Ways to Motivate Yourself

Not all days are alike, some are good, some bad; some happy while some sad. In those dark days of life, all that we need is motivation and support. When things do not go as you had planned, negative thoughts cloud your mind and you lose confidence. Motivating oneself is very difficult during such times. However, note that self motivation is the best method of encouraging oneself towards success. Take a look at the following methods and follow them regularly.

Effective Techniques to Motivate Yourself

One of the most important step in self motivation is to form a real goal or target. Only when you have a set target in front of you, you can work towards it. Once you have set your target, keep in mind the following rules to motivate yourself.

Let Go of Fear

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure. ~ Sven-Goran Eriksson
Fear of failure is the biggest obstacle towards your journey of success. Therefore, as one of the best self motivation tips, you should remember that failure is a stepping stone to success and success comes to those who do not quit. Therefore, even if you fail ten times, do not give up. Remember that behind every successful person are several unknown failures which have motivated them to win! Your determination and hard work will surely lead you to success sooner or later.

Hope for a Successful Future

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes. ~ St. Clement of Alexandra
Hope is definitely something that makes life worth living. Therefore, in order to study or to lose weight successfully, you should have a hopeful attitude that will help you succeed. Along with hope, a positive attitude is also essential for a successful venture. Try and block all the negative attitude/ thoughts and even people as it will help you focus on your goal.

Plan and Execute

Plan your progress carefully; hour-by hour, day-by-day, month-by-month. Organized activity and maintained enthusiasm are the wellsprings of your power! ~ Paul J. Meyer
Now you have a set target, positive attitude and also hope to succeed; next you will need is a plan to reach the target. Write down all that you need to do everyday/ week and month in detail and follow it accordingly. You can also take the help of like-minded people for practical tips or even talk to someone who inspires you. Write quotes on self improvement and motivation in your room and read them every day!

Work Hard Towards It

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. ~ Thomas Jefferson
There is simply no option for hard work and you need to do it to reach your targeted goal. However, work smartly and learn the skill of multitasking so that you accomplish more things in a short period. One of the best ways to motivate yourself to lose weight is to work together with a partner or a like-minded group so that you are naturally inspired towards success.

Manage and Use Time Properly

Don't wait. The time will never be just right
Lastly, remember that time is your biggest asset and use it accordingly. Planning and managing your time effectively will help you achieve more in a shorter period. Let go of procrastination and start right away. Every minute and every hour is important and hence, you need to utilize it effectively.

If you were wondering what is the success formula of famous entrepreneurs in the world, then I don't think it will be any different. Lastly, we can sum up the above with a thoughtful quote by William A. Ward.

Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ways-to-motivate-yourself.html

