The 9 Essential Habits Of Mentally Strong People

Mental resilience is a key characteristic that all successful people possess and once you discover that ".. obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path", you can deal with life in a much more resourceful way as Carolyn Gregoire explains in this illuminating article:-

In 1914, Thomas Edison's lab burned down, and years' worth of his work was destroyed. This could easily be described as the worst thing to happen to Edison, but the inventor instead chose to see it as an energizing opportunity that forced him to rebuild and re-examine much of his work. Edison reportedly said at the time: "Thank goodness all our mistakes were burned up. Now we can start again fresh."

"In a world that we don't control, tolerance is obviously an asset," Ryan Holiday, author of the forthcoming The Obstacle Is The Way, told The Huffington Post. "But the ability to find energy and power from what we don't control is an immense competitive advantage."

He's talking about mental strength, a difficult-to-define psychological concept that encompasses emotional intelligence, grit, resilience, self-control, mental toughness and mindfulness. It's something that Edison had in spades, and it's the reason that some people are able to overcome any obstacle, while others crumble at life's daily challenges and frustrations.

The ability to cope with difficult emotions and situations is a significant predictor of our success and happiness. The most capable individuals in this way are able to turn any obstacle into a source of growth and opportunity. And while much has been made of what mentally strong people avoid doing -- things like dwelling on the past, resenting the success of others and feeling sorry for themselves -- what do they actually do? What tactics do they use to overcome adversity time and time again?

"Things that we think are obstacles are actually opportunities to do something," says Holiday. "[To] be rewarded in some way that we never would have expected, provided that we address and don't shirk from that obstacle."

Here are 9 essential habits and practices of mentally strong people that can help you get through any challenge or hardship.

They see things objectively.

There's a maxim in the ancient philosophy of Stoicism, "There is no good or bad, there is only perception," which was later echoed in Shakespeare's famous line, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

The way we perceive a situation has a tremendous power to either help or harm us. So often, we react emotionally and project negative judgments onto a situation, when the first key to overcoming a challenge is to see things objectively.

"You can have the greatest plan in the world, but if you don't see the situation clearly, it doesn't matter," says Holiday.

Holiday studied countless examples through history of individuals who overcame obstacles that would seem completely insurmountable to most of us, from being falsely accused of triple murder to intense discrimination based on race or sex. He found that mental toughness came down to three things: Perception, action, and will.

"What's required [for mental strength] is some sort of philosophical framework that allows you to look past your emotions or what your first impressions of a situation might be," Holiday said. "So the elements of that are, 1) Your perception. Can you see things clearly and evenly? 2) Can you think about creative or out of the box kinds of solutions or actions? And finally, what is the kind of determination or will you can apply that action to the situation with?"

They let go of entitlement.

We all deserve happiness, but we don't deserve a life free from obstacles or setbacks. An attitude of entitlement -- thinking that we deserve to get what we want most or all of the time -- can make it much more difficult to deal with challenges when they come around and take you by surprise. This is a particularly common roadblock for Generation Y, according to Gen Y expert Paul Harvey, assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire, who observed that many Millennials have "unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback."

"Generation Y was sold a certain mindset about how the world was going to be at any and all times," agrees Holiday. "In previous times, the framework that people were given was not just a humbler one, but one that understood how unpredictable and inexplicable the world could be."

Mentally strong people recognize that their entire life plans, and life itself, could be derailed at any moment -- and they don't waste their effort feeling wronged by destiny when things don't quite go their way.

They keep an even keel.

Mental strength is not so much about always being happy as it is about "keeping an even keel at any and all times," says Holiday.

Emotional stability and the ability to keep a cool head is an enormous asset when it comes to dealing with challenging situations. Fortunately, emotional stability tends to increase with age -- and it should come as no surprise that we become happier as a result.

They don't aspire to be happy all the time.

Excessive preoccupation with happiness can actually lead to an unhealthy attitude towards negative emotions and experiences. Mentally strong people don't try to avoid negative emotions -- rather, accepting both positive and negative emotions and letting different feelings coexist is a key component of resiliency.

