Seven million years of evolution was dominated by two main factors: food scarcity and fighting against the cold. In contrast to that people in today’s modern society spend most of their time in a comfortable temperature range; if it’s hot, we turn on the A/C, if it’s cold, we turn on the heater or pull on another layer of warm clothing. This luxury has practically “switched off” our body’s natural protection system against the extremes that used to be parts of our lives up until a couple of hundred years ago. That – along with many other factors of course – plays a role in the large number of health related issues we’re facing today.
 
One of the key people studying the effects of cold exposure is the former NASA scientist Ray Cronise. Ray struggled with losing weight for quite some time when he came across an interesting discovery. During the 2008 Olympics it was a widely circulated claim that the swimmer Michael Phelps was consuming 12,000 calories a day. The average daily calorie intake of a regular U.S. citizen was 3,770 in 2014 (which is by the way the highest in the world). According to WebMD.com women should consume about 2,000 calories, while men should have no more than 2,400 calories a day. So how is it possible that Phelps ate almost four times as much as the average U.S. citizen and not gain weight? Just as a reference point it’s interesting to note that running an entire marathon burns “only” about 2,500 calories.
 
Cronise had a deep understanding of the physics behind heat transfer – otherwise known as the rules of thermodynamics – since he was employed to keep astronauts alive in space under extreme temperatures. It didn’t take much to figure it out: Phelps must be burning those extra calories simply by being in the 25-degree (77 Fahrenheit) water several hours a day. Amazed by his new discovery Cronise began experimenting with cold showers, ice baths and walking shirtless in winter, through which he ended up losing 12 kilograms (26.7 pounds) in six weeks. He measured his metabolic rate during and after cold exposure and found that his body was burning an enormous amount of calories. Rather than storing energy as fat his body was using it to keep his internal organs and core temperature on an adequate level.
 
Although Cronise states “you can’t freeze yourself thin”, combined with proper eating habits and some exercise temperature can have an amazing effect in developing one’s fitness. (Watch Ray’s TED Talk here!)
 
But weight loss is not the only benefit of experiencing cold on a regular basis. Wim Hof, the famous Dutch daredevil is known for his ability to withstand extreme temperatures for extended periods of time, which earned him the nickname “The Iceman”. Hof currently holds 21 Guinness World Records, including climbing to 7,300 meters (24,000 feet) on Mount Everest in nothing but shorts and a pair of boots, running a full marathon above the Arctic circle wearing again only a pair of shorts (no shoes this time) and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in the exact same outfit (or rather lack thereof). He also holds the world record of being immersed in ice for 1 hour 52 minutes, doing that without dropping his core body temperature below the critical limit.
 
Another interesting outcome of Hof’s technique (now taught to people around the world as the “Wim Hof Method”) is that through his years of mindfulness, breathing and yoga exercises accompanied by extreme cold exposures on a daily basis he developed a way to influence his autonomous nervous system, something previously considered impossible by the medical community. Hof proved in a laboratory setting, that not only he is able to achieve such feats, but through his teachings his students, too.
 
In March 2013 twenty-four subjects at the Dutch Radboud University were injected with a dead strain of Escherichia Coli bacteria, which normally induces violent sickness with flu-like symptoms, such as high fever, headaches, muscle pain. Twelve of the participants were trained by Wim Hof himself, while the other twelve (poor guys!) were the control group with no preparation whatsoever. Amazingly enough, Wim’s students could suppress their immune responses to the bacteria and produced significantly fewer symptoms than the control group, who suffered from what was normally expected from such an infection. (Learn more about the experiment through this Nature article or this short Youtube video!)
 
So let’s look at how many ways can cold exposure benefit you based on the current standings in scientific research.
 
1. Increases alertness
Taking cold showers in the morning is a great way to kick-start the day! The deep-breathing response of the body to cold water (or some hyperventilation for the untrained) help us increase our oxygen intake as well as speed up our heart rate, thereby releasing a rush of oxygen-filled blood throughout our entire body. When you’re exposed to cold your body also increases the production of norepinephrine, which is a neurotransmitter involved in focus and attention.
 
The actress Katherine Hepburn was a big fan of cold immersion; she started taking ice-cold baths and cold showers at a very young age and persisted with this habit throughout her entire life. She died at 96.
 
2. Lowers levels of stress and depression
Cold showers and ice-baths have been proven to relieve stress and depression symptoms due to the intense impact on cold receptors of the skin, which send a tremendous amount of electrical impulses from the nerve endings to the brain. It produces a natural antidepressive effect and you experience an immediate mood boost. There is also an increase in gluthathione, an antioxidant that keeps other antioxidants in the body performing at optimal levels, dampening the detrimental effects of oxidative stress on mental health.
 
3. Stimulates weight loss
As we have seen in the case of Ray Cronise, cold exposure can effectively aid weight loss. When studying the eating habits of Michael Phelps, Cronise discovered that keeping your body warm in cold temperatures requires an enormous amount of energy, thereby calories burn a lot faster, so eventually there is less remaining for your body to store as fat.
 
Speaking of fat the human body actually contains two types of distinctive fat tissues, the so-called white fat and brown fat. White fat is what most of us are familiar with; it is the one that our body accumulates when we consume more calories than our body needs. It puts them in a reserve known as body fat, which usually piles up at our waists, thighs, neck and lower back and that we’re so desperately trying to eliminate.
 
Brown fat on the other hand is the “good fat”. It’s a lot less visible, and it’s designed to help our body generate heat to keep itself warm when exposed to cold temperatures. It gets activated by cold exposure, and the more we expose ourselves to such conditions the more brown fat tissue is generated (or gets converted from white fat). This is the type of fat our ancestors used to have and that most of us are lacking today do to the luxury and comfort we live in. (Read more about brown fat in this Live Science article!)
 
4. Speeds up recovery
Ice baths among top athletes have become a common post-workout practice in the past years as more and more studies point out the effectiveness of cold on muscle soreness. In 2009 The New England Journal of Medicine conducted a study on 360 people, who either rested or immersed themselves in cold water after extensive resistance training, cycling or running. They concluded, that subjects exposed to cold water experienced a faster recovery from muscle soreness in the one to four day post-workout period, than their relaxing peers.
 
There is one important note though when talking about post-training cold exposure. When you’re doing strengthening exercises – without going into the details – you generate chemicals in your body that help you increase muscle mass. When exposing yourself to cold immediately after exercising you suppress this beneficial process, so if the goal is to build muscle, avoid the cold in the first hour after strength training! (On the other hand, spending some time in the sauna after workout does just the opposite; it actually helps you in building muscle mass.)
 
5. Improves circulation
When cold water hits the body its natural response is to shut down the circulation beneath the skin and at the extremities (hands and feet) to focus the energy on protecting the inner organs that are critical for survival. When you stop exposing yourself to the cold, the circulation in the aforementioned areas starts up again, making your heart pump fresh new blood to the areas that cooled down in the process. It’s like restarting your computer – it always runs smoother and faster after all the junk is cleared from its memory.
 
Additionally, this process can also lower your blood pressure, clear blocked arteries and result in an improved immune system overall.
 
6. Improves the health of your hair and skin
Cold showers are clearly the most natural way of improving your appearance when it comes to hair and skin. As opposed to hot water, cold doesn’t dry out your skin, it leaves all the healthy natural oils on it, while sealing the pores and tightening its surface. Regular cold showers will also lead to shinier, stronger and healthier hair and an increased ability for it to grip the scalp.
 
