7 Practical Strategies to Avoid Being Distracted

7 Practical Strategies to Avoid Being Distracted

Focus is the new superpower. Think about it. How many times has someone asked you a question, but didn’t hear your response because they were distracted by their smartphone? They couldn’t focus on your response for five seconds, and they actually wanted to know the answer!

If you want to have a huge advantage over all the competition in your life, learn how to avoid being distracted. You’ll find there isn’t really as much competition as you originally thought. You’ll be able to get far more done in far less time. That’s a real advantage.

Try these techniques to strengthen your focus:

1. Work at the optimal time. We all have a time of day that we’re best at focusing. For most people, it’s either early in the day or later at night that our ability to focus is at its highest. Whenever possible, schedule those activities that require great focus during those times. Save easier tasks for other times of the day.
2. Remove distractions. One way to be less distracted is to have fewer distractions. Consider what you’re commonly distracted by and do what you can to eliminate those distractions from your environment.
   • For example, you can’t be distracted by your phone if it’s turned off and in the other room.
   • The TV isn’t a distraction if there isn’t one in the room.
   • If you’re distracted by a noisy environment, use noise-cancelling headphones while you work.
     
3. Set your intention. Decide what you’re going to accomplish before you begin a task. How long are you going to work on it? What is the endpoint? Is it completion or a specific amount of time? Decide that you’re going to focus on this task until that endpoint is reached.
4. Use a timer. A timer is an easy way to magnify your focus and avoid being distracted. Set the timer for the appropriate amount of time and see how much you can get done in that time. Commit to working non-stop until your time elapses.
5. Practice focusing in your daily life. The way to avoid being distracted is to be good at focusing. You’re either doing one or the other every moment of the day. Whether you’re eating a meal, driving, taking a shower, watching TV, or having a conversation, try to focus completely on what you’re doing.
   • Focus is a skill that grows with practice.
6. Take breaks. No one can focus intently for hours and hours without a break. Experiment and see how often you need to take a break and how long your breaks need to be in order to feel recharged.
   • Keep in mind that it’s better to take a break before you actually feel the need for one.
   • Studies have shown that most people do best with a five-minute break every 30 minutes. A longer break is needed every couple of hours. Use this information as a starting point and experiment.
7. Get sufficient sleep. You can’t focus well if you’re not getting enough sleep. Your brain just doesn’t work very well without the rest it requires.
   • How much sleep do you need? As much as it takes, but it’s likely to be more than you first guess.

It would be awesome to be able to fly or to walk through walls, but that’s not going to happen. The ability to focus, however, is incredibly powerful and a skill you can actually develop.

When you can do more, at a higher level, in less time, the competition in your life evaporates. You can outwork everyone without feeling like you’re working that hard. Avoid distraction and be a superhero!

How to Get Better at Anything

How to Get Better at Anything as Quickly as Possible

A few people are lucky to have a lot of talent for a specific skill and seem to progress very quickly without a lot of effort. For the rest of us, it’s best to make an intelligent effort to progress quickly.

There’s so much information available today that the only real limiting factors are time and motivation. Still, there is a smart way to do anything. With the proper approach, you can develop mastery at the highest possible rate!

Follow this process and be amazed at what you can do:

