Life Optimizer is about how to live life to the fullest through personal growth. You can read the newest posts below and some featured posts on the sidebar. If you find them useful, make sure to get free content updates via e-mail or RSS feed.
How to Live Life to the Fullest Through Personal Growth
In The Medici Effect (here is my review), there’s a term I’m interested in: the Intersection. It’s a place where ideas and experiences from different fields meet and form new ideas. It’s a fascinating place to be because excitement from different fields come together at one place. Even more, you can get a lot of fresh ideas that make your and other people’s lives better.
Living in the Intersection has always been a dream of mine. The question, of course, is how. One good way to answer it is by learning from those who are already there. Specifically, there is a certain kind of people with Intersection experience I want to discuss here. They are the polymaths.
Polymaths are people who are extraordinarily intelligent in multiple fields. They live and thrive in the Intersection. Perhaps the most famous one is Leonardo da Vinci but there are still many others. Two examples of modern polymaths are Nathan Myhrvold and Jared Diamond.
Note: This is a guest post from Jonathan Beebe of Develop Minds
You may know all the reasons why you should keep a journal, but if you’ve never written in a journal before, or have limited experience with it, you may not exactly know how to get started. You’ve got your notebook out, and a blank page staring back at you… now what?
Of course, there’s no set rules to writing in a journal. You can write in it however you like and it’s effective either way; however, if you need just a little guidance to get you started on the right foot, I’ll show you an effective journal “template” that you can use day-to-day, and modify as you wish to suit your needs.
Remember, none of the “sections” listed below are required to be long. They can be as long as a few paragraphs, or as short as one sentence… it’s all up to you, after all, it’s your journal :-) Read the complete article »
What is your favorite way to make money? Obviously, there are many ways to make money. You can work for a company or have your own business. You can earn money from salary, dividend, commission, bonus, and many others.
My favorite way is to earn passive income. I’m sure this is not new to you. I’ve heard about it for years but only recently did I begin to understand its nature. I’m not saying that this is the best way or that everyone should do this. This is just the way I like most.
The main reason I love passive income is freedom. With passive income, I don’t need to be actively involved to make money. I do need to work hard to build the system in the beginning, but once it works I can leave it alone and the system will continue earning me money. All I need to do is checking it every now and then to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I can improve the system if I want to, but that’s optional. I can spend my time on a hobby or a new project.
What do you think it takes to get good luck? There are many opinions on this. One popular one is to prepare yourself so that you will be in the right position to capitalize on opportunities when they come. This is summarized in a Louis Pasteur’s quote that says “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”
But there’s an interesting take on it that I found recently in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. There the author gives a simple tip to get good luck: be generous. You should be generous if you want to be lucky. In other words, you should make other people feel lucky to be around you.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Here are three reasons why:
Read the complete article »
Note: This is a guest post by Cath Duncan of Mine Your Resources
With all the personal development books, blogs, speakers, videos, teleseminars and coaches available these days, we all have access to an abundance of information, and personal development can seem like an overwhelming task. I’ve been immersed in this literature and culture for 14 years, searching for the personal development ideas and change tools that really make a difference, and these days I believe that there are only really two skills that you need to master to progress your life:
- Getting clear on what you really want and
- transforming the fears that are holding you back from making what you want a reality.
In fact, I find that it often boils right down to just transforming your fears, because much of the time the only reason that you’re unclear about what you want is because you’re afraid to want what you want, so your fear obscures your vision of what you want. If you know how to handle your fear, you can have, do and be everything you want.
Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow – it empties today of strength.
Corrie ten Boom
You need to know how to stop worrying if you want to live life to the fullest. Why? Because worry doesn’t do you any good. It won’t help you live a better life. It won’t make you feel better and more energized. Instead, it will make you less happy and less productive.
But how can we do that? How can we stop worrying? 
Here are eight ways:
1. Focus on what you can control
Thinking about things you can’t control puts unnecessary burden on your mind. For example, why should you worry about how bad the economy is? There’s nothing you can do about it unless you are a key person in the government. No matter how much you think about it, nothing will change. So instead of worrying about it, focus on things you can control like building your network and increasing your value. Don’t worry about things you can’t do anything about.