You don’t have to worry that cold will make your hair fall out, it’s a myth (here is a message to your mom). In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The so common dandruff is also not caused by cold air or water, it’s rather an overabundance of malassezia fungus, which causes the build-up of dead skin cells on the scalp. It can be attributed to several factors including stress, vitamin deficiency or improper cosmetic products, but it can also be caused by the frequent combination of overheated rooms in winter and the cool dry air outside.
 
So how cold is cold enough to achieve the aforementioned results? In case of showers simply turn it all the way down and enjoy what you get from the water system. Staying under the shower for 3-5 minutes per session is adequate to experience most beneficial effects. In case of cold baths most rehabilitation specialists recommend starting with 10-14 degrees (50-58 Fahrenheit) and 6-8 minute sessions. Once you get accustomed to the cold and developed a certain amount of brown fat you can experiment with cooler temperatures, but don’t exceed the above timeframe.
 
As a final note it’s important to state that despite the fact that exposing our bodies to extreme cold temperatures can feel unpleasant, especially in the beginning, it’s generally safe for people without any heart related medical conditions. As always, listen to your body; individual tolerance limits can vary widely, and pushing yourself too far can result in undesired consequences.
 
With that being said, feel free to practice, experiment, and witness the amazing results of cold firsthand!

First of all let’s define what emotional intelligence is. According to the Dictionary of Psychology EI or EQ (both abbreviations used) is the capacity of individuals to recognize their own, and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior. Although the term first appeared in 1964, it gained popularity in 1995 when Daniel Goleman’s famous book was published with the same title.
 
There is no known connection between IQ and EQ, you simply can’t predict one from the other. IQ is also considered something you’re born with, while EQ is more dynamic; it can be improved with practice, but can also deteriorate if exposed to negative, emotionless or highly stressful environments for longer periods of time (like prison, war, etc.). Although some people are born more emotionally intelligent than others, the environment itself has a lot to do with the level of our EQs including that of the people we surround ourselves with in the long term.
 
Now let’s examine how much of an impact emotional intelligence has on our professional life. TalentSmart – the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests, training, and consulting – tested EI together with 33 other workplace skills and found that emotional intelligence has the strongest predictor of career related success and is responsible for 58 percent of one’s overall job related performance. It is considered one of the foundations for a myriad of skills including communications, assertiveness, teamwork, stress management and decision making in general.
 
Dr. Travis Bradberry, co-author of the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and co-founder of TalentSmart says in a March 2015 article that people with a higher degree of emotional intelligence are likely to make significantly more money regardless the industry, the position and the part of the world they live in. And that’s where it gets interesting. The same author in the same month published another article with the title “Why leaders lack emotional intelligence?” and demonstrated that although emotional intelligence does correlate significantly with job title, only up to a certain point. Having analyzed a million-plus individual records from front line workers to top executives the trend shows that EQ reaches its peak at the mid managerial level, from where it drops all the way down to the CEO, who is generally having the lowest EQ in the organization, even lower than that of an individual contributor on the bottom of the corporate hierarchy.

The explanation behind the results according to Bradberry is that middle managers stand out with the highest EQs, because companies tend to promote people to managerial levels who have above average influencing, communication and social skills and are the ones others generally accept, respect and like to work with. They are the typical “people persons”. But things change as we move beyond this level.
 
The higher we go above middle management the more we find people whose primary responsibility is to make strategic decisions and focus on company metrics, mostly related to growth. To perform these tasks efficiently one usually needs to be more cold-headed, numbers-oriented and place the company’s and its shareholder’s interests in front of other, often more humane aspects of running a corporation. Think about the Gordon Gekkos of the world here.
 
The sinking EQ level starting from the managerial level can be explained by the environmental factor I mentioned earlier. Once managers get promoted to more C-level positions the number of daily, meaningful interactions with their colleagues decrease. At the same time with their isolation from the working masses the size of their paychecks as well as their ego usually increase leading to an overall decline in emotional intelligence, entering into a vicious circle. That’s why they say it sure is lonely at the top.
 
One important remark about the disturbing findings of this research is that for every bar on the graph above, the top performers are still those with the highest EQ scores at each level. Meaning, that even though CEOs have the lowest score in the company, the best performing CEOs are still the ones with the highest emotional intelligence.
 
Another way to look at it is if you don’t have a high EQ it’s unlikely that’s you’re going to get promoted to a managerial position from which you wouldn’t be further promoted to a director or a C-level executive. And that’s where we closed the circle; I hope you see now why emotional intelligence does matter in the corporate world, and matter a lot!
 
After demonstrating this upsetting trend I feel I need to emphasize one thing: you don’t have to become the ruthless-killer type on purpose to be a successful leader, there are plenty of examples of the opposite. In fact, some of the world’s most celebrated business leaders are people who are highly social, approachable, extremely good with their people and maintain a work environment that attracts top talent from every corner of the world. Just think about Sir Richard Branson of Virgin, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines or the Googler guys.
 
So let me give you a few tips on how to improve your emotional intelligence to be a better leader, or become a leader in the first place. Feel free to experiment with them in all areas of your life, not just in business; they can do wonders in your relationships with others including friends and family members.
 
Put yourself in the place of others!
That’s basically what emotional intelligence is about. The common problem with us is that quite surprisingly we tend to think with our own heads and act based on our own emotions and beliefs, therefore we don’t necessarily understand why other people think and behave differently than we do. In order to understand each other better we need to try to place ourselves in the other party’s position and look at things from their perspective. We have to take into consideration that the other person might not be as adventurous, as extroverted, as outrageous or simply as motivated or excited as we are, so no wonder he will act differently in a particular situation.
 
Trying to think with other people’s heads does not only help in understanding the thoughts and actions of our friends and colleagues better, but it’s also very useful in any male-female relationship. As we may very well know men and women tend to think along different patterns, so practicing this with your significant other on a daily basis is a great way to develop your EQ (as well as not to get kicked out of the house too often).
 
One thing that immediately came to my mind when gathering my thoughts about this is chapter is a short story by Stephen Covey in his famous book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. One day he was riding the subway when a man with three young children got on the train. The kids were running around, screaming and shouting all over the place, while the man was just sitting quietly like he’s not noticing anything that’s happening around him. After a while Covey had enough, he stood up, walked to the man and said: Excuse me, sir! Don’t you think you should do something with your children? They are running and screaming all over the place like crazy, do you think it’s the way they should behave? The man looked at him calmly and said: Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe I should do something, huh? You know we just came from the hospital where their mother just died and I think they don’t know how to handle it, and quite frankly me neither. This sentence puts things in a completely new perspective, right? Remember this anecdote next time when someone does something that looks completely irrational to you. You don’t know their story, maybe in the same situation you would have behaved in exactly the same manner. Try to understand why people do what they do, because each of us has different motives and different beliefs we act upon.
 
Give acknowledgements!
Giving a pat on a back for a job well done or saying a few nice words to your colleagues is what makes you a leader, not just a boss. It can give a great boost in energy and motivation to any workforce, so don’t fall short on acknowledgements when someone has earned it. It will also increase your reputation and build employee loyalty resulting in people working harder and achieving more remarkable things. The same is true for your kids, too.
 