1. Educate yourself. Whether you want to master fundraising for a charity, the piano, cooking, gardening, or learning a language, there are hundreds of books on the topic. There are also podcasts, videos, and courses on your area of interest.
   • Read three books on the topic. Avoid just reading the book. Take notes, too. Find three popular books on your topic and educate yourself.
   • Watch two videos. There are plenty of videos online to choose from. Find an expert and see what they have to say.
   • Listen to one podcast. Podcasts have never been more popular. Find an expert in your field of interest and listen.
   • Look for the recurring themes in all the educational sources you use. These are the foundational items that are the most important to master.
   • Learning and getting better at anything are active processes. Look for these recurring themes rather than digesting the information passively.
2. Find a mentor. Mentors make everything happen faster. They know what matters and what doesn’t. They know all the obstacles you’re likely to face. They can provide focus, encouragement, and most importantly, feedback.
   • A mentor can take the form of a coach, teacher, guru, expert, or whatever term resonates with you.
3. Practice. It’s challenging to improve at anything without practice. The more you practice the better you’ll become. The more you practice, the faster you’ll improve.
   • Practice with intention. Know what you’re trying to accomplish before you begin practicing. You might be working on learning all the Russian words associated with ordering in a restaurant. Or maybe your intention is to learn the A sharp minor scale on the guitar.
   • Practice with an effective frequency. Practicing the piano multiple times each day is better than practicing just once a day. While it would be nice to work on your public speaking skills multiple times each day, that might not be practical or even possible.
   • Practice with focus. Your practice time is much less effective if you’re not paying 100% attention to what you’re doing.
4. Evaluate. Did you slice your drive out of bounds? Why did it happen? How consistent are your quarter notes? How accurate is your French accent? How is your public speaking coming along?
   • Some things you can test yourself, like your Spanish vocabulary. Other things will require the evaluation of someone with more expertise than you have. This is why it’s so great to have a mentor, teacher, or coach.
5. Practice more. Take what you’ve learned and practice some more. Frequent practice is the key to progress.

If you learn, practice, evaluate, and continue to repeat the process, you’ll improve as fast as humanly possible. The only limits are your time, focus, the quality of your mentor, and ultimately, your talent.

Don’t make the mistake of underestimating the value of how much you practice and how much focus you bring to the task. These are under your control and are the practical limiting factors the vast majority of the time.

With time, effort, and an intelligent approach, you can progress at anything at the highest possible rate.

Why Taking Action is the Thing That Matters

Why Taking Action is the Thing That Matters

Do you spend all of your free time reading and gathering information? Are you a self-help junkie that never seems to make any meaningful progress in your life? Are you trying to take your life to the next level by using the power of your mind alone?

How is that working for you?

Nothing changes until your behavior changes. Sure, you might feel better about your life after all of your mental gymnastics, but is anything actually happening in your life from all of these intellectual efforts?

Take action and watch your life change before your eyes!

Consider these ideas:

1. You have to do something for something to happen. Nothing happens until you act. You can’t wish or visualize your way to a plate of food, a fancy car, the partner or your dreams, or a successful business. Those things might make it easier for you to act, but you must still take action of some kind.
   • Unless you’re telekinetic, you can’t even make a paperclip move across your desk without taking action.
   • The more you want to accomplish, the bigger the action you’ll need to take.
2. It’s not what you can do that matters. It’s what you actually do that counts. The amount of capability you possess only increases the number of options you have available.
   • Having options isn’t the same as choosing one and taking action.
3. Your beliefs, values, and thoughts influence your behavior. For example, if you believe that you’re smart, capable, and good looking, your behavior will be different than if you believe that you’re simple minded, incapable, and homely in appearance. Here are some more examples:
   • Do you believe that failure is fine or to be avoided at all costs?
   • Do you believe that most people are inherently good or inherently bad?
   • Do you value safety or adventure?
   • Do you have positive thoughts about your goals or negative?
   • None of these things has any actual power in the world, other than that they can alter the choices you make and the actions you take.
4. The law of averages is ultimately on your side. If your dream is to play the piano, you can certainly do it. You simply have to keep trying. A pro pianist might play a certain piece better than you do, but you’ll most likely be successful eventually.
   • When you take action, you get a result. You’re bound to get the result you want eventually if you take action long enough. Eventually, the law of averages will pay off.
   • When you do nothing, you always fail.
5. Action creates potential. When you take action, you can learn from your results. When you take action, things change. New opportunities become available. You might meet a new person that can help you get what you want. When you take the first step, the next step appears.
   • Things start happening when you start moving. Nothing happens while you’re learning, scheming, and planning.

Things begin to change when your behavior changes. You’ve proven this to yourself thousands of times throughout your life. Your life changed when you started school, changed schools, and made new friends. Your life was different after you made permanent changes to your diet or started a new diet.

