The Unstress Course is Now Open for Enrollment (but Closes on Monday)

My brand new 10-week Unstress Course is now open to join.

If you join during this period you also get free life-time access to all the material in my The Art of Relaxed Productivity program as a special bonus.

The registration to join this course will only be open for 5 days, until 1.00 p.m EDT (that’s 17.00 GMT) on Monday the 4th of June.

Click here to learn more and to join the course

I started working on this course last year but it all started about 6 years ago when I had simply had enough of all the stress dragging me down in life.

This course is filled with all the best things I’ve learned since that time.

The strategies, exercises and simple step-by-step methods that have helped me to stop stressing so much.

Each week of the course you’ll get a written guide, a worksheet to help you to gain a better understanding of your own situation and results as you go through the course and an audio version of that week’s guide that you can listen to anywhere when you need help to handle a stressful situation.

At the end of the weekly guide you’ll get just a few specific action-steps to take that week to minimize the risk of you feeling overwhelmed and getting lost in stress again.

Because I want as many as possible to not only to read the information. But also to take small steps forward each week to make a real and lasting change in their lives.

In this course you’ll for example learn how to:

• Understand the 7 basic reasons for why we get stressed. So you can understand yourself better and where you need to put your attention.
• Start your workday with a morning routine that only takes a couple of minutes but will reduce stressful distractions and situations greatly so that you can focus 100% on what you want and need to get done.
• Deal with one of my biggest stress factors in the past: financial stress. I’ll show you 6 habits and strategies that have really helped me out with that and helps me to this day to keep stress about money to a minimum.
• Stop being stuck in the same old rut of stress and feeling like you don’t have enough time and energy for what matters to you. And start living a lighter, happier and healthier life where you embrace who you deep down are and what YOU want out of your life.

And a whole lot more.

The window to join The Unstress Course closes at 1.00 p.m EDT (that’s 17.00 GMT) on Monday the 4th of June.

Click here to learn more about The Unstress Course and to enroll

How Would Your Life Change If You Weren’t So Stressed?

That’s something I used think about quite often.

I’d dream about how that would be.

For a while.

And then reality would come running around the corner and at me again.

The stress would ramp up. And I’d tell myself that that this is normal and just how life is for almost all of us in today’s society.

But about 6 years ago I had finally had enough. Something had to change.

The stress was wearing me out. Physically and emotionally. It was dragging me down and holding me back in life. And I was worried about what it could lead to in the long run for my health (would there be bigger problems than a lack of sleep, stomach issues and headaches?)

I know a lot of people out there are in that same place.

I’ve seen it plenty of times in my own world. And – after close to 12 years – one of the absolutely most common issues I get emails about is how to stop being so stressed.

It’s actually a question that has only become more frequent in my inbox over little more than a decade as society has continued to change.

So since the fall I’ve been working on a new course filled with all the best things I have learned in the past 6 years and I use almost every day and week.

These are the strategies, exercises and simple step-by-step methods that have helped me to stop being so stressed.

The habits and the system that has been a real life-changer for me.

Today I have a rock-solid daily routine with habits that are specifically selected to prevent stress from appearing in the first place. And for promoting inner stillness, a sharp focus and constructive optimism.

When I feel I’m starting to get stressed I know how to handle that in 1-2 minutes by using simple and powerful techniques that let me reduce or eliminate the stress.

Before the day is up I usually get more of what truly matters all the way to done than I used to in a week back when I was so stressed and mostly used to multitask busywork.

In the evenings and on weekends I’m able to fully relax. And sleep comes easy, I don’t toss and turn in the middle of the night.

Stop letting the stress drag you down

The Unstress Course is a 10-week course filled with weekly guides, worksheets and audio sessions.

Plus, during the launch period you’ll get plenty of other very helpful bonuses too.

In this course you’ll for example learn how to:

• Understand the 7 basic reasons for why we get stressed. So you can understand yourself better and where you need to put your attention.
• Start your workday with a morning routine that only takes a couple of minutes but will reduce stressful distractions and situations greatly so that you can focus 100% on what you want and need to get done.
• Deal with one of my biggest stress factors in the past: financial stress. I’ll show you 6 habits and strategies that have really helped me out with that and helps me to this day to keep stress about money to a minimum.
• Stop being stuck in the same old rut of stress and feeling like you don’t have enough time and energy for what matters to you. And start living a lighter, happier and healthier life where you embrace who you deep down are and what YOU want out of your life.