How Therapy Can Help in the Golden Years

Marvin Tolkin was 83 when he decided that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living. Until then, it had never occurred to him that there might be emotional “issues” he wanted to explore with a counselor.
“I don’t think I ever needed therapy,” said Mr. Tolkin, a retired manufacturer of women’s undergarments who lives in Manhattan and Hewlett Harbor, N.Y.
Though he wasn’t clinically depressed, Mr. Tolkin did suffer from migraines and “struggled through a lot of things in my life” — the demise of a long-term business partnership, the sudden death of his first wife 18 years ago. He worried about his children and grandchildren, and his relationship with his current wife, Carole.
“When I hit my 80s I thought, ‘The hell with this.’ I don’t know how long I’m going to live, I want to make it easier,” said Mr. Tolkin, now 86. “Everybody needs help, and everybody makes mistakes. I needed to reach outside my own capabilities.”
So Mr. Tolkin began seeing Dr. Robert C. Abrams, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan. They meet once a month for 45 minutes, exploring the problems that were weighing on Mr. Tolkin. “Dr. Abrams is giving me a perspective that I didn’t think about,” he said. “It’s been making the transition of living at this age in relation to my family very doable and very livable.”
Mr. Tolkin is one of many seniors who are seeking psychological help late in life. Most never set foot near an analyst’s couch in their younger years. But now, as people are living longer, and the stigma of psychological counseling has diminished, they are recognizing that their golden years might be easier if they alleviate the problems they have been carrying around for decades. It also helps that Medicare pays for psychiatric assessments and therapy.
“We’ve been seeing more people in their 80s and older over the past five years, many who have never done therapy before,” said Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, a professor of research in the department of psychiatry at Stanford. “Usually, they’ve tried other resources like their church, or talked to family. They’re realizing that they’re living longer, and if you’ve got another 10 or 15 years, why be miserable if there’s something that can help you?”
Some of these older patients are clinically depressed. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that more than 6.5 million Americans over age 65 suffer from depression. But many are grappling with mental health issues unaddressed for decades, as well as contemporary concerns about new living arrangements, finances, chronic health problems, the loss of loved ones and their own mortality.
“It’s never too late, if someone has never dealt with issues,” said Judith Repetur, a clinical social worker in New York who works almost exclusively with older patients, many of whom are seeking help for the first time. “A combination of stresses late in life can bring up problems that weren’t resolved.”
That members of the Greatest Generation would feel comfortable talking to a therapist, or acknowledging psychological distress, is a significant change. Many grew up in an era when only “crazy” people sought psychiatric help. They would never admit to themselves — and certainly not others — that anything might be wrong.
“For people in their 80s and 90s now, depression was considered almost a moral weakness,” said Dr. Gallagher-Thompson. “Fifty years ago, when they were in their 20s and 30s, people were locked up and someone threw away the key. They had a terrible fear that if they said they were depressed, they were going to end up in an institution. So they learned to look good and cover their problems as best they could.”
But those attitudes have shifted over time, along with the medical community’s understanding of mental illness among seniors. In the past, the assumption was that if older people were acting strangely or having problems, it was probably dementia. But now, “the awareness of depression, anxiety disorders and substance abuse as possible problems has grown,” said Bob G. Knight, a professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California, and the author of “Psychotherapy With Older Adults.”
A report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that about half of all Americans ages 50 to 70 will be at high risk for alcohol and marijuana abuse by 2020, compared with less than 9 percent in 1999.
In years past, too, there was a sense among medical professionals that a patient often could not be helped after a certain age unless he had received treatment earlier in life. Freud noted that around age 50, “the elasticity of the mental process on which treatment depends is, as a rule, lacking,” adding, “Old people are no longer educable.” (Never mind that he continued working until he died at 83.)
“That’s been totally turned around by what we’ve learned about cognitive psychology and cognitive approach — changing the way you think about things, redirecting your emotions in more positive ways,” said Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist and professor of human development at Cornell, and author of “30 Lessons for Living.”
Treatment regimens can be difficult in this population. Antidepressants, for instance, can have unpleasant side effects and only add to the pile of pills many elderly patients take daily. Older patients may feel that they don’t have the time necessary to explore psychotherapy, or that it’s too late to change.
But many eagerly embrace talk therapy, particularly cognitive behavioral techniques that focus on altering thought patterns and behaviors affecting their quality of life now. Experts say that seniors generally have a higher satisfaction rate in therapy than younger people because they are usually more serious about it. Time is critical, and their goals usually are well defined.

“Older patients realize that time is limited and precious and not to be wasted,” said Dr. Abrams. “They tend to be serious about the discussion and less tolerant of wasted time. They make great patients.”


