How to be awesome at life

How To Be Awesome All The Time

Being incredibly awesome takes a lot of hard work and dedication. But it will all pay off! I am not telling you it is going to be an easy journey, but I am telling you it is going to be worth it. Give these seven tips a try and you will not be disappointed.

How To Be Awesome All The Time 🙂

1. Focus on being awesome.

Instead of focusing on the negative, concentrate on the positive. Positive thinking should become your way of life. This is not simply a cliché. When you are able to focus on the good there is an actual tangible benefit – your mind becomes more open to possibilities. Positive thinking stimulates the exploration and creation of new abilities that you can then harness to improve your life and generally enhance your awesomeness. Tell yourself to always remember that you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think you are and twice as attractive as you have ever imagined. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

2. Actively seek awesomeness.

Do whatever you need to do to take control of your life, whether it’s taking a walk, adopting healthier eating habits, meditating, spending some time with a close friend or simply drinking a cup of tea. Some people want it to happen, some people wish that it would happen, and other people make it happen. Strive to make awesomeness happen – but don’t just go through the motions. Give it your one hundred percent, best, all-out effort. Remember that the difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.

3. Banish non-awesomeness.

If you are occupied with negative emotions, unhappiness will follow. Negative thoughts eat away at you and leave no room for positive feelings. You close off your mind when you focus on the downside. First figure out what is dragging you down – you have already taken the first step to overcoming negative thinking.

It will be difficult at first, but you can learn to turn negative thoughts and emotions into positive ones. Treat this exercise in the same way you would treat any problem: assess, determine a plan of action and execute. This technique applies to any goal you have – whether it is finding a new job, losing weight or sticking to a budget. Constantly worrying without taking action is not productive. Take small, manageable baby steps at first, and set realistic, achievable goals. Let those small successes feed into your positive outlook and be the building blocks to your larger victory. Stay motivated – the moment that you are ready to quit is usually the moment right before the miracle happens. Do not give up on your path to incredible awesomeness.

4. Surround yourself with awesome people.

Consider who you want to have in your life, and how they may influence your well-being. If you feel that you are stuck in a negative spiral, talk to people who can help you put things into perspective and provide constructive, empathetic feedback.

Model yourself after awesome people. Learn about their achievements, and even more important – learn whatever you can from their mistakes. Chances are that they achieved awesomeness in their life through persistence and hard work, and you can do the same. Try to emulate their behavior as much as you can, and awesomeness will follow.

5. Remember that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

Try to always be grateful for what you have. Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you do not have. Try not to forget that what you now have was once among the things you had only hoped for. If you can learn to appreciate what you have you will naturally be happier and be well on your way to ultimate awesomeness.

6. Do awesome things.

Be kind to your friends and family, whether it is reaching out to a loved one you have not spoken to who would love to hear from you, or offering to babysit your young nieces and nephews to help out their parents. Be kind to strangers. Pay attention to the needs and feelings of others, and offer help where you can. There are many simple things that you can do for others, from volunteering at a soup kitchen to just helping someone cross the street or shoveling their sidewalk. Doing these tasks will make you happier and feel better about yourself, as well as make the world a better place. It is always beneficial to take the focus off of yourself and think of others. Remember that something that costs you next to nothing may be a priceless gesture to the next person, and really make a meaningful difference in their life. Think your small act will not make a difference? Well – you definitely will not make a difference by doing nothing. Do something today that your future will thank you for.

7. Smile!

It is such an easy thing to do. It may seem silly, but this simple act can take a small negative moment and turn it into a small positive moment. When you smile at the world, the world smiles back at you, and everyone feels better and more awesome than they were just a moment ago.

Here’s to having an awesome day!

You’re Already Awesome. Just Get Out of Your Own Way!: Judson Brewer MD, Ph.D. at TEDxRockCreekPark

How do we live the best life that we possibly can? One that surpasses our wildest dreams, one that leaves us bursting with gratitude for every breath we take?

For a considerable part of my existence, that very important question never even crossed my mind. Let’s rewind to the 1980s. For two years of my childhood, my six-person family lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment, one of the thousands dispersed across the mean streets of Manhattan. Since I was one of the younger members in the familial hierarchy, I was small enough not to need a bed, though I slept incredibly well on strategically-aligned sofa cushions. (It turned out to be a useful skill: Decades later, I have no trouble snoozing on overnight trains, or while squeezed into the part of an airplane that is laughingly known as a seat.)