And a whole lot more.

The Unstress Course opens for enrollment now on Wednesday the 30th of May, at 1.00 p.m EDT (that’s 17.00 GMT) and it will be open for 5 days.

73 Inspirational Quotes on Fear [Updated for 2018]

Fear.

Sometimes it’s a very helpful thing that keeps us from harm.

But many times it’s an inner voice and barrier that keeps us stuck.

That keeps us from getting what we want and becoming who we honestly deep down want to be.

Learning to handle fear and overcome it – even if that’s sometimes just for 10 or 30 seconds so you can take an important action – ­is critical to living your life fully.

So in this article I’d like to share timeless and time-tested wisdom from the people that walked this earth long before us (and from a few that are still here with us).

Here are 73 inspirational, thought-provoking and practically helpful quotes on fear.

[NOTE: This used to be a much shorter and more unstructured blog post that has somehow only become more popular in the past 11 years since I first created it. It is has now been updated with 51 additional quotes and received some well-needed polishing.]

1. “People living deeply have no fear of death.”
   — Anais Nin
2. “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
   — Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
   — Bertrand Russell
4. “Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.”
   — Karl Augustus Menninger
5. “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.”
   — James F. Byrnes
6. “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
   — Rudyard Kipling
7. “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”
   — James Stephens
8. “Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
   — Herman Melville
9. “Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.”
   — Unknown
10. “I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”
    — William Allen White
11. “Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.”
    — Isa Upanishad, Hindu Scripture
12. “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
    — Seneca
13. “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”’
    — Ralph Waldo Emerson
14. “Where no hope is left, is left no fear.”
    — Milton
15. “Laughter is poison to fear.”
    — George R.R. Martin
16. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.”
    — Japanese Proverb
17. “Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.”
    — Dale Carnegie
18. “One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”
    — Henry Ford
19. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
    — Franklin D. Roosevelt
20. “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
    — Helen Keller
21. “You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
    — Eric Hoffer
22. “Fear makes us feel our humanity.”
    — Benjamin Disraeli
23. “To overcome fear, here’s all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.”
    — Peter McWilliams
24. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
    — Marcus Aurelius
25. “Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.”
    — Arnold Glasow
26. “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
    — Anais Nin
27. “Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
    — Ralph Waldo Emerson
28. “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”
    — Aristotle
29. “Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.”
    — Dale Carnegie
30. “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”
    — Rosa Parks
31. “Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.”
    — Robert Louis Stevenson
32. “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
    — Joseph Campbell
33. “In time we hate that which we often fear.”
    — William Shakespeare
34. “Fear is the needle that pierces us that it may carry a thread to bind us to heaven.”
    — James Hastings
35. “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
    — Henry David Thoreau
36. “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
    — Steve Jobs
37. “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
    — Bertrand Russell
38. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
    — Jack Canfield
39. “There are times when fear is good.  It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls.”
    — Aeschylus
40. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
    — Nelson Mandela
41. “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”
    — Andre Gide
42. “The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.”
    — Lady Bird Johnson
43. “Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”
    — Louis E. Boone
44. “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”
    — Eleanor Roosevelt
45. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
    — Plato
46. “Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.”
    — Shirley Maclaine
47. “In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.”
    — Ralph Waldo Emerson
48. “If you’re not willing to risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot be your best. If you cannot be your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else is there?”
    — Les Brown
49. “The best way out is always through.”
    — Robert Frost
50. “Obstacles are like wild animals.  They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can.  If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.”
    — Orison Swett Marden
51. “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
    — Marcus Aurelius
52. “Don’t fear, just live right.”
    — Neal A. Maxwell
53. “Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair.”
    — David Seasbury
54. “Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop.”
    — Usman B. Asif
55. “If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?”
    — Confucius
56. “Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, professionals built the Titanic.”
    — Unknown
57. “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
    — H. P. Lovecraft
58. “Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death.”
    — Unknown
59. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”
    — Soren Kierkegaard
60. “Find out what you’re afraid of and go live there.”
    — Chuck Palahniuk
61. “No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
    — Edmund Burke
62. “Fears are stories we tell ourselves.”
    — Unknown
63. “Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small.”
    — Ruth Gendler
64. “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
    — Dale Carnegie
65. “There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.”
    — Mark Twain
66. “Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.”
    — Virgil Thomson
67. “Fear has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.”
    — Zig Ziglar
68. “Living with fear stops us taking risks, and if you don’t go out on the branch, you’re never going to get the best fruit.”
    — Sarah Parish
69. “Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile… initially scared me to death.”
    — Betty Bender
70. “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.”
    — Gandhi
71. “The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.”
    — John C. Maxwell
72. “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
    — Marie Curie
73.  “I must not fear.
    Fear is the mind-killer.
    Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
    I will face my fear.
    I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
    And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
    Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
    Only I will remain.”
    — Frank Herbert

