Success – Wesam Taleb

I am probably the laziest person I’ve ever met. I need constant daily motivation to avoid becoming a complete bum. The 5 tips below help me motivate myself to get stuff (eventually) done.

1) Break big steps down

Having goals is nice and all but if you’re like me, your brain shuts down if the goal is too big.

For example, if my goal is “write a blog post today”, it will probably take me months to write it. But if I trick myself and say “write a blog post title today” or “write one sentence today”, then I can do it without any trouble.

Doing just a little bit boosts my confidence and pushes me to keep doing more. Look up the Kaizen principle and thank me later.

2) Shrink your to-do list

Having 30 things to do every day makes me feel productive – when I get them done. It also makes me feel like a loser if I end up putting them off to a later time. I limit how much I have to do per day to keep myself from avoiding it completely.

It’s easy to commit to doing one or two tasks per day that you know you can finish. Be honest with yourself and be flexible. Although it’s fun sometimes, you don’t have to be your own worst enemy all the time.

3) Have a positive attitude

This is very common knowledge but that doesn’t diminish its importance. I do my best to have a positive attitude every single day and it really helps.

Does this mean every single day is perfect and my life is just “Hakuna Matata”? I wish. It means I look at what I can do. I look at what’s possible and do my best to push through to get to what I want.

4) Surround yourself with the right people

As much as I like saying I don’t need anyone, we need people. Humans are tribal by nature and need to feel connected. The right people can really enhance your life experience.

Some people help me feel like I can build a spaceship in my garage; I really like those people. I like to keep motivated people around me because they help me grow and motivate myself.

5) Do what you enjoy

There is nothing as demotivating as a boring routine. Find an activity that makes your heart happy and do it. You don’t have to do it for a living, do it for pure fun.

That activity will motivate you to do your other work and will open up so many other doors for you.

Share this with your friends if these tips motivated you to not be a bum today.

When I have a flight, I always opt for a window seat because I love taking pictures during the trip (I have a plethora of cloud photos). On one of my recent flights I had an epiphany. I was looking out the window during landing and it suddenly hit me how small everything and everyone really is.

I mean it hit me how T I N Y our entire world looks from a plane. I zoomed in (mentally) and noticed a highway with little moving specks on it. Then I started thinking about how each one of those tiny moving specks is a car with people (smaller specks) in it. Each one of those people (probably) has goals, hopes, dreams, ideas, beliefs and a life. But at that moment, all the specks were headed in the same direction. They were all part of the same system. They all needed to work together to reach their respective destinations. Sure, their destinations were different but they still depended on each other, whether they thought about it or not to get there.

This small humbling experience made me think about how much we all need each other and how interconnected our world is. One small action you take can have huge consequences for this tiny place we call home. Our technologically advanced world might make us feel big, but as far as the universe is concerned we’re nothing but tiny specks.