My Thai immigrant parents worked four jobs between them. For their superhuman efforts, they lived hand-to-mouth and month-to-month, just a few steps above welfare. Since the age of nine, I have worked in some capacity in each and every year of my life – nights, summers, weekends, tutoring, waitressing, camp counseling. The very first job was as mother’s helper: like an almost-baby-sitter, I kept toddlers entertained and well-fed while their parents worked in another room, and pocketed $3 for every hour on the clock. I’m tempted to romanticize how mighty the dollar used to be, but even then, it was below minimum wage.

Attending private schools, mostly on full scholarship, turned my world upside-down. Whereas my parents were struggling to survive, my high school classmates were the offspring of congressmen and banking giants. But despite being afforded more opportunities than most, they worked exceptionally hard towards even greater accomplishments. With all due respect to institutions that I’ve attended, my high school classmates are collectively the most brilliant group of people that I’ve ever encountered. There was the notion that success doesn’t happen overnight: those who aspired to join the Ivy League created roadmaps even before freshman year, hiring tutors to boost their grades in honors-level classes and joining extra-curricular activities that would flesh out a resume. Effective planning seemed just as important as effort and execution.

It was there, in a gleaming seven-story tower in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan, that I realized that the best lives don’t happen by accident. Sure, chance plays a part in every great success story: In “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell draws attention to the fact that Bill Gates and the inimitable Steve Jobs were both born in 1955, and that many other tech moguls were born around the same time. But self-determination and effort must also be critical factors, or else every product of that era would also be shaping industries.

In my adolescence, it dawned on me that if I wanted a better life – for myself, for my parents, for any future family – the first step would be to plan for it. Then came the inevitable hard work, which involved all-nighters, bouts of frustration and a fair share of missed steps – all in the name of journalism, my chosen field. But by age 21, I had been published in the New York Times. At 23, I interviewed Robert Redford from his log cabin for a cover story of Rolling Stone Bulgaria. In reporting from 15 countries (and visiting many more), I’ve been first on the scene after harrowing terrorist attacks, documented a chocolate fashion show and toured an Olympic facility with a future gold medalist.

That’s not to say that I have all the answers. There are days when I wonder if there’s a zero missing from my bank account, or how I can meet a friend for dinner when I have a late-night deadline. But I no longer conjure up polite ways to decline invitations to coffee, just to avoid spending $2 on a beverage that I can very well brew at home. I no longer share a shoebox-sized bedroom with three other people. When I crawl under the down comforter that’s sprawled across my bed – I actually have one now! – I don’t toss or turn or agonize, “What’s to become of me?” the way that Eliza Doolittle does in the movie musical “My Fair Lady.” That’s better than I imagined, and the best part is that the story remains unfinished.

So here’s the deal: This is going to be a space where we figure out how to live the dream. Let’s analyze the paths of the exceptionally talented (Tina Fey fans, get ready!) to see if we might follow in their footsteps. Let’s interact with those who have wisdom to impart, be they ordinary septuagenarians or world-famous pastry chefs. Let’s extract unconventional lessons from the unlikeliest of places, and leave no stone unturned. In other words, let’s all be our own versions of Oprah – may she reign forever. Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome, because if I have one addiction, it’s e-mail.

Here’s to living the best lives we can: the ones we deserve and are meant to live.

E-mail me here. Follow me on Twitter here.

For those who need to hear it, you’re awesome. Your attempts, your perseverance, your positive take on life despite your struggles – are awesome.

If you’re experiencing any difficulties in your career, life plans, relationships, or you’re simply feeling down, we have collected these 30 awesome quotes for you. Be inspired to tackle life with positivity, confidence and your one of a kind awesomeness.

Awesome Quotes

Awesome people have awesome attitudes and do things awesomely. If you want to build and maintain an awesome attitude, get into the habit of living in the present and doing it now.

Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome. – Zig Ziglar

Life is what you make it, and I plan to make mine awesome!

I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. It’s because of them I’m doing it myself. – Albert Einstein

Leave the fireworks for those who cast no spark of their own. – Karen Abbott

Enthusiasm is a kind of faith that has been set on fire. George Matthew Adams

Anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice.

