Self-development
12 Books to Elevate Your Vacation Reading List
We selected 12 reads that will add the most value to your leisure time. From eye-opening memoirs, through compelling fiction, to enlightening self-help – we’ve got you covered. Enjoy!
Start a Digital Detox this Summer
The summer season–and the extra downtime it usually comes with–is the perfect opportunity to take a break from the screen, be more present, and engage in more productive activities. Here’s some practical advice on how to get started.
The Art of Packing Light
We’ve prepared these practical tips and tricks on how to pack light for your vacation to prevent you from feeling weighed down by too much stuff and allow you to focus your energy on what matters most––the experience you’re having.
How to Stay Present and Mindful on Your Vacation
It’s time to let go of expectations and control when it comes to vacations. Discover some practical tips on how to enjoy every moment as it comes, appreciate the unexpected, and enhance your holiday experience.
News Flash: Doomscrolling Is Harmful To Your Health
The endless news cycle we consume takes its toll on our mental and physical health. Binging online negativity – doomscrolling – may be the most harmful way to stay informed. Choose news abstinence to live a longer and happier life.
How to Sleep Better
For anyone looking to live a mindful and intelligent lifestyle, sleep is a fundamental part of the success recipe. Here we look at simple, practical ways to prime your body for sleep and improve your wellbeing.
Body Neutrality: The Healthier Alternative to Body Positivity
Love and cherish your body, you only have one. Respect it for dealing so well with everything you put it through on a daily basis and appreciate it for keeping you alive. Your anatomy is so much more than its appearance.
Time to Celebrate: 8 Tips for Writing and Delivering a Compelling Speech
Your speech is a gift to your audience. With the right approach and enough preparation, it can sweep your listeners off their feet. Whether it’s a wedding toast, commencement speech, or eulogy, keep our guidelines in mind and you will never again lose sleep over the stress of a live performance.
Tear Up: Overcoming the Stigma of Crying In the Workplace
Even though crying is a natural human reaction, it makes people uncomfortable. Despite the high levels of stress, anxiety, and pressure that accompany us in a typical work environment, crying remains a frowned-upon reaction, yet it is the quickest attempt to defuse the tension.
75 Journaling Prompts
Don’t know what to write about in your journal? Here are 75 journaling prompts that we’ve prepared for you to boost your inspiration, reflection, and self-discovery.
How to Pick Up the Pieces and Rebuild Your Life
After a big personal or collective shift, coming back into life is both daunting and equally full of opportunity. Here, we look at how to start a new chapter with better habits, more mental strength, and brighter perspectives.
Come, Take a Gratitude Walk with Us
Gratitude is a gift that keeps on giving. In combination with walking, it’s pure magic in motion. One step at a time, walk your body and mind into well-being, and your dreams into reality.
At The Crossroads of Should and Must, Which One Will You Choose?
Every act of decision-making is a crossroad. The most common paths laid before us are should and must ― two very different energies, one tinted with a sense of duty, the other loaded with pure potential. Make sure you choose what is right, not what is easy.
Connecting to Your Intuition
Living life on your own terms means being able to tap into your intuition, often referred to as your "gut feeling." Here, we look at what some of the greatest modern-day thinkers have to say about tapping into your inner wisdom and living authentically.
Mental Hygiene: Why Do We Need It
Mental health is about living a fulfilling life and unleashing your full potential. In this article, our goal is to shed light on what mental hygiene is, explain why it’s important, and give some advice on its maintenance.
Connecting the Dots of a Clear Life Vision
Since we only have one life, we might as well live it to the fullest. Create a vision for yourself. Use your freedom, dare to dream, devise a plan with utmost specificity, and keep going. Clarity comes from engagement.
The Importance of Giving
Being able to give makes us feel like we’re making a big impact on someone’s life, encouraging us to do more good and uncover a different perspective of happiness.
Design Your Reality with Five Questions from Seth Godin
Reality can be successfully influenced, designed, and shaped to our liking with decisions, actions, and their consequences. Asking questions, five of them to be precise, provides guidance on the way to greatness.
