Sometimes, fast-paced lifestyles don’t cut it. You’d think that reading, eating and working faster would catapult your productivity into a new level of efficiency, but the truth is  that such an energy-depleting way of living can lead to burnout instead.

There’s only so much stress and pressure one person can handle. While power drinks and coffee might offer you that desperately needed push, sometimes to be productive you must slow down. Yes, I said slow down.

Before you dismiss my proposal as impossible, hear me out. It might sound ironic but it’s true; we’ve been trained to think that the faster we engage with tasks the better our results. But this is only partially true. If what we’re after is long-term, sustainable productivity then the key is to slow down a bit. With less stress burdening your shoulders you boost your clarity and efficiency, ultimately allowing yourself to be more productive.

Thanks, but no thanks

It’s important to turn down extra projects, overtime work, and anything else that puts extra strain on your already packed schedule. If people come to know you as the “yes, of course I will” person, then you will soon find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of tasks and responsibilities constantly deluging you, and you’ll find it increasingly harder to say “no.”

Saying “sorry, no” reminds people of your own humanity and limitations, and its nurtures others’ respect for you. Fewer responsibilities mean less workload, which then equals better productivity. Simple math here.

It’s all in the present moment

To manage to be productive even at a slowed-down pace requires that you practice mindfulness. Stop worrying over others’ future expectations and opinions of you. Rather, focus on what you need and should accomplish right now.

You can do this by focusing in the present moment. Forget the bigger picture and just be at peace with what you didn’t manage to do (your past) and what you should do (your future). This way you are mindful of what you’re capable of achieving right this moment.

This realization is what will boost your productivity, even if you are working in what it seems to be ridiculously slow-motion.

Sleep, what’s that?

It shouldn’t be optional, period. Sleep has been found to be more important than exercise and its essential role in your well-being is unquestionable. Sleep helps you better control your diet and food intake, while sleep deprivation makes you prone to mistakes and less resistant to fatty and sugary snacks.

With more sleep, you will achieve a consistent and enhanced brain functionality, increase your alertness, and overall perform better with less effort. No project, event or circumstance is more important than sleep.

Our society fosters fast-paced lifestyles; we’re expected to speed read, touch type at 150 wpm, and constantly multi-task so that we can fit everything we need to do into a tight 24 hour time frame. While this increased speed can improve our productivity in the short term, slowing down is important for both our well-being and work performance.  Having overwhelming schedules is not obligatory. It’s an option, and a choice we make each day.

You can change this by being more mindful of your daily routines, focusing more on your health and well-being by resting, turning down more responsibilities, getting enough sleep, and just slowing down from time to time, to recuperate.

How can you find exactly the right words that will close a deal? What kind of words and phrases are key for negotiating? The art of negotiation is 50% confidence and 50% in how you frame your opinions, assertions, and complaints. The following key phrases and words can help you become an efficient negotiator and get everything you want out of the deals you make.

I’m listening

Would you even bother wasting your time with someone who doesn’t even care enough to listen to your own views? Probably not.

The first and most critical step for getting on the right foot with your fellow negotiator is to actively listen. Reassuring phrases such as “I see what you mean,” “You’re right,” and “That’s a good point actually,” tells the other person that you respect them enough to actively engage with them during their interpretation of a situation.

You can win the other person over simply by making them feel respected and listened to. Yes, it’s that easy – and sometimes that’s all it takes to conclude a successful negotiation. Extra Tip: Don’t assume you know what someone’s about to say. People find it annoying when someone else constantly jumps in to end their sentences for them. While occasionally this might show how much you empathize with and focus on what is being said, you might come across as a know-it-all, and nobody likes that sort of person.