Love the life you live. Live the life you love. – Bob Marley

If you want to be average, do what others do. If you want to be awesome, do what no one does. – Alexander Den Heijer

I am awesome, amazing, beautiful and confident I don’t need someone to make me realize it!

The best thing about being who you really are is that you simply cannot fail! Be you, be awesome and live awesomely. – Ricardo Housham

Awesome people do awesome things awesomely. So step up connect, share the love, stay positive and be Amazingly Awesome.

It’s the imperfections that make things beautiful. – Jenny Han, “The Summer I Turned Pretty”

Flaws are awesome – so, ‘flawsome!’ I love making up a word. – Tyra Banks

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives. – Tony Robbins

If you want to be Awesome, you have to kick all the negative and boring people out of your life and arm yourself with awesomeness imbued with positivity, creativity and little bit of craziness. – Rajdeep Sarkar

Be strong when you are weak. Be brave when you are scared. Be humble when you are victorious. Be badass everyday.

I’m a person who gets better with practice. Getting older is awesome – because you get more practice. – Zooey Deschanel

Be awesome! Smile like a flower. – Debasish Mridha M.D.

I woke up and realized life is great and people are awesome and life is worth living. – Hulk Hogan

People always tell you, ‘Be humble. Be humble.’ When was the last time someone told you to be amazing? Be great! Be great! Be awesome! Be awesome! – Kanye West

I adore your anger and resentments; with such beauty, everything you do looks awesome. – M.F. Moonzajer

You are people with a present and with a future. Don’t muff the ball. Be excellent. – Gordon B. Hinckley

It doesn’t matter if you’ve failed or if you’ve been beaten. All that matters is that you learn something, get back up, and try again. Because winning is a good feeling, but winning when nobody else thought you could is an awesome feeling. – Ritu Ghatourey

Yesterday was just the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness. Things will get better. Keep smiling, don’t give up just yet. Perseverance has an amazing gift for you, just wait you see. – Janna Cachola

You are way awesome than you think you are. Don’t forget about your awesomeness today. – Janna Cachola

We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome. – Isabel Allende

Whenever I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.

Awesome people have fear, doubts, and worries – they just don’t let these feelings stop them. Be awesome to keep thriving, growing, inspiring, and sharing. – Richard Housham

AWESOME things come to those who focus on the positive, recognize the blessings, find the humor and never give up! – Tanya Masse

Share these 30 awesome quotes to discover the awesomeness in everyone!

Long before the Dos Equis commercials came out about The Most Interesting Man in the World, I wanted to be that guy. I envisioned myself as that one person at parties that everyone flocked to because I had done amazing things and had captivating stories.

I often imagined this:

“Hey, Bill! Come over here. This guy is telling a story about how he parachuted out of an airplane over the Sahara, ran an ultra-marathon through the desert and then spent a week living with a tribe of nomads!”

I didn’t do any of those things, by the way. But, that was my goal. I wanted to be awesome! And while I certainly didn’t become the most interesting man in the world, I did do a few awesome things along the way. Even better than that, I met some awesome people who did even more awesome things.

The more awesome you are, the more people will be drawn to you. And if people are drawn to you, then you will put yourself in situations where opportunities are abundant. Perhaps, someone finds you interesting and invites you to a party where you’ll meet your future wife. Or, maybe, you tell a story in one interview and that makes you memorable enough to get hired.

But, being awesome and doing awesome things isn’t just about looking cool at a party. It’s about getting out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself beyond your status quo.

People and stories that are recognized as awesome are seen as such because they’re unusual and out of the ordinary. That means you have to do something outside of your comfort zone. You need to push yourself.

By pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones, we’ll find out things about ourselves that we never knew. We’ll discover that we are capable of so much more.

So, while being awesome and doing awesome things can make you the life of the party, there’s more to it than just that. Knowing how to be awesome is knowing how to push yourself beyond your limits and discover the deeper depths within you.

So, here are 3 quick ways to be awesome:

1 Do At least One Epic Activity

When I was 24, I traveled to Europe with a buddy and ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. I wore the white pants and shirt with the red sash and weaved in and out of the crowd, dodging bulls along the cobbled streets of Pamplona.