Here and Now: Staycation and Summer Essentialism
Squeezing the juice out of your current reality can generate the kind of fulfillment that can fortify your mental wellbeing against the monotony of the daily grind. Take a break, focus on what’s essential to you, and believe in the magic of the here and now.
Emotional Diversity: A Deep Dive into Feelings
Emotional diversity is the spice of life. The emotional depth that each and every one of us carries inside is what allows us to keep improving the reality we live in. Are you ready to dive deeper into the ocean of emotions enchanted within you?
How to Support Your Mental Health at Work
Focusing on mental health at the workplace has immense benefits for both the employee and the employer. That’s why we’d like to share several tips with you on how to support your mental health at work.
Gaining Emotional Literacy with Plutchik’s Wheel
Emotions are energy in motion. Adding depth to who we are, they enable us to taste life in all its flavors. Yet, to understand them properly and harness their power we need tools. Enter the Plutchik's wheel.
Is Changing Our Brain a Matter of Changing Our Mind?
The wiring in our brains is not fixed, it’s adaptable. We can harness the power of neuroplasticity and take responsibility for our brains by transforming our minds. It is not easy but it is worth it. Wellbeing is a skill.
Life-Changing Power of Gratitude: From Federal Prison to Enlightenment
Craig Stanland is a reinvention architect. After being sentenced to 2 years of Federal Prison and hitting his absolute rock bottom, he’s spent the past several years rebuilding himself through gratitude practice, journaling, and meditation.
Emotional Intelligence and Its Role in Relationships
The deep understanding of emotions, sensitivity to signals of emotional shifts, total engagement in a relationship, and emotional stability and life satisfaction are the main benefits of developing emotional intelligence skills.
How to Stay Sane During a Crisis
Life is neither designed for suffering nor for eternal, never-ending joy. Life is not black and white, it is what you make out of it. Every challenge is a new opportunity for growth and strength.
Alone, Not Lonely: Benefits of Intentional Solitude
Intentional solitude is nothing to be fearful of. Au contraire, it’s bursting with potential and possibilities. The freedom in it may provide you with insights you’d never experience in the presence of others and enhance your relationship with yourself in more ways than one.
Intentions vs. Goals
Setting up intentions for your goals can do magic for your motivation, persistence, and your overall satisfaction in the process of achieving your goals.
How to Add More Fun to Anything You Do
The purpose of life is to enjoy it. What better way to do that if not by indulging in more fun. Do more of what makes you happy and whistle your way through what brings you less joy but needs to be done. It’s all about your attitude.
Is It Okay to Not Be Okay?
In this article, we’d like to talk about “being not okay”, with the goal of normalizing this state. We are so deeply conditioned into striving for okayness that we don’t realize we’re missing out on a lot by avoiding the state of un-okayness.
Expectations vs. Reality: Dismantling The Trap
Life is unpredictable and expectations are no guarantee. The only certainty that can live up to your expectation is the blissful freedom from it and the simplest antidote is gratitude.
How to Make Yourself and Your Mental Well-Being a Priority
To show up for your career and community, you have to show up for yourself first. In this article, we explain why emotional health is important and share some steps you can take to prioritize self-care and put mental well-being on your to-do list.
What Is Impostor Syndrome & How to Overcome It
There are certain things we can do as individuals to overcome impostor syndrom stigma and live a rather fulfilling life. But first, let’s get acquainted with the phenomenon, as it’s the first step towards overcoming it.
Understanding and Living With ADHD
We dive into this mental health condition to better understand its symptoms and the lifestyle choices that can help support those diagnosed with ADHD.
Toxic Positivity: In Defense of Negative Emotions
Toxic positivity is forced happiness. It’s the assumption that despite your difficulties and challenges you should be cheerful. But life is a package deal, it comes with both light and darkness and we need an array of emotions to accept and deal with both.
Blessings in Disguise: 7 Lessons on How to Fail Well
Not every failure leads to success, yet success is hardly possible without failure. The more we fail, the more likely we are to succeed. We’ve chosen 7 success stories to prove that defeat can lead to victory.