It’s not you, it’s me: Offering the right perspective

Another important thing to consider when negotiating, whether it’s with your 3-year-old child or your manager, is adopting the right perspective. You don’t have to sacrifice your assertiveness and dynamism to achieve a good deal. What you need to do is not offend the other person, or make them feel uncomfortable or frustrated. That’s easy to say, but you might ask yourself how to achieve this. It’s actually easy to do, as well: simply say what you believe, feel, or think rather than talking about what the other person has said or done. By shifting the focus to your perspective, you are essentially making it easier from them to accept your assertions, because you remove any implication of blame. Therefore, the statement “I feel this is not what we had in mind” is much more effective and less offending than “You don’t understand what we are after, I’m afraid.”

The first introduces disagreement in a mild and indirect manner, with the sense that you feel it might have been your own explanations and descriptions that led to the misunderstanding. On the other hand, the second is full-on negative and slightly harsh, essentially telling the other person that they’re just not smart enough to figure it out.

Don’t ever assume you know what the person in front of you is thinking. To make assumptions is to risk losing that person’s attention and respect. Focus on “I” statements and steer away from speaking about what you think they think, want, or have.

Show Empathy

You have better chances at winning a negotiation if you show empathy. People are naturally defensive during a negotiation so managing to make them feel less threatened will win you some ground. Find something you have in common. This could be anything: you’re both young women, you’re both parents, you work in the same field, you like the same style of art, you just read the same best-seller … pointing out the similarities between you makes it easier for you to mold the other person’s opinion towards a direction that benefits you. Show your empathy with phrases such as these:

“I understand (where you’re coming from).”

“I feel the same way about (the situation, the problem, that point).”

“I would be (happy, upset, curious, disbelieving) in that case too, you know.”

Using these key phrases and being willing to listen attentively will increase your chances of achieving the deal you’re after.

Experience fosters learning. No matter how much you may wish you could download skills and knowledge into your brain, the only foolproof way of mastering anything in life is through experience. And by experience, we mean “trial and error.”

Virtually any skill – speed reading, touch typing, walking, speaking a foreign language – requires substantial amounts of time invested in practicing. During a 1957 press conference, William Faulkner was asked for his advice to young, aspiring writers. This was his reply:

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance.

On a similar vein, Aristotle asserted the same principle of experiential learning, hundreds of years before Faulkner:

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

This is the basic premise that underlines experiential learning (learning from experience). We don’t first learn something and then do it, rather we learn it by doing it. In other words, practice precedes learning and experience is a prerequisite for mastery. You cannot expect to speed read just by reading a book about speed reading, but the moment you experience and practice that skill you become a speed reader.

Experiential education is what allows a person to fully immerse themselves in the learning of a skill or capacity, and it’s what produces the most impressive learning results. According to psychologist David Kolb, knowledge is the product of experience. When a person is having a concrete experience, for example when they’re learning touch typing, this physical experience is what will allow the beginning typist to mentally reflect on their performance and produce their own interpretation of the process. With these abstract interpretations of the learning experience the typist is then back in the physical realm, actively testing out their assertions; this cycle is what ultimately results in learning to touch type. We repeat this process of practice, reflection, concept formation, and re-testing until learning takes place.

This approach to learning, like all others, of course has its flaws. Many people point out this theory’s inability to explain how people also learn without reflecting on the learning process. A common example is the fact that a person can learn how to tie their shoelaces through repetition, rather than reflecting on the process.

Nonetheless, the reflective aspect of experiential learning has a wide range of benefits and functions. With experiential learning, for example, we increase our self-esteem because we succeed in teaching ourselves something new by actively applying the new knowledge. This process is rewarding and gives a big boost to self-confidence because it has tangible results the learner can immediately recognize.

Theory turns into knowledge when we’re allowed to participate in our learning in a mindful, receptive, and attentive manner. What’s more, experiential learning is what will offer us the confirmation that learning indeed took place, that we’ve mastered a new skill and we’re ready to advance it even further. Whenever you have the chance, choose to learn through experience and practice rather than in the abstract. The results will astonish you.

Google has been introducing services and tools over the years that offer valuable help to the public. Apart from emailing and searching, Google offers many ingenious tools and features designed to make our life more fascinating and to make us more knowledgeable. Two of these tools are Google Helpouts and the revamped Google Maps.