Understand the effect of your emotions!
People’s emotions directly affect the emotions of others around them, that’s why it’s so important whom we surround ourselves with. If the boss has a bad day it’s highly likely that the rest of the team will be having a bad day too. As one bad apple can make the whole basket rotten, one negative person can make an entire team become pessimistic, unproductive and unmotivated.
 
If you’re a leader you need to pay close attention to your mood and mental state at any given moment in time, since the effect is might have on your colleagues can be a lot greater than you think. Of course the same is true for positivity; if you’re excited and motivated it’s highly likely that others will pick up your energy too contributing to a highly productive and creative work environment.
 
As I said earlier one’s emotional intelligence is not constant, it changes with the environment, but can also be changed by deliberate practice. As we repeatedly practice behaviors associated with developing our EQ we build new neural pathways in our brains slowly forming them into everyday habits. After a while we start responding to our surroundings with a higher level of emotional intelligence without even having to think about it, benefiting us in practically all areas of our lives from family and friends to enhanced business relationships or more frequent promotions.

Just think about it for a second. Who would want to be around people who complain all the time, criticize and judge others and constantly look for ways why things cannot be done. Such toxic people usually have a low self-esteem and are full of fears; fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear that they won’t be loved. When you have fears your mind is occupied with thoughts of worst-case scenarios which often lead to unconsciously attracting these undesired events into your life. This is how you enter a vicious circle; you fear that something bad will happen, you think about it constantly so it does happen in the end and then you can say: I knew it!
 
The same is true for positive thoughts. If you believe you’re the perfect candidate for a job and are certain that you’re going to get hired you go to the job interview energized, radiating competence and confidence with your physical posture, your words, the tonality you use and the gestures you make. If you do have the required competence but fear that someone else might even be better, smarter, taller, stronger or whatever you come up with in your mind you might not project the same positive image that would make the recruiter want to hire you. We all like to work with self-confident, creative, constructive and energetic colleagues because they are the most likely ones who come up with new ideas and new ways on how to solve problems and how to foster business growth. If properly motivated these are the kinds of people who become leaders and achieve great heights in their careers.
 
There is a common misconception that our genes, our environment or the combination of the two is responsible for how happy and fulfilled we feel in our lives. Although both factors have an impact, in reality it’s the habits you cultivate, the way you interact with others, how you think about stress and problems and how you seek satisfaction is what really makes the difference.
 
I remember walking into a surf shop in Australia a couple of years ago on Phillip Island in August, the middle of the off-season. There were no customers in sight and there was one curly-haired guy at the back of the shop waxing and repairing boards one after the other. We starting chatting about where I came from and how life is in Europe and after about a 15-20 minute conversation I asked him a pen and paper to write my address and phone number down so that whenever he’s planning to visit my country I’d be happy to show him around. He looked at me with a genuine smile and said: Why the hell would I want to go to Europe, mate? I have everything I need here, the sun, the ocean, the waves, the girls, all my friends, I don’t ever want to leave this place! It was a sentence I didn’t expect from a twenty-something guy in the 21st century. He was happy with everything he had, and didn’t want more.
 
Although I believe in lifelong learning, growth and improvement and feel I need new challenges to tackle and new skills to master from time to time, I did learn something from this guy. I learned to appreciate what I have, what I achieved – my health, my friends and my supportive and loving environment. Since then I’m regularly trying to take a short pause and think about how grateful I am because of all these things and how much energy and power they give me to carry on. Feeling grateful is a very positive state of mind that should be exercised regularly so it becomes a habit which influences your general way of thinking over time.
 
One might say sure, I know being positive is important but I just can’t shift my negative thinking when all this craziness and stress is happening at my workplace and bad news about the economy is flowing from every channel of the media. The good news is you can change! Things on their own don’t have any meaning except the meaning you give them. If someone crashes into your new car don’t think about how unlucky you are but rather how fortunate it is that no one was hurt and there’s only material damage. Typical glass half empty half full syndrome. At first of course it’s easier said than done. It takes some time and deliberate practice, but eventually everyone is capable of change, because it’s all in your head! You react to things based on your existing beliefs and experiences, which wired your brain over time to behave the way it does today. Neuroplasticity is a scientific fact, which is a fancy word for one’s capability to rewire his brain and develop new beliefs and thought patterns, even in adulthood.
 
The other common factor that’s often affecting one’s mood is stress. The problem is that often people stress out about being stressed. As I explained in a previous article stress is a totally natural state that can boost our performance if we handle it right. A certain amount of stress is necessary in order to be in our most resourceful state, however if we can’t manage it right we get anxious, overwhelmed, and eventually our performance drops. What determines the way you behave in a stressful situation is not the amount of stress itself but rather the way you perceive it, and that’s where positive thinking kicks in, again.
 
A study was conducted at one of the largest Swiss banks UBS during the middle of the financial crisis where one group of managers were shown a documentary about how stress can fuel their creativity leading them to leverage their innermost potential, while another group was shown another film about how stress at the workplace leads to a series of bad judgements, depression, and even health problems. After six weeks each member of the study was evaluated and it turned out that the employees who saw the “enhancing” video scored significantly higher on the so-called “Stress Mindset Scale” and reported increased feelings of happiness and job satisfaction than the group exposed to the negative documentary.
 
A big problem with stress and negative thinking is that it’s contagious. If you’re surrounded by people feeling frustrated and complaining all day it’s really hard if not impossible not to pick up their mood and way of thinking in the long term. It’s especially dangerous when the boss has these traits since it can poison the atmosphere of an entire organization. But this is also the good news, since positivity is contagious also. We can easily cheer up a friend by laughter, jokes and painting a positive outlook of the future. No wonder why people with a generally positive attitude have a lot more friends and enjoy a more colorful social life, they’re simply more fun to be around and their presence fills us up with the same positive energy.
 
It’s also no surprise why people with a positive mindset get promoted more often. The constructiveness and creativity as well as the ability to grow and motivate others are exactly the skills you would expect a leader to have and they all arise from a positive attitude.
 
Here are a few tips to make your life brighter and set yourself (and others around you) up for long term success:

• Smile! Even if you don’t feel like it at the moment. The “fake it until you make it” principle works more often than not and it’s been proven that what you do with your body physically has an effect on your psyche just as the other way around.
• Surround yourself with positive people! This one is a no-brainer. As I wrote above, your environment has on effect on your mood, so why not choose that to be a positive one?
• Try to formulate your problems into words, since all enemies have to have a name first! Once you named it try to change the wording into positive, like instead of saying “I’m gonna have a hard time adjusting to this new type of work” say “It’s gonna be an exciting challenge to acquire all these skills necessary to perform my new job better than anybody else”!
• Don’t play the victim! You create your own reality, so make sure it’s one with a lot of fun and excitement! By the way, people usually care a lot less about you than you think, so it’s not worth the effort anyway. Be the one who encourages others not the one who needs encouragement.
• Help someone! Voluntarily helping others without expecting anything in return leads to a positive mental state and strengthens our self-esteem. So be selfish, get out there and help as many people as you can!
• Read about positive things! Or even write about them – just like I’m doing now! It’s hard to be depressed when you surround yourself with positive and motivating thoughts and stories.
• Share! It’s always more fun, to share your experiences with others. It’s like it multiplies the experience. Why do you think Facebook became so successful? (And don’t forget to listen to Jack Johnson’s Sharing Song, just to get yourself in state.)
• Express gratitude, as often as you can! Here is an exercise that you might want to try out. Before falling asleep at night come up with three things that you were grateful for that day (preferably different things every time), do that every day for at least three months and observe whether it has any effects on your everyday thinking process. Try to spend a few moments on each point and try to really express your feelings about the particular thing in mind. If you have a close family around you it might be a good idea to do this together, it can be a lot of fun and also one of the most important habits you can teach your kids to set themselves up for success later on in life.