Dealing With Grief and Loss
In this article, we’ll explain what grief actually is, share some common myths and facts, and, most importantly, share tips on how to deal with it in as healthy way as possible.
From Happiness to Flourishing in Five PERMAnent Steps
Flourishing is a state of sincere positivity and deep fulfillment in which our meaning is bigger than ourselves and our resilience stronger than adversity. Read on to find out how to create flourishing in your own reality.
Goodbye Apathy: Combat Symptoms of Languishing
Mental health is a spectrum and languishing, the peculiar state between depression and wellbeing, is a serious risk factor. After reading this article you'll be well equipped with solid strategies to combat your feelings of emptiness.
The Power of Daydreaming
Traditionally, having your head in the clouds was far from a compliment, but today the positive, constructive benefits of being a dreamer are becoming more prevalent. Find out more about the power of daydreaming and how to use your imagination to your advantage.
Coping with Nostalgia to Rediscover the Joy of Now
At times, we can get so deeply entangled in nostalgia that we start denying the present. We can become attached to the beauty of the past with such intensity that we feel like that kind of happiness will never happen to us again. Here's how to let go of the past
4 Tips to Cultivate Gratitude & Grow Child’s Brain with Positivity
How to raise a grateful child and nurture their positivity? Here’s what you can do as a parent, family member and a friend to nurture gratitude in the kids.
Stop Chasing Happiness and Start Enjoying Your Life
In this article, we’ll cover some of the common misconceptions about happiness and explain the difference between chasing happiness and enjoying your life.
The Effects of Perfectionism on Happiness and Success
Perfection is the absence of flaws. Perfection is a myth. Nobody and nothing can ever be truly perfect and yet so many of us fall victim to the pursuit of the impossible every chance we get.
Expansive vs. Contracted: How Our Body Makes Decisions
The process of making a decision might take anything from a split second to infinity, yet, conscious or unconscious, it’s a complex occurrence in the mind and body.
5 Ways to Start Being More Sustainable
If you’d like to put your daily choices under control, it’s time to get informed and take more sustainable and conscious actions that lead to positive changes.
Make Your Own Power Space
Just like having a dedicated workspace can help reduce distractions and make you feel empowered for a productive day in your home office, a power space is a spot at your home that’s filled with good energy, joy and items that inspire you.
How to Become a Responsible Consumer
In this article, we’ll guide you through some of the basic principles of sustainable thinking and briefly remind you of some responsible and conscious shopping practices you can implement in your everyday life.
What Is Social Intelligence and Why Should I Develop It?
Understanding social roles, reading emotions, comprehending relationships, or effective listening. These are some of the social intelligence skills. Continue reading to discover what social intelligence is and how you can reap its benefits.
The Five Languages of (Self) Love
The quality of our relationships with other people and ourselves is a direct result of the quality of work we invest in building and developing them. In this article, we analyze five love languages to help you understand the inner mechanisms of your relationships.
Filtering Through the Noise: Useless Vs. Useful Criticism
The sooner we learn how to distinguish negative from constructive criticism, the richer our lives will become. In this article, we explain how you can do that.
10 Habits for Inner Peace
In this article, we’ll describe several behaviors designed to bring you closer to achieving inner balance and calmness–habits for peace.
Learning to Identify Who You Are
How to create our identity statement and adopt a set of values that no matter what will always guide us and help us decide which road to take? We answer some of these questions in this article.
Guiding Lights: How to Choose Your Mentors Wisely
Finding a mentor has the life-altering potential to open up a whole new chapter in your journey. Here's how you can choose your mentor.
The One-Size-Fits-All Approach To Motivation
Action creates motivation. Start simple and focus on the process rather than the goal. It will give you a sense of accomplishment that fuels motivation. With the destination in sight, it’s still all about the journey.
Align Your Own Stars: Everyday Ideas for Positive Affirmations
Life is what you make it. If you recognize the power of affirmations as a force that can build you and your reality up, you might become unstoppable. In today’s article we give you examples of different affirmations you can use to attract abundance into your life.