"We so value optimism and happiness and all these positive traits, which are themselves abstractions, that we get caught by surprise and can't deal with their opposite," says Holiday. "If we were more middle of the road, things would be better and we'd be able to take advantage of the things that happen to us because there's more objectivity."

Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay argues that our cultural obsession with happiness can be dangerous, and that instead of worrying about being happy, we should concern ourselves with being whole.

"The idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness," Mackay writes in The Good Life. "Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don't teach us much."

They're realistic optimists.

Mentally tough people make a habit of getting up after they fall. Instead of getting upset, feeling hopeless and giving up in the face of obstacles, they take the opportunity to put on their thinking caps and come up with a creative solution to the problem at hand. Mentally strong people tend to be realistic optimists -- they have the hopefulness of optimists and the clarity of pessimists -- which gives them both the motivation and the critical thinking required to come up with creative solutions.

"Every time [realistic optimists] face an issue or a challenge or a problem, they won't say 'I have no choice and this is the only thing I can do,'" researcher Sophia Chou told LiveScience. "They will be creative, they will have a plan A, plan B and plan C."

They live in the present moment.

Being present -- rather than dwelling on the past or anticipating the future -- allows you to see things as they really are. Whether or not they have a formal meditation or mindfulness practice, mentally strong people tend to have a mindful, attentive way of engaging with the world.

"You could call it being in the zone, you can call it whatever you want, but the idea is that if you're focused exclusively on one thing in front of you, you're not bringing baggage to that situation and you're considering only the variables that matter," says Holiday.

The science has demonstrated that mindfulness really can boost your brain power. Mindfulness practice has been linked with emotional stability, reduced stress and anxiety, and improved mental clarity.

They're persistent in the pursuit of their goals.

We've all heard inspiring stories of amazingly successful people who overcame significant hardships and failures to get there. They're exhibiting one of the most fundamental qualities of resilient people: Perseverance, or as psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth puts it, grit.

In her studies of students in a number of different educational environments, Duckworth found that grit more than any other single quality (IQ, emotional intelligence, good looks, physical health) accounts for students' success. She also studied teachers and workers in various professional environments to determine what accounted for their success.

"In all those different contexts, one factor emerged as a secret to success, and it wasn't social intelligence, good looks, physical health or IQ. It was grit," Duckworth said in a TED talk. "Grit is passion or perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in and day out -- not just for a day, not just for a month, but for years -- to make that future a reality."

But they know when it's time to let go.

A mentally strong person can say to themselves, "I tried everything I could in this situation, and now I can let it go," says Holiday. Just as important as perseverance is the ability to recognize that you can control only your own actions -- not the results of those actions. Accepting this fact allows us to resign to the things that are beyond our power.

There's an idea in Stoicism, Holiday explains, called the "art of acquiescence," which is yielding to the things that you can't change and making the best of them, rather than allowing them to upset or frustrate you. We need strength, determination and perseverance, but these aren't the answer in every situation. The mentally strong person lives by the Serenity Prayer -- they change what they can control, accept what they can't control, and know the difference between the two.

"Sometimes, the solution to the problem is to accept the problem and to bend yourself around that problem rather than crashing yourself repeatedly into it until you break," says Holiday.

They love their lives.

Amor fati is a Latin term that translates to "love of fate," a concept derived from the ancient Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers that later reemerged in the work of Nietzsche. And it's perhaps the single most important key to mental strength.

"The idea is that you don't just have to tolerate the things you can't control -- they could be the greatest things that ever happen to you," says Holiday. "You can find the joy in not just accepting, but in embracing the things that happen to you."

Mentally strong people are grateful and appreciative of obstacles because of the simple fact that obstacles are life itself. Shortly before her death, Seattle-based author Jane Lotter left that advice with her family in a powerful self-written obituary.

As Lotter put it, "May you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path."

True Grit!