After her husband died two years ago, Miriam Zatinsky, a retired social worker who is now 87, moved into an independent living facility at Miami Jewish Health Systems. It was a difficult transition to make late in life.
“It was really strange to me, and I couldn’t seem to make any friends here,” Ms. Zatinsky said. “I really couldn’t find my way. I was having a terrible time.”
The medical director for mental health at the facility, Dr. Marc E. Agronin, a geriatric psychiatrist and the author of “How We Age,” told her that her problems were not unusual for someone in her situation, and encouraged her to make some friends. He prescribed Xanax to help with anxiety, which she said she rarely takes, and he put her in touch with a social worker, Shyla Ford, whom Ms. Zatinsky saw once a week until Ms. Ford moved (Ms. Zatinsky now has a new social worker she talks to). They strategized on how she could reach out. And slowly, she did.
“Sitting at the table for dinner, you talk to people,” said Ms. Zatinsky, who has become president of her building.
Typically, 15 to 20 sessions of talk therapy are enough to help an older patient, unless he or she is struggling with a lifetime’s worth of significant problems. Still, even long-term issues can be overcome.
After a debilitating depression in which she spent three months unable to get out of bed, Judita Grosz, 69, of Pembroke Pines, Fla., decided to see Dr. Agronin, who prescribed medication. (She also tried group therapy but didn’t like it.) He also practiced some cognitive behavioral techniques with her — for instance, requiring her to get dressed every day for a minimum of 15 minutes.
Eventually, she began to feel better. “I learned to adjust my thinking, and I don’t get as anxious as I used to,” said Ms. Grosz, who has since begun making and selling jewelry. “I found out at this age that I am artistic and creative and innovative and smart. I just woke up to the fact that I have a mind of my own. Talk about a late bloomer.”
Dr. Agronin, who still meets with Ms. Grosz monthly, said, “You might not be able to gain a magical insight and wrap up their entire life in therapy, but you might be able to accomplish one or two small but meaningful goals.”
Sometimes, what older patients really need is help putting a lifetime in perspective.
“Things can be seen differently from the perspective of old age that relieve some guilt and challenge assumptions that you’ve had for decades,” Dr. Abrams said. “ ‘Maybe it wasn’t too terrible after all; maybe I shouldn’t blame myself.’ Maybe some of your worst mistakes weren’t so egregious, and maybe there were unavoidable circumstances you couldn’t control.”
Mr. Tolkin still stops by Dr. Abrams’s office for a monthly checkup.
“Everybody has a certain amount of heartache in life — it’s how you handle the heartache that is the essential core of your life,” Mr. Tolkin said. “I found that my attitude was important, and I had to reinforce positive things all the time.”
He said he wishes he had tried therapy years ago. But he adds: “I can’t go back. I can only go forward.”

So You Think You Want to Take Online Classes?

If you are a college student or if you are an adult who simply wants to become better educated, it’s a good time to take stock and to think about what you may need to do to be ready to jump into the virtual world of online learning.

Online opportunities for learning and for earning college degrees have become pervasive in the last 10 years. Most two- and four-year colleges now offer online options. For-profit colleges that exist solely online now offer both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Consortiums such as Coursera, a tech company that partners with universities worldwide, offer non-degree oriented, free classes for people who simply want to learn new things. This is a sea change in education.

And yet… Only 50 percent of students who register for online classes succeed. (This is compared to an average of 70 percent of students in traditional campus classes.) It’s not because those who fail aren’t smart. It’s not because they don’t have good intentions. Research has identified factors that have more to do with a student’s psychology than intelligence. My own experience as a teacher of online classes leads me to the same conclusion.

If you are considering taking online courses and want to be in the 50 percent who make it through (and with good grades), here are at least some of the variables that make a difference:

Be realistic about what you are taking on.

There seems to be a myth among at least some students that online classes are easier than campus classes. Generally they aren’t. You are signing on to wrestle with new material, to master new skills, or to increase your own knowledge base. A good online class will be as challenging as any course you’ve taken in a brick building.

Be realistic about your reality.

Most online students are adults with adult lives. That means families, jobs, and complicated schedules. Be sure you really have the time and energy to put eight to 10 hours a week into reading, researching and responding. Often the students who have had to drop my class have found it overwhelming to fit class work into already over-stressed lives. One man who did very well for the first few weeks found to his dismay that he had underestimated the effect of a new baby in the house. The needs of the baby and his need for sleep overwhelmed his ability to focus on the class.

Whatever your good intentions and optimism, there are only so many hours in a day and you only have so much energy. Before writing the check to take a class, be sure you can fit it into your schedule.

Be realistic about your own motivation and maturity.