You can’t just accumulate knowledge, daydream, or make grand plans. You have to DO new things.

When your behavior changes, your life changes. How do you want your life to change? What can you DO to make it happen? When will you get started?

5 Ways to Program Your Subconscious Mind

5 Ways to Program Your Subconscious Mind

It depends on whose numbers you want to believe, but roughly 95% of our behavior is beyond our conscious awareness. Your subconscious files away your memories, experiences, perceptions, and insights and maintains them far beyond the recollection of your conscious mind.

These past experiences and revelations have a tremendous impact on your beliefs, habits, and general behavior.

Programming the subconscious mind is a powerful tool for altering behavior!

Using these strategies will help you program your mind to benefit your mind, body, and soul:

1. Affirmations. Everyone is familiar with affirmations. These are positive statements that you repeat to yourself each day. Affirmations can be powerful, but they must be used correctly:
   • Avoid affirmations that are clearly untrue. Your subconscious is flexible, but it’s not willing to seriously consider the ridiculous. Repeating, “I am a billionaire,” is too factually untrue to be accepted by your subconscious. “My financial situation is improving rapidly” is easier to swallow.
   • Use imagery and emotions to really sell it. See yourself as thin, financially successful, or selling your first novel. Generate the same emotion you would have in that situation.
   • Repeat your affirmations 3 sessions per day for 5-10 minutes each. Right before falling asleep, right after awakening, and any opportune time during the day are ideal times. For example, if you want to strengthen your confidence, repeat the affirmations when you’re feeling self-doubt.
2. Subliminal technology. There is software available that flashes subliminal messages on your computer screen. These programs can run all day long without your awareness. You can use the affirmations included with the software or write your own.
   • There are also audio programs with positive messages embedded in the music beyond your ability to consciously recognize.
   • There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the usefulness of these programs. Since so many are available for free, there’s no harm in giving them a try for a month. See what happens.
3. Hypnosis. You’ve been hypnotized many times. You probably just didn’t view it as hypnosis. When you’re totally engrossed in a book or movie, you’re hypnotized.
   • Hypnosis is just a state of intense concentration with a reduced awareness of what is happening in your immediate environment. In this state, you’re more suggestible. In other words, it’s easier to influence you or to change your mind.
   • There are many books, audio programs, and videos that utilize hypnotic techniques. Many people find these highly effective, while others seem less impressed. Again, give it a try and determine if it’s worth your time.
4. Meditation. Meditation is a great way of concentrating your focus. Meditation creates a mental state that opens the mind to new ideas. Meditation can be learned quite effectively from books and videos. It does require practice to become skilled, so this isn’t a quick fix.
5. Visualization. If you’re good at visualizing, you can convince your subconscious of nearly anything. A convincing visualization is viewed by your subconscious as an actual experience. For example, if you visualize yourself giving successful speeches, your subconscious will become convinced this is a skill you possess.
   • Again, the best time to use this process is right before falling asleep and upon awakening in the morning. Visualizing is easier and more effective at those times.

We are only aware of a tiny portion of what our brain is doing at any moment.

Our brains are dealing with far too much information for our conscious mind to process. The brain is controlling body temperature, blood pressure, pulse, digestion, concentrations of various salts, neurotransmitters, hormones, and far more sensory data than we’re aware of.

The same is true for our behavior. In theory, the subconscious mind controls 95% of our behavior. It only makes sense to address this 95%. There are several ways to program the subconscious. Pick one and see what you can accomplish!

How to Train Like an Athlete

How to Train Like an Athlete in Pursuit of Your Goals

Do you know the difference between training and exercise? Here it is, in its simplest terms:

Athletes train. The average person (this is most of us) exercises.

Training is the conscious act of working through a pre-developed workout program with an end goal of achieving something. For example, an athlete could be training for a marathon, a new weightlifting meet, or even a CrossFit competition.

Exercising, on the other hand, is the basic act of getting active. In most cases, the goal here is to lose weight or build minimal muscles. However, the key downside – and the difference from an athlete’s workout – is that there is no concrete plan put in place.

