As a kid I spent a great deal of my time playing The Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon and Simcity; busy building worlds, steady constructing lives, I loved it. Wether this was cause or effect, I’ve grown up believing that life is 99% make-able; a formula in which the harder I would try, the better life would be, backed by a limiting Scarcity Mentality as described in Stephen Covey’s infamous book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

This simplified and faulty belief of responsibility, deeply instilled and fueled by insecurities of inadequacy, has caused me to work hard, but not smart. Spreading myself too thin, losing my strength in losing my joy and running around the field without the goal in sight. It might almost be the default of the world we live in, but it was unbearable for me. Believing life was but a formula, I blamed myself for being the weak link in the sum and I found myself drained, unfulfilled and lost, with to-do lists piling up and passion running low.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right” – Henry Ford

Over the past few months, learning the basics of neuroscience and watching a lot of incredibly inspiring TEDx talks, I have come to believe that it is not my skill, nor my knowledge, qualities or working ethic that holds me back, but my own mind. It is our mental that determines the true quality of our happiness and success and admitting to this, I made it my no. 1 priority to harness this.

To illustrate the following example, from Rory Sutherland’s “Perspective is everything” TEDx Talk:

[su_quote]”In the U.K., the post office had a 98 percent success rate at delivering first-class mail the next day. They decided this wasn’t good enough and they wanted to get it up to 99. The effort to do that almost broke the organization. If at the same time you’d gone and asked people, “What percentage of first-class mail arrives the next day?” the average answer, or the modal answer would have been 50 to 60 percent. Now if your perception is much worse than your reality, what on earth are you doing trying to change the reality?”[/su_quote]

Where I have always invested my energy into coming up with a practical solution, I now realize that other than changing the situation, sometimes you just have to change your perspective. Reframe. And step by step, that is what I set out to do.

“How you gonna win, when it ain’t right within?” – Lauryn Hill

By adopting an Abundance Mentality, expanding my horizon and consciousness, applying the 20/80 principles to my productivity, through clear goal setting, meditation and positive affirmations and with a fine blend of productivity hacks and mindfulness practice; I aim to work and live smarter, energized and with a smile on my face.

How to do this exactly, I will have to find out and learn as I go, but my journey has commenced. And here, I will chronicle my saga. Besides collecting and sharing the helpful tools and insights and hopefully striking a soul or two, the chronicling of this journey is part of the journey itself, as to tackle my fear of vulnerability, failure, imperfection and rejection. If you are at all inspired or recognize yourself in this post, please do participate and start today to commence and chronicle your own unique journey.

This was blog #1. My sails are set.

Peace,
Nadia

PS1: The Scarcity Mentality (“People see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life”) versus the Abundance Mentality (“Flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives, and creativity”) as mentioned above.

PS2: The image of this post is a work of M. C. Escher, a Dutch graphic artist who was big on the optical illusions and playing with your perception. This is cool as hell so here’s a few more: