The Importance of Time Management in Personal Development

Time Management and Personal Development

One of the biggest reasons that people do not achieve anything in their lives is because they get lazy. Another big reason is that people say they simply do not have the time. A person will say they would love to learn a new language, but they just do not have the time to do it. This is incorrect and a cheap way out. It is a way for people to keep from bettering themselves because it is a good excuse. In fact, you do have the time because it comes down to time management. In order to practice good time management, you need to do the following:

1. Make a list of the things you do in a day that are done every day. This can include making meals, getting ready for work, going to work, being at work and spending time with the family. Add all this up and determine how many hours that is.

2. Add in eight hours sleep and then subtract the total from 24 hours.

3. See how many hours you have at this point. Those are hours you can use for personal development

So, if you spend eight hours at work, one hour going to work, one hour getting read, one hour preparing meals and three hours with the family, you get the following amount of hours: 14. Add in eight hours and that comes to 20 hours, which leaves you four hours every day that you can use to better yourself. Four hours multiplied by 365 days means that in one year, if you keep to a schedule, you have the potential to use 1,460 hours to better yourself, that comes to a whopping 60 full hours per year. That is a huge amount of time you can use to change who you are and to better yourself. Granted you will not use all that time for personal development. Movies, walks, sports will all take time out of that but even cutting that in half you get one full month of time to better yourself. That is a month you can use to lose weight, learn a language and more and all it takes is scheduling your time properly. Should you sit on the couch and watch television instead? Sure that is okay, as long as it fits into your time management scheme, however don’t let it become a habit or your decision to better yourself will fail to the background.

You need to make yourself a time budget when you are trying to better yourself personally. This will tell you how much time you can spend on something and you cannot go over budget. You got five hours of television a week? Well, use them wisely. You can’t go over with a financial budget, and you cannot go over with a time budget. That is what bettering yourself comes down to, having discipline to make the commitment to change who you are and what you are.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on May 28, 2011

How to Better yourself

Do Not Be Lazy When Bettering Yourself

Betting yourself is not easy work. The process of changing who you are is not a quick-fix; it is something that must be done over time. You cannot do this overnight, but you have to take time and follow a long personal journey. It takes time, it takes effort and it is not something you can do if you are not driven to do so. Changing yourself involves a lot of work, and you cannot be lazy. If you are lazy when you try to better who you are, you will not better who you are. You may think that you are bettering yourself, but you are not. You are just changing your perception of who you are, but not actually changing who you are. Being driven is an integral part of bettering yourself, and you cannot be lazy with it.

Here are some ways that you can do to ensure you stay driven with bettering yourself.

1. Don’t push yourself too hard. If you are trying to lose weight and you decide to go to the gym every day, you are going to push yourself to hard. This will result in you becoming lazy because you won’t want to do it anymore. A better solution is to go to the gym three days a week. That way you will be able to lose weight, while not pushing yourself too hard.

2. Make good goals for yourself. When you have goals, you have guideposts that you can achieve. The thrill you get from achieving a goal will ensure that you do not become too lazy with bettering yourself. The only thing here is you do not want to make goals that are unrealistic; otherwise you will get lazy and not achieve them.

3. Be accountable to others. If you are accountable to others, and if you have told people what your goals are, they will keep you from failing. They will ensure that you are going to achieve them and that in itself will keep you from becoming lazy. We all want to show others that we will be able to achieve something that we say we will achieve. When people think that you are going to fail, you want to prove them wrong. If they are watching you, you will make sure that you achieve what you said you will and that will keep you from becoming lazy.

Being lazy when you are trying to better yourself is the worst thing you can do for yourself. You will decide it is too hard to better yourself and you will not want to get up in the morning and meet your goals. The minute you become lazy with personal development, you have failed in your tasks. Laziness is one of the biggest killers in the world. Laziness keeps people on the couch, away from exercise, it keeps people from achieving things and it leads to many diseases. You do not want to have yourself fail because you were lazy, that is embarrassing.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on May 8, 2011

How To Be Confident

Where Can You Get Confidence?

In your tool chest of items that will allow you to develop yourself personally, confidence is one of the most important tools. With confidence, you will be able to tackle the challenges that come your way, but the thing is, you can’t just get confidence. You need to work for confidence and it is not always easy. Sometimes you may not think confidence is coming, but any doubt you feel is hurting your confidence. You need to get rid of doubt because it is what is going to hold you back. Confidence cannot exist if you have doubt, and these are the ways you not only get rid of doubt, but increase your confidence.

1. Make sure the people around you give you confidence. By having people who believe in you, you will begin to believe in yourself. They will tell you the things you are doing right, things you need to improve on, but most of all they will tell you exactly what you need to hear. That is why having a good group around you can give you confidence.

2. Confidence comes from pushing yourself to try new things. One of the ways you can do that is to get out of your typical comfort zone. If you don’t usually go out at night, start going out at night and pushing yourself to talk to people. If you are shy, be outgoing, if you are outgoing, be shy. Whatever you have to do to make things different, and to push yourself, will give you confidence when you need it.

