Ask people about their ultimate goal and most of them reply happiness or something that’s closely related to it. And you know, it’s very hard to reach complete happiness by isolating yourself.

Of course, there’s always a certain risk if you integrate other people in your plans, as they are .. not you and so their plans might differ from yours. But it’s better to take calculated risks than to lead a boring life! At least, that’s how I think about it. Plus, you can minimize those risks by doing some thinking about yourself. Notice, that I wrote “some thinking”, don’t spend all of your time alone. Thinking can create a nice basis for your self development, but once you got your basis, further progress becomes way easier if you use other methods as well. And you won’t really know yourself unless you studied yourself in social interactions.

If you dislike all kinds of social situations, this does not mean that you should avoid them. On the contrary, you should rather get used to them. Feeling uncomfortable during most social interactions is a clear sign that you focus on yourself too much. Go out and learn to have fun! You’re not the only interesting person out there.

No matter it can be physically demanding to always keep your momentum but you reach your goals much faster if you do. Plus, it’s somewhat more pleasant to feel the fresh air pressing against you.

Unfortunately, there are neither mental pedals nor mental feet you could pedal with. So building mental momentum differs a little from building speed on a bike. But just a little.

Let’s see how building mental momentum actually works:

Preparation

If you start to ride completely unprepared you risk having to move back to your starting point. That’s not what you want to do, so consider applying the following tips:

• Goal awareness: Do you know your goals yet? Your movement is just not effective if you don’t. I mean, how would you even know you’re moving into the right direction? You don’t need to plan every stopover but you should at least have a vague idea about where the journey should lead you.
• Safety measures: Know that you will experience times of doubt and maybe even frustration. Set up the steady will of not giving up. Having a hard time moving usually just means that you are moving up a hill. So look forward to the downhill ride that is yet to come! I also recommend writing a little motivational text you can read when you’re feeling bad.

Starting to Move

Time to ride!

1. Set small goals. This is the mental equivalent to start driving in the first gear. I recommend daily goal setting for fastest results.
2. Speed up the process of reaching those goals. This doesn’t mean you need to do achieve an amazing number of small goals a day, just make sure you built enough mental momentum to reach those goals fast and with ease.

Shifting Gears

When going for your small goals starts to become less demanding and you feel that you possess some unused motivation, you might want to change up:

1. Set some bigger goals. They shouldn’t be too hard. Setting goals that are out of reach would considerably slow you down. It would be like changing up too early. You shouldn’t choose goals that are too easy to reach either, as you need to go to the next level in order to get extra momentum. You don’t want to stagnate, do you?
2. Again, speed up the process of reaching those goals. Use your collected momentum to reach these bigger goals. Everytime you complete a task, your speed will increase by some amount.
3. Then you might want to change up again.

Repeat this process until you grew beyond what you’ve thought to be possible. Believe me, this mental momentum is some kind of motivation that will help you to yield quite some amazing results.

One additional note: You don’t unlearn riding a bike. Think about it.

Why People Oversleep

There are some different reasons for oversleeping and staying in bed for too long:

• Not hearing the alarm ring: What can I say about this one? Actually, the solution is kinda easy in this case: Get a louder alarm clock! If you regularly miss your alarm you should change something about it.
• Drugs: I don’t want to talk a lot about this point as it’s pretty obvious. If you’re too drunk to stand up, how do you think you could get out of bed on time? Same applies to some other drugs. Just don’t do drugs if you want to wake up at a precise time the following day. (Drinking a lot of coffee can have negative effects on your sleep as well.)
• Tricking yourself to stay in bed: This is where it starts to get interesting. And basically, that’s the point this article really is about. The problem with it is: This sort of tricking yourself has become a habit for most of us. Especially on weekends. You’re giving away valuable time this way. Solving this problem takes some time as you will have to replace the habit of tricking yourself to stay in bed by the habit of getting out of bed as soon as your alarm rings.

Habit Replacement

To replace a habit, you have to act according to the new habit all the time. This means you should get out of bed on time on weekdays and on weekends. Don’t allow any exceptions.

Habit forming is said to take about three weeks at least. So force yourself to stick to your new habit for the first month. Once it has become a habit, you’ll do it all naturally.