Online learning requires that you “show up” and show up regularly. Often you will be responsible for making submissions that other students need in order to keep a discussion going. Since there is no set time to participate in class, it’s easy to let a day or two or four go by because of other obligations. That’s a setup for failure.

More than a few of my students have fallen by the wayside due to major issues with procrastination. If you procrastinate and get behind, it becomes harder and harder to get caught up. If you are irresponsible about doing your share of group work or getting assignments done on time, you risk alienating your classmates and annoying your teacher, who doesn’t have the time or the responsibility to chase you.

Be realistic about your time management skills.

Succeeding online means logging in every day or at least 5 days a week. It means doing the reading so you can do the assessments and assignments. It means taking the time to participate in the class discussions. Students in my classes who succeed treat the online course very much like a part-time job. They set aside regular, predictable time to do the work. They keep a calendar to make sure they meet deadlines and immediately do makeup work if they had to be “absent” for a day.

Be realistic about your willingness to engage with others.

Ironically, your professor and classmates will get to know you online at least as well, and often better, than if you were sitting together in class. Campus students can be virtually invisible by not volunteering in class. Online learning requires that you be out there, visible and engaged. Success comes to those who post regularly, who show that they have thought hard about the readings, and who contribute novel and interesting ideas to discussions.

Success also comes from encouraging others, from asking good questions, and from being willing to be challenged. When people engage in discussions without attacking others and without being defensive about their own contributions, discussions can be very rich and meaningful. One of my classes only requires three posts a week. The students who do best in terms of mastering the material are often showing up 10 – 12 times, sometimes with just a word or two of encouragement for a classmate, sometimes with a new insight into the material, sometimes with an anecdote from their own life that highlights something we’re talking about. These are the students who breathe life into the class. Often they are also the students who truly master the course.

Be realistic about your skill with words.

For now, at least, online learning generally requires communicating well in writing. “Discussions” are all by posts. Group work is through written chats within the class. Your words represent you. Poor grammar, spelling mistakes, rambling prose, or confusing paragraphs will get in the way of success, no matter how good your ideas may be. Teachers and peers don’t have the energy and patience to decipher your meaning. If you aren’t confident about your ability to communicate well in writing, it would be wise to get a tutor to help you hone your skills before tackling a course online. Another option is to first take an online course in expository writing.

Be realistic about your skill on a computer.

If you aren’t a reasonably competent typist, if you don’t know your way around Word or have difficulty learning how to navigate a platform, you’ll quickly become frustrated with the whole enterprise. Frustrated people tend to get anxious and annoyed. Often they fall behind and then get so discouraged they drop out. And please: Don’t do as one of my students did and ask your mother to do your typing. He often lost points because she didn’t have time to be his typist when he had deadlines. More to the point, it made me question who was really writing the responses.

It’s a new world. I fully expect that the boundaries between campus and online learning will continue to blur as an inevitable outcome of technological advances. The best online students are those who find it exciting to be on the cutting edge of change and who engage in class with curiosity and enthusiasm. As for me, I thoroughly enjoy getting to know my online students and watching them stretch and grow through their interactions with the materials and with the class.

Getting Unhooked from Pain & Choosing Happiness

Even teens who are popular and appear to be doing well may feel secretly isolated emotionally, harboring distress that seeks expression through self-destructive behavior.

Neurobiology of Breaking Habits

Self-destructive behavior patterns, such as addictions, are hard to break because they provide immediate relief. But their aftermath makes people defeated and ashamed, requiring more relief, and the cycle continues. These habitual, compulsive behavior patterns limit new learning and connections in the brain by obstructing opportunities to experience the positive rewards from sustainable, effective coping strategies.

Kaitlyn, 17, was bright, vibrant and charismatic. She was adopted at birth (and knew this all along), then struggled from early childhood with both epilepsy and an unbearable sense of psychological pain and inner isolation she could not articulate.

Kaitlyn’s shame and sense of herself as unlovable had its origins in feeling unwanted and abandoned. She was naturally outspoken, gregarious and likable, but developed an early pattern of self-consciousness and inhibition with peers, driven by fear of rejection. She learned to act according to what she thought friends and boys wanted – anxious to be liked and secure her relationships.