That one story has given me an “awesome factor” for 10 years. I tell it at parties, during meet-and-greet ice breaker games and to pretty much anyone. Before I met my wife, I told the story on every first date I ever went on.

Every single time, it gets the same response: “That’s awesome!” Then, they’ll ask questions and I get to tell the whole story over and over again.

By the end of the 5-minute story, I am the most interesting man in the world- or at least the most interesting man within a 10-foot radius! This one epic activity has carried me for years.

I’m not the daredevil type. But, when people hear this story, they immediately think I’m some badass. My wife laughs every time people say things, like “Wow, you’re a real adventurist!”.

But, in their minds, that story makes me awesome. You know why? Because it is awesome.

Over the years, I’ve known others with similar, awesome tales of epic activities. I met a guy who swam with Great White Sharks in South Africa, another who cared for rhinos on an animal reserve in Africa and another who got scuba certified in Thailand.

Tell one of those stories at a party and you’ll be instantly awesome. But, more important than that, you get to live out the activity and stretch yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of. And that’s more awesome.

2 Travel to Awesome Places and Embrace the Locals

To fully appreciate the world and see things from different angles, you need to see the world. This doesn’t mean you have to be a non-stop traveler or the person that wanders the world for a year. You should, at least, get out and see a few places outside of your comfort zone.

I am not actually a great traveler. I get nervous leaving the country (I think I watched too many episodes of Locked Up Abroad) and prefer to travel around the U.S. But, I know that this limits me and that I have to get out of my comfort zone.

So, over the years, I have pushed myself to travel to different countries. I still have much of the world to see but, by overcoming my fears and stretching myself, I know I’m to a great start.

Once you do travel to an awesome place, you need to ditch the tourist traps and hang out with the locals. No one cares if you saw the Colosseum in Rome. Everyone that goes to Rome does that. Getting drunk with the locals and laughing at each other’s accents, on the other hand, is awesome.

I went to Scotland once. When I talk about that trip, nobody cares to hear about the rolling hills or visiting St. Andrews. Everyone that goes to Scotland sees those things.

So, instead of that, I tell the story about how my buddy and I went to a local dive bar in the shipping yard of Aberdeen. We were looking to mix it up with some local drunk sailors and get into an old-fashioned bar fight. The plan backfired, however, as the Scottish shipping industry had apparently clamped down on drinking at port years ago.

Instead of encountering badass sailors with anchor tattoos, we stumbled into what used to be known as the toughest bar in Aberdeen only to find it was now owned by a nice Indian gentleman and his cute little puppy.

Despite that, we still made the best of it and did some weird shots with him before heading off to pay drunken homage to the town’s Braveheart statue. It was an awesome, memorable experience.

Anyway, if you want to be awesome, go to awesome places and hang out with awesome people.

3 Help Others

Helping others is, perhaps, the most awesome thing you can do. If you are able to help someone in need, whether it be something as large as building a water well in a remote village or as small as just being a good friend in times of need….well, there is just something so awesome about that type of love that it’s hard to explain in words. You have to feel it.

I have met people who have traveled to Africa to build water wells in Uganda. I have also met people who have traveled to Southeast Asia to build schools. On top of that, I also got to meet a person who taught children in South America how to read and surf! That is a lot of awesomeness!

I also know people who volunteer at the local pantry once a month, others that donate clothes to the homeless and even people who spend time with their elderly relatives. That is a lot of awesomeness as well!

Knowing how to be awesome isn’t that hard. You just have to take yourself out of your comfort zone and do something for others. It will stretch you as a person and make for an awesome story. Most importantly, it will mean the world to the person you are helping.

Do epic things, travel to awesome places and help your brothers and sisters in the world and you will be AWESOME.

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Author: Tony Bellagamba

My name is Tony Bellagamba and I am a business professional, motivational speaker, and blogger. I believe that there are no dream jobs, only dream “vocations”. A vocation is a calling, something you were meant for. My dream is to help you find that calling by educating you, motivating you, and making you laugh along the way.

I always thought that babies should come with operating instructions and that parents-to-be should be required to pass a parenting test. After all, a license is required to drive a car. Surely a course in the basics of taking care of a baby’s physical and emotional needs would help. Beyond these basics, I dream of a world that acknowledges and nurtures the spiritual dimension of our being and teaches us how to be awesome human beings. It’s really very simple. It’s just not very easy. It takes a lot of focus, willingness and practice, practice, practice.

