Tag Archives: self help

Understand yourself – Day 115/139

You will probably learn most about yourself through a deep personal discussion with a good friend. If that sounds too demanding, we luckily have the personality profiles like DISC.

Almost everyone knows it but who can use it to their benefit?

I will argue that there is no single right way to use a personality profile to your advantage but here’s one way that is easy and works for me.

Jay Niblick presents the way he uses DISC in the What’s your genius – video #3. The test you take here only takes a few minutes so you can question the accuracy of it but you can also see if there is something to be learned from the results.

You will succeed if you act natural.

The result shows an estimate of both your natural and adaptive behavior styles. Natural style is how you would behave naturally. Adaptive style means how you’ve learned to behave in the current circumstances.

My result shows that I have “D” and “C” values at the natural level but my “I” and “S” are suppressed to a lower level than would come naturally.

The “I” is the interactive behavior, meaning how you prefer to interact with people. This result shows that I’m not interacting enough. This parameter also describes my tendency to show emotion and it could well be that I haven’t managed to do that on the optimal level.

The “S” is the stability-seeking behavior. My natural style shows that i prefer an average amount of stability in my life. Not surprisingly, I’ve adapted my “S” to a much lower level, meaning I’m living a too fast-paced life. Difficult disagree with that but I hope it’s mostly due to this project I’m having. Luckily I only have 24 days left.

Try it yourself and see if you can explain the result.

Send your result here as a comment if you dare.

The core of success – Day 107/139

I’ve written quite a few posts about success in life and how to achieve both success and happiness. I was recently pointed out a video that well illustrates what success is all about. (Thanks Antti for the tip).

Here’s a link to the video!

It is 14½ minutes but if you want to avoid the bullshit, you can save over 5 minutes by skipping between 02:00 and 07:40.

http://whatsyourgenius.com/genius-mindset/posts/introduction.html

The result is hardly a surprise to anyone.

People are more productive when they are able to do things they are good at.

To most people this seems to be irrelevant. People are only partially interested in what their strengths actually are. If this video made you want to increase your self-awareness, I suggest you to fill in the survey I presented on Day 15 of my project.

This will be the core of my project’s success.

After starting this project I’ve tried to follow this exact advice. I’ve concentrated more on what I feel comfortable and good at and less on the things that I find frustrating. And not only that, I’ve tried to encourage everyone around me to do the same.

This is what entrepreneurship is at its best. A group of people able to do what they like.

Good or bad argument? – Day 103/139

Under the weekend I met with a group of interesting people, including my three brothers. They have a habit of steering the discussion to the philosophical level. Here are two highlights that I’d like to mention.

Any argument is a reflection of a person’s own thoughts.

All people are irritated by something. Expressing one’s irritation is often an unsolved personal issue that has the habit of appearing ridiculous when explored a bit deeper.

Still, almost all people leave these issues unsolved. This leads to embittered behaviour that becomes increasingly difficult to solve.

A healthy environment of reflection and analysis from the peers is helpful to handle these issues. The more open the discussion, the better the expected result. This leads us to the second point.

How do you want to spend your time?

Every moment is unique. Everyone has the chance to cherish each moment of their lives if they want to. Doing this even for a few seconds per day would have a huge impact in the long run.

To me the best part of the weekend was when I was mocked about my table manners. Such argument can be quite beneficial to the whole dinner party.

So which one is it?

Negative feelings about this blog entry? What can you learn about yourself?

Positive feelings about this blog entry? Keep that thought and try to copy it to something else you do today.

6 impossible things before breakfast – Day 94/139

The title to this blog entry is stolen from the 2010 movie Alice in Wonderland. In the movie Alice is finally able to achieve the seemingly impossible goal by believing in can be done.

It helps you to believe if you’ve already achieved 5 impossible things before the big one.

Achieving anything in life depends entirely on your attitude towards achieving. How many people actually think of doing impossible things? Let alone doing several of them and already before breakfast.

I really like Alice’s mentality and actually find it something everyone should ultimately pursue. Everyone should have the pleasure to dream remarkable things. To start believing in your dreams and see them made reality.

If you have low confidence, start small. Try doing one semi-possible thing before breakfast. Like going for a run at 6 am or doing one push-up the first morning and then always increasing the count by one the next morning.

Impossible is just a state of mind.

Here are five things that would’ve been considered impossible in the beginning of my project.

  1. Getting together a team of 8 people who all believe in a dream.
  2. Raising 30,000 € of funding for an impossible project.
  3. Making and launching a new social web service in 5 weeks.
  4. Getting free nationwide media coverage for a website.
  5. Getting positive feedback on keskustelu.kauppalehti.fi.

The time of miracles is not over. Fulfilling the $1,000,000 target in this blog will be the sixth.

Discipline of success – Day 73/139

In the aftermath of my military refresher I want to share a few thoughts on discipline.

The military wouldn’t work without it.

It has been shown that intelligent people can be commanded to kill in a strictly disciplined environment. When  you want to apply external discipline to control your people, you need to be strict but you still need to make the people want to do it themselves.

The interesting question is:

Where does discipline end and self-control comes into the picture?

Not only the military but also our society tries to discipline everyone to behave accordingly. We live in a world of rules and regulations. If you want to succeed you have to pick a target and then have the self-control to keep on the right track.

Self-control is one of the guiding principles in the teachings of Brian Tracy, a speaker and author in self-help and personal success creation. If you’re interested in the very basics of success, here’s a great video of Tracy in action. It’s over an hour so you might want to skip the uninteresting parts.

If you want to succeed, you must have the self-control to do it. As Tracy puts it, you have to stay in line for success.

How to start a business – Day 31/139

Let me tell you a true story on how a person should start a business.

My youngest brother Iiro is 20 years old. He doesn’t intend to have a job for the rest of his life. He has zero respect for making money which means integrity. But his respect for other people is enormous.

His coaching has contributed to my success.

When I make my million it is much to his credit. His coaching is by far the best I’ve ever received, from anyone. I told him his service is immensely valuable so we set the price at 10,000 € + tax.

Within hours, my brother had become from an unemployed person to the highest priced life coach in the country.

That is how you start a business. Check out his advertisement (in Finnish) on his new website ihmeparantaja.com.