Author: Munro Stewart

Remember that you can improve your life and the world for the better by turning your thoughts and dreams into action and reality.

Thinkist - Munro Stewart

1. A person who uses their thinking and thoughts to transform their life and the world around them for the better. Their thoughts propel them to ultimately take action towards making their vision come true.
2. A person who thinks that you can turn thoughts and ideas into reality.
3. A person who understands that action, work, habits, and routines are also needed to make changes, complete tasks and projects, and achieve goals and dreams.
4. A person who thinks that action and results begin with ideas, thinking, and believing.

Write down a list of your goals and dreams, because writing thoughts and ideas down is the first step to making them come to life.

12 Lists that help you get things done - Lifehack.org

A list of your short- and long-term goals can be a great motivator, as well as a trigger list to help generate new projects. I also like to have a list of areas of focus, the different roles that I play, each of which comes with a different set of tasks and goals.

Remember that 80% of the result comes from 20% of your time, work, or activities, and that 80% could be good enough for many tasks by focusing on the essential 20% of your efforts and activities.

16 Things I wish they had taught me in school - Positivity Blog

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule - also known as The Pareto Principle - basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities. So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think. You can just drop - or vastly decrease the time you spend on - a whole bunch of things.

"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential." - Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee’s top 7 fundamentals for getting your life in shape - Positivity Blog

If you want to improve your life then it’s tempting to want to add more. One problem with this may be that you don’t really have the time or energy to do more though. And so your efforts to improve become short-lived. Adding more and more just creates more stress and anxiety. Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do. And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease. This has the added benefit of making it easier to actually enjoy whatever you are doing even more while you are doing it.

Live your life by being true to yourself and following your own dreams and desires.

Top 5 regrets of the dying - Huffington Post

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

Have a growth mindset by believing that you can grow, learn new things, improve your skills and knowledge, and realizing that temporary and recurring failure are a necessary part of learning and growing.

Believe you can change - Aaron Swartz

Dweck, like many adults, had learned to hide her frustration and anger, to politely say "I'm not sure I want to play this anymore" instead of knocking over the board. She figured the successful kids would be the same - they’d have tactics for coping with failure instead of getting beaten down by it. But what she found was radically different. The successful kids didn’t just live with failure, they loved it! When the going got tough, they didn’t start blaming themselves; they licked their lips and said "I love a challenge." They’d say stuff like "The harder it gets the harder I need to try."

Remember everyone is emotional and that people are all going through the ups and downs of life, so try to comfort or cheer up others who get angry or are in a bad mood.

The critical 7 rules to understand people - Scott H. Young

Perhaps this is an exaggeration. But the core of the message is that people tend to have stronger feelings about something than they let on. People who regularly have outbursts of anger, depression or flamboyant enthusiasm are generally frowned upon in most cultures. This especially applies to men (for women trying to figure us out). The application of this rule is to not assume everything is fine just because someone isn’t having a nervous breakdown. We all have our individual problems, angst and upsets that are normally contained.

Give people sincere praise about something they have done well or that you appreciate about them before giving them negative feedback or an idea for something they could change or do differently.

How to Give and Receive Feedback at Work: The Psychology of Criticism - Buffer

"Sandwich every bit of criticism between two heavy layers of praise." One well known strategy for feedback is the “criticism sandwich,” popularized by the above quote from cosmetics maven Mary Kay Ash. In the sandwich, you begin with praise, address the problem, and follow up with more praise. In fact, the more of the conversation you can frame positively, the more likely your recipient is to be in the right frame of mind to make the change you’re looking for.