Being an awesome human being requires mastering the fine art of being a human being. The “man” part of being human has been carefully defined to distinguish us from “other primates.” Man/woman comes equipped with opposable thumbs, an erect posture, a highly developed brain, the capacity for abstract reasoning, and the ability to communicate and organize information based on a symbolic system of language. The “hu” part is best understood when we realize that it is a Sanskrit name for God that predates the anthropomorphic image of God as a fatherly, human figure. So, to be “human” means to be both divine and earthly at the same time. What a balancing act — to be a soul or spiritual being having an earthly embodiment.

To be an awesome human being requires three things:

1. To know that you are both spiritual and earthly.

To live consciously from the inside out, deeply connected to the truth as you know it.

That’s it — just three things!

First, let’s look at what it means to be simultaneously aware of our spiritual and earthly existence. Wrapping our brains around this means grasping that we are at once limitless yet limited, of God yet earthly, finite yet eternal. We have the freedom to explore the vast complexity of our being as much or as little as we choose. Unfortunately, for many people there is no structure or stimulation in their lives to motivate such an exploration.

The world’s great religious teachings are filled with passages about what it means to be fully human. In The Wisdom Jesus, for example, Cynthia Bourgeault suggests that the incarnation of Jesus served the purpose of showing humanity how to fulfill “our only truly essential human task here . to grow beyond the survival instincts of the animal brain and egoic operating system into the kenotic joy and generosity of full human personhood.” Bourgeault notes how this claim of Jesus as the Christian role model for the human challenge of synthesizing physical and spiritual existence is affirmed in the gospels. Jesus frequently uses the term “I am,” as in “‘I am the shepherd,’ ‘I am the door,’ ‘I am the vine,’ ‘I am at your heart’s door knocking,’ ‘I am in you and you in me’ . In so doing, Jesus has identified himself with being itself.”

Whether looking through the lens of Christianity or some other theistic perspective, the challenge to know ourselves as both divine and earthly is there to be reconciled, and as Bourgeault suggests, it is our only essential human task. To know and to welcome God’s presence in ourselves is a worthy and essential vocation for us all.

The second requirement of being an awesome human being activates our conscious intention and choice. To live consciously requires the willingness to hold oneself responsible and accountable for one’s thoughts and behaviors. This eliminates such excuses as “I wasn’t thinking” or “I wasn’t paying attention.” To live consciously means to hold the intention of keeping your awareness present in the moment and building the ability to notice when your attention wanders to the past or future and then bringing it home to the present. It takes practice.

To live consciously from the inside out, deeply connected to the truth as you know it, means connecting the observations of your conscious awareness in the moment to the wisdom and truth that has been activated in your consciousness. A far richer life can be led from this deeper place of truth rather than the egoic external orientation of personal preferences and approval-seeking. When we reach outside for gratification, we are telling ourselves we are not enough and thus reside in a consciousness of lack. When we express outwardly from that deep inner place of truth, we have the ability to recognize what is true for us in the world because it resonates with the truth within us.

Finally, to love ourselves and others without conditions is the crowning achievement. This is not a matter of romantic love, but rather the feeling and expression of devotion to the well-being of ourselves and one another. It is a recognition of our kinship and underlying oneness. When we love in this way, we make nothing more important than loving one another. This kind of love is the most powerful force in the universe. It unites us as one through the trials and triumphs of life. Without it, we are separated by our judgments and personal, positional preferences. With it, we are magnificent. This kind of love is achieved through compassionate and caring choices made repeatedly day after day until it becomes who and how we are.

To be an awesome human being is not a matter of being perfect, for perfection does not exist in human form. We can only strive to do our best, humbled by the knowledge that we do in fact stumble and fall, and that those seeming “failures” are usually our most wonderful life lessons. To be awesome is to recognize and accept the challenge of being the very best “you” that you can be. Those who live this way serve as an inspiration to others to do and be the very best they can.

I look forward to your responses and reactions to this piece.

Please feel free to leave a comment below or to email me at [email protected] Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

To learn more about me, visit my website, For information on my future blogs, click “Fan” at the top of this page.

For more by Judith Johnson, click here.

For more on spiritual development, click here.

