for sports instead. The game is no different, in fact it is probably better because I actually know about sports, whereas I wouldn't know how to tell one stock from another.

But I am not here to discuss the pros and cons of gambling. I am just demonstrating that I actually know a fair bit about this stuff and I have had enough experience over the past few years to realise how closely related gambling theory is to my belief system for how to live life

Mathematical Expectation

The key concept to understand is mathematical expectation which, to put simply, is the amount that you can expect to win or lose per bet. It is easy to calculate - just multiply the each possible gain or loss by the probability of those outcomes and sum the results. Still confused? Let's look at a simple example: the coin toss.

If we were betting on an unbiased coin toss we could assume that the result would be 50% heads and 50% tails. If I were betting $1 each time for the possibility of winning an extra $1 if I was correct then the expectation of this situation would be calculated as:

(0.5 x 1) + (0.5 x -1) = 0

Therefore the expectation of this action is that I would break even over the long term. There is no advantage to either player. However, if you were feeling generous and decided to offer me a $2 win each time I was correct then my expectation for this event would be:

(0.5 x 2) + (0.5 x -1) = + 0.5

This is known as a positive expectation and if we were to play the game 100 times I could expect to win $50. The opposite of positive expectation is a negative expectation - where the long term result of the game is expected to result in a loss. In the coin toss example this would happen if I were wagering more than the payoff for winning. For example if I bet my $1 each time but was only winning $0.50 my expectation would be:

(0.5 x 0.5) + (0.5 x -1) = - 0.25

If I were to play this game 100 times I would expect to lose $25.

That is mathematical expectation at its simplest level. The three examples above illustrate what neutral, positive, and negative mathematical expectation looks like and how they work long-term.

How Mathematical Expectation Applies to Life

Hopefully you now understand the basics of mathematical expectation, the foundation of professional gambling, because it is actually applied everywhere in our lives. Just like every betting action has an expectation applied to it, so does every action in our life. Every decisions we make contributes to our overall expectation of life, which can be neutral, positive, or negative.

Just like the gambler who bets on an event with a negative expectation can expect to lose money long-term, you can expect a negative effect on your life over the long-term if you perform actions with negative expectations.

But what are negative expectation actions in life? I say it is anything that does not contribute positively to your life and the life of those around you. That is, anything negative.

Have you ever been rude, mean, or inconsiderate to someone? Or have you every spent your time stressing and worrying over small things? Or have you ever purposefully taken advantage of someone or something? These are examples of actions we perform in life that have a negative expectation. Our lives are poorer because of these negative actions and the long-term result is a negative and unhappy life.

Luckily positive actions have the opposite result. Any positive action you perform has a positive expectation for your life. By being kind, loving, and caring towards yourself and others you will develop a life with a positive expectation. A life where only positive outcomes are expected.

Perform Positive Expectation Actions Only

If you had to gamble for your life would you choose to place bets with a negative expectation? Would you choose these bets where you would expect to lose? No, you wouldn't but this is exactly what you do with your actions every day of your life.

Every negative thought and every negative action in your life brings with it a negative expectation. So why continue to be negative? Focus your energy on positive actions that yield a positive result for your life. Be kind, donate, listen, help, and above all love yourself and others.

Make a series of small positive actions and your life will become ultimately positive.

Image: Dan

Life is Not Fair (Great News!)

"Life is not fair!" This is a phrase commonly used by pessimists, the eternally negative, and the people who actually gain pleasure from thinking that the world is against them. And it's 100% true. Life really is not fair but guess what? That is great news!

Life Really Is Not Fair

If life was "fair" then everyone would have the exact same life. We would all work the same job, get paid the same amount, live in the same size house, drive the same car, and have the exact same chance at having fun. Zero.

Life is not designed to be fair for all and quite frankly it would suck if it was. If life was fair then what incentive would there be to try new things? Would you be motivated to start your own business and/or work 60 hours a week if you knew you were going to get the exact same reward as the guy who plays guitar and surfs all day? Hell no! (Not to mention the fact that if you were working 60 hours and some guy is not then that breaks the whole "fairness" rule anyway…)

In a world where everything was fair then education, skills, attitude, and experience would count for nothing because everyone would be rewarded the same. In fact society as we know it would cease to exist. No one would want to work in those high-stress jobs, no-one would be motivated to achieve more than the average, and science and technology advances would stop (or at least drop off significantly). Things are not meant to be fair and it is technically impossible anyway so its best if you start accepting that life is not fair. Besides that is actually a good thing.