Seeing is Believing: The Power of Visualisation

The current Winter Olympics and particularly Lizzy Yarnold`s inspirational gold medal reminded me of the potency of achieving your goals through the power of visualisation. I`ve always been amazed how the world of sport has always embraced this power and yet the average person on the street has no idea of its phenomenal impact. Well not any more! Here is an excellent article explaining how:-


"Despite the great case for getting off our duffs, there are some amazingly cool and effective practices we can do from the comfort of our own recliners – without even budging a finger. For instance, you could practice your golf swing, work out your muscles, prepare to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, hone your chess skills, practice for tomorrow’s surgery, and you can even prepare for your best life!

Mental practice can get you closer to where you want to be in life, and it can prepare you for success! For instance, Natan Sharansky, a computer specialist who spent 9 years in prison in the USSR after being accused of spying for US has a lot of experience with mental practices. While in solitary confinement, he played himself in mental chess, saying: “I might as well use the opportunity to become the world champion!” Remarkably, in 1996, Sharansky beat world champion chess player Garry Kasparov!

A study looking at brain patterns in weightlifters found that the patterns activated when a weightlifter lifted hundreds of pounds were similarly activated when they only imagined lifting.  In some cases, research has revealed that mental practices are almost effective as true physical practice, and that doing both is more effective than either alone. For instance, in his study on everyday people,Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared “people who went to the gym with people who carried out virtual workouts in their heads”. He found that a 30% muscle increase in the group who went to the gym. However, the group of participants who conducted mental exercises of the weight training increased muscle strength by almost half as much (13.5%). This average remained for 3 months following the mental training.

Noted as one form of mental rehearsal, visualization has been popular since the Soviets started using it back in the 1970s to compete in sports. Now, many athletes employ this technique, including Tiger Woods who has been using it since his pre-teen years. Seasoned athletes use vivid, highly detailed internal images and run-throughs of the entire performance, engaging all their senses in their mental rehearsal, and they combine their knowledge of the sports venue with mental rehearsal. World Champion Golfer, Jack Nicklaus has said: “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp in-focus picture of it in my head”. Even heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, used different mental practices to enhance his performance in the ring such as: “affirmation; visualization; mental rehearsal; self-confirmation; and perhaps the most powerful epigram of personal worth ever uttered: “I am the greatest”.

Brain studies now reveal that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory. So the brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization. It’s been found that mental practices can enhance motivation, increase confidence and self-efficacy, improve motor performance, prime your brain for success, and increase states of flow – all relevant to achieving your best life!

For someone like Matthew Nagle who is paralyzed in all four limbs, mental practices have transformed his entire way of life. Matthew had a silicone chip implanted in brain. Astonishingly, after just 4 days of mental practice, he could: move a computer cursor on a screen, open email, play a computer game, and control robotic arm. While our circumstances may be less stringent than those that Matthew endures, it’s quite obvious that every person can benefit from mental practices.

So, if athletes and chess players use this technique to enhance performance, how can it enhance the lives of the ‘average Joe’? First, study results highlight the strength of the mind-body connection, or in other words the link between thoughts and behaviors – a very important connection for achieving your best life. While your future may not include achieving a great physique or becoming the heavyweight champ or winning the Masters Tournament, mental practice has a lot to offer you. Try it here!

Begin by establishing a highly specific goal. Imagine the future; you have already achieved your goal. Hold a mental ‘picture’ of it as if it were occurring to you right at that moment. Imagine the scene in as much detail as possible. Engage as many of the five senses as you can in your visualization. Who are you with? Which emotions are you feeling right now? What are you wearing? Is there a smell in the air? What do you hear? What is your environment? Sit with a straight spine when you do this. Practice at night or in the morning (just before/after sleep). Eliminate any doubts, if they come to you. Repeat this practice often. Combine with meditation or an affirmation (e.g. “I am courageous; I am strong”, or to borrow from Ali, “I am the greatest!”).
(Source:Angie LaVan - Psychology Today)

This is what Jim Carrey achieved through visualising his future......

And this is the science behind it all ....

Mindsets and the negative impact of praise

 

The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behaviour. The right kind motivates students to learn.

(So says Professor Carol Dweck, a leading expert on motivation, personality and development. So if you`ve always believed that we need to motivate people through praise, you will find this article fascinating!)

