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It is rare that I dedicate a blog post to a single TED episode when usually a tweet will do but seeing as a lot more of you follow my blog then the twitter feed this is a better setting.

This 4:22 second video by the suprisingly hilarious German psychiatrist and Holocaust-survivor is sure to have a massive impact with you.

Why Believe In Others? 4 Minutes That Will Revolutionise Your Thinking is a post from: thelifething.com
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Long overdue but I finally got round to finishing a guest post for my good friend Eduard over at peopleskillsdecoded. You can check it out by heading here or check out the summary below.

Confidence, more than ability, is usually what separates the winners from the losers and so what better trait to focus on for improving your confidence.

Some people are innately very confident and I am sure we all secretly harbor some resentment towards them because of it but even if confidence does not come easily to you, it can be improved. The 5 Unorthodox confidence boosting techniques we are going to focus on today are:

1. Wear Outrageous Underwear
2. Make Statements – Limit Explanation
3. Learn To Love Silence
4. Dress Dapper
5. Finish Well

Anyone else want a guest post? Just let me know in the sexiest way possible…or just send me an email, whichever works for you.

Instant Confidence – 5 Unorthodox Tips For Improving Yours is a post from: thelifething.com
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Hello all you happy campers, today is not a usual post but instead a sexy little look at a sexy little life changing retreat for you in sunny Costa Rica.

The truly delightful and tasty Ashley Ambirge from TheMiddleFinger Project is onto something epic, and this particular piece of epicness is in the form of a 7-day retreat on the sandy beaches of Costa Rica this December 7th -14th 2010.

In her own words

“the retreat was setup with the purpose of giving people an excuse to finally remove themselves from their daily routine, and witness the transformational powers of travel in terms of gaining perspective and clarity, and start asking themselves the questions they really need to be asking.”

You can check out some more info on this badboy by clicking here to visit The Middle Finger Project – Liberation Seven. though it all sounds good to me, I just need to find some swimwear, I’m thinking Speedos. (Oh, for the record that link is an affiliation, think I have to put that up there don’t I? Wouldn’t want to be breaking any rules now would I)

Give it a think. If your up for making some seriously positive life changes, fancy a bit of sun and wouldn’t mind hanging out with some pretty cool people for a week then what are you waiting for. In my opinion it is very reasonably priced.

If you do sign up defiantly let me know and I will personally come round and kiss you.

KEEP ROCKING.

Need To Make Some Life Changes? Costa Rica Would Probably Work is a post from: thelifething.com
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Read Time: Around 5-6 minutes

Stephen Mills is a personal development blogger who shares his thoughts at his blog

“In this world, things are hard, and conflict and pain are commonplace. Fighting for what you want and against what you don’t want is considered normal. Struggle is celebrated in this world – in this difficult world.” – Julia Rogers Hamrick

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What is The Easy Life?

To me the easy life is a life where you primarily do what you want, when you want to do it. You thrive instead of just survive. You live a life of joy, peace, and one relatively free of pain, conflict, struggle, and resistance. It does not necessarily mean a life free of challenge, effort, or intensity. Nor does it mean a life of lounging around doing nothing.

I know people who play soccer during their lunch hour in the broiling Houston summer heat. If I were to do that, it would be hard. To them it is fun and they enjoy it immensely. They do not have to motivate themselves to get through it. If you love mountain climbing, it might be challenging, exhausting, and difficult, but it does not mean you live a “hard” life. You do it because you love it. To me, any repetitive, boring, simple task is hard. Those tasks used to be an enormous struggle for me to complete. They are easier for me now, but they still not what I would call part of an “easy” life.

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The Two Ways of The Easy Life

In my view, there are two complementary ways to live the easy life. One is changing your behavior and the other is changing your thoughts. I think they both are required but you can achieve an easy life with different degrees of each; there is no one solution for everyone. The ideas below contain both ways. It’s important to note that these are high-level summaries and each one requires a deeper dive to figure out how it can work for you. 10 Ways to The Easy Life This is a partial list. I feel like I could go on forever, but these ideas are the first ten I thought of and I think are a great start to living the easy life.

1. Kill your commitments. The vast majority of people I know are seriously over committed. Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that commitment in general is a bad thing.  I know this may go against common wisdom, but if common wisdom was so wise, most people wouldn’t be common.

Commitments invariable become a burden. It never fails that a commitment will end up conflicting with something else you want or need or feel like doing instead. You might just be tired and not feel like it, but since you committed you feel you must. Then it becomes hard. This doesn’t mean you can’t contribute, volunteer, help, give, or whatever else you feel like doing. Just don’t commit in advance. Do it on an ad hoc basis; when you feel like doing it. Refusing to commit is a basic part of a free and easy life. I’ve written much more on this in Freedom From Commitment.