When people cry about life not being fair they are doing so because on a deeper level they enjoy living with a "me vs the rest of the world" attitude. They like complaining about their situation and making it out like they have no control because it makes them feel like their life has been defined by some higher power. A higher power that they can blame, and people love being able to blame someone else.

But life is not like that. Life definitely is NOT fair but it is also not a zero-sum game. It is not a competition. When someone has some success in their life there is not an exact counter-balance of negativity for someone else. For you to make $1000 today, someone else does not have to first lose $1000. That is not how the world works. Your life, and its "fairness", is the sum of all YOUR actions and is not dependent on anyone else.

Find Success in Unfairness

Everyone can achieve success and happiness but only those that realise it is up them (and not pre-determined by god, fate, or any other belief system) will actually do it. These people are the ones that understand that, because life is not fair, they can stack the odds in their favour.

When you understand the positive implications of life being unfair you start to see the world in a new light. Instead of complaining about your situation, or comparing your lot in life to that of others, your mind begins to focus on creating scenarios that are in your favour. New opportunities are presented, ideas are developed, and the possibilities become almost endless.

So, next time you hear someone mutter those wonderful words - "life is not fair" - you should smile and remind yourself that it is completely and utterly true, but that it just means that you can rig life so that it is always working in your favour.

Life is not fair and that is great news!

Image: www.frkncngz.com

Paleo Diet - 30 Day Review

It has been one month since I first started living the paleo lifestyle and I am converted. I realised I was converted when, like all good paleo zealots, I started calling it a lifestyle not a diet. But it's true. It feels like a natural progression for me with my focus on developing and improving myself on both mental and physical levels taking me to explore new things. I started the diet simply as a test and the experience has been so positive that it now feels unnatural to be doing anything else. So I'm a paleo convert and maybe you will be too after reading my in-depth review of my first paleo month.

The Stats

Let's start with the cold hard stats. I am a self confessed numbers geek so even though I feel and look better living the paleo lifestyle I like to verify it with numbers. Numbers can't lie can they?

Weight: 77.6kg (-2.4kg)
Biceps: 32cm (no change)
Chest 98cm (+2cm)
Waist: 72cm (-2cm)
Hips: 82cm (-4.5cm)

For those that know me in person they would say I am, and always have been, fairly thin. To have dropped 2.4kg and a few centimetres around my waist and hips it has to have been all fat that I lost which is amazing as most people, including myself, would not have thought I needed to lose any. But I have definitely trimmed which means that my body fat percentage must be approaching single digits and my abdominal muscles are starting to be visible again, for the first time in a few years. And I haven't even been doing any ab exercises!

The weight loss mostly happened in the first two weeks which makes me think my body was adapting to my new eating regime and has now found a more natural body composition. Initially I was worried as I did not want to lose any weight but I feel if I add a more determined exercise effort (including good post-workout foods) I can gain some muscle fairly easily now.

Exercise

My dedication to exercise has been lacking over the past few weeks. I have still managed the odd primal style exercise (lifting sandbags, pushups, chinups, squats) at home but it all felt a bit random. Even when I did make it to the gym my workouts were all over the place and I could not get into a good rhythm. But I may have rectified that on my last visit.

I have decided to stop using resistance machines and move to a workout which combines free weights and interval style training. I start the stopwatch when I arrive and then go through a series of exercises (box jumps, squats, deadlifts, lunges, pushups, shoulder press, bicep curls, chest fly, chest press, shoulder fly) and attempt to beat my previous time for the overall workout. There is no set rest time between sets so I just push myself until my body needs a rest. I have only done this workout once but I felt great (and worn out) so I think there is potential there.

That is the plan from here on in, so stay tuned for a future update on that but for now let's get back into dissecting my first paleo month by looking at some of the difficulties I faced.

Difficulties Faced

I faced a handful of difficulties implementing a paleo eating plan but none were insurmountable. The biggest challenge was the increased preparation time for meals. Before going paleo my breakfast consisted of cereal and milk with a total preparation time of 10 seconds, and my lunch was nearly always bought from a store. My new breakfasts and lunches take anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes each so I had to find up to 30 minutes of preparation time each day to stick to the paleo diet. Luckily I am good at managing my time.