The Process

This leads us to the most important aspect of what motivates an athlete – the process.

We get so caught up in the idea that motivation should be based on always striving for the end goal. To a certain extent, having this idea in mind will help you to better see the outcome as a euphoric experience, but athletes have a different psychology.

An athlete understands that every workout that leads up to their event – whatever it may be – is crucially important. By that measure, an athlete is motivated by their own actions each and every day.

Yes, many athletes will tell you that they strive to accomplish a particular task, that they have role models and people they look up to, but when it comes to motivation – athletes are very different than most of us.

The most important part that separates an athlete’s motivation from most of us is that they have a deep ability to exercise through the grind.

The Grind

The grind is a term used to describe the daily workings of an athlete’s training program, especially as it leads up to a competition.

Athletes have the most unique ability to almost love the grind. They thrive in settings where they are put to the test, where the pain is the only option, and where recovery is essential.

The Take Home

Athletes have a unique psychology about the grind.

Most people will believe that they can look to the end goal as a source of motivation. Some people might even start using another person as an external motivation.

It really does not matter which you want to choose – none of them will be more effective than altering your psychology to match that of an elite athlete and their love for the grind.

Learn to Love the Grind in Your Pursuit of Your Goals

Loving the grind and being motivated by your daily work takes time and requires conscious effort.

As an individual, you can start by developing a clear plan for your goals and how you can achieve them. Once you have successfully constructed a plan, you can begin the real training and develop your own love of the grind.

Join the ranks of athletes in their love for the grind. Make the most of every struggle and learn to thrive in situations where you are pushed past your comfort zone.

How? Practice. Daily practice:

1. Make it a habit to step outside your comfort zone each day:
   
   • Meet one new person.
   • Ask that cute neighbor out on a date.
   • Make one more sales call.
   • Take a different route to work.
   • Try a new sport.
   • Take dance lessons.
   • And many more!
2. Each day take one step towards achieving your goals. Overcome obstacles as they rise up to greet you. Practice creating solutions that work. These are all part of your daily grind.

Like an athlete, you can learn to enjoy the grind. Let your daily actions be your motivation to keep going, day in and day out.

When you can do this, you too will enjoy success!

How to be More Ambitious

How to be More Ambitious

Many of us wish that we could be a little more ambitious. We’re ambitious enough to create a comfortable life, but we lack the ambition to create an amazing life. We gravitate toward comfort rather than embrace the change that building an amazing life requires. We are capable of much, much more.

Ambition might seem like an innate trait that can’t be developed, but that’s false. Ambition is created by following a few simple rules and ideas.

You can create greater ambition with these strategies:

1. Set rewarding goals. One of the signs that you have set great goals is the amount of motivation you feel when you imagine yourself achieving them. So, setting bigger and more exciting goals will increase your motivation and ambition.
   • Also, keep in mind that we rarely succeed at a level beyond our goals. If anything, we tend to fall a little short of our goals. Setting bigger goals is one way to have more ambition.
2. Get a coach or mentor. The right coach will help you to be more successful and help you to get there much faster. The world knows that you’re serious when you hire an expert to help you. You’ll also feel more motivated to do your best!
3. Use your talents and skills. Leveraging your talents and skills makes life easier. It’s hard to feel ambitious when you have to navigate through your weaknesses. Focus on utilizing your talents. You’ll feel more motivated to be highly successful.
   • Make a list of your great greatest talents and skills. How can you use them to your advantage? Avoid your weaknesses and utilize your strengths.
4. Stick to your interests. Do what you like. Think about it. If your goals revolve around something that interests you, it’s not really work. The greatest guitarists in the world love to play the guitar. Those that excel at mergers and acquisitions love to make deals.
   • It’s nearly impossible to be great at something you don’t like to do.
5. Remember your successes. Success breeds success. Remember all the times you’ve been successful. The emotions that arise from this simple exercise can inspire you to be successful again in the future.
   • Most people gloss over their wins and focus on their failures. This is certainly an unproductive habit if you want to feel ambitious.
   • Make a quick list of your 10 greatest successes and fully experience them again in your mind. Notice how you feel afterwards.
6. Enjoy making progress. Success takes time, but progress can happen quickly and regularly. If you can learn to enjoy making a little progress each week, your ambition will explode. Anything is easy if you can enjoy the journey.
   • For example, it’s easy to lose 30 pounds if you feel excited when you lose two pounds.
7. Manage negative thoughts. Negative thoughts are ambition killers. They suck all the motivation right out of you and bring negative expectations. You’re paralyzed if you don’t believe you can succeed.
8. Spend time with ambitious people. It’s challenging to rise above the level of the people around you. You’ll become more ambitious when you spend time with ambitious people.
   • Take a long and hard look at your social circle. What impact do you believe these people have on you and your future?