We often hear these days that we've produced a generation of young people who can't get through the day without an award. They expect success because they're special, not because they've worked hard.

Is this true? Have we inadvertently done something to hold back our students?

I think educators commonly hold two beliefs that do just that. Many believe that (1) praising students' intelligence builds their confidence and motivation to learn, and (2) students' inherent intelligence is the major cause of their achievement in school. Our research has shown that the first belief is false and that the second can be harmful—even for the most competent students.

As a psychologist, I have studied student motivation for more than 35 years. My graduate students and I have looked at thousands of children, asking why some enjoy learning, even when it's hard, and why they are resilient in the face of obstacles. We have learned a great deal. Research shows us how to praise students in ways that yield motivation and resilience. In addition, specific interventions can reverse a student's slide into failure during the vulnerable period of adolescence.

Fixed or Malleable?

Praise is intricately connected to how students view their intelligence. Some students believe that their intellectual ability is a fixed trait. They have a certain amount of intelligence, and that's that. Students with this fixed mind-set become excessively concerned with how smart they are, seeking tasks that will prove their intelligence and avoiding ones that might not (Dweck, 1999, 2006). The desire to learn takes a backseat.

Other students believe that their intellectual ability is something they can develop through effort and education. They don't necessarily believe that anyone can become an Einstein or a Mozart, but they do understand that even Einstein and Mozart had to put in years of effort to become who they were. When students believe that they can develop their intelligence, they focus on doing just that. Not worrying about how smart they will appear, they take on challenges and stick to them (Dweck, 1999, 2006).

More and more research in psychology and neuroscience supports the growth mind-set. We are discovering that the brain has more plasticity over time than we ever imagined (Doidge, 2007); that fundamental aspects of intelligence can be enhanced through learning (Sternberg, 2005); and that dedication and persistence in the face of obstacles are key ingredients in outstanding achievement (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006).

Alfred Binet (1909/1973), the inventor of the IQ test, had a strong growth mind-set. He believed that education could transform the basic capacity to learn. Far from intending to measure fixed intelligence, he meant his test to be a tool for identifying students who were not profiting from the public school curriculum so that other courses of study could be devised to foster their intellectual growth.

The Two Faces of Effort

The fixed and growth mind-sets create two different psychological worlds. In the fixed mind-set, students care first and foremost about how they'll be judged: smart or not smart. Repeatedly, students with this mind-set reject opportunities to learn if they might make mistakes (Hong, Chiu, Dweck, Lin, & Wan, 1999; Mueller & Dweck, 1998). When they do make mistakes or reveal deficiencies, rather than correct them, they try to hide them (Nussbaum & Dweck, 2007).

They are also afraid of effort because effort makes them feel dumb. They believe that if you have the ability, you shouldn't need effort (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007), that ability should bring success all by itself. This is one of the worst beliefs that students can hold. It can cause many bright students to stop working in school when the curriculum becomes challenging.

Finally, students in the fixed mind-set don't recover well from setbacks. When they hit a setback in school, they decrease their efforts and consider cheating (Blackwell et al., 2007). The idea of fixed intelligence does not offer them viable ways to improve.

Let's get inside the head of a student with a fixed mind-set as he sits in his classroom, confronted with algebra for the first time. Up until then, he has breezed through math. Even when he barely paid attention in class and skimped on his homework, he always got As. But this is different. It's hard. The student feels anxious and thinks, “What if I'm not as good at math as I thought? What if other kids understand it and I don't?” At some level, he realizes that he has two choices: try hard, or turn off. His interest in math begins to wane, and his attention wanders. He tells himself, “Who cares about this stuff? It's for nerds. I could do it if I wanted to, but it's so boring. You don't see CEOs and sports stars solving for x and y.”

By contrast, in the growth mind-set, students care about learning. When they make a mistake or exhibit a deficiency, they correct it (Blackwell et al., 2007; Nussbaum & Dweck, 2007). For them, effort is a positivething: It ignites their intelligence and causes it to grow. In the face of failure, these students escalate their efforts and look for new learning strategies.

