A final year Liverpool University philosophy student turned over his exam paper. This was it. The culmination of three years of hard work.

He stared at the question in front of him.

     What is the definition of confidence?

He paused for a moment.  Then wrote his answer:

     This is.

He got up and strolled from the exam room. His answer – two words.

I love this. But is it confidence or recklessness? You decide. One dictionary definition of confidence is: (noun) a feeling of self-assurance arising from appreciation of one’s abilities or qualities.

He got a first, so you’d have to say he was right.

Click here to see a beautiful photo that’s had a good response on my Facebook page. And follow me there if you’d like daily nuggets like that.

And not long until my exclusive new global membership club launches – The High Achievers Gold Club. On the agenda: what YOU want to achieve in the next 12 months, and how you get there as quickly as possible by being part of an exclusive group of my high-achieving clients. More details on this blog soon…

Debbie is 33 and unhappy with her weight. She is at least a stone larger than she’d like to be, despite trying every diet in the book.

One day, whilst aimlessly surfing online, she stumbles upon an American website called The Small Plate Movement.

She initially dismisses the entire site as a joke. This site is pretty leftfield. These guys reckon simply by reducing the size of your plate, you’ll eat less, and therefore lose weight. Ridiculous, right?

But, the more she reads, the more she sees that they’ve backed up all their research with government-approved science. Incredible as it may seems to Debbie, the site seems to suggest people serve themselves a portion based on the size of the plate they’ve got in front of them. Big plate = bigger portion. And smaller plate = smaller portion.

This gets Debbie thinking. She decides to invest in some new crockery. She changes her 12″ plates for 10″ plates.

In four months, she loses a stone.

True story. Apparently a two-inch smaller plate means we serve ourselves on average 22% less calories, and are still happy with what we’ve eaten.

And it works in other areas as well – smaller spoons, and (for the boozers amongst us) taller narrower glasses.

What can we learn? Little changes to our environment make a big difference. Our minds work in weird ways – and not just when it comes to food. Play around with your surroundings, try something different, see what happens.

And if you’re trying to lose weight, get some of Debbie’s 10″ plates!

ps – this week’s blog gives me the chance to illustrate my point with a picture of Alan Partridge and his big plate. Non-UK readers… check this out for a little taste of possibly the greatest ever Brit sitcom.

pps – if you want to get your kids, for example, to eat MORE – try putting more on the plate, and making the plate bigger.

ppps – look out for my High Achievers Gold Club. Coming soon…

WARNING: This week’s blog is short n’ sweet. Well it is called the 1-minute blog, after all.

Here & Now. Make this the place you’re at all week.

You’re not off into the future, worrying about this or that. You’re not thinking about the past, about how you could or should have done something different.

You’re concentrating on the present. Just the here and now. It’s the way to be productive and actually live.

ps. If your problem is finding enough time, why not read this blog from Zen Habits. Two jobs, six kids, marathon training, and the author still finds time  for a new project.

pps. Just a few days now until my exclusive new global membership club launches – The High Achievers Gold Club. On the agenda: what YOU want to achieve this year, and how you get there as quickly as possible by being part of an exclusive group of my high-achieving clients.

When you become a member of the Gold Club, you’ll get a program to listen to, read and follow on a daily basis, regular personal feedback with me as well as your individual Gold Card. More details coming next week.

It’s hard to relax when you feel physically and mentally drained. So how to do it?

First up this week, a story from Karianne, who sent me an email about her recent brush with illness, and how it came exactly the same time as a crucial work presentation.

Hi Tony

I sent you a mail last week to thank you for the gold collection app. I have been using it on and off for half a year and mostly I listen to the motivation,inspiration or creative stuff. I am Future Executive Sales Director for a major cosmetic company and am dependent on my own mental state to keep the good flow.  This tool is simple and easy to do. When I listen it’s during my daily walk to my office.

I am quite energetic and love to be on the go. And you can only imagine how lost I felt when I was badly hit by a virus a month ago.  The doctor ordered me to take it really easy to get rid of it or it might have got worse. Yikes! I had several appointments and an event coming up. I had no backup plan and I just HAD to do it. Every time I took any exercise my heart just sped up and I got dizzy, confused and exhausted . Really bad! It will disappear If I can slow down for a couple of weeks, but of course I had to still present this event. 

The day before the event (guess what – it was Friday 13th too), I tried the iRelaxation session and found it really powerful. I have tried anchoring before but not to slow down, just to pump me up;). It was so great. 

It really worked very well! Saturday I held the event and I was teaching for 6 hours. Each time I felt the hammering started I manage to slow it down again via anchoring. Even on stage! So much easier than meditating for 20 min;) four times a day (one is more than enough to manage). Fascinating. Thank you so much again. 

Best,

Karianne.

Sent from my iPhone

Karianne, thank you for your email. Of course there are hundreds of different ways to relax, but in the audiobook iRelaxation that Karianne mentions, I present to you some absolute tried and tested techniques. Click on this link to get it on your iPhone.

Secondly Relax in a minute pops up in Zest magazine this month.

How could the quote to the left apply to you?

I’m currently waking up to a seriously upbeat burst of Fedde Le Grand every morning at the moment…

Tony.

The following is taken from a section of my book Persuade in a minute.

If you’re single, read on – you’ll love this. And if you’re not single, of course you won’t need this but read on as I reckon you’ll enjoy it anyway.

“How Singles Make Themselves More Attractive On Facebook”

Ever heard of ‘mate choice copying’? If the research is anything to go by, it’s happening on Facebook right now.

Researchers at Duke University and the University of California found that when we’re alongside someone attractive in a photo, people find us more attractive too. And when we’re alongside somebody not so blessed in the looks department, our perceived attractiveness goes down too.