What could you accomplish if you were more ambitious? What would you attempt? Take the first step today by setting a couple of big and exciting goals. Consider your talents, skills, and interests while setting those goals.

These simple steps will get your motivation and ambition flowing. You can become the most ambitious person you know if you choose to.

8 Reasons Why SEO Helps Your Business

8 Reasons Why SEO Helps Your Business

Smart business owners know how important search engine optimization (SEO) is for their company’s websites. SEO, when done effectively, will help to increase a website’s visibility on the search engines.

This means that their website will show up in the top search results when someone searches for a keyword or phrase that applies to their business. Being in the top results can send thousands of targeted prospects to your website.

In fact, smart SEO can help your business in many ways!

Consider these benefits of SEO:

1. You will see an increase in traffic. As your website becomes more optimized over time, it will start to rank higher in the search engines for various search terms. As this happens, you should see an increase in traffic, or prospects viewing your website. Ultimately, this should increase your sales too.
   
   
2. It will increase the credibility of your business. Your customers are conditioned to believe that the best businesses are those ranked at the top of the search engines, whether that is true or not.
   • When you rank highly, your prospects perceive your business more favorably, which leads to an increase in sales, conversions, and brand recognition.
     
     
3. SEO can lead to long-lasting results. Radio, print, and billboard ads produce short-term rewards. SEO, on the other hand, helps to deliver long-term rewards.
   • By investing in SEO, your online presence increases, resulting in a more profitable return on investment (ROI).
     
     
4. You are in control of the cost. Whether you are building backlinks, creating a social media presence, or creating blog content, you will know how much it will cost beforehand. Once you know what each service will cost, you can determine which you believe would give you a better ROI.
   
   
5. Your website will become more user-friendly. A good SEO expert will be able to look at your website and optimize it not only for the search engines but also for your users too.
   • Improving your website’s user experience includes many aspects, including how quickly your website loads, how easy it is to navigate, and whether it is mobile-friendly.
   • By improving the user experience of your website, you will see an increase in conversions, plus you should see an overall ranking increase in the search engines, as this is one of the known ranking factors.
     
     
6. SEO helps encourage users to visit a local store. It has been shown in numerous studies that having an online presence can also increase visits to your offline premises. If you have a restaurant, for example, a potential customer could check out your menu or customer reviews before making a reservation.
   
   
7. Your social media following will increase. As your search engine rankings increase, more visitors will arrive at your website. Even if they do not immediately buy from you, they may still end up checking out your social media platforms, follow them, and then become buyers later on.
   • These new followers can also share your marketing messages, leading to an increase in social traffic and sales.
     
     
8. SEO helps put you ahead of your competitors. As you integrate SEO and various other online marketing techniques into your business, you will move ahead of those competitors who have not implemented these techniques.

SEO is incredibly important nowadays, and if you are not implementing it in your own online marketing activities, you are limiting your results, sales, and profits.

Look at what your competitors are doing and see what you can do to rise above them. It will be worth your time and effort.

6 Things That Prevent You From Doing Your Best Work

6 Things That Prevent You From Doing Your Best Work

Doing your best work takes more than just sitting down and working. There are many obstacles to producing high-quality output.