Google Helpouts

How does the idea of an online personal SAT tutor sound? What about a chemistry Helpout before the finals? Google Helpouts is a video tutoring marketplace that allows experts to share their knowledge and skills with those that seek them out. Launched in November 2013, Google Helpouts lets experts – teachers, chefs, plumbers and everything else in between – provide one-to-one Helpout sessions. Some Helpouts are free, other cost up to $120 an hour.

The one-to-one model used ensures the user gets the expert’s full attention, making learning and problem solving practically foolproof. This paid advice service by Google makes it possible to find an expert to help you with virtually anything, whether that’s understanding the reason for your cat’s weird coughing to troubleshooting your bathroom leak. Google Helpouts runs a money-back guarantee for Helpouts that, well, didn’t help out much.

This is especially useful for students, because Google Helpouts can offer solutions on many levels. Assistance in many fields is available, to help students figure out how to use complex math formulas, improve reading efficiency, or take better lecture notes. With the help of experts, any issue becomes solvable.

The fact that Helpouts is a service globally available that can be solicited almost instantly makes this new Google service stand out. How many times have you wished an expert could be within reach to help you on the spot? Well, now it’s possible.

The New Google Maps

Learning about your travel destination, whether it’s 2 miles away or across an ocean, is now a complete experience with the new Google Maps and its advanced features. The new version of Google’s mapping program makes visually visiting and learning about unknown destinations easy and enjoyable.

Whereas previously it was only possible to obtain fundamental information when planning a journey from destination A to destination B, the new integrated technologies now make it possible to plan a journey that also includes airplane flights and combine it with public transit and other forms of transport to have the most complete itinerary.

Also, you are now able to plan a journey that has more than one set destination, allowing you to find the quickest and most traffic-free way to do your chores and then arrive at your desired destination. It’s a tool that many people are already using daily as it saves time and frustration and helps avoid being stuck in traffic jams.

A complete visual experience for Google Map users

A new image carousel at the bottom of the page allows the user to have a sneak peek into their destination, whether that’s a sushi restaurant or a new pop-up gallery.  Even if you’re not planning to visit a place, Google still offers you a visual tour to cities big and small around the world, unveiling fascinating new aspects of the world’s urban tribes.

The advanced but still user-friendly new Google Maps service makes journey planning to campus and across the Pacific equally easy. Efficiency and real-life integration seem to be two things Google has perfectly mastered, and it has never been more evident than it is with Helpouts and the new Google Maps services.

With a simple internet search, you’ll quickly realize that there is a plethora of resources designed to equip you with the qualities you need to rise to the top and be the ultimate success.  While these can be very interesting and even helpful, there are many other practical attributes that often get dismissed in the process.  The development of leadership qualities often tends to take the forefront in the “how to succeed” literature in the blogosphere, and there is no doubt that these are attributes you cannot be without in order to make it and maintain your hard earned success. However, it might be time to take a closer look at the lesser noticed but nonetheless highly valuable skills sets that will assist in growing your business and helping you reach the goals you want.

Regular Reading- Informational and Otherwise

Reading. Boring? Maybe. But not if you’re doing it right.  Outside of your regular workload, do you read anything that expands your mental capacity? Are you learning anything new? Chances are that if you are not reading anything new, your ability to process information is diminishing, or at best stagnating.  The creativity it takes to succeed doesn’t just happen – it comes from being able to focus as well as gain vision.  Vision comes from constructing a picture in your mind based on word description; this can be fiction, non-fiction, and even directions.  It provides an exercise in fine-tuning your ability to focus on one particular task while improving memory.  Furthermore, one of the most underrated and overlooked values of becoming well-read in today’s society is a markedly improved vocabulary, along with communication smarts, and refined oratory prowess. Any successful individual will tell you that speaking well is key. Creativity is great.  Creativity you can communicate?  A priceless characteristic.