 
Let me finish this one with a few words from Tony Robbins:
“Your philosophy of life shapes you more than anything else. Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start getting excited about what could go right! Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends, have fun, be crazy and outrageous, go out there and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process!”

If I tell you that the resolutions people make around the first days of January each year are broken in 30 to 45 days and almost completely forgotten by day 60 I’m sure you’re not surprised. We vow things like in the New Year we’re going to lose weight, quit smoking, eat healthy, start finding a new job, partner or hobby. Do they work out in the long term? Rarely.
 
If we look at the sales statistics of gym memberships all over the world we find an unmistakable peak in January each year. Since the fitness industry is well aware of the fact that losing weight is clearly the number one resolution people make they run clever advertisement campaigns in the last few months of every single year to make sure people don’t forget they have a commitment to make. The following chart compiled by Workout Magazine in conjunction with ClubManager resembles the cumulated monthly revenues of gyms nationwide in the UK:

The orange line represents the month-by-month comparison of average membership sales, while the blue line shows a smoothed five-month average indicating whether membership sales are increasing or decreasing. Apart from the January spike it’s also interesting to see how people stop going to the gym just as the holiday season starts in November. Most of them say I’m going to break all the rules anyway, but I’ll make it all up from January!
 
Let me walk you through the points why I believe New Year’s resolutions don’t last and give you some tips on how can you make them stay in your life for years to come.
 
1. Should or must?
Creating lasting change is always about motivation and not ability. Saying I should lose some weight in order to feel better about myself rarely going to get you through the process. You have to find a way to make it a must, a “that’s it, no more, never again!” experience! In your brain you need to link an unbearable amount of pain to not changing and a great amount of pleasure to change. (You can learn about this in more detail here from Tony Robbins himself.)
 
You need to analyze carefully in your mind what will happen if you don’t follow through, how will that make you feel. What will happen with your life in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years or even 10 years from now if you’d continue to live the way you do now. You need to associate a great amount of pain to that scenario. On the other hand imagine how would it feel if you did follow through. Imagine yourself in the same timeframes if you lived the way you desired and watch how that makes you feel. You most likely link pleasure to this scenario.
 
Now that you’ve got your motivation – since all human beings are wired to avoid pain and gain pleasure – you need to come up with an action plan you can stick to in order to achieve whatever your goals are. You should also come up with ways you can enjoy the process more, because you have to make sure you do everything in order to avoid the feeling on pain that you’ll like to avoid in the first place. For example if you choose running more often as your New Year’s resolution you can run with friends, listen to music or audio tapes, run in different, diverse environments or compete with yourself or with others in various ways. But if you don’t like running, don’t choose it because you heard it’s a cool thing or it’s the best way of losing weight, you won’t follow through anyway. Find something that you enjoy doing, play tennis, swim, ride your bike or do yoga, do whatever you find the most pleasure in that will take you towards your goal. Know your outcome and have fun in the process!
 
Make sure you’re persistent, don’t skip a session because there’s bad weather or you’re on a vacation. If you want to do it you will always find a way, if you don’t want to do it you will always find an excuse. Make sure you carry on with great discipline especially at the beginning. The longer you’re into something the less discipline you’ll need, because it will simply transform into a habit that you’ll never ever want to leave behind.
 
2. Unclear or unrealistic goals
If you don’t know exactly where you’re going you’ll pretty much never get there. Do you ever start driving your car without knowing exactly where you want to go? And if you do know your destination, do you ever start driving without knowing how to get there? The same is true for your goals. You need to have certain points of reference you can relate your progress to, so you know where you are and know precisely when you arrived.
 
This is why statements like I should lose some weight doesn’t work. You’d rather say: I must be X (your current weight) minus 5 kilograms by May 31st and X minus 10 kilograms by the end of December. In order to achieve that I will run 3 to 5 kilometers twice a week and go to the gym an additional two times every week. I will change my diet; I’ll minimize eating high-carb and high-sugar content foods and try to go as natural as possible. I will stick to my plan no matter where I am and no matter what the circumstances. I will transform my body not because I have to, but because I want to. How’s that for a resolution?
 
The other important aspect you have to keep in mind is that you don’t set unrealistic goals and an unrealistic schedule. In certain cases try to build up the change gradually, allow time for yourself to adapt. Like if you’ve never run in your life don’t plan to run 10 kilometers a day 5 days a week because then you’ll end up linking pain to what you should be linking pleasure to and your body will naturally resist. Say you’ll run 2 kilometers three times a week for the first two month and then you’ll gradually raise the distance by a km every additional month. Don’t be a masochist, but be persistent with what you wrote down in your action plan.
 
3. Bad timing
Why exactly do we come up with a list of things we want to change exactly when the calendar turns from one year to the next? Does it have some kind of special power that we can only harness in the first days of January? Of course it doesn’t. Look at it realistically. You’ve just gone through the holiday season, ate and drank as much as you can, hopefully didn’t work too much in the past two or three weeks and didn’t go to the gym since the end of October. After all those weeks of laziness and partying come January, when you set yourself up for a drastic change from one day to the other. No wonder your body will resist!
 
By the way, if there were things in your life you really wanted to change, why waited until New Year? I’m pretty confident that if they were truly important to you (a must not a should) you would have started the process right away. The fact that you waited until the end of the year means that what you have on your New Year’s resolution list are mostly shoulds, and not musts.
 
I personally believe that reflecting back on the passing year and coming up with plans for the New Year is a useful thing, but it’s not the same as compiling a New Year’s resolution list. I look at the end of the year kind of like a milestone; I analyze what I had planned for last year and from that what did actually materialize. Then I come up with a new plan for the coming year. It mostly includes specific things I want to accomplish as well as a deadline for each item. It’s similar to a written project plan, which I look at on a regular basis to track progress.
 
If you want to change something in your life you should start the process right away. Don’t wait for some special date to come, because you can easily lose momentum. Set goals whenever you feel you need to, be as specific as possible, write them down and check your progress on a regular basis. This is the surest way you will reach lasting change in any area of your life.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a lecture held by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the father of modern positive psychology and the flow theory itself. Although I read his famous book titled FLOW many years ago, it was hearing him in person and witnessing his amazing knowledge and wisdom in the topic that made think and look into the subject a little deeper. He spoke about the flow theory in general, how one can achieve such a state at work, how an entire organization can develop a flow state and how it all relates to the accelerated lives we live in the 21st century. These are also the main points I’m going to address in this article.
 
What is flow?
Flow is a completely immersed, energized and positive mental state having the following characteristics:

• goals are clear;
• feedback is immediate;
• concentration deepens to a maximum level, we are completely focused on the task at hand;
• the present is what matters, we forget about the world around us;
• we are in control all the time;
• the sense of time is altered, we lose track of time, we are “in the moment”.

Flow can also be considered a completely focused motivation. Flow leads to a feeling of spontaneous joy while performing the task, despite the fact that we’re entirely immersed in the activity and does not even focus on ourselves or our emotions. An important aspect of being in a flow state is control. We need high enough challenges, but we also need to be a master of the skills required to perform the activity, that’s the only way we can keep control in our hands.
 