How to Prevent Burnout and How to Heal From It
The best way to prevent burnout is to implement a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Although you can’t always prevent stress from happening, you can choose how you prepare for it and how you react to it.
Learning to Say "No"
With blurred boundaries, we often find it hard to determine whether it’s okay to reject an offer. Is there a way to say “no” without hurting other people’s feelings? What can “no” mean in a broader sense? Let’s explore that topic further.
Free Yourself From Old Narratives and Write a New One
We live by creating stories – from our past, altered memories, false self-beliefs, or someone's expectations. How do we change our narrative? Here's how to start from a clean slate.
How to Hold Yourself Accountable
You can accomplish your goals through consistency, persistence, and motivation. That means staying in the game even when things get rough. Here's how.
The Metamorphosis: How to Get Tougher than the Tough Times
Can we prepare for anything that life throws at us? Not really. However, there are certain grounding mechanisms and strength practices that we want to share with you today to help you navigate challenging times in your life.
How to Make Stress Your Friend
It’s time to make a positive change and befriend your stress. In this article, we explain how to acquire certain skills, change your habits, and take control of how you feel about stress.
How to Draw the Line Between What You Do and Who You Are
Today the ‘border’ between our work life and our personal life is barely visible. It's time to set clear boundaries, redraw the line between who we are and what we do, and redefine our approach to our career.
In Celebration and Appreciation of Women
Today we celebrate women in all their might and glory. We see you, we love you, and we thank you.
Inspiration Time: New Ideas for Things to Be Grateful for
We’ve prepared a list of different categories and things you can be grateful for to assist you on your journaling experience and to guide you on your journey to appreciation, mindful living and self-growth.
6 Ways to Deal With Daily Challenges and Obstacles
This article is a framework for dealing with tough and challenging moments in life. We’ll share some useful tips and additional reading resources that will guide you towards living a happier life and having a lighter approach to daily challenges and obstacles.
The Gift of a Day Off: How to Properly Enjoy It
A single day off has the power to rebuild you, recenter you, and reconnect you with your purpose. Here’s how to spend your free time to regain mental and physical stamina you need in order to become the best version of yourself.
Emotion Management to Help You Deal with Procrastination
Procrastination is an emotional issue that needs resolution by using logic, reason, and emotional investment. In this article, we explain how.
How to Cultivate Gratitude Within a Team
We've prepared this short and straightforward team gratitude guide for all the leaders out there who’d like to make a positive change among their team.
Twilight Rituals: The Power Of A Nighttime Routine
Our evening routine is as important for our success and wellbeing as what we do with our time in the morning. In today’s article we go over the twilight rituals and self-care practices that will prepare you for a good night’s sleep.
Redefining Success
Let’s redefine success. Let’s discover various viewpoints on this universally important phenomenon, gain insights, explore different perspectives, and engage in personal growth.
How to Be Happy
How do we become happy? Where does happiness come from? What is happiness? This is the ultimate guide on how to be happy and find your source of inner balance, joy, and life satisfaction.
You Do You: How to Be Yourself and Own Your Space in the Universe
The moment you discover and accept your most authentic self, you transcend the material world. You become liberated, stripped away of the inessential, and free to fully own your life. In this article, we discuss how you can own your space in the universe.
Minimalist House Tour: Why Less Is More Than Enough
To help you make room for minimalism in your life, we’ve created a structured representation of its most important assumptions. Welcome to our minimalist house tour.
Proaction vs Reaction: The Art of Taking Control
How often do you feel like your mood and actions depend on external circumstances? In this article, we discuss two terms – 'proaction' and 'reaction' – that influence our behaviour.
How to Find Balance in Your Life
Achieving balance begins with setting up a positive mindset and progresses to better organization and life satisfaction. In this article, we’ll share with you everything we know about finding balance in life.
Why We Sabotage Our Own Happiness
Self-sabotage is engaging in actions that ultimately get in the way of our primary intention and final goal. Continue reading to discover what are the best antidotes for stopping yourself from taking risks and living the life of your dreams.
Flaws And All: Self-Compassion For Beginners
In the event of misfortune, how do we calm our inner critic and at the same time take full responsibility for our lives? Through self-compassion.