Secretarial Know-How

Don’t forego what you might regard as menial tasks and the dexterity it takes to do them, and concentrate solely on power in your drive to become successful.  If you can’t operate a multi-line phone system, run the all-in-one fax/printer/copier in the center of your office complex, alphabetize those files and touch type, you will not be as successful as you hope to be. Why? Because you can’t multi-task.  Secretarial know-how is defined as multi-tasking savvy. Organizing, scheduling, answering calls, performing the art of touch typing with finesse and running that all-in-one office machinery at the same time is something that keeps any office running smoothly. Secretarial dexterity ensures you won’t soon forget how to manage these humble but vital tasks. Keep doing some of your own secretarial work.  This skillset is the lifeblood of success, and it will keep you appreciating those who work under you.

Appropriate Optimism

Having a good attitude and outcome-driven outlook is important.  Also important is appropriate optimism.  Many people sacrifice honesty for optimism in the hopes that it will be the magic ingredient to changing a flat-lining operation. Becoming discouraged is not helpful either. What you need is a fine balance between the two extremes.  No one appreciates the sugary, hyperactive optimist when the reality of difficulty is facing them. This often reads as disingenuous (even deceitful) to your workplace contemporaries.  On the other side, the doomsday, freakout, all-is-lost approach kills any creativity and productivity you might have otherwise inspired.  Without losing sight of the situation – good, bad or indifferent – you will rouse others to their fullest potential by building your reputation as someone who can be counted on to be honest about the circumstances.  Sometimes the optimism comes from your ability to get creative (and here’s where you can rely on your well-read mind). Sometimes it’s communicated by your willingness to lend a hand in menial task accomplishment (where your secretarial know-how shines) that creates an atmosphere of caring, teamwork, possibility and optimism.

In closing, you don’t rise to the top by dusting off your prior experience, and not solely by the latest and greatest tips on success.  You rise to the top by polishing even further the attributes you may once have assumed were a waste of your time, the attributes you assumed you would get to never do again once you succeeded. Never forget where you came from, and you’ll never struggle to remember where you’re going.

Some would argue that bookstores are becoming a thing of the past given today’s digital age and the rise of e-reading. Many point to international book retailer Borders as an example. At one point, there were over 500 Borders superstores in the United States, with additional stores in Singapore, New Zealand and Australia. The company was eventually forced into bankruptcy, both due to poor business planning and foresight and also due to the increasing selection of online booksellers and the rise of digital media.

While Borders was undone, this doesn’t need to be the fate of all bookstores in the 21st century. As convenient as e-reading is today, it cannot replace human contact. Bookstores around the world are showing real innovation in how they’re working to keep the magic of the written word alive and make the corner bookstore a fun place to spend an afternoon, catch up with friends and even work on English skills in a comfortable setting.

How Bookstores are Embracing the Digital Age and Staying Relevant

Across the world there are great examples of bookstores large and small that manage to stay relevant and compete with the instant access, cheap prices and huge selection on the Internet.

One small, independent bookstore in the United States opened just a few years ago as dozens of nearby bookstores shut their doors. The store didn’t just scrape by, though, it managed to turn an ever-growing profit month after month with an innovative strategy. This bookstore owner installed his own printing press to compete with the Internet’s inventory, giving him the ability to print 5 million books, including Google Books, as well as offer custom publishing. Readers can enter his store, request a hard-to-find book or out-of-print book, and have it in hand in about four minutes.

The future of bookstores may even go further in this embrace of new technology, perhaps letting shoppers download a digital copy of a book over free Wi-Fi access in the store, or offering the option of a dual pack book with an in-store book purchase that includes the printed version as well as digital or audio versions.

Bookstores Offer the Human Experience

One thing that e-books cannot offer is the human experience and the ability to socialize and get out in the world while staying informed and catching up on the latest sci-fi or thriller release. Bookstores of the past were a place to relax with friends, have a drink and take in a newspaper or a book, and many bookstores today are trying to bring that back.