After that the difficulties faced were small. Sure I had an itch for sugar but that was to be expected, and I had to learn to appreciate drinking vodka, lime and soda instead of beer or wine, but these changes were easy to make. When I decide to do something I get highly motivated so sticking to the plan was not hard.

However, after living a week following the Paleo Diet rules strictly I did decide to make a few minor modifications.

My Modifications

By modifying the diet I am not saying that I know better than those spruiking the benefits of paleo living but just that I saw things that would improve my own experience and increase my chances of success without much of a trade off on my health. The two biggest changes I made were to include a couple of things that I enjoy as "treats", and being more lenient on some naturally occurring foods.

The treats were simple. It wasn't about adding processed foods and sugars again but more about establishing a lifestyle where my eating habits are mostly paleo but with a few bonuses I enjoy. The bonuses I chose are things that I used to have without negative consequences for my body. Milk is the number one example and I have only decided to use it to allow me to drink coffee because I love the taste of good coffee but cannot stand to have it black.

I have been drinking milk for a long time and have never had problems with it so adding a little to my diet for me to enjoy a coffee seems like a nice trade off. It's still much less than the LOMAD (litre of milk a day) I was guzzling on the Geek to Freak routine earlier this year.

The other modification I made was to be lenient on all natural foods, even if they are not strictly good paleo foods. For example I have, and will continue to, add the odd serving of potatoes to my meals. My theory is that naturally occurring is still better than anything processed and my focus is now on eating when hungry instead of being too strict to the rules. I think this will help stabilise my weight and perhaps even help gain muscle without detriment to my health. It's not like I will be eating bread every meal!

What To Do When Paleo is Impossible?

During this past month I found times when it was physically impossible for me eat enough food to satisfy my hunger and still keep within the paleo rules. I faced a dilemma. Do I go hungry and wait for a better opportunity to present itself, or do I just make the best choices from what I had available. The latter is what I went for.

Following the paleo rules strictly is obviously needed (and recommended) for those seriously overweight and/or sick but for me, a thin and healthy young man, I decided that regular eating was better than being a paleo nazi. After all, a cave man wouldn't starve himself if food, albeit strange compared to his normal diet, was available would he?

So when faced with these impossible paleo solutions I made decisions to choose the most natural foods I could, eat lots of protein, and avoid highly processed carbs. When in doubt eating is better than starving.

Falling off the wagon

But that motto of choosing the best food available was not the reason why I fell off the wagon over Easter. It was all my own choosing and I am glad to have done it. Kind of like a mini-experiment within an experiment to prove that the original theory is still valid. With nearly a month of paleo living elapsed I decided to relax my "best food available" rules and included some naughty things. I'm looking at you chocolate.

I am not much of a chocolate person so it wasn't anything to do with cravings or willpower. It was just a test. I decided to opt-in to Easter with my family and I ate my white chocolate bunny, drunk too many vodkas, and under-slept 3 nights in a row. The result? Bloody terrible.

I woke up the monday and I was sneezing up a storm, my nose wouldn't stop dripping, my head felt fuzzy, and my body had dull aches all over. Turns out that was the best I was going to feel all day.

Later, when I was curled up on the couch feeling a little sorry myself (and finishing my easter chocolate) a thought occurred to me: "What if I am sick because my body is telling me to stop treating it like crap?" I put the chocolate down, ate some fruit, grabbed a handful of nuts and shifted back to a paleo focus. 24 hours later I was feeling fine. No medicine, no antibiotics, and no crazy tonics made of moon dust and unicorn hair. Just a simple diet change. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Need for Sleep

Getting enough sleep is still the hardest lifestyle change for me to implement. I have so much going on in my life that I end up squeezing sleep in instead of allocating enough time. I think this is a common problem for many people, a by-product of our society and the structures we have in place, but that is a discussion for another time.

The point about sleep is that I am still not maximising my potential, especially living the paleo lifestyle, because I am not resting adequately. I am considering going to biphasic sleep where I add an afternoon nap but I will hold off on this for now. One experiment at at time. For now my focus is on increasing both the quantity an quality of my current sleeping patterns.

One Month Summary

The paleo lifestyle is great. I lost some fat, I increased my energy levels, and I now have a new passion to annoy all my friends with. What's not to love?

Seriously though, I do not think words do it justice when explaining the positive feelings experienced. I believe that removing a lot of the crap from my diet has resulted in my mindset becoming even more positive than before. I feel that I am seeing dramatic improvements in myself both physically and mentally just by living this lifestyle. Now the next step is to buy a big block of land, learn to farm, and grow a big wooly beard. Keep an eye out for that article!