2. Avoid the golden handcuffs. We get used to living at or above our means and buying all kinds of material things.  We do not need these large homes, expensive cars, electronic toys, clothes, or the myriad of other things we get used to living with. Having all these things comes with a cost; it often means handcuffing yourself to a job or a way of earning money that you don’t enjoy. You are not free to decide to quit your job or do something else, because you are enslaved by your possessions. These material possessions will not make your life easy or happy. Do you want to work until you are old at a job you don’t enjoy so you can pay for homes, cars and other possessions? Or would you rather live modestly and sit on the beach reading a book (or whatever else makes you happy)?

3. Decide to pay the price to get out. Getting to easy will sometimes come with a price. You must commit to paying the pricing to getting out of the traps that are causing you pain, discomfort, boredom, or anything else that you don’t want or like. Paying the price to get out is better than staying trapped. The get out price is may be intense, but at least it will be temporary. The price of staying trapped is a chronic slow burning pain. I say rip off the bandage and get on with your new life. If a person or circumstance in your life is causing you unhappiness, you have to let them go. Alternative you can choose to live your difficult life. Don’t blame anyone else; it is you who are choosing to live that way

4. Stop compromising. I know this is a controversial statement, but I really feel strongly about it. It’s also a much nuanced topic that would take a book to fully explore. I wrote one article specifically on this subject and I encourage you to read it if you are interested: Freedom From Compromise and Control. My view of compromise is that it is typically usually a lose-lose situation.

5. Accept that you are choosing your life. You are choosing your life. You don’t have to do anything. This is a hard concept for most people to accept, but unless you take responsibility for your choices and your circumstances you will never get to an easy life. If you think your life is forced upon you, then stop reading and have a long miserable life.

6. Forget what happened in the past. This is captured in a wonderful quote by Guy Finley:
”Stop thinking you can change what happened yesterday by reliving it today.” I would modify that to stop reliving what happened to you five minutes ago. Every minute of stress, upset, anger, disappointment, depression, or any other negative emotion over what has already happened, is another minute thrown into the wastebasket of your life. You can’t change the past, but you can enjoy the present.

7. Don’t give away your happiness. Do you have a boss that makes you mad?  Is there a toxic person in your life who makes you depressed or causes you to seethe with anger and frustration?  Do you stress out over the idiot drivers on the roads?  You are handing your happiness over to them; just giving it away as if it were nothing. Read more here.

8. Stop caring what other people think. From almost the time you are born you are bombarded by others with telling you what you are expected to do, what you should do, what will make you happy, beautiful, successful, and secure. You should do what makes you happy as long as you respect the rights of others. I say to hell with what others think. If you really think about it, it is highly hypocritical and arrogant of others to expect you to do what they want.

9. Stop caring what others do. The day I stopped caring what others did, a gigantic burden was lifted from my shoulders. There may no more single psychological freeing experience than simply letting go of the behavior of others. This does not mean you have to agree with what others do; your values and beliefs will obviously be different than those of other people. What it does mean is that you refuse to let what they do affect you.

10. Stop trying to control others. This is a special case of caring what others do. So to keep it short and simple: The degree you try to control another person, is the degree to which you make yourself a slave to their behavior.

10 Easy Steps For Getting Yourself To The Easy Life is a post from: thelifething.com
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Grab Your Free CHOOSE promotion ebook. Yes, because I am that nice. Download It Now.

Read Time: 2 Minutes 5 Seconds

Hello all,

After some more tweaks, adjustments and refinements the CHOOSE ebook is almost ready for launch. Yes, I know. You are all as excited as a sackful of newborn puppies.

I believe strongly in this book and am very proud of it, and for that reason I have created a small promobook for it which explains exactly what you get. I know, even more excitement.

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Did you know that:

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• Money Dones Exist
• There are a different set of rules for the rich than for you.
• Earning money is a loser game.

Well, grab a copy of the CHOOSE ebook and we’ll soon have you up to scratch.

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Why Download The Ebook?

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1. The Promobook is FREE!!! so what  have you got to lose by downloading it.

2. You work incredibly hard for your money so take the time to invest in the knowledge that will help you make best use of it and in some cases make you stinkingly rich. I have put in the hours of reading and the legwork so you don’t have to and can still enjoy the benefits of knowing just how money works and the game of money is played.

3. This book will be priceless to you if you have never thought about your own personal Financial Intelligence or even if you have and I guarantee it will change your mindset, your approach to money and have a fattening effect on your wallet. If not then I will refund your money no questions asked and you can even give me a forfeit. Thats how much I know this is going to have a positive inpact on your life, it’s why I wrote the book in the first place.

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Enjoy

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Let me know what you think in the comments and the best comment will get a free book when it is launched next week. Also, do me a great favour and give it a tweet of Facebook mention. Doing so will significantly increase your sex life, scientifically proven.