Shame, Rage and Self-Harm

Kaitlyn had a history of self-harm, typically provoked by real or imagined rejection. She harbored a secret fantasy of being hurt and then rescued, and impulses to make her pain visible and have it validated by others. This dynamic was an unconscious attempt to manage overpowering feelings. It brought others close enough so she wasn’t alone, while reassuring her she was still loved.

Shame is a terrible feeling of badness associated with wanting to hide one’s head and disappear. Kaitlyn’s feeling of shame and badness was fueled by episodes of rage at home, confirming her fear that she was a “monster” who drove people away and didn’t deserve love and happiness. Rage can be a defense against intolerable shame, when shame turns into blame and is projected onto others. In this way, the bad feeling is passed on like a hot potato, providing temporary respite from feeing terrible, but propelling the cycle of shame and self-destructive behavior.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and Self-Sabotage

Shame-based self-perceptions that are acted out through self-destructive fantasies and behavior create a self-fulfilling prophecy, providing rigged evidence of badness. Feelings such as worthlessness, badness, and inferiority have various origins in early experience when we are developing a sense of self. These feelings may later be experienced as factual — as if they represent the truth about who we are. When such compartmentalized experiences of oneself remain secret and unarticulated they can lead to unconscious pressure to make this inner “truth” a reality, leading to self-sabotage.

Dysfunctional behavior patterns are habits with psychological, often unconscious, motives. Breaking them requires insight into what function they serve and the discipline to stop them. It also requires courage and initiative to try out new behaviors and allow a different chain of events to occur. On a neurobehavioral level, new behaviors that generate positive feedback create new pathways in the brain, allowing momentum for psychological growth and change.

Kaitlyn had been caught in waves of powerful feelings and a difficult cycle of self-defeating patterns. But she wanted more than anything to be strong, self-respecting and independent and began to use her determination to work toward these positive goals, instead of hurting herself.

Kaitlyn’s first step was talking in family therapy about being secretly drawn to videos about suicide and self-harm on YouTube, especially when feeling sad or alone. She initially feared being judged and was scared that access to the videos would be taken away. However, as she trusted that it was safe to talk about these secrets without being judged and could make her own decision, Kaitlyn was able to evaluate what she wanted to do.

When taking a neutral step back to assess her thoughts and feelings, Kaitlyn recognized that exposing her mind to this content fed her fantasies, pulling her deeper into darkness, and created a cycle of regression which impeded independence and forward motion. Just as she could choose what food to put into her body based on its effect, she could decide whether she wanted to expose her mind to stories and images that made it harder to resist being self-destructive.

Trying Out New Behaviors

With encouragement, Kaitlyn became motivated to try out new ways to comfort herself. Learning better ways to regulate and take charge of her feelings gave Kaitlyn a jumpstart to taking healthy risks in the world.

Kaitlyn enrolled in a Saturday class in public speaking at a local college to develop her confidence. Having had a seizure at home after the first class, she missed the following class. She felt alienated and experienced a familiar sense of herself as defective, followed by the temptation to hide. In therapy she talked about the isolation and sadness she felt.

A week later, right after the next class, Kaitlyn burst with glee into the family therapy session, followed by her mom and dad. Grabbing the feelings list, she began the meeting as always — naming the feelings that fit her state at the moment: “Alive, amazed, confident, exuberant, happy, hopeful, proud,” she said. The excitement was contagious, but we glanced at each other curiously, waiting to find out what changed.

Kaitlyn went on to describe the class. The teacher asked for improvisational introductions by each student. Inspired by another student who made himself vulnerable, Kaitlyn bravely went up in front of the class and spontaneously spoke to her experience with epilepsy, telling her story in public for the first time. Looking around the classroom as she spoke authentically, Kaitlyn noticed people listening and completely engaged. Invigorated, she was fully present and one with herself. Everything felt natural. The class was mesmerized, responding with tears and applause.