The following chart resembles the different mental states in relation to challenge and skill levels according to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi:

Apart from flow control and arousal states are also ideal to be at. While you’re in the control state you can develop confidence, perfection and routine in something that requires high skill level, but means still a moderate level of challenge to you. The real development however happens while being in the arousal state, where you set your challenges a bit higher than your actual skill level. It can also be considered as being at the outer border of your comfort zone.
 
The other important characteristic of flow is that it happens while being engaged in one single activity. In other words, you can’t multitask and be in a flow state simultaneously. I’m often experiencing flow while writing, but I need to turn all IM and email notifications off before beginning to work otherwise I’d be continuously distracted and would not be able to keep up this effective state for longer periods of time.
 
Flow at work
In order to achieve flow at work first of all we must have the conviction that what we do serves a useful purpose and has value. Meaningful work creates proud and happy citizens, while the contrary leads to exploited masses in the long term. By meaningful work that has purpose and creates value I don’t necessarily mean being Mother Theresa or the person who invents the cure for cancer, it can mean the smallest thing that one considers useful for the society. I recently saw a movie about a Japanese sushi chef who dedicated his life to creating the most beautiful pieces of food ever, thereby enriching people’s dining experiences to something unique that they’ve never had before. He practiced, experimented all over his lifetime to become better and better every day, competing with no one but himself. He had a long, happy, meaningful life, people loved him, praised him and his legacy still lives up to this day. Not everyone has to be a CEO, a superstar surgeon or a Harvard professor, the society just as well needs perfect taxi drivers, plumbers, poets and gardeners, too. And flow can be found in all of them, we just need to have the right mental attitude, give our very best and not feel ashamed of whatever stigma our profession carries with its name.

The problems with low flow levels in today’s classic corporate environment is that few jobs have clear goals (at least for the people performing them), they seldom provide adequate feedback and time dedicated for work is specified for the worker not by the worker. Skills of the workers are often not matched with the actual opportunity, which leads to worry, anxiety or just the opposite, boredom and apathy.
 
When choosing a profession people should identify their strengths and build upon them, because not everyone makes a good accountant or sales person. It’s party the fault of our education system, we want to produce people with identical capabilities, however it’s the wrong approach. Each of us is born with different skills, talents and fields of interests and the main purpose of education should be to identify and develop these to a maximum level. Since the school system is unable to do that, in fact it does quite the opposite, it’s the parents’ responsibility to make sure their children find their so called Element and base their lives around that.
 
Professor Csíkszentmihályi believes that organizations can also be in a flow state, which breaks down to the number of its employees being in this particular condition. Naturally, the higher the number of workers in flow the higher the company’s overall flow state. The extraordinary corporate success stories we’ve seen in the past 15-20 years especially in the area of information technology are mostly due to new management practices that changed the way we think about work in general. Charismatic, visionary leaders developed corporate cultures where flow – and thereby creativity – was embraced and encouraged more than anything, thereby having employees come up with remarkable new ways of solving problems that helped disrupting entire industries within a very short period of time.
 
In Jim Collins’ famous book Good to Great the author analyses why some companies make the leap and become market leaders and others don’t. These great successes largely depend on the flow state of the management and their ability to pass it on to lower levels of the organization. Business leaders who want to embrace the power of flow within their organization need a special set of skills and attitudes, such as:

• optimism (in general and about the future);
• strong belief in the importance of integrity;
• ambition coupled with perseverance;
• curiosity and never ending desire to learn;
• empathy for others and mutual respect.

 
Achieving flow in work today is both easier and harder than say 30 years ago. It’s easier, because we have access to the Internet, a practically endless source of information that help us discover our real passion, purpose and meaning in life, it gives us tools on how to develop ourselves and become the best at what we do. On the other hand this gift is also a curse; we can easily get overwhelmed, not being able to choose from the vast number of possibilities and living life jumping from one thing to the other, without experiencing total immersion in anything. Professor Csíkszentmihályi says that on average 10 years of focused effort is required for someone to master any field of discipline to an expert level. Malcolm Gladwell reinforces that in his book Outliers, where he says it’s been proven that most of the great musicians, artists, sportsmen and business people we know by name have spent at least 10,000 hours of concentrated effort and practice before they achieved notable results. As we learnt above flow requires total control, and control requires mastery. Mastery can be achieved by anyone with the right attitude and persistency, and as history has taught us many times, it’s never too late to start!
 
If you’re interested feel free to check out Professor Csíkszentmihályi’s 2004 TED talk here!

The number one killer of creativity I believe is Western style education, where we’re taught to follow rules, instructions and learn all the “right” answers. If we don’t comply we get pain. Not necessarily in the physical sense, but in the form of bad grades, verbal discouragement and the stigmatization of being a “bad” student, a person unable to perform what is required. This process starts at a very young age, when we’re most susceptible for any kind of new information and still naïve enough to believe and accept everything that is being taught us by the authorities, i.e. our teachers.
 
It’s a lot easier to measure performance with standardized multiple-choice tests and treat everyone as equal in terms of skills and interests than finding everyone’s natural born talent and nurture it throughout the person’s entire life. Albert Einstein hit the nail right on the head when he said: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid.” My goal in this article is not to over-criticize our education system but to get you understand why we are like we are today, what made us think the way we do and how can we change that for the better.

Fortunately with the help of the free media (at least in most countries) and especially the Internet information became more available to masses than ever. If someone’s committed and persistent enough he can acquire knowledge, skills and thinking patterns that were previously accessible only for the elite. This led to a new type of awakening and contributed to the birth of the “modern day entrepreneur”. He’s the person who often disrupts entire industries by his unique and creative thinking, his ability to understand complex and difficult concepts as well as to visualize the future and do everything towards its materialization. No coincidence that most founders of today’s great companies didn’t go to or didn’t graduate from college. Their way of thinking was not influenced – or shall I say not oppressed – by conventional education so much and their childish curiosity together with their confidence and ability to tackle problems in unusual, creative ways have led them to unbelievable successes.
 
No longer is creativity in the 21st century a privileged skill of painters, musicians, writers and poets, it infiltrated into practically all professions on all levels. Market leader corporations need to leverage creativity to the highest degree possible to stay ahead of the competition and have to employ people with such skills from developers to salesmen and CEOs. Consultants need to come up with creative strategies for their clients, marketing agencies have to devise creative advertisement campaigns and engineers must use creativity to invent better, lighter, cheaper, faster products than ever before.
 
Creativity became a buzzword in the past 20 years and we do need it more than ever to become successful in all areas of business (as well as in our private lives). But although the demand has changed radically the education system remained virtually the same, therefore we need to take matters into our own hands. So after this long introduction here is a compilation of 10 great ways to boost your creativity regardless whether you’re struggling with a writer’s block or trying to come up with a marketing new strategy for your company. Feel free to experiment with them, combine them or tweak them until you achieve the results you truly feel satisfied with.
 
1. Get positive!
Your actual mental state has a lot to do with the way you think. It’s a scientifically proven fact that positive emotions lead to more resourcefulness and creative thinking. This effect is based on the so-called broaden-and-build theory, which suggests that when we feel happy and excited we become a lot more willing to experiment and try out new things, eventually making us more flexible and more willing to leave our comfort zones. And as we know, that’s where the magic happens!
 