Paleo for life. I'm convinced.

How to Visualise Success

I have written a few articles so far about how the brain works, how it tricks us, and how to use this to apply basic Positive Happiness thought principles to our lives. One of the key thought techniques commonly used by successful people is a form of mental rehearsal called visualisation. So it only makes sense for me to discuss how visualisation works and show you how to maximise the effectiveness of your positive visualisations. As mentioned in several previous articles, our brain is fantastic at performing tasks automatically. Anything that it deems as an easily repeatable task gets put onto "auto-pilot", including our thoughts.

This can cause some unwanted problems at times but it can also be used to our advantage to automate positive thought processes. We can essentially train our brain to automatically think and perform positive actions for us. Sounds great? well it is, and you can do it too with these simple tips for getting the most out of your visualisations.

What are visualisations?

Visualisations are just a form of mental rehearsal where we imagine how a certain situation will look and feel. We might imagine what people say, how they look, what actions we take, and so on. The point of visualisation is to mentally prepare ourselves so that we are confident and capable of handling the upcoming scenario. When we picture success enough we find success.

This is why we are focusing on positive visualisations. If you are going for a job interview you want to develop a visualisation where you are confident, smart, friendly, and you ace the interview. Or if you are playing an important sporting match you want to visualise yourself excelling physically and mentally and being victorious. Practice these visualisations enough and the positive results will start to occur.

Make visualisations intense

The more intense or realistic you can make your visualisations the more effective they will be. This is the main reason why some sportspeople thrive in pressure situations and others fail. They have all learned the basic skills and practiced them thousands of times, but only those who make the practice as realistic as possible (both mentally and physically) will succeed when under pressure.

Start Small

Just like learning to drive you need to break down overly complex actions and thoughts so that you can practice and visualise success at each step. Start by breaking your overall goal into smaller tasks that you can visualise success for. Perfect each individual visualisation before bringing them all together.

Practice, practice, practice

Practice all the possibilities that could arise and visualise how you would deal with them and succeed. Then do it all again. If it only takes the brain a few times to start automating a thought process do not give it a chance to think of anything but success. Keep repeating the positive visualiation until the brain has it on speed dial.

Every detail counts

Create a clear and detailed picture of the scenario in your mind. Include all the details you can think of - colours, fabrics, smells, weather, people. Adding these details will help your brain recognise the scenario when it occurs in real life and thus be able to apply the correct visualisation.

Experience the emotions

When you first begin a visualisation you may feel some fear or stress. Acknowledge that those feelings are fine because they are why you need to practice visualisation in the first place. As you get into the swing of things start focusing your mind on what emotions would be triggered as you see your success unfolding. What would the success feel like? How much would it mean to you to have that success? Start experiencing those positive emotions as if you had already been successful. Eventually your mind will expect those feelings whenever the situation presents itself.

Eventually if you perform positive visualisation enough then just by thinking about the situation you will trigger positive and successful thoughts patterns. You wont even have to remember to do it. And when that situation does finally present itself your brain will do it all automatically and you will naturally expect success because that is what you trained for.

Visualise success and the rest will follow.

Image: graur codrin

Proof Your Brain Is Tricking You

Our brain tricks us into believing whatever it wants us to believe. I have previously mentioned some fatal flaws of the brain but perhaps its biggest flaw the brain has is that when presented incomplete information it will fill in the missing spots with whatever information it assumes to be correct. Once our brain has filled in the missing information it pretends that all the information was presented from the external source instead of being hacked together by our brain. This is a problem for a number of reasons: Firstly, our brain might not fill the gaps correctly. It fills the gap with a "best guess" approach using information it already has. If the missing data is something our brain has never seen before then it will be impossible for it to correctly fill the gap.

Secondly, by pretending the whole picture of information came from an external our brain will give more weight to it and thus will believe it to be true. This means that the data supplied from our brain (correct or otherwise) is assumed to be true even though it was fabricated just to fit the gap.

With that in mind I thought I would share an example that proves that our brains are masters of filling gaps with information and assuming it to be correct. The first time I did this little test I blew my mind.

Exercise: Proof by Optical Illusion

This little optical illusion exercise will prove just how easy it is for your brain to trick you. We often hear about blind spots in our vision, or when driving a car, but did you know that we have a blind spot right in front of our eyes? When we have both eyes we do not notice because they are positioned on our face in such a way to maximise our viewing potential. However we an discover the blind spot very simply and, at the same time, prove how our brain deceives us by assuming it is always right.

