Have you ever had the experience of coming to the end of a long productive day, looking back over what you have done and feeling completely dissatisfied with what you managed to accomplish? You know you can do better, and you should do better. Friends and family tell you that they could never hope to do as much as you, but you feel like you could do more.

People have a tendency to believe that they are special or separate from the rest. That they are innately lucky, skilled and intelligent, that they are above average, destined for greatness, and immune from the problems that plague others. This is simply not true.

There is nothing inherently special about you, me or anyone. We are all average, and unless we do more than average, we will remain that way. Only hard work, discipline, practice and perseverance will set us apart from the crowd.

When it comes down to it, the vast majority of the choices that we make throughout our lives are in reality inconsequential. The real issue arises when we give too much weight to the perceived consequences and therefore fail to take action, or procrastinate, wasting precious time in the process.

Anxiety causes the importance of each decision to be dramatically overstated.

In most cases making a quick decisive decision is far more productive than extensive contemplation. Regardless if you are suffering from the symptoms of anxiety, or are dealing with the mental ramifications of the many choices and actions necessary to follow your dreams, you need to ‘Stop Thinking and Start Doing.

The words people use, the actions they take, their mood, the topic of conversation and their personality all influence how you think and feel.

Please don’t disregard this off hand. Humans are social creatures, we love to be included, accepted and connected. We have evolved to see and empathise with the emotions, thoughts and feelings of those around us. By putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we can almost feel what they are feeling and think what they are thinking. This process is vital if we hope to maintain any semblance of social connection, something which most people desire.

Just because it is written in a book, published online or spoken about with confidence by an ‘authority figure’, doesn’t mean the information is true.

This free from surviving to thriving PDF will outline seven life principles to turn your life around.

It will help reframe your thinking, giving you guiding principles that will enable you to make and maintain positive changes in your life. Changes that will help you move from surviving to passionately thriving.

Thoughts of worthlessness, poor self-image, lack of belief in your own abilities, failure, and social out-casting, can run rampant in the mind and detrimentally impact your ability to function.

I know from first-hand experience the negativity cycle that these thoughts can put you into. When I am suffering from anxiety or depression, these thoughts can become particularly powerful.

They play on a loop in my mind, getting ever louder. The more they play, the more that I am negatively impacted. My functionality drops as I am less and less able to do the things I usually do. These losses ‘prove’ that the voices in my head are right…

If you struggle to remember plans, keep appointments, or simply track your responsibilities over extended periods of time, this post is for you, it will give you some tools and systems to help organise your life.

I know it can be frustrating and embarrassing, but the first thing that you need to do is stop being too hard on yourself. Be aware that some people simply have better memories, or were taught effective ways to plan while growing up…

The first time I had a panic attack, I thought I was going to die.

There was no exact triggering moment, just a quick, overwhelming onslaught of symptoms. Tight chest, sweating, heart palpations, racing thoughts, and a feeling of impending doom…

I lose every day. Each time I step onto the mat at the start of a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training session, I know that I will soon be ‘tapping out’. Giving the signal that I have been defeated, and effectively admitting to myself, to my opponent, and to everyone watching, that I was bested. ‘You win or you learn’ is an aphorism that we learn to live by, and in most sessions, I lose more than I win. Yet I return, day after day, and plan to continue to do so for the rest of my life. By the end of this chapter I hope to convince you of the reasons why…

Learning how to adult is a challenging prospect. There is so much to do, and so many different skills needed to successfully maintain a household, pursue a career and have successful relationships, all of which involves learning life skills, that we may not have been taught…

When you start to make changes in your life in any positive direction, you will encounter haters. There are people who will share with you all of the reasons that you should stop doing what you are now doing, and why you will fail. They cause you to doubt yourself, question your goals as well as the methods that you are going about acquiring them…

Procrastination kills dreams.

It causes the ‘must do’ tasks to build up and never get done. It takes away our leisure time. It makes us stressed and causes us to scramble over approaching deadlines. It makes us feel guilty and worthless whenever we recognise all of the things we haven’t yet completed….

I exercise at least 10 times per week. These sessions involve running, weights or swimming in the mornings and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at night. I didn’t just start with this exercise routine. I slowly built it up over years, taking time to develop the conditioning and lifestyle needed to support this level of training.

If you are looking to get rich quick, it is a terrible idea to become a writer. People do buy books, but often it takes many interactions with a new author before they will purchase one, even then the profit on that book will only be a few dollars at best.

Given enough time, life will cause us to suffer in one way or another. We will all become injured or sick at some stage, sometimes quite seriously.

Some of us will suffer significant setbacks, both personally and financially. A large percentage of the population lives with disabilities, mental illness and issues carried over from their past.

Before you can properly address a problem, you first need to accept that the problem exists.

This is true for all aspects of life, but in my experience, particularly true for addressing the impact of past trauma, and dealing with mental afflictions…

It is easy to get caught up in the emotion of the moment and then to overstate its importance.

Take being cut off in traffic as an example. The feelings of anger and self-righteousness can linger for hours. For some people, a minor incident can even lead to outbursts of yelling, hitting, swearing, anger, and even physical conflict…

When the symptoms of a mental affliction begin to arise, it is important to take action to address the problem as soon as possible. This way the severity, duration and impact of the affliction will be minimised. Unfortunately given the nature of mental illness, it is often very difficult, if not impossible to even realise that action is needed, or to develop the motivation to do so….

Multi-tasking simply doesn’t work. Not for you, not for me, not for anyone.

Although it may feel like you can do more than one thing at a time, you actually can’t – at least not well. In reality you are doing two things poorly, and often taking longer to do them compared to if you did them one after another…