A bookstore chain in China’s Shanghai region is reintroducing people to the charm of bookstores by incorporating food, beverages and even a stationary outlet into the store itself. These customer-oriented bookstores attract readers and offer a new spin on book-selling by creating a comfortable, laid-back atmosphere where people can spend some time reading.

Re-embracing the Bookstore

If it’s been a while since you’ve even set foot inside a bookstore, it may be time for you to re-embrace the charm of a neighborhood bookstore to catch up on your reading. Along with catching up on the news and current events, reading English books can be a great way to gain more familiarity with words and spelling, and there is no better way to practice your reading than finding a great book that catches your attention and sparks your imagination!

These days it seems as if anyone can become a self-published blogger or online writer. It only takes a word editor and basic writing skills. Or does it?

Yes, there are bloggers who’ve been blogging for over two decades now. There are people who are leading experts in their field, and blogging about what they know comes naturally to them. But what about the rest of us, the small and medium businesses, the freelance professionals and the solopreneurs who wish to run and maintain a blog? Is it feasible to become a blogger if you’ve never really had a way with words?

Becoming a blogger is a process that assumes that you:

• Love and know your subject

• Have excellent writing skills

• Have a marketing plan and stick to it no matter what

People who are passionate about and experts at what they do will have no trouble finding topics to talk about on their blog. You’ll find that especially if you’re a leader in your niche market, you will see how quickly people will become dedicated blog readers.

However, when it comes to writing skills, you won’t keep those readers if your English isn’t in tip-top shape. Yes, typos and misspellings do happen and people will forgive them or ignore them occasionally, but if you fail to abide by simple 4th grade grammar rules, this will harm your blog and the reputation you’re trying to build around your brand.

If you want to start a blog, ensure you first brush up your writing skills — especially spelling and vocabulary. Even if at first you’re only using text messages or a Twitter feed, make sure you know the meaning of the words you’re using, and that you’re spelling them correctly. Proper English and good grammar will never go out of style. By ensuring you write professionally in every medium, you’ll create a stepping stone towards writing blogs that will (potentially) go viral.

Bloggers who are fanatically followed and read by their communities are the ones who have self-improvement and self-education as their top priorities. These are people who are able to contribute new ideas, introduce new perspectives, and find new ways to solve a problem or unveil an ignored factor people couldn’t see before.

That being said, ensure you are active in your market so that you know what you’re writing about. Learn about the latest developments, see what’s trending, and take note of what is falling in popularity. Learn new words and concepts introduced in your market and in the wider social discourse as well. This way, your writing will reflect this relevancy and radiate the self-confidence of a knowledgeable, expert blogger.

Finally, remember some basic rules for blogging:

• Write in a conversational tone. Use “you” a lot to make the blog post more shareable and personal.

• Storytelling is a great hook. Use this technique to intrigue readers into staying on the page.

• Write compelling content. Use numbers, cite studies, and share stats to drive a point home. These help build trust.

Cross-posted on the Vocabulary Improvement blog.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments

<div align=”center”><img class=”pinthis” src=”http://www.ultimatevocabulary.com/images/blog/writing_as_professional.jpg” alt=”” /></div>

<hr />

<p dir=”ltr”>These days it seems as if anyone can become a self-published blogger or online writer. It only takes a word editor and basic writing skills. Or does it?</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Yes, there are bloggers who’ve been blogging for over two decades now. There are people who are leading experts in their field, and blogging about what they know comes naturally to them. But what about the rest of us, the small and medium businesses, the freelance professionals and the solopreneurs who wish to run and maintain a blog? Is it feasible to become a blogger if you’ve never really had a way with words?</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Becoming a blogger is a process that assumes that you:</p>