The Power of NOW
The truest path to living a conscious and fulfilled life is to be present in the now. How does one achieve the state of presence? How to live your life to the fullest, right here, right now? Continue reading and discover how to embrace the current moment.
How to Stop Making Excuses, Complaining and Judging
Complaining, judging, and making excuses. At a glance, these seem unrelated, apart from the fact that they have destructive potential. In this article, we’re going to tackle all three of them, analyze them, explain, and see what can be done to overcome these behaviours.
12 Pathways To Getting Better At Being Good
As the best-selling author Sheryl Strayed explains, goodness is an act of being and doing. Yet, as challenging and complicated as being good might feel, simple acts of kindness have the power to guide us in the right direction. In this article, we explore different paths to getting better at being good.
Self-Growth Books: 15 Best Personal Development and Self- Improvement Books
In this article, you’ll have a chance to read a short synopsis of our favorite self-growth books on how to improve your lifestyle, find purpose and unleash your full potential.
Outdoor Therapy: Benefits of Reconnecting with Nature
Nature is crucial to our mental and physical wellbeing, and it has healing powers. We are born from the earth and we will one day turn back into it, which makes our relationship with Mother Nature of vital importance. In this article, we explore how we can care for this bond and continue to rely on it.
What Is a Fixed Mindset: How Having a Fixed Mindset Could Be Holding You Back?
In this article, we’ll focus on the opposite concept on growth mindset, the fixed mindset, and give you a new perspective on why and how this way of thinking can restrain you in life, and what are first steps to change.
How to Become More Conscious in Everyday Life
Full presence gives us more control over our lives and makes us more efficient in everyday activities. If you’re looking for ways to be more conscious and present in everyday life, here are 9 habits you can implement into your day-to-day life to live more mindfully.
The Art of Life According to Ancient Stoic Philosophers
The school of thought that is both closest to our hearts at Intelligent Change and has the most practical application of its principles is stoicism. Let's explore bits of stoic wisdom together.
13 Habits of Successful People
The road towards success is a challenging one. We talked to the successful people we know and discovered their routines and habits. Instilling some of these habits of successful people might help you remain in balance while moving closer to achieving your goals and living the life of your dreams
To The Moon And Back: Self-love For Beginners
Self-love is prioritizing your happiness and well-being in a healthy and self-compassionate manner while consciously working towards maximizing your potential to live out your dreams and lead the life of purpose. In this article, you will discover how to practice self-love.
Finding Your Purpose in Life
Do you struggle with finding your purpose in life? Here are some tips on what you can do to find or enhance your sense of purpose in life.
How to Have Your Best Year Ever: Annual Planning Practice
Reviewing your past year and creating a vision for the following year is important if you want to live the life of your dreams. In this article, we share with you tips on how you can plan your next 12 months with purpose and mindfulness.
Home Sweet Home: How to Create an Atmosphere of Gratitude
Transforming your space into a sanctuary of gratitude is not that hard of a job, although it does require an open mind and a bit of time and dedication. In this article, we share how to create an atmosphere of gratitude at your home.
10 Simple and Powerful Lessons From Famous Thought Leaders
We’ve prepared an inspirational article with simple but powerful stories and productivity quotes from famous entrepreneurs, artists and thought leaders.
How to Plan Your Day, Your Week, Your Year
Learning how to plan your day, plan your week, as well as plan your year can truly change the way you see the world. In this article, we share some best tips on how to do that.
How to Feel Grateful When Life Gets Hard
Practicing gratitude when life is hard should be both about acknowledging the suffering and taking action towards a positive change. In this article, we share five tips for feeling more grateful when going through a rough patch.
The 1% Changes To Create Successful Habits
A step by step system for using tiny changes to create long term successful habits.
How to Embrace Change in Your Life
Although change is a normal and necessary part of human life, accepting it can be a real challenge. Still wondering how to embrace change? Here is how.
The Five Key Relationships That Will Help You Become the Best You
Relationships we have with others directly influences the level of our happiness and success. In this article, we uncover the five key relationships that will help you become the best you.