Step 1: Get a bank piece of paper (A4 size works best) with nothing on it. Draw a filled circle in the centre of the page about 1cm wide (that's 1/2 inch for those non-metric people).

Step 2: Close your left eye

Step 3: Chose a spot on the paper about 5cm (2 inches) to the left of that centre dot. Hold the paper up to your face with the chosen spot in front of your right eye. You should still be able to see the drawn circle in your peripheral vision but you should not be focusing on it.

Step 4: Slowly move the paper away from your face, all the while focusing on the spot you picked to the left of the drawn circle. Eventually that circle you draw will just disappear from your vision - it will look like you are holding a plain blank piece of paper again!

What is Going on Here?

Even though your brain controlled your hands to draw the circle, and even though you KNOW that the circle is there, your brain has filled in your blind spot with a "best guess". It analysed the rest of the information coming in, which was predominately blank paper, and chose to fill the gap with what it thought was most likely. But whatever is most likely is not necessarily correct.

The Blind Spot in Action - Our Self Belief

This proves that our brain is not always right. Just because it tells us something is true does not make it so. There are countless examples for how this applies to our lives but the biggest (and worst) is with out negative self beliefs. When we doubt ourselves, or speak negative of our skills and actions, or stop loving ourselves, then we are providing an incomplete picture of our self-image to our brain. We are giving it the opportunity to take all these negative thoughts and try to figure out the patten to fill in all the missing gaps.

The result is obvious - our brain deduces that the gaps must be filled with self loathing, anger, resentment, and a whole range of other negative emotions. It fills all the gaps in our self-image with these, and then presumes them all to be correct. We end up with a grossly exaggerated negative self-image which we assume is correct. Self-fulfilling prophecy anyone?

Luckily this also works for positivity. If you start providing an incomplete picture of positive thoughts about yourself to your brain then it will start filling the gaps with positive emotions. Your self-image will become one of happiness, love, and positivity. And because we already know that our brain tries to prove itself right it will start manifesting scenarios in your life that will reinforce this belief.

So stop assuming all your negative beliefs are true and start providing some positive information to your brain. Your life will change because of it.

Image: Danilo Rizzuti

Spend Time With People That Energise You

In my recent wrap up of my first 3 months I noticed that my article about why we all need some alone time has been my most popular piece so far. I think this says a lot about the current organisation in our society and how there is such a strong pressure to stay connected to others that we end up craving more and more alone time. However, I believe that a big part of the problem is the quality and type of social interactions people are having, and it is with that in mind that I thought it was time to talk about the value of spending time with people that energise us. This may sound like the complete opposite stance to my earlier article about needing alone time, but the truth of the matter is that as humans we need both. We need time to be alone and focus on ourselves but we also need time with others, forming emotional and social connections and building our relationships. The problem we face is balancing these needs.

Social Media: The Anti-thesis of a Balanced Life

In terms of balancing your life, social media sucks. No that's not fair. It's not just social media that puts undue strain on us but technology advances in general. Emails, text messages, mobile phones, twiter, facebook, blah blah blah, the list goes on forever. With the plethora of these modern products available to us we have become a society that is always on but never truly connected.

With these technologies anyone can contact us at any time they wish. And they generally do. We spend countless hours in front of a screen (computer, phone or otherwise) interacting with people but not really connecting to them. The problem with this is two-fold.

First, it means we rarely get to experience that true alone time where we can devote to ourselves. With all these options we never disconnect and we lose our personal identities. The increase of availability we have through technologies means a decrease in time for ourselves. Which explains why more people are feeling like they need alone time.

The second problem is that these modern methods of communication are impersonal at best and any positive feeling we derive from them is so short-lived that they do not actually fulfill our human needs for social and emotional connection with others. All they do is give a short burst of quasi-connection with others that just leaves us wanting more. Which is why many people become addicted to social media.

You may have a thousand facebook friends, or a million twitter followers, but how many of these people would you invite to your house for dinner? My guess is not many. This is ultimately sad because face to face is where we form true friendships and actually fulfill our humans needs for social interaction.

Humans are meant to interact with other humans in person. Face to face. Mano a mano. That's why we have friends.