CHOOSE: Master Of Money or Slave To It. Download Your FREE Promobook Now!!! is a post from: thelifething.com
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To finish this little mini series on Info graphs I came across this neat little number. Perhaps your site is on there. Click the image for a larger view.

Top Million Websites In The World – A Visualisation is a post from: thelifething.com
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Following the popularity of the “How The Internet Works” Infograph of the other day, today I want to introduce you to David McCandless who is doing some incredible things with data manipulation or in laymens terms, making sense of the numbers. Check out his TED talk below. If you can’t see the embedded video then just click here.

I have only just got round to setting up my own TED account almost 200 videos. In any case if you have one you can connect with me here.

I have been a fan of the infograph for some time and so here are my top three that I have picked up over years from around the web.

What Does A Trillion Dollars Look Like?

Or lets put it another way, with moving picture goodness.

And then there’s the Roadmap to Harmony

Information can overwhelm but at the same time it can be an incredibly powerful tool. Just ask Hans Rosling.

The Beauty Of Data Visualisation (the New Oil), From A Silky Voiced Englishman is a post from: thelifething.com
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If you one of the 3000 people a month that are reading this blog then no doubt you have some idea of what the internet is. But what about how it works? Here’s a great info graphic from makeuseof.com that brings some visual stimulating clarity for some of us that tend to spend our lives online.

[Via: Online Schools]

How The Internet Works is a post from: thelifething.com
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Why Read (700 Words)

As part of the new “value added” approach from the lifething.com this is the first of the toolbox posts which focus on giving you the tools, apps, systems and software that I have found to be useful in achieving great health, wealth, happiness and success.

Todays posts focuses on the Mac users out there and highlights the essential apps I have on my mac and what they will do for you. They are all free and so if you know other Mac lovers that would benefit from them why not forward the post onto them, it might just bring a smile to their face.

Click the images to be taken to the download page.

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App Cleaner

The budding entrepreneurs Mac is his castle and no one likes a messy castle. Nothing important can get done when there is rubbish lying all over the floor. Fortunately App cleaner is a great little free piece of software that allows you to completely remove an unwanted add from your sexy mac without having to worry about ghost files being left behind. It also has a very easy drag and drop functionality. Messy macs will be a thing of the past.

Inkscape

One most awesome piece of open source software. I have used inkscape massively over the years for all sorts of design work, both personal and professional. It won;t do everything that Illustrator will do but it does the 10% of stuff you are going to need it to do and it costs a few grand less. Couple it with GIMP (unfortunate name) to replace Photoshop and you have an instant design studio. Now just understand basic form and colour theory and you are half way there.

MindNode

Incredible free and easy to use mind mapping / brain storming / noggin dumping / whatever the PC term for it is these days piece of software. I have used a lot of mapping software over the years and this by far is still currently my favorite. Incredible simple and quick to use and it won’t cost you a penny. Perhaps send the creator a digital kiss, or some chocolate cake.

Name Mangler

If you are a photographer than this piece of sexiness is a must. Name mangler easily allows you to rename and reorder hundreds of files at once with custom prefix, suffix and step options. Keeping an organized system of photos is time-consuming but this app significantly reduces the investment. Great name too.

VLC

Any possible video format you have, VLC will play it. Honestly sometimes it is spooky. You can have an obscure Japanese design video with twin sub sections in a format with more letters on the end then the chinese alphabet and this bad boy doesn’t even stutter. I now play everything through it as a matter of principle because I know it is unlikely to ever be stumped. Get it, get it now.

Vuze

If you download media (legally or otherwise I am condoning neither officially) vuze will help you do both. It has a beautiful GUI and I have very rarely not been able to find a good file of whatever I was searching for. Also there malicious adware protection seems to be impeccable as I have still not had any problems after nearly two years. Definitely worth the download.

DropBox

What can I say, if you have a mac and don’t have drop box then you need to have a look at yourself in the mirror and ask some serious questions. Possibly the single best free app for backing up files and sharing documents I have ever used. Simple to download and launch it sits in the top launch bar of your mac and auto uploads anything you put into it to a server on the net with zero effort from you. If you hack it then it is also possible to have more than one account. I have a personal one and two business accounts on my Mac. Shush.

Focus Booster

A recent addition of mine but it is great for benchmarking the 25/5 productivity pie rule. It is beautifully designed and sits on your computer as a glorified egg timer allowing you to keep an eye of your 25 min sessions. A small bell alerts you when time is up and then it kicks straight into your 5 mins break session. A great little number.

8 Essential Free Mac Apps Of The Budding Entrepreneurs Toolbox is a post from: thelifething.com
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The wealthy all have some defining characteristics that have been responsible for their wealth. These are learnable.