The best painter in the world won’™t do his best work sitting in the corner at a loud party. An engineer isn’t likely to find a solution to a complex problem after a week of subpar sleep. You can’t even do a great job of mowing your grass if you a™re preoccupied with your bills.

Your best work requires certain things. It also requires avoiding certain things. It also requires good conditions. The quality of your work improves as the quality of the conditions improve.

Avoid these things that prevent you from doing your best work:

1. A lack of focus. Keep your attention on your work and give it the priority it deserves. Try to put your worries aside and avoid daydreaming while you’re working. Put the focus of your life on your work if that is what is necessary in your situation.
2. Too many distractions. Are you trying to work while keeping your eyes open for an important email and monitoring your social media feeds? Are you having a conversation with your children about doing their chores? Trying to watch a movie in the background? Thinking about your bills?
   • The fewer distractions you have in your environment, the better your work will be.
3. Negative emotions. If you’re stressed, angry, jealous, fearful, resentful, or depressed, your work is going to suffer. If you’re content, peaceful, and relaxed, the quality of your work will be significantly higher.
   • It’s very challenging to produce your best work if your life is in turmoil. A simple, enjoyable life increases the likelihood of doing quality work.
   • Remember that your emotions are triggered by your thoughts. Avoid thinking about the negative things in your life while you’re working. When you’re not working, focus on implementing solutions to deal with those negative things.
4. Lack of a plan. A great vacation usually requires a plan. You can’t just jump in the car and drive south. Doing your best work requires having a plan of attack.
   • What are you going to do?
   • When are you going to do it?
   • What resources do you need?
   • Who else needs to be involved?
5. Failure to do the most important tasks. The most important tasks can be the most challenging, or at least, the least enjoyable. The hardest exercises are the most effective. The most effective tasks are often avoided for tasks that are less uncomfortable. Achieving the best results means doing the hard things.
6. You’re not physically at your best. No one does their best work in a sleep-deprived state. Your best work requires that you be at your best physically. Sleep and diet are the keys. Sufficient sleep and good food help to ensure that the quality of work you produce is worthy of your respect.
   • Have a regular bedtime and stick to it.
   • Avoid foods that you know aren’t good for you.
   • Eat the proper number of calories for you.
   • See your doctor regularly.
   • Exercise.

There are several ways to fall short of doing your best work. Focus, good health, and a distraction-free environment can go a long way towards enhancing the quality of your work. Negative emotions and the lack of a plan can also make it impossible to do your best.

Doing your best requires removing as many obstacles as possible. Give yourself the best opportunity to do excellent work.

11 Tips for Overcoming Laziness

11 Tips for Overcoming Laziness

Laziness is frustrating. There are things that you know you should be doing, but you simply don’t feel like doing them. Everyone has been in this situation more than once.

A lazy day isn’t an issue on occasion, but chronic laziness can cause a lot of short and long-term challenges in your life.

Learning to deal with laziness in an effective manner is an important tool in your life skills toolbox.

If laziness is negatively affecting you, try these techniques to curb it:

1. Start with the hardest task. Many people find that there’s actually just one task that’s preventing them from taking action. If you could just put that task in your rearview mirror, everything else would be a piece of cake. Try doing your most dreaded task first and watch your productivity rise!
2. Start with the easiest task. On the other hand, if you could just gain a little momentum, you might find yourself motivated to continue. Try doing the shortest or easiest task first and see what happens.
3. Reward yourself for taking action. A little reward can go a long way. Tell yourself that you can have a cup of coffee after you work for 30 minutes. Or, let yourself read a chapter from your favorite novel after putting in a couple of hours of work.
4. Get organized. A cluttered workspace increases the amount of resistance you feel. Whether it’s a messy desk, a dirty kitchen, or a bunch of toys in the yard that are standing in your way, spend some time tidying things up.
   