What is your favorite quote on fear? Feel free to share the best one(s) you have found in this article or in your life in the comments section below.

Daily Simplicity: 13 Habits That Will Make Your Life Lighter and Happier

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Confucius

“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.”
Bruce Lee

I love to keep things simple.

Why?

One simple reason and one of the most important ones for me is that simplicity reduces the heaviness in life.

It makes it lighter and not so stressful or energy draining as it once might have been.

So today I would like to share 13 daily habits that make my life simpler, lighter and happier. I hope you’ll find something useful for your own life among these habits.

1. Use a very simple workspace. My workspace is just a laptop and a larger screen on a desk made out of wood. I use a comfy chair and there is room for my glass of water beside the computer. That’s it. There are no distractions here. This makes it easier to write and to keep a clear mind.
2. Cook more food than you’ll eat. We usually make 4-10 servings of what we are about to eat. This cuts down on time that you spend on cooking and you’ll have to do less washing up in general. Plus, you’ll have lunch for the day after. And sometimes a couple of portions to put in the freezer. And that really comes in handy on those evenings when you don’t feel like cooking.
3. Write shorter emails. I tend to write emails containing only a few sentences, usually between one and five. In some cases I write more of course. But keeping this guideline in mind cuts down on the time and energy that is spent on processing emails.
4. Be 10 or 5 minutes early for meetings and appointments. This will help you to make your time of travel into a sort of break and a time of relaxation. Instead of it being another thing that ramps up the stress.
5. Spend only 20% of your time on dwelling on a problem. And 80% of your time focusing on a solution. Instead of the other way around. It is not always easy to do but keeping this thought in mind makes it easier to not fall into the trap of feeling like a victim or going down a spiral of perceived powerlessness.
6. Stop trying to do things perfectly. Go for good enough instead and when you are there you are done. Get things all the way to done this way and then move on to the next thing. Setting this more human bar for yourself not only leads to more things actually being finished but also helps with keeping your self-esteem on a healthy level. Perfectionism makes it pretty impossible to find or maintain high self-esteem.
7. Stop trying to please everyone. Because no matter what you do there will always be people who you don’t get along with. That you don’t have good chemistry with. Or that do not like you for some reason that may often be about them and something that you have no control over.
8. Eat slower. Make your lunch time a time of relaxation rather than a time to just add to the stress of your day. One thing that works well to slow down when eating is to put down the fork between bites.
9. Enjoy the simple pleasures. A pear. Fresh and clean bed sheets. A hug and a kiss. Holding hands. A laugh with friends. The sun and blossoming nature after a long and cold winter.
10. Give each item a home. Then you’ll know where to put the item when you have used it and easily find it again when you need it. Plus, you’ll reduce the clutter in your workspace or at home.
11. Write everything down. Pretty much everyone’s memory is leaky. So help yourself. Write down what you need to do or shop for today. Write down your ideas before they fly away. Write down the one habit or area you are focusing on right now in your life and put that note where you can see it every day. Like on your bedside table or bathroom mirror.
12. Avoid making mountains out of molehills. When stressed about something ask yourself: will this matter 5 years from now? Or even 5 weeks from now?
13. Breathe. When you are lost in overwhelm, a problem or the past or future in your mind breathe with your belly for a minute or two and just focus on the air going in and out of your nostrils. This will calm your body down and bring your mind back into the present moment again.