How would you like to feel AWESOME all the time?

Better yet, how would you like to be able to eradicate emotional states such as feelings of depression, anger, sadness, loneliness, fear, doubt, negativity, and anything else that might be holding you back in your life?

We all have a DEFAULT way of being. This is our “emotional home”.

This default state consists of the emotions that we consistently condition most frequently. The more that you access certain emotional states, the more you’re conditioning that to be your default way of being.

Emotions can be habitual. As the saying goes, “We are what we repeatedly do everyday.” We are also what we repeatedly FEEL!

In this video blog, I share with you how to change your DEFAULT STATE and how to feel awesome all the time. I’ll show you how to break your pattern of destructive emotions and explain why you feel the way that you do.

Watch the video below:

How To Experience More Pleasure And Less Pain

We all want to experience more pleasurable emotions in our lives, right? We also want to avoid painful emotions. As mentioned in the video, our CONDITIONING is what is determining how we feel consistently, on a day to day basis. We have emotional patterns that come up, that have been conditioned in us over several years.

My solution for changing this and feeling awesome all the time is simple: Conditioning. Every day. You need to CONDITION yourself daily to be, have and experience what it is that you want out of life. If you want more happiness in your life, then you need to proactively condition that happiness daily.

If you want more excitement and passion, then you need to cultivate that daily. And if you want more inner peace or any other positive emotion, it comes from proactively conditioning it! When you condition everyday, it becomes automatic. It becomes a default way of being.

You begin to eliminate the old, destructive emotions that were consuming you and start replacing them with new ones that become easier for you to access. To make this practical, I recommend taking up a morning ritual and conditioning yourself every morning. It can be just 15 minutes or longer, but the cumulative affect is massive over long periods of time.

Even in just 30 days, your life can transform and I’ve seen remarkable results! If this has resonated with you in some way and you want to learn more about how to feel awesome all the time, then I want to invite you to check out my Morning Ritual Mastery program.

In Morning Ritual Mastery, you’ll learn how to create a morning ritual that will transform your life and it’ll help you to be CONSISTENT to it over the long-term. You’ll also be able to join myself and others in the program on a 30 Day Morning Ritual Challenge and be apart of an amazing community.

To learn more about Morning Ritual Mastery, click here.

Unlocking the 3 A’s Of Awesome To Increase Your Happiness And Productivity Daily

We all fight stress every day.

It’s in our newspapers, it’s in our calendars, it’s in our homes.

Life for most of us can get overwhelming fast.

It’s no wonder we want happiness more than anything else these days and no wonder we have hardly moved the needle. But we know being happy leads to 31% higher productivity, 37% higher sales, and leads to a tripling effect in your brain’s creativity.

Over the past five years I’ve worked with hundreds of thousands of leaders around the world — eating dinner with royal families in the Middle East, sharing stages with Harvard deans, and consulting on leadership to organizations like Audi, Viacom, and GE. I have worked as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart, interviewed billionaires, and worked directly for two CEOs at the world’s largest company.

And, I’ll be honest: just like you and me, they’re all fighting this same battle daily.

The trick isn’t avoiding the battle, but being aware of it and winning it. And I’m going to teach you how to do that in Three Simple Steps.

This course is based on emerging positive psychology research and in each step I’ll show you how to find the awesome in your life through exercises, empirical data, and some fun videos.

Attitude

In this step we will learn to take back control of our attitude every day with 7 proven ways to get happy right now.

Awareness

In this step we’ll train ourselves to be mindful of the small pleasures all around us. I’ll show you one simple exercise to do daily to increase your happiness.

Authenticity

And finally, as Gandhi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” We need to be authentic to get there and I’ll show you how to find your most authentic self through 3 simple exercises.

We all battle stress daily. It’s natural! But this is a battle that we can win. Like doing a cartwheel, swinging a golf club, riding a horse, happiness can be learned. Come join me and thousands of others to find the awesome in your life to increase your happiness and productivity daily.

Grow Your Business, Not Your Inbox

What’s better than being excellent? Apparently it’s being awesome. And we’ll stop you right there: these words are not interchangeable. At least according to Nick Riggle, a philosopher and author of the new book, On Being Awesome.