Let's look at another student—one who has a growth mind-set—having her first encounter with algebra. She finds it new, hard, and confusing, unlike anything else she has ever learned. But she's determined to understand it. She listens to everything the teacher says, asks the teacher questions after class, and takes her textbook home and reads the chapter over twice. As she begins to get it, she feels exhilarated. A new world of math opens up for her.

It is not surprising, then, that when we have followed students over challenging school transitions or courses, we find that those with growth mind-sets outperform their classmates with fixed mind-sets—even when they entered with equal skills and knowledge. A growth mind-set fosters the growth of ability over time (Blackwell et al., 2007; Mangels, Butterfield, Lamb, Good, & Dweck, 2006; see also Grant & Dweck, 2003).

The Effects of Praise

Many educators have hoped to maximize students' confidence in their abilities, their enjoyment of learning, and their ability to thrive in school by praising their intelligence. We've studied the effects of this kind of praise in children as young as 4 years old and as old as adolescence, in students in inner-city and rural settings, and in students of different ethnicities—and we've consistently found the same thing (Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007; Kamins & Dweck, 1999; Mueller & Dweck, 1998): Praising students' intelligence gives them a short burst of pride, followed by a long string of negative consequences.

In many of our studies (see Mueller & Dweck, 1998), 5th grade students worked on a task, and after the first set of problems, the teacher praised some of them for their intelligence (“You must be smart at these problems”) and others for their effort (“You must have worked hard at these problems”). We then assessed the students' mind-sets. In one study, we asked students to agree or disagree with mind-set statements, such as, “Your intelligence is something basic about you that you can't really change.” Students praised for intelligence agreed with statements like these more than students praised for effort did. In another study, we asked students to define intelligence. Students praised for intelligence made significantly more references to innate, fixed capacity, whereas the students praised for effort made more references to skills, knowledge, and areas they could change through effort and learning. Thus, we found that praise for intelligence tended to put students in a fixed mind-set (intelligence is fixed, and you have it), whereas praise for effort tended to put them in a growth mind-set (you're developing these skills because you're working hard).

We then offered students a chance to work on either a challenging task that they could learn from or an easy one that ensured error-free performance. Most of those praised for intelligence wanted the easy task, whereas most of those praised for effort wanted the challenging task and the opportunity to learn.

Next, the students worked on some challenging problems. As a group, students who had been praised for their intelligence lost their confidence in their ability and their enjoyment of the task as soon as they began to struggle with the problem. If success meant they were smart, then struggling meant they were not. The whole point of intelligence praise is to boost confidence and motivation, but both were gone in a flash. Only the effort-praised kids remained, on the whole, confident and eager.

When the problems were made somewhat easier again, students praised for intelligence did poorly, having lost their confidence and motivation. As a group, they did worse than they had done initially on these same types of problems. The students praised for effort showed excellent performance and continued to improve.

Finally, when asked to report their scores (anonymously), almost 40 percent of the intelligence-praised students lied. Apparently, their egos were so wrapped up in their performance that they couldn't admit mistakes. Only about 10 percent of the effort-praised students saw fit to falsify their results.

Praising students for their intelligence, then, hands them not motivation and resilience but a fixed mind-set with all its vulnerability. In contrast, effort or “process” praise (praise for engagement, perseverance, strategies, improvement, and the like) fosters hardy motivation. It tells students what they've done to be successful and what they need to do to be successful again in the future. Process praise sounds like this:

• You really studied for your English test, and your improvement shows it. You read the material over several times, outlined it, and tested yourself on it. That really worked!
• I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it.
• It was a long, hard assignment, but you stuck to it and got it done. You stayed at your desk, kept up your concentration, and kept working. That's great!
• I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of work—doing the research, designing the machine, buying the parts, and building it. You're going to learn a lot of great things.

What about a student who gets an A without trying? I would say, “All right, that was too easy for you. Let's do something more challenging that you can learn from.” We don't want to make something done quickly and easily the basis for our admiration.

What about a student who works hard and doesn't do well? I would say, “I liked the effort you put in. Let's work together some more and figure out what you don't understand.” Process praise keeps students focused, not on something called ability that they may or may not have and that magically creates success or failure, but on processes they can all engage in to learn.

Feeling anxious? Why trying to "keep calm" is a terrible idea

I believe that one of the most powerful tools we can use to combat nerves, anxiety and stress is to learn to reframe those emotions and make them empowering instead of debilitating. In this article, Drake Baer explains how:-

DON'T KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. INSTEAD OF FIGHTING YOUR BODY'S NATURAL REACTION TO ANXIETY, EMBRACE YOUR AMPED-UP STATE, AND REFRAME YOUR ANXIETY AS EXCITEMENT. HERE'S HOW.

A strange sign has found its way to walls across our country: Keep Calm And Carry On, a World War II-era Britishism that's become a brightly colored, boldly fonted, and mostly misguided placard of staying cool under pressure. Mainly because it totally misses the way emotions work.

"People seem to have this very strong intuition when they feel anxious to try and 'calm down,'" says Alison Wood Brooks, a professor of business administration at Harvard. "But it's actually very, very difficult to do successfully, particularly when leading up to very anxiety-inducing tasks, [like public speaking, a job interview, or singing in front of people]."

Instead of trying to force ourselves to be calm, she says, we should be getting excited--due to a psychological something called arousal congruence.

Image: Flickr user Akio Takemoto

While keeping calm might seem like a simple enough instruction, it actually conceals two steps, for every emotion has both an arousal and a valance component--and you need to regulate each in order to change the emotion.

Arousal is physical: in the case of anxiety, you have an increased heart rate, a spike of stress hormones like cortisol, and a sudden appearance of sweat. Arousal is also automatic: it's a function of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is always looking out for danger. Since arousal is so automatic, it's hard to control.

Valence is cognitive: it's the way you interpret all that physiological stuff happening inside you--how you feel about your feelings. So if you're trying to "keep calm" while you're anxious, you have to shift your perception of your emotion.

If you're trying to "keep calm" while you're anxious, you have to shift your perception of your emotion.

Alison Wood Brooks

When you tell yourself to "calm down" you have to make two hidden steps, moving both arousal and valence. But moving from anxiety to excitement is easier: your body can stay in an amped-up physiological state, but you re-appraise your anxiety as excitement.

"That it's a two-step process is not intuitive," Brooks says, "and understanding that you're trying to do two different things makes people more emotionally literate."

It can also make people better performers.

Here's how to practice reframing your anxiety as excitement.

Brooks recruited a group of volunteers. They were asked to take part in three kinds of experiments: tackling public speaking, math, or singing in front of people.

The subjects were primed differently in each of these cases. Before making their speech, diving into their problem sets, or launching into "Don't Stop Believing," they were asked to make one of three kinds of statements to themselves:

• To keep calm
• To get excited
• Or nothing

In each of three cases, the anxious folks that told themselves a variant of "get excited" performed better: they gave more persuasive, competent, and persistent speeches; notched hire math scores, and belted out Journey with greater accuracy.

WHY YOU DO BETTER WHEN YOU GET EXCITED

Oscar Wilde, once quipped that "worry is misspent imagination": turns out that the dude was right. As Brooks explained to us, when we get worried, we're making poor investments with our attention: instead of thinking of the ways that big presentation will go right, we're spending our finite attention on what will go wrong, what's wrong with us, and what our parents did to make us inherit that behavior.

"Anxiety precludes you from exploring real solutions and real thought patterns that will come up with solutions," she says. "When you're in a positive valence, it primes an opportunity mindset, so you think of all of the good things that can happen. You're more likely to make decisions and take actions that will make that world likely to occur."

As the karaoke outcomes attest, we can actually prime that opportunity-oriented mindset.

Take, for instance, if you're about to go onstage: when someone asks you "how do you feel," tell them that you're excited. If you get in the habit of that, Brooks says, it could really improve your performance. If you're a manager, emphasize excitement rather than calmness. And if you're all by your lonesome, staring at a blank document and feeling anxiety creeping up your neck, tell yourself that you're excited to even put a paragraph on the page.

