Author: Victoria Lagodinsky

One habit that will serve you well is to spend 15 minutes every day tackling the areas of your home where clutter accumulates. A quarter of an hour may not seem long, but by making it a deadline, you can achieve an amazing amount.

1. Choose one area that needs your attention: for example, the pile of unsorted mail, the kitchen drawer, or the dusty knick-knack shelf.

2. Set a timer for 15 minutes and begin tidying up. Don’t stop until the 15 minutes have elapsed.

3. Sort items into separate piles according to where they should end up: for example, “storage”, “donation”, “trash”, “proper location for use”, or “rearranged in current location”. Just throwing things in a drawer to hide them only transfers the problem. Take the opportunity to dust or clean any surfaces you have cleared.

4. When your timer rings, assess your progress. Congratulate yourself on what you’ve achieved. If you think you need to spend another 15 minutes, go ahead, but don’t overwhelm yourself.

5. Repeat this every day for at least a week to begin to establish the habit. The longer you keep it up, the easier and more effective it will become over time. You’ll be surprised at what you can accomplish in sessions of just 15 minutes.

Find lots more valuable advice and tips in Learn to Balance Your Life by Michael and Jessica Hinz. It will equip you with everything you need to: identify your priorities and allow enough time for them; maximise your finances; use your work and leisure time enjoyably and profitably; and make your home a calming yet energising place to live.

Your ‘Personal Perspective’ influences your thoughts, opinions, choices, actions, and ability to make changes

Aside from your IQ there is another aspect to your thinking that influences every thought you have. Which of these 7 personality types sounds the most like you?

“I call it your Personal Perspective”, explains Master Certified Coach and author of You Can Think Differently, Caterina Rando. “This is your basic attitude to life, the way you tend to look at the world, unconsciously and consistently. With its roots in your culture, upbringing and life experiences, your Personal Perspective influences your thoughts, opinions, choices, actions, and ability to make changes”.

Which one sounds the most like you? While you may sway from one to the other at different times, you will have one primary Personal Perspective.

Personality Type 1: The Idealist

Idealists have faith that things can happen just by believing they can happen. They see the world as a good place, and they are convinced that they can make a contribution to the planet and the lives they touch.

Difficulties: Idealists tend to believe what they are told and may easily be taken advantage of. They can act before asking questions and gathering all the facts or considering the consequences. They are big dreamers, sometimes too big – meaning that they hope that things will happen rather than having to make them happen. They often stay in unappealing situations for too long because they believe that “things will work out”.

Challenge: Ask more questions, examine your feelings and pause more often to consider possible outcomes of your actions and beliefs. Think about opportunities before seizing them.

Personality Type 2: The Realist

Realists do not sugar-coat anything. They are persuaded by facts and evidence rather than by hypothetical visions or emotional pleas.

Difficulties: Realists prefer to be sure of success before they take action. They do not act on faith or work things out as they go along. This can limit their openness to opportunities.

Challenge: Be willing to act without trying to predict down to the last detail how things will work out. Allow yourself to be surprised.

Personality Type 3: The Pragmatist

Pragmatists are often well-balanced people who are flexible in their perspective – they are sometimes realists, sometimes dissenters, sometimes idealists and sometimes questioners. They often acquire a reputation for being reasonable, and for being good judges. However, their outlook is rarely predictable in advance.

Difficulties: They are unlikely to act on instinct and can go back and forth endlessly before making a decision. This can place relationships under strain.

Challenge: Limit your thinking time before taking action. Be willing to choose one perspective at a time and go with it. You could also benefit from building up your intuition.

Personality Type 4: The Questioner

The doubter in the crowd. Questioners have to see something to believe it and will not take your word for it. They often stand on the perimeter and keep their thoughts to themselves. Difficulties: Questioners often do not try things because they have not been proven, delaying action until it may be too late. They often let life pass them by.

Challenge: Allow for the possibility that people and situations sometimes really are as they appear. Don’t let your scepticism stop you from taking action whenever it might serve you.

Personality Type 5: The Stoic

Stoical people show fortitude, but they neither perceive nor express much emotion. Their feelings are difficult to read. They are generally “strong, silent types”.

Difficulties: People find it hard to know them or get close to them.

Challenge: Seek to be more aware of your feelings, and develop ways to express them. Note the positive effects of reaching out to others emotionally.

Personality Type 6: The Visionary

Visionaries have a unique way of looking at life. The “energy” of a situation or action – whether it “feels right” – is their most important consideration.

Difficulties: Their focus on energy means that visionaries can miss or ignore facts, signs and consequences that others see. They can appear to be out of touch with reality.

Challenge: Focus more on what is practical and realistic – the probable as opposed to the possible. Consider consequences. Take advice from friends who can offer a realistic perspective on important situations.