The Money Non Secret

I don’t think it is a secret that most people would like to own a lot of money. Most people would like to be rich, have lots of mulah, coinage or dough. However, there is a difference between being rich and being wealthy. The wealthy are indeed rich, but the rich are not always wealthy. Cryptic I know, but stick with me a few more sentences.

You can win the lottery, become famous or earn a huge paycheck and become rich, but not necessarily wealthy. Millions can easily disappear within a few years which is why most lottery winners return to their previous level of wealth within 5 years of winning and American football stars are, on average, bankrupt within 4 years of giving up the game . Britney Spears career anyone?

Having money is not the same as being wealthy, being wealthy is about being able to create money and look after money for many generations. You can be lucky and get rich, but it is unlikely, far better to learn how to become wealthy and ensure you become rich and that those riches will last. Here’s some traits of the wealthy to get you started.

Who You Need To Be

The Wealthy Are All The Same, The Poor Are All The Same

There is a mold for wealthy and successful people, a predisposition some would say. Wealthy and successful people are different from poor people. They think differently and they act differently. Many of  us do not share the mold of the wealthy but it is one you will have to squeeze yourself into as money does not hang around the out of shape. The 7 essential attributes that all wealthy individuals, generally agreed by most that have studied the lives of the wealthy extensively, share are listed below.

The 7 Traits

Low Emotion: When it comes to money and wealth, emotions are going to get you into trouble. The wealthy understand this and learn to control their emotions and think logically when it comes to financial decisions. High emotions tend to lower your financial intelligence and it is your financial intelligence that ultimately makes you wealthy.

Immense Boldness – We all have self doubt from time to time. The difference between the wealthy and the poor is that the wealthy face it head on and conquer their fears, the poor run and hide from them. Boldness is not about having no fear, it is about what you do with that fear. Do you let it cloud your judgement and shy away from profitable decisions or do you use it to help clarify and take decisive action when a deal presents itself.

Great Salesmen – Sales and salesmen have negative connotations to most people but this is the very reason many talented and intelligent people do not see the recognition or success they deserve. Most people are just one skill away from wealth – sales. Wealthy people are great salespeople. No one becomes wealthy on their own, and so it is critical to  sell your ideas well, whether this is for a company, a product or an investment.

Great Leaders – Great leaders are great inspirers and managers of people. Without exception, almost all wealthy individuals are great leaders of people – of their staff, of the people they work with, of the teams they create. If leading people fills you with fear then you need to find a way to control that fear. No-one creates great wealth alone and no one is going to follow you in your path to riches if you cannot lead them well.

Excellent Communicators – It is communications skills such as writing, speaking and negotiating that are crucial to a life of success. You can have the greatest ideas and the best laid plans but unless you can communicate them well to others and create and inspire teams to help you achieve your goals then you might as well be pushing against a brick wall. The wealthy are great people persons, that is one of the secrets to their success.

Failure Connoisseurs – No one likes to fail, not the poor and definitely not the wealthy. There are two ways you can react to failure, it can defeat you or it can help you to grow. Failure falls on both the wealthy and the poor but the fundamental difference is that it helps the wealthy to grow whereas it defeats the poor. If you wish to become wealthy then failure is part and parcel of the game. There is no wealthy person in history who has not failed and not lost money, it is part of the process. Failing is not the issue, not learning from failure is a problem.

Responsibility Takers – With great wealth comes great responsibility. The life of the wealthy is not all fun and games, they are responsible for many organisations, investments and most importantly people. The wealthy know that when the chips are down then it falls on their heads, they are there for everything, not just the successes. The wealthy don’t make excuses, try to shirk the blame or overlook their failings. They take responsibility for their actions and decisions, whether they turned out well or not. Taking responsibility and being a person of integrity is vital in becoming the person you need to be in order to be a good steward of money.

To Sum Up

If you currently can’t see yourself as one of these people that share these characteristics then some serious personal work needs to be done. These are the skills one needs to develop in order to become wealthy. It takes time, but the payoff is worth it.

Key Notes

The 7 Key Characteristics of the wealthy are that they Have Low Emotion, Have Immense Boldness, Are Great Salesmen, Are Great Leaders, Have Excellent Communicators, Are Failure Connoisseurs and Take Responsibility

Here’s to your foundation of wealth.

Choose: Master Of Money Or Slave To It

If you want to start on the road to being fantastically wealthy then look out for my new ebook. It launches shortly so here is a sneak preview on the goodiness you can expect. Click on the image for a larger view.

Help Me Out

I give all this advice out for free and so if you like what I write and it help you, please help me out by letting others know. On this site, it has been scientifically proven that by doing so you will become instantly twice as attractive to the opposite sex. Can’t argue with science.

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The Seven Learnable Traits Of The Fantastically Wealthy is a post from: thelifething.com
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