<ul>
<li dir=”ltr”>
<p dir=”ltr”>Love and know your subject</p>
</li>
<li dir=”ltr”>
<p dir=”ltr”>Have excellent writing skills</p>
</li>
<li dir=”ltr”>
<p dir=”ltr”>Have a marketing plan and stick to it no matter what</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p dir=”ltr”>People who are passionate about and experts at what they do will have no trouble finding topics to talk about on their blog. You’ll find that especially if you’re a leader in your niche market, you will see how quickly people will become dedicated blog readers.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>However, when it comes to writing skills, you won’t keep those readers if your English isn’t in tip-top shape. Yes, typos and misspellings do happen and people will forgive them or ignore them occasionally, but if you fail to abide by simple 4th grade grammar rules, this will harm your blog and the reputation you’re trying to build around your brand.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>If you want to start a blog, ensure you first brush up your writing skills — especially spelling and vocabulary. Even if at first you’re only using text messages or a Twitter feed, make sure you know the meaning of the words you’re using, and that you’re spelling them correctly. Proper English and good grammar will never go out of style. By ensuring you write professionally in every medium, you’ll create a stepping stone towards writing blogs that will (potentially) go viral.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Bloggers who are fanatically followed and read by their communities are the ones who have self-improvement and self-education as their top priorities. These are people who are able to contribute new ideas, introduce new perspectives, and find new ways to solve a problem or unveil an ignored factor people couldn’t see before.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>That being said, ensure you are active in your market so that you know what you’re writing about. Learn about the latest developments, see what’s trending, and take note of what is falling in popularity. Learn new words and concepts introduced in your market and in the wider social discourse as well. This way, your writing will reflect this relevancy and radiate the self-confidence of a knowledgeable, expert blogger.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>Finally, remember some basic rules for blogging:</p>

<ul>
<li dir=”ltr”>
<p dir=”ltr”>Write in a conversational tone. Use “you” a lot to make the blog post more shareable and personal.</p>
</li>
<li dir=”ltr”>
<p dir=”ltr”>Storytelling is a great hook. Use this technique to intrigue readers into staying on the page.</p>
</li>
<li dir=”ltr”>
<p dir=”ltr”>Write compelling content. Use numbers, cite studies, and share stats to drive a point home. These help build trust.</p>
</li>
</ul>

<em>Cross-posted on the <a href=”http://www.ultimatevocabulary.com/2014/09/play-with-words-become-a-blogger-yourself” target=”_blank”>Vocabulary Improvement</a> blog.</em>

<hr />

<strong><em>Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments</em></strong>

Mind-mapping is visual thinking. It’s an information processing model that lets you represent information in a way that involves a part of your brain that helps you see connections. You can tell from recent technological and cultural trends that visualization and graphic imagery is gaining ground as an effective form of presenting information.

Think of Pinterest and infographics for instance; both are image-based models of information portrayal and their popularity keeps on increasing.

Mind-mapping skills help you process information quickly and easily and let you retrieve that information at any time. When combined, mind-mapping and speed reading can become your tools for achieving astonishing new records of information assimilation.

Why mind-mapping will help you process information faster:

Succinct

You can succinctly illustrate complex relationships (causation, correlation) by activating your mind-mapping skills. When reading you can visually represent, either mentally or on paper, incoming information in ways that are instantly understood.

In particular, if mind mapping is done in your head, you can save yourself great amounts of information processing time, boosting your reading speed even further.

Information-friendly

Another characteristic of mind-mapping is that it’s the ideal method when it comes to factual information processing and acquisition. Being efficient in mind-mapping means you are capable of easily identifying key connections, grasping complex concepts, and arriving at conclusions fast and correctly.

Think of mind-mapping as your tool for taking information and turning it into active knowledge. When speed reading you need an approach that takes information, processes it and yields back knowledge, all done at high speed. That’s what mind-mapping does, by helping you process and understand new information. With such an efficiency tool, you are more likely to read faster, thereby increasing your productivity and overall benefits.

Time-efficient

Mind-mapping helps increase your reading efficiency. It allows you to create visual images on the go; every new clue, sentence or paragraph is processed and added to the existing network of connections and relationships. In this manner, your knowledge continues to grow at an efficient speed and pace.

These three features of mind-mapping – being succinct, information-friendly and time-efficient – are what makes it a great skill to consider if you wish to read and assimilate new information faster.

While speed reading as an approach is a complete method in itself, by using this technique along with mind-mapping you can unlock more of speed reading’s power in the struggle to conquer information overload.

Advantages of Mind-mapping

One of the major advantages of mind mapping is that it’s a system that favors information retention and usage.

Mind-mapping is more than visually processing/representing information, it’s about finding ways to understand, store and use new information in an efficient, instant and productive manner.

Another advantage of mind-mapping is that it’s an integrated approach to information processing. It forces you to connect new to existing information, draw complex conclusions, see the bigger picture, revise previous and irrelevant opinions and overall, become a critical thinker who actively engages with information in order to transform it into knowledge.

In a nutshell, mind-mapping makes reading strategic and purposeful.

The relationship  between mind-mapping and speed reading is a mutually reinforcing one. The better you become in one, the better the other will become. This is a process that keeps evolving the more you practice, making you a better, faster reader with an outstanding amount of knowledge and wisdom at your fingertips.

Have you ever wondered how words can affect your perception of reality, let alone your emotions and self-image? Words don’t just express emotions or ideas — their function is not purely communicative — and words can in fact have an enduring and substantial influence on your self-esteem.

Limiting yourself to static, negative words and phrases harms your sense of self-worth. Confidence partly stems from how we perceive ourselves and partly from how we believe others perceive us. Therefore, by broadening your vocabulary, enriching it with affirmative phrases and words, you give yourself the vocabulary you need to describe yourself in the best possible light.

Urban lifestyles force us to use a limited vocabulary on our day to day activities. In fact, we try to communicate with the fewest possible words to save time and get things done faster.

What if we could do something more constructive instead?

What if we consciously chose meaningful and emotionally charged words to describe our feelings, intentions, and thoughts? Then we would get a more rewarding experience of ourselves and our reality, encouraging a more positive approach to life.

By improving your vocabulary you equip yourself with new concepts to describe and experience your identity. On the other hand, a limited vocabulary is limiting: it doesn’t let you fully explore the positive qualities and sensibilities that you have, it doesn’t let you acknowledge and articulate them and, by extension, appreciate your self-worth.

Therefore, consciously strive to enrich your vocabulary with affirmative, meaningful words that can uplift, motivate, and support you. Learn and express affirmative words that highlight your assets, your qualities, and your uniqueness.

Sensibilities

even-tempered, solicitous, fair-minded, optimistic, unostentatious

Qualities

zealous, sagacious, high-reaching, inspirational, joyful

Traits

organized, conscientious, autonomous, judicious, dedicated

Here are three more words that you can use to describe yourself:

Sagacious

It’s the synonym for shrewd and smart. You might consider yourself shrewd and intelligent, but these are words that have lost their momentum because they’re worn-out from daily use. Sagacious, on the other hand, has a different kind of power and vibe to it. It is a word that’s uncommon, and out of the ordinary, instantly giving you a more strong impression as to its capacity and reach.

Asserting that you are sagacious rather than clever, you visualize yourself in a much more flattering light. The same can be said for all of the other words in the lists above.

Offbeat

Using offbeat to describe your inclination to be peculiarly unique has an entirely different ring to it. By describing yourself as offbeat, instead of weird or strange, you assign an affirmative quality to your self-identity. This word helps emphasize your uniqueness and brings out your uncommon but fresh take on life.

Quixotic

Refers to people who are idealists, who are inclined to be romantic and at times excessively utopian. Asserting and endorsing your quixotic nature lets you take this quality and invest it in ways that can be practical and beneficial. Others might consider your starry-eyed stance unrealistic and immature, but if you embrace your quixoticism you take what’s considered a weakness and turn it into an asset.

By enriching your vocabulary with affirmative words like these you create a pool of dynamic and agreeable concepts you can use to improve your self-image and change the way you look at yourself and your life. Ultimate Vocabulary software can be your primary tool to taking this essential step.