Personality Type 7: The Dissenter

Dissenters do not expect people to be sincere and honest. They do not expect good things to happen to them.

Difficulties: A dissenter will usually be labelled as negative. Dissenters miss out on many of life’s keenest pleasures.

Challenge: Wake up to the idea that life is wonderful! People can be good and good things can come your way. Release your negativity. Embrace power thinking.

Still not sure? Try this test

Imagine yourself in the following situation:

One night you have a really vivid dream that you win the lottery. The winning numbers are amazingly clear and you remember them when you wake up. Do you:

(a) Dismiss it as “just a dream” and forget about it.

(b) Think the dream is probably nonsense – but you’ll still be curious to see if any of the numbers come up.

(c) Doubt whether anything will come of it but see no harm in playing the numbers in the lottery.

(d) Get really excited by the dream and buy a lottery ticket on the way to work?

Depending on your answer, you are probably: a dissenter (answer a); a questioner (b); a pragmatist (c); or a visionary (d).

Which personality type are you? We’d love to know in the comments below!

Do you ever feel like you’re holding yourself back? Your personality type, or Personal Perspective, has a great influence on the way you think and act. If you fully understand your Personal Perspective, and the impact it has on your everyday life, you can learn to free your mind of negative attitudes, focus and prioritise. Then nothing can stop you!

With 20 specially devised exercises, You Can Think Differently will teach you how to recognize and evaluate your own personality, and give you the tools you need to lead the life you want.

“Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life”

You Can Think Differently by Caterino Rando

144 pages • Illustrated • £6.99

AUS $14.99 NZ $17.99

£5.99 l Buy the e-book now!

What is mindfulness?

Being mindful is actually something that we all did very naturally when we were small children. When we are being mindful, we are choosing to notice the details of our experiences, just as they are in this moment and without judging or trying to change them in the first instance. Sometimes mindfulness is described as seeing clearly.

If you watch young children or animals exploring their world, you will see that they are curious, fully absorbed in the present moment, engaged in their activities and playful in their exploration. Experiences are new, fascinating and rich in possibility. This attitude and kind of attention is what we aim to rekindle in ourselves as adults through mindfulness practice. Learning to develop our curiosity and ability to notice a wide range of experiences both within and around us.

As adults we have been trained to analyze and make sense of our experience, mostly by thinking about it. We aren’t encouraged to play or to explore or to really experience our world. Being mindful, we are waking up to what our senses are telling us. Our minds and bodies constantly receive information, refreshing it moment by moment. This happens automatically and without any effort on our part. Mindfulness invites us to reconnect to this information, using our senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.

Mindfulness Exercise: Tuning in to Sitting

Start by trying this simple exercise next time you are sitting down somewhere quiet. Spend five minutes simply noticing your experience of sitting.

1. Notice the sensations as you sit  – your feet making contact with the floor, your bottom on the seat of the chair or on the cushion. Is there any feeling of pressure, or perhaps hardness or softness?

2. Can you feel any difference in temperature between your body parts and the various surfaces they are touching?

3. Does your body feel large or small compared to the chair you are sitting on?

4. Can you hear anything? What are the different sounds that you notice around you?

5. What else do you notice as you sit here for a few more moments?

6. There is no need to change your experience in any way – just notice.

Sounds simple and maybe a little strange to start with, but try it and you’re on your way to living more mindfully.

Mindfulness has emerged as one of the most important therapeutic practices available today. Inspired by Eastern meditative practices, mindfulness is a simple yet powerful approach that aims to help you become fully engaged in the present moment, and in the process overcome negative thoughts and feelings.

“This book has so much potential to help people and contribute to the flowering of greater well-being and sanity on this planet.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, author

The Mindfulness Breakthrough by Sarah Silverton

176 pages • Illustrated • £9.99

AUS $19.99 NZ $26.00

£9.99 l Buy the book now!

Are winter days getting you down? Plan an adventurous expedition for some time in the spring or summer to lift your spirits.

Plan an adventurous expedition for some time in the spring or summer. Download a map from the internet and print it out on good strong paper. Annotate the map to show some of the excursions you might make. Read around the subject and write your most fascinating discoveries on your map. This then becomes your key for unlocking exciting surprises when the longed-for time comes – and to relish the prospect long in advance.

Taken from Mind, Body, Spirit Book of Days Diary for 2014. This bestselling illustrated holistic diary series offers inspiring advice on how to find new value and delight all areas of your life – friendships, relationships, creativity, spirituality, health and well-being all through the year.

Mind, Body, Spirit Book of Days Diary for 2014 (Spiral-bound)

Buy the book 

£12.99