2. Ask better questions!
The questions you ask yourself when trying to figure out solutions to problems are more crucial than you might think. Tony Robbins, the famous peak-performance coach goes as far as saying “The quality of your questions is the quality of your life! Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” What he means by this is it’s not the same asking How come I can never lose weight? as opposed to How can I lose weight and enjoy the process?
 
If you ask yourself better questions your mind will automatically focus on finding better answers and solutions – and conversely. Try to focus on your desired outcome when formulating your words and state things in the positive, it might just give you the answers you were looking for.
 
3. Exercise!
The biological effects of exercising are pretty straightforward; your pulse goes up, your blood gets filled with more oxygen which is transferred to all vital organs of your body including your brain. Your brain cells require oxygen to generate ATP for energy, and strong mental focus requires plenty of that. Your brain can’t function on its maximum level without proper oxygen supply for an extended period of time, therefore you need to take frequent brakes while doing serious brainwork and do some kind of physical or breathing exercise to ensure the proper oxygen supply. The ideal is to have at least a 15 minute break after each 90 minute work session when you do some sort of physical exercise, depending on your actual environment. If you’re struggling with a creative block go running, jump on your bike or play an hour of squash; aerobic exercises like these can energize your entire body and supply your cells with fresh oxygen that fuels your mind for the hours to come. By the way exercising is also proven to lift your mood too – see tip #1!
 
Another aspect of exercising that boosts your creativity is to pursue a hobby that itself requires you to be creative. These include most technical and adventure sports like sailing, off-road racing, caving, climbing, etc. Once you’re up on a wall in the Himalayas (OK, extreme example) you need to solve any problem that comes in your way with the resources you have at your disposal, and if your fail, your life could depend on it. Situations like these conditions you to become extremely resourceful and creative not only when you’re out there, but when you need to solve problems in the office, too. No wonder why so many successful business people pursue such hobbies. It not only contributes to their enhanced creativity, but helps them continuously stretch the limits of their comfort zones, which often lead to greater entrepreneurial successes in the long term.
 
4. Take a break!
Have you ever tried to recall someone’s name whom you knew well before and under no circumstances did it pop into your mind? Then an hour or two later when you thought about him again you immediately remembered.
 
The simplest way to overcome creative blocks is often to set the problem aside for a bit and get back to it later. The perfect creativity-inducing breaks are activities that are engaging, but not too intense, such as walking, doing some housework or driving your car. Taking planned breaks and combining them with some physical movement is a good idea anyway, as I already pointed out above.
 
5. Change your environment!
Our neural pathways are influenced by the environment we’re in and the way we interact with it. When we change our environment the new sights, sounds and scents all have effects on our brain. History’s greatest AHA! moments didn’t occur at the office desk between two emails. You need to expose yourself frequently to new stimuli in order to develop new neural pathways that leads you to new discoveries.
 
Living in a highly multicultural environment or moving abroad has great benefits on an individual’s overall creativity. The need to get comfortable in a new physical environment, the urge to pick up the local language as well as learning the habits and way of thinking of the other culture are great ways to rewire your brain and look at things from a totally new perspective.
 
6. Walk!
Great creative leaders like the late Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg swear by walking meetings. Shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing” is a practice in Japan where people walk in parks and forests to improve their mood and overall health. Research shows that it’s not just the trees, but the act of walking too that improves one’s creativity and mental state in general. Stanford University students who walked instead of sitting at office desks gave significantly more creative answers to questions that are commonly used to measure creative thinking skills.

I also suggest making important phone calls standing up, maybe strolling on the office corridor, you might just be more resourceful than if you were merely sitting behind your desk as you normally do throughout the day.
 
7. Look at it from a distance!
Creating some artificial distance between you and your actual problem might help you in coming up with solutions you haven’t thought about before. For that you must try to separate yourself from the situation as much as you can, try to disconnect from it emotionally, as it was more or less irrelevant to you what’s going to happen. Think of it a bit like solving a problem for a distant acquaintance, someone you don’t particularly care about, but still want to help her just out of pure politeness. This way your brain filters out subjectivity as much as possible and might come up with new ideas on solving the particular situation.
 
8. Talk about it!
Sharing your dilemmas with others is always a good idea, even if it’s your grandmother who doesn’t understand a single sentence you’re telling her about your new prototype’s technical capabilities. During the process of framing and formulating your thoughts and actually saying them out loud often generates new ideas and perspectives, ones you’ve never thought about earlier.
 
9. Create a crappy first draft!
You need to create a first draft, even if it’s crappy, since it’s very hard to edit a blank page! You have to start somewhere, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be there, so you can think about it, tweak it, adjust it until it’s something you consider worthwhile.
 
To make it more memorable allow me to quote Ernest Hemingway’s words: “The first draft of anything is shit!”
 
10. Don’t become a person of habits!
Habits and rituals are necessary tools for a happy and fulfilled life, however too much of the wrong kind kills creativity and eventually leads to a machine-like life. Here I’m not talking about empowering rituals like meditation and daily exercising, but ones like going to vacation to the same place every single year, spending your weekends doing the very same things again and again, eating only in restaurants you’re familiar with together with people you know. Certainty is the enemy of creativity, because creativity comes from novelty and variety.
 
Don’t be afraid to try out new things, new foods, new sports, explore new places, meet new people, since that’s the only way you’re going to develop the necessary flexibility to succeed in life, because change is the only thing certain these days. Once you become friends with it, no event will disrupt your inner balance, you’ll remain confident and positive, and as we know, that’s one of the fundamentals of creativity. And creativity adds the juice to your life, or as Einstein put it: “Creativity is intelligence having fun!”

A ritual can be a single recurring activity like watching TV every day before you fall asleep or it can be a sequence of activities like you get out of bed in the morning, go to the bathroom, take a shower, have breakfast, wash your teeth, take out the trash and kiss your partner before you leave for work. There are three major characteristics of a ritual: the activity itself (what you do), duration and timing (when and for how long do you do it) and the sequence of the activities, which has to be more or less in the same order to qualify as a ritual.
 
According to their effect on your life in the long term there can empowering and disempowering rituals. I call it empowering when it supports your goals, it contributes to your overall wellbeing or development or helps doing that for others. Disempowering rituals are basically the destructive habits like biting of the fingernails, smoking, doing drugs or paying for hookers on a regular basis to lighten up our love life. Performing these activities are not going to take you where you want to be for sure, so you better find a way to erase them from your life once and for all and substitute them with something empowering instead. The hard thing with negative or disempowering rituals is that the longer you’ve been engaged in them the harder it is to change. Smokers know what I’m talking about.
 
What you think and what you do on a regular basis is who you become. That’s why it’s so critical to fill your life with positive rituals that give you health, vitality, joy and piece of mind, because these are the foundations of long-term success. You can develop rituals for practically any part of your day, however there is one timeframe when they can be the most effective and have the greatest impact on your wellbeing, and that is the mornings right after you wake up and right before you start to work.
 
In the morning your mind is still fresh, not filled with the problems and dilemmas accumulated throughout the day and your body is also well rested (hopefully), so you should be ready to jump start them both with a set of powerful morning rituals. Below I’ve collected a series of activities that you can choose from (or God forbid do all of them) to start up your day. Try to do them consistently for a couple of days and you’ll notice how different you’ll feel throughout your entire day and how differently you’re going to tackle the challenges that come in your way.
 
Rise early!
In order to be able to perform any activities besides your must-do morning routine you need time, time for yourself. Set the alarm clock an hour earlier (after a while you won’t need an alarm at all) and don’t, for Christ’s sake don’t hit that damned snooze button!
 
