Smart Self Development Plan

“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

When I was reading an online magazine the other day, I came across this famous quote by Oscar Wilde, and it immediately struck a chord with me.

It was not my first time that I had heard it, but it resonated with me. I guess it resonated particularly well with me at that given moment. Why?

I have been working on my limiting beliefs for quite some time now, sometimes I overcome one of them, others tend to creep up over and over again. Like the one where I tend to think that I need to be someone else to be happy. I think I need to pretend to be someone else, dress like someone else or behave like them to be happy.

This is complete nonsense. I get that. But I sometimes think that it is true. I am sabotaging myself. I am not being 100% me. I am pretending to be someone else to be happy? Time to get real!

This is why I work on my limiting beliefs from time to time. I probably should do it more often, but I am happy that I do it. Even little steps count towards that mile.

So, when I ask other people, I see that I am not the only one who thinks or wants to be someone else every once in a while. Due to various reasons, I guess. We all have our own reasons, personal reasons often.

People envy. People do not like themselves. Or something along those lines. So, the easiest thing for them to do (including myself), is to pretend they are someone else to make them feel better.

Does this relate to you? [Read more…]

Do you consider yourself a busy person?

Let’s face it who does not consider themselves as “being busy?“ Everybody is busy nowadays. Everybody. At least that’s what I perceive.

I see people rushing to work after they dropped off the kids at school. I see a lady eating a salad in the office, because she does not “have the time to go for lunch”. That could have been me a few years back. Seriously.

We have all been there. Or, in fact, we might be in this boat right now.

We might think that we simply do not have to time to go for a long walk with the dog, because someone is waiting for you at home, or this certain paper needs to be send out. We might think that we simply have too much on our plate to do certain things which we would like to. [Read more…]

When was the last time you failed?

For me, it was this week. In fact it was two days ago, when I was really angry at myself.

Really angry. Why? Because I had failed. And I do not like to not achieve, so I got angry. A natural reaction, I guess.

My book was supposed to come out today. Today. But it is not out, it is not ready yet. Because I failed.

And then I got carried away with this anger. All these things came up in my head. The nasty words I found describing myself. Everything from “Why did I not manage to do this?” to “I am really failing.”

Not fun.

I failed miserably, at least in my own eyes. That’s what I thought. [Read more…]

Remember the Space song going viral last year? The astronaut singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” while being in ISS flying around the earth?

Well, this astronaut – Chris Hadfield – has been speaking at TED this month. The talk “What I learned from going blind in space” only got released this week, and it already has over 350.000 views!

I think I know why. I mean apart from the fact that Chris Hadfield is widely known.

Chris gives an amazing talk about his experience to confront fear, and danger. In fact he gives a recipe on how each one of us can not only address a fear that we might have, but also deal with it. It sounds simple in comparison to flying to space, in my view. [Read more…]