Bottom Line:

"A lot of times, anxiety is most debilitating when it leads to inaction, like you just don't know where to start," Brooks says, noting that the most productive people she knows are highly skilled at just doing a small piece of a larger project.

"Just do something and constantly work on it and revise it and hone it into a product or a performance that turns into something wonderful. I think this idea of reappraising anxiety as excitement can help inspire simple actions--to just get excited and do something."

The amazing history of the "to do" list - and how to make one that actually works

If you`ve ever struggled with getting things done and ended up making endless lists, this article by Belle Beth Cooper will throw some light on why we feel compelled to write "to do lists" and how to do them effectively:-

WHY DO WE MAKE LISTS AS HUMANS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco is a big fan of lists and has some fascinating ideas about why they’re so important to humans:

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible… And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists…

Umberto Eco

Umberto explained in an interview that lists are often seen as relics of primitive cultures--simplistic devices that don’t belong in our modern day and age. However, the simple form of the list prevails again and again over time, because, as Umberto says, it has “an irresistible magic.”

Umberto Eco said, "The list is the origin of culture. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists."

When we struggle to express ourselves, we use lists. Like Umberto says, lists help us to make sense of the world around us. We create lists of the sights we see on vacation, the places we want to visit, the food we need to buy at the grocery store, and the tasks we need to get done. It’s a simple habit of increasing our day to day productivity.

We pack all the madness and ambiguity of life into a structured form of writing. In short making lists is a great way to increase our overall happiness and feel less overwhelmed.

Not only that, but we also form and challenge definitions of the things around us by making lists of their characteristics. For instance, if we were to describe an animal to a child, we would do so by listing characteristics like color, size, diet and habitat. Regardless of whether this matches the scientific definition of the animal or not, that’s how we make sense of it.

The list is the mark of a highly advanced, cultivated society because a list allows us to question the essential definitions. The essential definition is primitive compared with the list.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE GODFATHER OF THE TO-DO LIST?

Benjamin Franklin is a great example of someone known for using lists to encourage his own self-improvement. He famously detailed a thirteen-week plan to practice important virtues such as cleanliness, temperance, etc. Each day he tracked his progress on a chart.

Benjamin also set himself a strict daily routine, which included time for sleeping, meals and working, all set for specific times of the day. Unfortuantely, the demands of his printing business made it difficult for him to always stick to his routine, but this image shows how he aimed to spend his time:

LISTS FOR PRODUCTIVITY

These days, we use lists for productivity as much as anything else: shopping lists, reminders, planning for events, and the to-do list are all variations on a productivity-based list that we use to help us get past procrastinating.

The to-do list in particular is one that we spend a lot of time and energy on perfecting. Somehow, we don’t seem to struggle when it comes to making a shopping list and buying everything on it, but getting the tasks on our to-do list done is a whole other ball game.

4 TOP TIPS TO WRITE A TO-DO LIST THAT WILL ACTUALLY HELP YOU GET THINGS DONE

Looking at the history of lists and how they’re used, we can glean some insights about how to create a to-do list we can actually complete.

1. Break projects into tasks, don’t succumb to the Zeigarnik effect

We kind of have a reminder system built-in to our minds that nags us about unfinished tasks, called the Zeigarnik effect. It sounds pretty cool that we already have this, but it’s actually not that reliable or healthy for us.

ASAP Science explains The Science of Productivity

What really happens is that there’s a disconnect between our conscious and unconscious minds--the unconscious mind can’t plan how to finish the task, but it gets annoyed with the feeling of it being unfinished. To shake off that feeling, it nags the conscious mind with reminders about the task--not to finish it, but simply to encourage us to make a plan.

If you’ve heard of David Allen’s GTD method, you’ll be familiar with his concept of “next steps,” which is pretty much the same thing. It’s the process of breaking down a project or task into smaller tasks, and planning which one will be the next step towards completing the whole thing.

This abates the nagging of the unconscious brain, as it’s satisfied that at some point we’ll get onto that task, and we know exactly how we’ll do it.

Maria Popova at Brain Pickings says the essentials of creating these do-able next steps are to make “a few very specific, aactionalbe, non-conflicting items.”