In the book, Riggle outlines “how not to suck,” pulling in real world examples, helping to create a blueprint for achieving awesomeness and providing analyses and tips on the subject of awesomeness.

“The word awesome as it resonates with us these days has new social meaning; it’s used to talk about social openings and their dynamics,” Riggle writes in his new book. As defined in the book, “social openings” are “when we break out of our norm-governed roles by expressing ourselves” — that could be cracking a joke to the person next to you during your morning commute or starting a wave in the audience of a basketball game.

Social openings are the beginning of building up your awesomeness as well as your community’s. Doing things such as taking risks, expressing yourself, creating things and giving back help to cultivate both personal awesomeness and as Riggle calls it, a “coperson” community of awesomeness.

According to Riggle, building these communities starts with individuality, having a sense of self and appreciating and respecting others’ individuality. “Being awesome is a matter of creatively breaking out of, or riffing on, norms that determine much of everyday life, and doing so in an expressive way, generating a social opening that allows for the mutual appreciation of individuality,” Riggle writes.

There are a number of things a person can do to be awesome. For example, someone can suck as a person but still do something awesome — however, that doesn’t make them an awesome person. To make sure you don’t suck and to learn more how you can be awesome, here are 10 quotes from Riggle’s new book.

“Your individuality is constituted by your aspirations, your cherished beliefs, what you love and value, your sense of humor, your talents, whether you’re shy or intense, your taste in food, music and clothes and so on.”

“The kinds of things we do when we express ourselves — play, create, explore, take risks, imagine and so on — allow us to deepen our self-understanding and appreciation. This, in turn, allows us to cultivate and refine our sense of self or individuality.”

“People who suck recognize the opportunity for a social opening but don’t act on it.”

“Awesomeness is a distinctive phenomenon, wherein someone expresses themselves in the spirit of fostering a coperson community — from creating a social opening at the local cafe to enlivening or enriching the community or workplace, throwing a great party.”

“Being awesome is a matter of creatively breaking out of, or riffing on, norms that determine much of everyday life.”

“Awesome culture is primarily a culture of social creativity in action, in which the creative sociality centrally involved the cultivation, exploration and appreciation of individuality.”

“If you’re living a life, developing a style, becoming the kind of person who aims to make people laugh, think, play, imagine, smile, care, strive, or empathize, then you’re probably attuned to the ethics of awesomeness.”

“Awesome culture gives us a picture of a person who is creatively generous, egalitarian, non-conformist, socially curious, open, innovative, cooperative, playful and sympathetically attentive to individual style.”

“We have to cultivate our social imaginations and excel at perceiving, interpreting, understanding and sympathizing with our copeople.”

“Suckiness can really sting, and when we try to be awesome we can really mess up by being insensitive, imperceptive, overly ambitious or forgetful.”

programming and human factors

I’ve been fortunate to have some measure of success in my life, primarily through this very blog over the last eight years, and in creating Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange over the last four years. With the birth of our twin girls, I’ve had a few months to pause and reflect on those experiences. What did I do right? What did I do wrong? How would I do things differently next time? What advice should I give other people based on my own life experiences?

The short answer is that I wouldn’t.

There are too many paths forward in life; I barely feel qualified to make decisions about what to do in my own life, much less recommend strategies for others in theirs. On some level I feel like Jared Fogle, who lost 245 pounds eating nothing but Subway subs. Maybe that worked for him, but how does that make it a valid diet strategy for the rest of the world? In other words, what I did worked for me, but I’m crazy.

That’s also never stopped anyone else from handing out terrible life advice hand over fist before. So I figure why not. Who wants to live forever?

Under pressure to make some sense of what I’ve been doing with my life for the last eight years, I put together a small presentation which I delivered yesterday at this year’s Atlassian summit.

How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

If you’re reading this abstract, you’re not awesome enough. Attend this session to unlock the secrets of Jeff Atwood, world famous blogger and industry leading co-founder of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. Learn how you too can determine clear goals for your future and turn your dreams into reality through positive-minded conceptualization techniques.* Within six to eight weeks, you’ll realize the positive effects of Jeff Atwood’s wildly popular Coding Horror blog in your own life, transporting you to an exciting new world of wealth, happiness and political power.

* May or may not also include working hard on things that matter for the rest of your life.