Hydrate yourself!
The first thing you need to do after you woke up (and used the bathroom, which I’m not going to list as a morning ritual although it does qualify as one) is have at least a glass of water! You haven’t been drinking any fluids in the past 7-8 hours and your body is severely dehydrated by the morning. Squeezing a little lemon juice into your glass helps you to not only hydrate your body, but to alkalize it in the same time. Not drinking water for several hours leads to building up acidity that needs to be neutralized and lemon water is the simplest way to do that.
 
Meditate!
You don’t have to be religious to enjoy the benefits of meditation. On a physical level it can lower your blood pressure, decrease any tension related pains, increase serotonin production that improves your overall mood, improve your immune system and make it more resistant to disease and increase you overall energy level, which is exactly what we want in the morning.
 
The mental benefits of meditation is even more diverse; it improves your emotional stability, increases your creativity, develops your intuition, your focus and your overall piece of mind, making problems smaller and more manageable. I’m not going to go through in details on how to meditate, there are several ways you can do that, none of them is right or wrong, there are plenty of resources you can find on the Internet in the topic.
 
Exercise!
The most important of all! You need to kick-start your body by pumping blood and fresh oxygen into every cell, for that you need an increased heart rate. It doesn’t matter what you do, whether you run, bike, swim or jump on your trampoline. It doesn’t have to be a full 1-hour workout either, just make sure you’re doing something aerobic (purely lifting weights is not ideal in this sense). This will also start up your metabolism, being able to use food more efficiently through the day leading to weight loss in the long term. Just make sure you do it every morning no matter what, remember, that’s how it becomes a ritual!
 
Take a hot and cold shower!
Exposing our body to extreme temperatures for short periods of time is a very health thing that most wellness facilities having a sauna and a plunge pool are aware of. You can reach similar effects by taking a not-too-hot shower and finish it up with a 30-second cold session in the end. By cold I don’t mean comfortably cool, turn off your hot water entirely! An ice-cold water shock has a number of physical and mental benefits, like improving your skin tightness, improving your circulation and immunity, stimulating your lymphatic system (leading to weight loss in the long term), reducing stress and increasing alertness – just what you need in the morning! Once you got used to it you can repeat the hot-cold shift two or three times, or skip the hot part entirely.
 
Plan your day!
While still in the quiet of your home take a few minutes to plan your day; what do you want to achieve today and how are you planning to do that. Putting that on paper (or in your smartphone) helps a lot. In the evenings before going to bed you can look at the list you made in the morning and check whether you really did perform what you scheduled for the day. If you did, well done, give yourself a pat on the back and fall asleep gratefully. If for some reason you still have undone things on your morning list make sure they’re not forgotten and schedule them again the next morning. This way you can keep track of your daily duties and things will less likely run out of control over time.
 
Take time for a healthy breakfast!
Even our grandmothers knew that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, however is does matter what you give your body to start the day with. As I described above when we were talking about hydration your body is rather acidic in the morning and you need to do everything you can to regain the healthy acid-alkaline balance it needs. You don’t want to put foods into your mouth that are further acid forming, so you should avoid anything sugary like jams, cereals (yes, most of them are loaded with sugar!), cookies, waffles or pancakes. Meat – especially red meat – is also acid forming, so try to avoid bacons and sausages too for breakfast. Try to have as many fresh vegetables as you can with some grains, not too sweet fruits, maybe some plain yogurt and a huge green smoothie. You’ll feel much lighter afterwards and you’ll also notice that your mind is sharper, your ability to focus is enhanced.
 
Educate yourself on the way to work!
Commuting to work takes up enormous amounts of time of our lives, so don’t let it slip by without getting something useful out of it. Find a way and develop a ritual of educating yourself while on the way to your workplace, read a book or a newspaper if you’re taking the public transport, listen to meaningful conversations or audio tapes if you’re driving in your car. In the past few years I formed the habit of listening to audio books in the car while commuting to work, even I was amazed how many books I have gone through during this period. It’s like reading a book an hour or two every day, doing that while stuck in traffic, which I would be anyway. Time is precious, so do your best to make the most out of it!
 
Remember John C. Maxwell's words: "You’ll never change your life until you change something you do every day. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.”

Your comfort zone is a space where you feel familiar, your thoughts and actions are under your control and you experience little or no anxiety or stress. You’ve been there, done that, you know what most likely will happen so it serves your most fundamental need called certainty. It provides a state of mental security, that you think leads to the feeling of comfort and joy. That might be true on some occasions, but it’s not always the case.

What happens when people get too comfortable? Imagine what would it feel like, if you could predict the exact outcome of all your actions with 100% certainty? You knew what would happen, when would it happen and how would it happen. I’m sure you know the answer: you’d be bored out of your mind! That’s when people start seeking for adventure, be that in the form of starting their own business, applying for a new job, trying out a new sport, moving to a new country or God forbid starting to gamble.

Each of us has different values and interests, as well as different levels of risk tolerance and lust for adventure. That’s why the comfort zone is something that’s unique to everyone; a thing that’s scary for one person can be exciting and fun for the other. A few weeks ago I was out in the mountains with some friends climbing rock for a couple a days and this trip showed a perfect example of how differently we feel about certain things. Looking at a particular route on the wall led to fear and anxiety in one member of the party while it meant thrill and excitement to the other. I’m talking about two people with very similar climbing skills! The difference was that the first person thought it might be a bit too difficult for him and he might fall (meaning he failed), while the second person thought that although it looks a bit difficult if he’s good enough he might succeed! Typical glass half full or half empty situation. So he thought what’s the worst thing that can happen? He takes a fall. So what, at least he tried, and he can still climb back and try it again in a different way. Which member of the party do you think pushed himself harder and succeeded?

This story leads us to the most important aspect of why we should constantly try to stretch the boundaries of our comfort zones - because it leads to growth! When the person with the optimistic attitude and higher risk tolerance climbed the difficult pitch he expanded his comfort zone, because when next time he sees something that’s of similar difficulty he’s going to say: “Hmm, I’ve done something like this before! Let’s do it again, or maybe try something harder!”. Meanwhile the person who had a fear of falling and eventually did fall and then retreated will think: “Last time I tried something similar I failed, so I rather try something easier this time, something I can manage!”. No wonder he’ll never be a great climber, because he’s afraid to take the necessary risk thereby staying in his good old comfort zone that he’s used to. You’ve got to take calculated risks, that’s what’s making you better, wiser and stronger no matter what area of life we are talking about. I said calculated, because you should not ignore the possible negative outcomes of any activity and always use your best judgment and experience in order to avoid doing something you might regret in the future. In other words: don’t confuse stepping out of your comfort zone with being reckless and stupid!

Staying at the climbing example what would happen, if a person with no climbing experience whatsoever had been instructed to climb the same route our two friends tried earlier? He would probably land right in the panic zone, where he freaks out and gets paralyzed by fear, so no development – stretching of the comfort zone – happens here at all. He rather gains a highly negative, never-again experience, that makes him avoid situations like this probably for the rest of his life.

Growth happens the most when you’re in your learning zone, preferably at the farther end, but not in the panic zone, just as the picture illustrates below:

So how do we expand our comfort zones besides the obvious trying out of new things? Let me give you a few ideas to consider.