Reflective Journal: How to Write One and Prompts
Keeping a reflective journal is one of the most common ways of keeping a diary. Many people use it to write about their experiences, impressions, feelings, or doubts to gain an insight into their inner life. In this article, we give you some tips on how you can keep a reflective journal.
How You Can Spread Joy This Holiday
This holiday season may differ from last year’s, yet we believe it can be even more empowering, meaningful and mindful. Here are some ideas how you can spread joy.
5 Tips for Mindful Gift Giving
In this article, we want to share with you five tips that will help you embrace mindfulness during the holiday season and discover joy of meaningful gift giving from the heart.
20 Types of Journals to Keep
In this article, we discover why it's important to be a journaler; analyze 20 types of journals that are out there; and explain how you can benefit from keeping each of them.
Four Tips on How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Getting off social networks can be beneficial temporarily, but it won’t prevent you from feeling bad when you fall into the social comparison trap. So, what do you do then? Here are 4 steps.
Good News of the Week
Cow hugging is a new Dutch way of boosting mental health; Boston Hospital grows "food medicine" in organic farm on its roof; new sustainable initiative from Ikea, and other positive news.
What Is Growth Mindset and How to Achieve It
A growth mindset is an approach to life in which people believe that their talents, intelligence, and abilities can be developed further. Learn how to switch from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset and achieve your goals in every area of your life.
Present Day – How Social Media Detox Helps Restore Your Energy
Mimi Ikonn, partner at Intelligent Change, talks about why it is so important to practice weekly social media breaks; how screen time detox helps restore your energy and declutter your mind; and shares the first steps to take in order to connect with your inner self.
How to Create a Positive Mindset and Attitude in Life
A positive mindset is a game-changer, as it will further elevate and improve your attitude and behavior, and make you a happier person in the process.This article is all about showing you what, how, and why of achieving a positive mindset and attitude in life, so let’s get started.
The Power of List-Making
Lists go beyond the tasks to accomplish or things you need to buy. Lists are an easy and effective way to reconnect with how you feel about what’s going on in your life, understand what truly matters, determine where you’d like to go next. Here are some ideas for list-making.
The Power of Affirmations
The goal of this article is to teach you about positive affirmations and help you turn those self-doubts and negative thoughts into inspiring daily affirmations.
Your Mess Is Your Message
Cathy Heller is the author of Don't Keep Your Day Job sharing wisdom, anecdotes, and practical suggestions from successful creative entrepreneurs and experts. In this post, she details heartbreaking losses and failures of her and others, and yet, still finding success.
How to Navigate Change
Here is an excerpt from Neil Pasricha's new book: You Are Awesome. It's a heartfelt book on cultivating resilience, spending your time more wisely, and becoming a happier human.
Best of 2018 Intelligent Tuesday
The best of 2018 Intelligent Tuesday happiness, productivity, and mindfulness tips from the year.
Elimination Planning: 5 Questions To Improve Your Productivity
The 5-Step Process to helping you become more productive by eliminating what makes you unproductive.
9 Conventional (and Not So Conventional) Mindfulness Techniques of Top Performers
9 conventional and unconventional mindfulness techniques used by top performers in their field from CEOs, authors, artists, and more with descriptions of each.
Best of 2017 Intelligent Tuesday
The best of 2017 Intelligent Tuesday resources on happiness, productivity, fulfillment and more as decided by our 100,000 readers and personal favorites.
6 Findings After Researching 1,000 Self-Help Articles the Last 6 Months
After researching 1,000s of self-help resources, here are 6 key findings.
Intelligent Tuesday: Best of 2019
The best resources on joy, productivity, and self-fulfillment that has enhanced our lives in 2019.
How to set more effective personal goals
Use the habit building buffer zone to set more effective personal goals. Here's how.
It’s Not About Passion, It’s About Your Purpose in Life
Enter Ryan Holiday, best-selling author of the Obstacle is the Way and former marketing director for American Apparel, to talk about why following your purpose in life is much better than passion
Two Awesome Hours by Josh Davis Book Notes
Book notes from the book, "Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done" by Josh Davis