I hope you can forgive me for the title, and I guess the rest of the abstract, and probably the entirety of the presentation too, but I find it’s easier to be serious when I’m not being entirely serious. At any rate, it’s complicated.

Here’s what I’ve seen work:

1. Embrace the Suck
2. Do It in Public
3. Pick Stuff That Matters

The video explains. When put on the spot, under duress, I have selectively doled out this advice to a few people over the years – and miraculously, I’ve seen them succeed using these rules, too.

(I put a lot of additional explanatory detail in the slide notes that you’ll only see if you download the full presentation.)

“it’s better to be safe than sorry” is such crap. You know what’s better than being safe? Being AWESOME.

Mostly, I think it’s the fear that gets us, in all its forms. Fear of not achieving. Fear of not keeping up. Fear of looking dumb. Fear of being inadequate. Fear of being exposed. Fear of failure. The only thing preventing us from being awesome is our own fear of sucking.

So that’s why I say we embrace it. Who wants to live forever?

How to Talk to Human Beings

So You Want to be a Programmer

Written by Jeff Atwood

Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I’m talking about. Find me here:

Resources

• About Me
• discourse.org
• stackexchange.com
• Learn Markdown
• Recommended Reading

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Coding Horror has been continuously published since 2004

Copyright Jeff Atwood © 2020
Logo image © 1993 Steven C. McConnell
Proudly published with Ghost

How to change your life is a big interest of mine, mainly because I did it myself. Three years ago my life was very different — I was living in London and was not very happy.

Fast forward to now — I spend half the year in Ibiza and look after private clients in 3 different countries, write for some amazing websites and am about to launch my first group training program about how to market yourself and get clients.

If you want to change any aspect of your life — whether it means starting or growing a business, getting in shape or moving abroad and working from the beach — I’ve compiled 8 badass ways to get the life you want, shake things up and achieve your goals.

1. Stop worrying about what other people think of you.

This is a hard one to get your head around, but once you do, it’s life changing. The truth is that people will always have opinions, no matter what you do. Holding yourself back and not chasing the life you want because of other people will leave you feeling stuck. Who cares what other people think of you?! I’d rather be the person who works toward her goals rather than the one who sits, waiting.

2. Invest in yourself first.

Past high school or college, most of us don’t think about carrying on with learning, which is a shame. What skills can you learn to help you to achieve your goals? Instead of wasting time reading gossip magazines, look at books that can teach you valuable things or audio books to make your daily commute easier and more fruitful. Always invest in yourself first.

3. Choose your influences.

When clients talk to me about making changes, one of the first things I consider are the things that influence their view of the world. If you want to be and entrepreneur and start your own business, then stop reading horror stories about how bad the economy is. Your subconscious listens to everything that you tell it; decide what you want to be true for you.

4. Take action in spite of fear.

One of the most powerful pieces of advice I was ever given was to take action in spite of fear, rather than waiting for it to go away. When you are living an exciting life, there will always be an element of fear involved as you have new experiences. Rather than let it stop you, remember that you are uncomfortable because you are simply traveling out of your comfort zone, which is positive.

5. Find a spiritual practice.

Every morning and evening, I chant and do a Buddhist practice called Gongyo. I also meditate and practice EFT tapping.

Find a practice that works for you and make it a part of your life. You have an infinite supply of wisdom and inspiration inside of you — give yourself the time to connect with it and watch how your life changes.

6. Let your past go.

We’ve all had painful experiences in our lives — it’s just part of being a human being. When I became a Buddhist, one of the first quotes I read that really helped me was “Resentment is like holding a hot coal and expecting the other person’s hand to get burned.”

It’s healthy to work to not carry resentment around with you, as it weighs you down. If you are not sure how to let something go, be open to knowing more — then, the answers will come.

7. Stop talking, start doing.

I have new clients make lists of things that they are not doing to reach a goal. One of the best ways to stay stuck in your life is to constantly talk about things and never take action. If you want to really change your life or achieve big goal, then commit to being someone who takes big action and talks about it after rather than the other way around.

8. Listen to people who have what you want.

Don’t listen to your broke friend about how to make more money or grow your business. It sounds obvious enough, but most of the time, people are so quick to give advice that they actually aren’t qualified to be giving. Seek out people who have the life that you want, learn from them, read their books and take their classes — first-hand knowledge is worth it’s weight in gold.