5. Force yourself to do the task you’re avoiding for just two minutes. Many tasks are easy to do, but it can be hard to get started. Force yourself to work for just two minutes and you might find that it’s easy to continue for much longer.
6. Get more sleep. Perhaps you’re just tired. More sleep is the answer.
7. Visualize the task already completed. Close your eyes and see yourself completing the task. Notice how wonderful you feel. Use that feeling as motivation to get busy.
8. Relax. The ultimate reason we don’t take action is this: We think about performing a task, and it doesn’t feel good. Notice where you feel uncomfortable when you think about doing that unpleasant task. Relax that area, breathe deeply, and the feeling will dissipate.
9. Think about something that gets you excited. What is something you love to do? Think about that for a while, and then quickly get started on the unpleasant task.
10. See yourself as someone that gets things done. If you see yourself as someone that struggles to complete your tasks, that’s how you’ll behave. Instead, convince yourself that you are someone that takes care of business. Validate this belief by noticing the many tasks you do.
11. Schedule breaks. When you have a break to look forward to, it’s easier to get to work. Promise yourself that you can do whatever you want for 20 minutes after you work for two hours.

Just because you feel like being lazy doesn’t mean you have to actually be lazy. Take control of the situation and get yourself to take meaningful action.

Everyone feels lazy from time to time, but successful people are able to move past this temporary emotional state and get themselves moving again.

Give yourself the occasional lazy day but avoid allowing yourself to be lazy on a regular basis. When you get to work and complete your tasks quickly, you can take more well-deserved time off to relax and do those things that are more important to you. Your life is waiting for you!

How To Be Seen As More Trustworthy

How to be Seen as More Trustworthy

You know several people you trust and several that you do not. Have you ever considered how you came to those decisions? You probably never gave it a lot of thought about how you designated someone as trustworthy or not.

Have you ever considered how others view you? Do you think most people consider you to be trustworthy? If you’re concerned, there are several things you can do to enhance your trustworthiness score to others.

Use these strategies to be seen as more trustworthy by the people in your life:

1. Be predictable. It’s hard to feel comfortable with or rely on someone that is unpredictable. When people can predict your mood and general behavior, you are viewed as more trustworthy. Volatile people aren’t seen as trustworthy. People that make changes abruptly aren’t viewed as trustworthy either.
2. Be on time. Trustworthy people are on time with the arrival and their commitments. If you’re regularly late to work, appointments, assignments, or even just meeting your friends, you’re not seen as trustworthy.
   • Being chronically late is also rude. Others may feel that you’re showing a lack of respect. This also makes you seem untrustworthy.
3. Avoid talking about others. People know that if you like talking about other people, it won’t be long before you’re talking about them, too. It’s best to limit the amount of time you spend talking about other people unless your statements are positive.
   • Saying negative things about others is always a mistake. It frequently comes back to haunt you. Plus, people consider you to be untrustworthy with important information.
4. Keep your word. When you give your word, keep it. Do what you say you’re going to do. Be where you say you’re going to be. Be honest about your intentions and fulfill them. Avoid making commitments unless you’re certain you can keep them. Take all of your promises and commitments seriously.
5. Admit your mistakes. People that are willing to admit their mistakes are considered to be more honest and trustworthy. If you don’t try to hide your mistakes, it allows people to trust you at a higher level.
6. Be open. Avoid being that person with a mysterious life or secrets. There’s always that one person at work that refuses to discuss their life outside of work. Most often, we don’t consider that person to be trustworthy. We think:
   • What are they hiding?
   • Why are they hiding it?
   • What else could they be hiding?
7. Keep secrets. If someone tells you something in confidence, keep that confidence. The quickest way to be seen as untrustworthy is to tell secrets that you were asked to keep. Be known for being that person that would never betray a confidence. You would want others to keep your secrets, so do the same.
   • It can be so tempting to share juicy gossip. When someone can keep a secret, we trust them in many other ways, too. Keep your promises.

There are so many advantages to being seen as trustworthy that it’s worth rehabilitating your image if others don’t trust you.

If people view you as untrustworthy, it can impact your career and all of your relationships. Trustworthy people have a better choice of partners and friends. Trustworthy people have better relationships with everyone around them, including their own children.

You may have been untrustworthy in the past, but that situation doesn’t have to continue! It will take some time, but you can become the most trustworthy person you’ve ever known.