Some of you might be able to just use the new habit instead of the old one, but most of us will need some techniques to help ourselves to make the change happen. So here are some recommended methods you can apply during the habit replacement period in that particular case:

• Proper alarm clock positioning: Place your alarm clock out of reach. I recommend to place it just so far away from you that you have to get up on your feet. Once you’re standing it’s a lot easier for you to stay awake and your whole situation changed: Now you don’t need to force yourself to get out of bed anymore, you just need to force yourself to not go to bed again. That’s not that hard to do (or let’s say not to do).
• Don’t let your mind make decisions when drowsy: This requires a little self-discipline. But define your will before you go to bed and stick to it. It’s a major point. Your mind will come up with various strange reasons why you absolutely need another hour of sleep when in fact you just slept long enough to miss a whole vacation. Drowsiness is a strange mental state. And you want to make your decisions when you’re in a clear state of mind, don’t you?
• Motivation: Maybe you will need an extra motivation. You could reward yourself for getting out of bed on time for example. Any small reward will do fine. Plus, you should know what you can do after getting out of bed. Just make it hard for your drowsy mind to come up with any reasons for not getting up.

Don’t let sleep rule you, rule your sleep.

I know, some people won’t acknowledge that. Maybe you’re one of those people. Maybe you think of role modeling as childish or you think it’s a method only weak people use. In fact, it’s none of the kind.

What not to do

It’s probably true that a lot of weak people got some kind of role models. And they might aim at becoming like their superstars, but trying to become like your role models is not what you should do. Here’s why:

If you copycat a person you will become a poor copy of that very person. You will never really reach the goals you aim for, because you’re setting yourself limits. Your role models are limiting in that case. Yeah, you could possibly improve in certain areas but at what price? You’d be giving away your uniqueness and freedom. Don’t do it.

What to do

Try to exceed your role models. Try to integrate their best habits, attitudes etc. into your own life but keep your uniqueness. This goes hand in hand with another view of your chosen mentors:

Do not see them as unreachable gurus. They’re not. They might did some great things in their lives but you can do it as well. In fact, you can even do better as picking up their effective traits gives you a nice time advantage. Keep that in mind. They made their faults as well.

If you truly believe that you can be greater than your role models, then you can proceed. Study their lives and think about which of their habits you could use to improve yours. Ask yourself: “Why did they become so successful?”

It’s also important to compare different prosperous persons at that point. Look out for things they have in common. If several highly successful people all have some very special common characters, then it’s very unlikely that this is due to pure chance. It’s more likely, that there’s a direct relationship. So these common characters are what you’re looking for.

Integrate them in your lifestyle and become great.

Basically, that’s it. I’d like to close this article with one little warning though:

Don’t let studying other people’s lives detract you from living your own life.

Is it because people are different? Does self development only work for a special kind of people? I don’t think so. But there’s one essential part that is rarely mentioned:

Successful self development needs a solid basis. It has to come from within.

Sadly, a lot of people seem to ignore that fact completely. They try to rush into self development, using any promising sounding scheme that they found anywhere on the internet. But do they ever ask themselves whether they are ready to use the scheme? Probably not. Unfortunately, even the most sophisticated scheme only works if you comply with its requirements.

An Example of a Failed Attempt

Take the following common approach for example: Mr. X is completely dissatisfied with his own life. He’s one step away from depression and thinks of himself as crap. Not worthy to lead a happy life.

Now X decides to finally do something to improve these conditions, so he informs himself about self improvement. What he finds on one of the websites he browsed is the following method:

“Say out loud that you love yourself and your life. Do this every morning just after getting out of bed. This will result in higher self-esteem and a more positive attitude.”

Alright, X applies the method. He does exactly what was said on the website. But he gets strange results, because this is what happens: He slips right into depression. His self-esteem is as low as it can be. How could something like this happen to him?

It happened because he lied to himself. He might said that he loves his life but in reality he hated it. And that’s what he thought while he recited the words that should improve his life. So basically, he just increased the frequency of negative thoughts instead of creating a positive attitude.

The simple truth is: You can’t lie to yourself. That’s what X didn’t know. You can surely do better than him!

How I Created My Basis

Well, at first I should tell you that my starting point didn’t look all too bad. It all started about one year ago. I liked my life but I just wasn’t completely satisfied with all aspects.

That’s why I began to read a lot about self development and psychology. (Some of the books I found to be especially useful are listed on the page Resources.)

Some months ago I began to think a lot about my own life. About the goals I want to reach and about who I am. I’m not talking about this kind of daydreaming here. I sat down in front of my computer and concentrated on some basic questions while I wrote down every thought I considered to be important. This thinking process lead to some nice insights.

Now I’m still developing. Still thinking and gathering new information. The next step I need to take is going from theory to practice.

I can’t tell you how my life goes on but the quality of my life already improved and I feel that it’s still improving. So my approach worked for me. Still, I don’t want you to just copy what I did. Because my approach will not work for anyone.

Maybe you got a slight idea on how a successful self development attempt can look like. An attempt that came from within. Now it’s up to you whether you make use of this information or not. Just remember to go your own way.