Don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself sometimes!
One of the biggest fears holding us back from doing the things we deep inside desire is what would other people think. After all, we don’t want anyone to think that we’re crazy, irresponsible or weird in any way, we want others to have a good opinion about us and make sure they love us. Right? Not quite. Think about the people you admire for any reason, whom you consider successful, what are they like? It’s likely that they’re the non-conformist type, who like doing things their own way, don’t follow the crowd, don’t accept no for an answer and most probably have made enormous mistakes during their lives, still, you love them because of their craziness and charm that makes them so special and unique! To achieve that don’t be afraid to truly be yourself, don’t let others’ opinions influence your behavior and decisions, follow your instincts and make sure when you leave the room, people will ask: “Wow, who was that guy?”

Doing things your own way instead of the socially trained way can be a big step outside your comfort zone at first, but once you get used to it you’ll find that it’s tons of fun! You’ll probably make great friends along the way, too.

Be a risk taker!
It’s called your comfort zone because it’s the place where you’re comfortable with what you’re doing, you know what to expect and the risk of failing is reasonably little. But as my example showed earlier, it’s not the place to grow, either. If you want to expand in business, in sports or in other aspects of your personal life you have to try out new things and new ways of doing things, which often holds a considerable amount of risk, but can lead to higher rewards. Even if a business opportunity is well known by many people, not everyone is willing to take the risks involved, and those who do and are well prepared will most likely reap the greatest rewards. That’s how it’s been during the course of history and that’s how it’s going to be in the future, no question about it.

Learn to enjoy the unknown!
Why do people gamble? Why do they bet? They do it and have been doing it for centuries because there is a certain level of excitement in trying to predict the unknown, hoping to be lucky, hoping that things will turn out favorably for them. Some people even enjoy the racing of their hearts and the twitching of their stomachs while the roulette wheel is spinning or the horses are racing down the track. Now I’m not telling you to gamble in any way, but rather try to become comfortable with and even learn to enjoy making risky decisions. Don’t be afraid of the unknown, think of it as an opportunity not as a threat. If you have a plan for the worst, but expect the best, you can only gain, if nothing more a great learning experience!

Face your fears that are holding you back!
A great way to expand the limits of your comfort zone and grow is to face and overcome your biggest fears. Are you afraid of spiders? Heights? Tight spaces? Germs? Rejection? Think of them this way: are your fears really realistic? Is there a high chance that you’re going to get physically injured by what you’re afraid of? If the answer is no, try to face it and overcome it step by step, even with the help of a professional, because living your whole life with the burden of feeling afraid of something that likely will never happen or causes no real harm to you uses up an unbelievable amount of your energy and for no reason.

The benefits of regularly stepping out of your comfort zone are diverse and essential for one’s success. But you can’t live your life on the edge all the time, sooner or later it will drain all your energy and you’ll end up frustrated, anxious, ruining the things in your life you tried so hard to create. You have to return to your good old comfort zone from time to time to process the new experiences and have some piece of mind to recharge your energy reserves. Make sure you surround yourself with things that give you total comfort and security (like a cozy home, a loving wife and family, some financial reserves) which are always there for you to return to and which fill you up emotionally. That provided you’ll always have the energy to get out there and climb that mountain of yours while becoming better and better along the way.

The thing with first impressions is that they’re very hard – if not impossible - to keep under conscious control; it takes intelligence and lots of practice to overcome falling into the trap of putting people in boxes the moment you see them. That is why making a first impression is so utterly important; turning a negative opinion about someone into a positive one is much harder that creating that positive image in the first place.

Positive first impressions are equally important in business and in private life. Fortunately there are ways you can develop them and turn them your ally instead of your enemy, because just as it is hard to turn a negative impression into a positive one, so is the other way around! Since first impressions are usually formed by nonverbal cues before the person even starts to speak you also need to pay attention to a few bodily gestures and signals when trying to create the best impression of yourself in a given situation.

Get in a peak state!
The first and most important step before any important meeting is to adjust your state. You can’t form a positive impression of yourself when you’re anxious, stressed or depressed, because your posture, your voice, your gestures will all transmit the signal that you have something going on. Trying to fake your state is dangerous; most people might not know consciously that you’re faking, they will feel however that something’s just not right with you. So when you’re feeling stressed about something the solution is not to force a grin on your face, but rather allow yourself a few minutes to get in a more elevated state before that important meeting happens. You can do that using a wide variety of tools like the ones I wrote about in an earlier post.

Adjust your posture!
After you’ve successfully adjusted your state into a more positive one most likely your posture will also follow. But since the way you hold your body is so fundamental when trying to project a positive image it’s worth paying some extra attention to straightening up, lifting your chest and head a little bit (not too much, otherwise you’ll look arrogant), pulling your shoulders back and taking long, deep breaths to calm down your nervous system and signal confidence.

Smile!
When greeting someone for the first time an honest, moderate smile can do wonders in the other party’s brain, saying this person is friendly and approachable, I want to find out more about him! As with most things too much is often worse than none at all; grinning and laughing in the first couple of seconds can make you seem unsecure or incompetent.

Make eye contact!
Make lasting eye contact while greeting and shaking the hand of the other person, as this transmits the signal of openness and true interest towards the other party. Try to open your eyes slightly more than usual to enhance the experience, of course making sure you’re not looking silly and the other party doesn’t notice that it’s a learnt and deliberate action.

Be careful with touching!
While you’re shaking hands try to lean slightly forward, which also indicates that you’re engaged and interested. In some situations and cultures slightly touching the upper arm or shoulder of the other person while shaking hands might help in improving rapport, but be careful with that, it can easily backfire. Do that only when you’ve done some previous research about the person you’re about to meet and know for sure that he’s an open, extroverted and direct individual who would value such a gesture.

Pay attention to your overall appearance!
The way you hold your body is not the only way you influence other people’s perception regarding your appearance. The way you dress as well as the ornaments, makeup, perfume and hairstyle you wear also transmit signals about yourself whether you’re aware of it or not. You can also play around with these consciously depending on what image you want to project of yourself in a given situation. If you’re not sure how the outside world sees you in a particular outfit just ask your spouse or a good friend to form an honest opinion. Ladies know what I’m talking about.

Get interested!
Right after the first impression is formed in that critical first 3 to 5 seconds you can start reinforcing that image verbally through engaging in a meaningful conversation. Pay attention to your voice – tone, volume, speed – as well as your facial and other bodily gestures to stay congruent with the image you’re trying to project. Always be genuinely interested in the other person, since everybody feels whether someone’s just trying to be nice to them or they are sincerely concerned about getting to know more about who they are. We’ve all been in situations when we met someone at a party and knew immediately that he or she was dragged there by a friend and are just waiting for the moment to get the hell out the door. Being truly interested in someone can be the key to lasting relationships, because when we’re interested, they become interested, and when two people are genuinely interested in each other that’s when some kind of bond is formed. This can either be a beginning of an intimate relationship just as well as a lasting friendship or a successful business partnership.

So don’t be afraid to use all techniques at your disposal to master that critical first impression whenever meeting someone new. Don’t worry, it’s not manipulation, it’s simply showing the other person who you really are when you are at your best! This has been practiced by successful people in all walks of life throughout history and you should be doing it, too! Don’t kid yourself into thinking that charismatic leaders were born to make lasting impressions, it took them years if not decades of conscious practice so they could become who they are today. Just make sure you stay authentic and congruent, stick to your values and you’ll have no problem forming meaningful, lasting relationships wherever you go on the planet.