They took a large group of men and women, all of whom described themselves as ‘straight’, and showed them pictures of a ‘potential mate’. In some pictures, the potential mate was standing alongside someone the participants were told was an ex, who they were now no longer with.

The researchers consistently found that potential mates were thought to be more attractive when they were alongside somebody else ‘attractive’ than when they were alone. In addition, the potential mates were found to be less attractive when they were alongside a partner perceived to be unattractive.

Eye Movement

Okay, it’s time to get deep. Ready?

What is your purpose in life?  What are you doing it all for?  How would you like to be remembered?

What’s important to you?

I like asking myself these questions occasionally. Those ‘big questions’ get me focused again on the important things I need to do today, and stop me worrying at posts on Twitter about petrol shortages (or something equally silly).

Steve Jobs described what’s important to him in the excellent biography by Walter Isaacson:

creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.” Steve Jobs.

What about you?

ps – If you are motivated by money, ask yourself how you want to be remembered, and what/who you going to spend the money on? Because money itself is just a collection of a numbers on a screen – it needs to be spent!

pps – Two places left on my first Big Mo day after two ticket-holders have now moved to the next day (which isn’t even officially on sale yet!) The first two to click here and purchase a 50% off ticket are IN.

Stop and smell the roses. I saw this on a blog last week and loved this picture…

The second awesome image was one my friend Tina posted yesterday on Facebook.

So funny and so true for so many. And underneath, hundreds of comments; ‘LOL I thought it was just me’, ‘the bad thing is when they start arguing with each other’, etc etc…

If this is you – do one thing today. Get a decent sleep download… like the one in my app, (although there are also plenty of other great sleep downloads by other authors on iTunes). It’s my most popular download, and it’s the way to, er, stop your brain talking to yourself.

If you haven’t got the app yet then you can simply click here.

Have a good day… (and remember to smell the roses.)

Are you suffering from age excusitis?

British writer Tony Parsons wrote a long, thoughtful and funny piece on the ‘myth of the midlife crisis’. It’s well good – check it out here (although be warned it’s got some adult themes and fruity language).

So do you suffer from ‘age excusitis’? Saying “I’m too old”? (Or “I’m too young”.). If the answer is yes, and you’re someone who’s a bit susceptible to describing yourself as ‘over the hill’, here’s an age excusitis equation for you.

• Work out your remaining ‘productive life’. So a 30 year old can work from 20 to at least 70 = 80% of productive life left? In this way you shift your perspective onto what’s possible, rather than what’s past.

Is your atttention span rubbish? Buddhists call it ‘Monkey Mind’ – like a monkey constantly leaping from tree to tree. Now psychologists have now identified two new phenomena, ‘Facebook Mind’, and ‘Twitter Mind’.

Do you ever notice this? If so, then here’s a couple of thoughts on how to counter it.

1. Load an focus program onto your computer such as StayFocusd or getconcentrating.com which regulate your FB time. These can be really useful. Here’s an article I wrote with more details.
2. Switch your wifi off when you have something important to do. Even if it’s only for a few minutes at a time, this ‘drastic action’ helps to focus the mind. True sufferers of Monkey Mind will try to click on Facebook/Twitter/Email/Fave Sites anyway (I speak from painful experience), but the lack of wifi forces the mind to focus. The more you can train yourself to do this and switch the internet off for short periods, the more you will develop laser focus again.

Give these a go. You may be surprised at how much more you get done this week.

Do you suffer from ‘Facebook Mind’ or ‘Twitter Mind’? Why not share your method for dealing with it here?

PPS – I read this self-penned mini-biog recently and loved it: “Unreliable. Easily distracte”

Tina would count herself lucky if she got six hours’ sleep a night. She was always busy, and often didn’t even seem to have eight hours left in the day to actually shut her eyes and get some sleep. But even more than that, once she turned the light out, her mind would race with all her worries and problems, and it would regularly take her hours to drop off.

We’ve all had this at some point. Many people say it’s not that they don’t allow enough time for sleep, it’s just that when they actually get into bed, their mind starts racing. And then they feel more awake and alert than they have all day.

The following is taken from my book Relax in a minute. It is one of the easiest and most effective sleep techniques you’ll ever use.

Get some Zzzzzs

The secret is to clear your mind to prepare for a deep rest.

When you are ready for sleep, work out how many hours you’d like to sleep for. This number is important and I’ll refer to it as ‘Z’ in the technique. If you want eight hours’ sleep, then Z = 8. If you have set the alarm for six hours, then Z = 6. If you want to sleep for six-and-a-half hours, then round it up so Z = 7. And make sure you set an alarm.

So just to be clear, when Z is referred to in this technique, it refers to the number of hours you’re going to sleep for.

• Be still. Notice (Z) things that you can see. Go slowly, concentrating on every one.
• Notice (Z) things that you can hear. Again, go slowly.
• Now notice (Z) things that you can feel or touch. For example, it might be the temperature of the air, the duvet on your back, the feeling of the sheet against your skin.
• Now shut your eyes and continue the process, seeing in your mind (Z) things in the room you could previously see. Notice (Z) things you can hear, and (Z) things you can feel. Make them different things on each round (1 minute)

Yes, it’s supposed to be difficult – and fully occupy your mind. If your mind wanders, start the full minute again. This is important.

Once you manage a full minute of this, it will usually be enough to take you into a nice, relaxed, different state.

After the full minute, you’ll find you are mentally prepared for sleep. But you must complete the full minute.

Back to Tina. She had been running through all her problems in her mind when the light went out. As soon as she started getting some Zzzzs though, things changed. She started to clear her mind before sleep and more often than not, after one minute of doing this, she was ‘chilled out enough to drop off’. That’s what you want.