2. Prioritize ruthlessly

Maria’s post on the history of the to-do list also describes the story of a psychologist who gave a talk at the Pentagon about managing time and resources. Before the talk began, the psychologist asked everyone in the group to write a summary of their strategic approach in 25 words.

Apparently, 25 words was too little for the men to express their strategies, and the only response came from the single woman in the group, whose summary read as follows:

First I make a list of priorities: one, two, three, and so on. Then I cross out everything from three down.

I’ve heard this approach suggested before in various places, and it always reminds me of the CEO I worked with at my previous company, who had a Post-It on his desk that read, “prioritize until it hurts.” in other words, learning the powerful skill of saying no. I’m not sure if he ever managed to do that, but I liked the approach.

To-do lists invariably crop up when we have so many things to do that we can’t keep track of them all in our heads (Aha! We’re back to Umberto’s thoughts on how lists help us to create order from the chaos of our lives!). Which means that we end up with lists far too long for us to complete.

Prioritizing ruthlessly seems to be the only way to actually get done what’s most important in the little time that we have.

3. “Plan ahead”--advice for which Charles Schwab paid $25,000

Here’s another cool story of how to-do lists evolved in the workplace:

Almost 100 years ago, the president of the Bethlehem Steel company in the USA was Charles M. Schwab. His company was struggling with inefficiency and Schwab didn’t know how to improve it, so he called in Ivy Lee, a well-known efficiency expert at the time.

Lee agreed to help the company, with his fee being whatever Schwab felt the results were worth after three months.

Lee’s advice to each member of the company’s management team was to write a to-do list at the end of each day, which consisted of the six most important tasks to be done the following day. Then they were told to organize the list based on the highest priority tasks.

The next day, the employes worked through the list from top to bottom, focusing on a single task at a time. At the end of the day, anything left on the list would get added to the top of tomorrow’s list when the employees once again planned for the following day.

As the story goes, the company was so much more efficient after three months that Schwab sent a check to Lee for $25,000.

In your own planning, you can take Lee’s advice for free and use the night before to plan your workday. Setting out the most important tasks you want to complete the following day will help you to avoid time-wasters and distractions by knowing what to work on immediately.

4. Be realistic in your planning

Sometimes it’s nice to know that even our great heroes are fallible. This story about Benjamin Franklin’s struggles to keep up with his daily to-do list shows how important it is to be realistic about how much time we have and what our priorities are.

Franklin was known to be a meticulous tracker of his daily routine and his work towards the virtues he prioritized.

Unfortunately, the demands of his business meant that he didn’t always keep up with his ideal daily routine. He often got interrupted by clients and had to ignore his schedule to meet with them.

He also noticed that some of the virtues he aspired to practice, such as frugality--not wasting anything--took up too much time for him to live life as he wanted to. Preparing his own meals and mending his own clothes all the time, for instance, meant that he didn’t have enough time for business or his side projects.

The result of these conflicting priorities was unhappiness over not completing the tasks he set for himself. As a result, he had to re-prioritize, which is something we should keep in mind.

If we’re struggling to complete our to-do lists on a regular basis (we’ve all been there at some point!), we need to make a change to the list--make it more realistic.

Although a to-do list can be infinite, our time is not. We need to match the tasks we require of ourselves to how much time and energy we can afford to spend on them. This is where prioritizing can really come in handy, as well.

Starting to develop your own, personal daily routine is one of the most powerful ways to become a great list maker. You might find some inspiration from these seven famous entrepreneurs and their routines.

Find a way that works for you

As with pretty much any kind of lifehacking or productivity topic I write about, individual mileage will vary. We all need to take into account our unique situation when experimenting with advice like this. For me, prioritizing and planning the night before has really helped. For you, being realistic might be more useful.

BONUS: JOHNNY CASH’S PERFECT, SEMI-EFFICIENT TO-DO LIST

As a last example, I found a to-do list from Johnny Cash. This wouldn’t necessarily be one we’d advocate to help you become more efficient. But then again, we can’t argue with Johnny Cash’s success, can we?