Pride – the Antidote to Shame

Kaitlyn could barely contain the exhilaration brought on by this new feeling of pride (the antidote to shame) which emerged from a new experience of herself in relation to others. She took action that transformed her loneliness and alienation into a feeling of mastery and power. But the feeling of pride came not only from challenging herself with something meaningful to her and succeeding, but from something deeper.

Healthy Risk-Taking and Changing Behavior Patterns

Kaitlyn resisted the impulse to hide or pretend that typically escalated her feeling of being alone and ignited a self-destructive cycle. Instead, she took a healthy risk to let herself be seen, acting confidently from a position of strength and self-respect rather than a wish to be rescued.

Kaitlyn’s behavior created an opportunity for interpersonal feedback that challenged her sense of herself as defective and the belief that she could feel connected and affirmed only through pain. The key element here was that this challenge occurred experientially, not intellectually.

Healthy behaviors that foster connection and affirmation from a position of self-acceptance and self-respect offer the possibility of sustainable attachments. Here, Kaitlyn broke the cycle of feeling connected and affirmed only through darkness, potentially releasing herself from a treadmill of pain.

Choosing Happiness over Suffering: the Results

As she basked in the fact that people seemed to not only like her, but respect her and admire her courage, I said, “You see — you don’t have to hurt yourself to get people to see and care about you.” “ I like being happy!” Kaitlyn exclaimed, with a sense of wonder alongside awareness of the irony of this statement. She glance at her dad and they both smiled knowingly, “Who knew?!” her dad piped up in his good-humored way.

Disclaimer: The characters from these vignettes are fictitious. They were derived from a composite of people and events for the purpose of representing real-life situations and psychological dilemmas that occur in families.

5 Tips For a Drama-Free Divorce

Divorces always seem to come in one of two packages: slightly amicable or miserably dramatic. Most people prefer the latter, yet are unsure of exactly how to achieve it.

With that in mind, here are a few, useful tips to make your divorce far more pleasant than you originally expected:

1. Leave defensiveness at the door.

Defensive behavior will not only lead you to feeling rotten but will only add to increased tension between you and your soon to be ex. How can you tell if you’ve hit the defensive door? Watch for words like, “no I didn’t” or “you started it” or “that’s not true.” When you find yourself being defensive ask for a time out to get yourself together. Even if your ex is finger pointing, yelling, blaming, etc., don’t do it.

Take the high road. You will never regret calming yourself down but you will regret trying to change his opinion with defensiveness. It’s not going to happen — so let it go.

2. Neither accept nor deny all of the blame for your divorce.

It took two of you to get to this place and it’s extremely important for you to dig deep and own your role in it. On the other hand, don’t be a martyr. You alone did not end your marriage and you both would do best by acknowledging that. Since you have no control over his thoughts or behaviors, take care of your own and take care of yourself.

3. Don’t “dis” your ex to everyone you meet.
First off, it’s rather bad behavior to kiss and tell but more importantly, it means you are hanging on to some really nasty energy that will inevitably only hurt you. Share your thoughts and feelings with either a professional and/or one or two close confidants but not with every person you come across.  If the only thing you can think about your ex is highly negative, try not to think about him. Seriously! Stop that nasty repetitive thought, let it slide out of your head and add some positive, happier thoughts about anything but your ex.

4. More importantly, don’t “dis” yourself at all for any reason.
Owning your role in your marital problems is one thing, criticizing and belittling yourself is another and not at all useful. If you find yourself thinking that he stopped loving you due to your appearance, your age, your income, your cooking ability or anything else you can think of, stop it! Stop it right now. What good could possibly come from beating on yourself? If you can’t stop, it’s time to get yourself some help.

5. Use this time to soul search, not to feel sorry for yourself.
Get to know you again or for the very first time. Who are you? What do you love to do? What are you good at and what type of person are you most attracted to? It’s time to not only like but to love yourself first.

A divorce can be a sad time but it can also be the greatest gift you will ever receive. Try to find the joy in life and move forward. “you won’t regret it. A whole new world of adventure awaits you why wait to find it?