Learning & Study Techniques Archives - The Art of Improvement

Turn Your Life Around in 7 Steps

Have you ever felt stuck, lost or overwhelmed in life? If so, you’re not alone. Some research shows that up to 75% of people have felt that way at one time or another.

When best selling author and speaker, Timber Hawkeye, realized he needed to make a big change in his life, he did some serious thinking about what he needed to do. He had been living a traditional life in Corporate America, with plenty of success and material possessions, including designer clothes and a sports car. But inside, he just knew something wasn’t right.

Stop Letting People Walk All Over You

Start here: Browse the Self-Improvement Guides and pick the path that fits your situation.

“No.”

It’s a simple word. Powerful too. Yet it is often met with a less-than warm reception. There are many people who say “yes” to most things thrown their way, often in fear of saying “no.”

In reality, saying “no” isn’t anything other than being assertive. Not abrasive, confrontational, or anything in between. It’s an important but small part of assertive communication. Mastering it means to know your boundaries and communicate them in an effective, non-confrontational manner. If you don’t honour your boundaries, then you are giving someone else the opportunity to take advantage of you. By setting and enforcing what you’re comfortable with, whether that’s in your work, social, or personal life, you form your character and establish a social image (even if the social circle itself is small).

Minimalism for Overthinkers

Start here: Browse the Self-Improvement Guides and pick the path that fits your situation.

Imagine yourself sitting in a room filled with all kinds of things that cover all of the bookshelves, furniture, and floors. A small table in front of you is scattered with stacks of magazines and digital devices, like a laptop, phone, and ipad.

Now try another scenario, but this time imagine sitting in a room that is clear of clutter. The shelves contain personal items that are meaningful to you. The floor is clear and clean, and the small table in front of you has only a vase of flowers and a book that you’re currently reading.

A Simple System to Escape Mediocrity

“First say to yourself what you would be and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus

You don’t escape mediocrity by accident.
You do it on purpose.

Most people drift. They consume. They wait for motivation.
But you will not.
You’ll choose a different path, one boring, deliberate day at a time.

6 Uncomfortable Truths About Success You Need to Hear

Comfort. Let’s think about that for a second. Don’t get it twisted, comfort feels wonderful. It’s reassuring, safe, and protective. A comfortable evening is predictable, but in a good way. You know what you’re getting. Now, that’s great, but say you repeat that pattern, repeatedly. You choose comfort every day and night. That safety net isn’t just present, it completely wraps around your life.

Soon, the comfort can begin to feel too soft. Suddenly, it’s too hard to get up. Comfort is wonderful and necessary in all of our lives, but not wholly. Like everything, balance is needed. Discomfort – often in the form of truths you don’t want to hear – is essential in your journey to success, whatever that may look like.

How I Learned to Remember Everything

With today’s technology it may seem like we don’t really have to use our memory to remember things. We can just look it up, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, we have a world of information at our fingertips that is easily accessible at any time, day or night. But then there are other things that we want to keep stored in our own memory banks for future or daily use.

When studying school work, learning a new language, taking on a new job or developing a new skill, these things all require memorization. And sometimes it can be a challenge to retain the information you need to know.

Before we had computers to remember everything for us, people memorized all kinds of things. Addresses, phone numbers, poetry, and speeches, just to name a few! Our brain can be trained to hold far more data than we usually ask it to.

Habit Stacking 101 A Beginner's Guide to Building Powerful Habits

How Small Actions Can Create Big Ripples In Your Life

Do you ever wonder how you got where you are? Have you considered the circumstances and events that brought you to this point in your life?

In his book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Aron Ralston recounts the steps and choices he made that led him ultimately, to a life-threatening situation that changed his life. If anything had been different, it could have resulted in an entirely different outcome.

How to Bounce Back from Hard Times

Life is full of challenges. Not everything we attempt or wish for will materialize the way we’d hoped. But seeing failure and adversity as part of the process can help put things into perspective.

Business woman Arianna Huffington said,

“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.”

Being resilient is not necessarily something you’re born with, but you CAN learn it. Even if you didn’t have the environment or opportunity to build skills of resilience as a child, it’s not too late.

How to Work on Yourself | 3 Key Strategies for Personal Empowerment

In the pantheon of self-improvement buzzwords, ‘empowerment’ feels among the boldest. To empower is to literally give power to yourself. It feels intimidating in its grandiosity – as if the act of personal empowerment requires a life-changing act (or something to remember, at least.) It may feel difficult, then, to actively push for a personally empowered life. However, misvaluing its importance in the grand self-improvement scheme of things is an error not worth committing. To personally empower yourself allows you to organically grow confidence as you can firmly say yes, I did choose myself today. Achievements become more likely when you instil empowering levels of confidence in your mindset.

How to Change Your Bad Habits

Do you have a bad habit or two? Most people do. While good habits can be helpful, and make it easier to live happy, healthy lives, bad habits can make things more difficult to achieve our goals, and to be the people we want to be.

So if you have a bad habit that’s creating problems for you, it should be easy to just stop doing it, right? Well, no. As most people would agree, it’s not that easy. Stopping a bad habit can be nearly impossible depending on how deeply rooted or physically addictive that habit may be. But turning it into a better habit, could be the trick to making the change.

So how do you change a bad habit into a good habit?