Choose Your Friends Wisely

Now that I have had that little rant on the dangers of social media it is time for the most important part of interacting with others - choosing your friends wisely or, as I like to call it, spending time with people that energise you.

Do your friends give you a burst of energy? Do you feel happy to be in their company? After spending time with them do you go home thinking how wonderful they are? Can you be 100% yourself around your friends? If you are not answering yes to these questions then you need to have a long hard look at the type of people you call friends.

For a long time in my life I wanted everyone to be my friend. I was desperate for others to like me so I focused on pleasing everyone and the result was the opposite to what I intended - I connected with no-one. After all, no-one can truly connect with a people-pleaser because by their very definition they are not being true to themselves and humans are very adapt are picking up when someone is not acting congruent.

During this time I would see other people with wonderful friendships and I would be envious. I badly wanted to develop close connections with other people but by being a people-pleaser no-one wanted to develop those strong connections with me. Sure I always had some friends but they were never the guaranteed rock-solid friendships other people had. Looking back it is easy to see why. Building a relationship where one person is always pleasing the other will never be long lasting.

Now I have a handful of really close friends in my life and they are all wonderful people. They are all the kind of people that I can spend hours with before realising the any time has past. They are the kind of people that energise me, excite me, challenge me, and like me for who I am. Every time Sophie and I spend time with these friends we end up raving about how great it was, how wonderful they are, and how we should hang out more with them.

This is not a gloat about how good my life is but a demonstration of what having good friends feels like. I am lucky to have some very good friends who share my interests and passions and my life is better for it. I describe what I feel around my friends to challenge you to think about your friends and how your relationships have been built in the past.

Do your friends energise you?

Image: photostock

My First 3 Months

Time certainly has flown by - it has been 3 months since I started this website and I feel like I have developed significantly over that period. 3 months of dedicated personal development and physical experiments will do that I guess. The 3 month milestone is quite an occasion for me. I have dabbled in personal websites and blogs before but none of them managed to keep my interest like this. I feel like I have only just begun, that I have so much more to offer, and that I could keep writing for years. With that in mind I thought I would assess how much progress I have made in 3 months.

The Site Stats

These are the cold hard stats. Keep in mind I am missing about 6-7 days worth of data when I mistakenly removed the analytics code when I was upgrading my site.

• Visits: 651
• Unique Visitors: 463
• Page Views: 1661
• Email Subscribers: 1
• Traffic Split: Search Engines = 46% , Referring Sites, =33% , Direct = 21%
• Most Viewed Article: Sometimes We all need some Alone Time

Overall most things are trending upwards. Over the past two weeks I have averaged over 20 visits per day and I have set two personal bests for single-day stats: most visits (30) and most page views (98).

My (lack of) Marketing

I have pretty much broken every rule for how to create a high-traffic website. I do not write small articles (most are over 500 words and some are up around the 1500 word mark) and I do not get myself out there with hardcore "marketing" that seems to be the norm. My current self promotion tally is:

• Commented on 4 blogs.
• Posted 10 links to this site on Twitter
• Submitted 6 articles to blog carnivals.

I think this is one area I should put more effort in to but right now I prefer to spend my time writing high quality content so that this site can be as useful as possible when I start attracting higher visitor numbers.

My Writing Style

Looking back I can see some of my earlier articles were very rough and unpolished. I have always enjoyed writing, both fiction and non-fiction, but my skill has definitely improved since beginning this site 3 months ago.

Now my articles flow better, my conclusions are stronger, and I invoke more thought and feeling with my writing. At least that's how I see it.

My Biggest Mistake

I have made plenty of mistakes over the past 3 months but the biggest would be blurring the lines between this website and my personal life. I got so involved with the mindset of personal development that I started acting like a "life coach" all the time.

The realisation for this came from my beautiful wife-to-be, Sophie, when she said said "I feel like I only get to talk to the writer version of Zac Sky now. Where is my fiance Zac Sky?" That was a wake-up call for me.

I am the kind of person who gets passionately involved in projects, so much so that I can loose perspective on others things that are important but I did not want to do that to my relationship. My relationship with Sophie is the most important thing in my life and I am lucky that she was understanding of my over-zealous dedication to this project. I just hope my passion is one of the reasons she is marrying me...

The Next 3 Months

So what is in store for the next 3 months? More of the same but better! More articles, more personal and physical development, more stories, more experiments. More of everything. More, more more!

Don't forget you can subscribe to my email newsletter. That way you won't miss a thing.

Stay tuned.