3. Get inspiration from others. There are many people who have gone through bettering themselves, and they have a story to tell. Go to your local library and get biographies on individuals that you admire. Read about their challenges and how they overcame them. This will help give you confidence because you will see that others have gone through the exact same thing and achieved great success.

4. Talk to yourself whenever you begin to have doubts. Go to a mirror and talk to yourself, have conversations with yourself and compliment who you are. This may seem like an odd thing to do but you know yourself, you trust yourself and you will be able to push up your confidence just by talking to yourself. It is a very good technique that is used by actors, politicians, generals and more because you are speaking directly to yourself and making yourself confident. It works, trust us.

Being confident is very important in anything you do. When you are confident, you will not doubt your decisions and your confidence will help others believe in you. That then allows you to build up your confidence even more. Confidence is your best friend when you are bettering yourself, and it will keep you pushing yourself to become a better person. All you have to do to be confident is to use these tips and begin to change your life today.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on April 10, 2011

Time to Take It Slow

Personal Development and Taking It Slow

When you decide to start betting yourself through personal development, one of the first things you need to do is take a breath. The world is very fast paced and that leaves a lot of people scrambling to keep up. It can be difficult because people do not know what to do with a world that moves by like a speeding freeway. We become stressed, confused and depressed. There is an old saying that tells people to stop and smell the roses, and that is something you need to do when you are involved in personal development. You need to take the time to slow things down and just enjoy the time around you.

We too often feel that everything moves fast and therefore we must move fast, and if you do not want to move fast you can become depressed. Depression is a nail in the coffin of personal development, and you need to find a way to beat it. That comes from practicing the concept of Carpe Diem, which is Latin for Seize the Day. You want to seize the day because by doing that, you better yourself. This is why people create goals and bucket lists, they want to be able to seize the time they have and better who they are. They want to reach the end of their life knowing that they have done all that they can and are better for it.

How does this come into taking it slow? Well if you do not appreciate life and the time you have, you cannot seize the day. You do not want to rush through life because you will not spend the time you want to better yourself. If every day is about going to work, coming home and working, then going to work the next day, how do you have time to take it slow? Do you want to better yourself by learning a new skill? Well, then you should take the time to learn to do something like cooking. If you only buy microwave food because you are thinking you are too busy, you are not doing yourself any favours.

Look at something like Tai Chi, it is about moving slow and becoming one with your spirituality. There is no rushing; it is the joy of the movement. People like to go out on the water but they go out on motorboats rather than canoes. By taking a canoe you have more time to reflect on the quiet around you. Taking it slow allows you to look inward at who you are and to take the time to better yourself. We would all like to have infinite time but that is not going to happen, so instead you need to take it slow so you can make time for what matters in your personal development. Rushing through your life is just getting you to the end sooner, and that is something you are not going to want. Breath, relax and take it slow.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 13, 2011

Music and Personal Development

The Power of Music For Changing Your Life

The type of music you listen to says a lot about you, however to say that a person who listens to Metallica is angry, or a person who listens to Beethoven is sophisticated, is simply wrong. Yes, the music you listen to influences you, but anyone can listen to all forms of music and appreciate it all. However, discussing the point of music and what music is better is not what is being done here. No instead, we are going to look at how music can help to change your life and lead to personal development.

Music is very important to the human condition. Music was probably one of the first artistic things humans ever did beyond painting on cave walls. Today, there is so many choices with music that you can literally never get through it all.

In terms of personal development and music, music can be used to not only make you happy, but to motivate you as well. For example, if you listen to sad music, you will most likely feel down. However, if you listen to upbeat music, you can most likely become happy.

In professional sport leagues, teams will often play loud music that has a lot of energy to it so that they can get ready for the game and get pumped up for it. They are essentially using music to change their lives. They are using music to implement something and influence a part of themselves. In their case, they are influencing their energy and adrenaline so they can play better.

In your case, you can use music that will get you pumped up, but you can also use music that will make you happy. Look at your collection of music and choose songs that inspire you and make you smile. Picture yourself walking down a nice beach on a sunny day and think of the music you would like to hear. What music relaxes you in that case and makes you smile. You want to think about that because by choosing the music that relaxes you and makes you smile, you can then create the same feelings as that beach by just listening to the songs. It has been proven that music can relieve stress and brighten your mood, so why wouldn’t you use it when you are trying to change who you are. You cannot change who you are and better yourself if you are not optimistic about who you are going to be. You need to be in the right frame of mind and the best way to do that is to listen to music that makes you happy. You can think about happy things, but music just works better for stirring the emotions that influence you to better yourself.

So, go and download the mp3 of your favourite song that makes you happy. Sit back, and listen to it and imagine yourself changing your life. Think of how happy you will be and think of how it will change who you are. Before you know it, you will be happy and ready to begin a journey of personal development.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on Feb 13, 2011