THANK YOU

I’ve been writing consistently for just about a year now.

At first, writing was just a cathartic exercise to help me express myself and feel relief from the things I struggled with. In all honesty my first post was about a woman that I liked and how I didn’t feel good enough for her.

I started writing at a time when I felt like I had no one to talk to. I know that I have many people in my life that care about me, but I didn’t want to change the image they saw of me.

So I wrote everything down online, and for a long time no one paid attention. I didn’t mind that.

But eventually people started relating to my stories. I always tried to put a positive spin on everything and focus on solutions to these struggles, instead of the endless negatives that came with them.

Fast forward a year and 2HelpfulGuys has released our first book.

“Not So F.A.Q.: Common Questions, Uncommonly Asked.”

It is a compilation of questions Leroy and I receive on a daily basis. Some are the most common questions about confidence and health etc., and some are more specific questions that strike a chord within us.

In this book I wrote my answers as if the asker and I were sitting outside looking at the stars in deep conversation.

I answered with my heart and put my own experiences with these struggles out there for them to relate.

Although I was answering one person, this conversation would not be for their eyes alone, and that scared me. Not only was I revealing myself to anyone who would care to look, but people would be paying for these insights.

I’m not good at asking people for money. With this book I’ve had a really hard time asking people if they’d like to buy, simply because I want to share this message with everyone without strings attached.

But the problem is that I want this to be my career. I want so desperately to have the resources to continue to spread our messages and help the people we resonate with.

Leroy and I at 2HelpfulGuys have dreams so big that they would surely be laughed at, but we have a deep routed attraction towards these dreams and the good that they will accomplish.

Even with this in mind, I still have a hard time asking people if they want to buy our book.

This made me worry.

I didn’t know if I was good enough, after all, I’m still a work in progress. I’m not perfect and I’ve never been perfect. I’ve often felt like I’ve been worse than most people out there.

But someone left a review to our book that made me realize that all of this worrying and fear was unwarranted. One specific thing that they said struck a chord with me.

“This book is inspiring because the authors pull back the polished masks folks wear and show the teeming process that is happening underneath. The reader is invited to actively think along with the answers being presented, and instead of being the last word on the subject, the answers that the authors give are more like a jumping off place.”

I don’t have all the answers, and I would never try to say that I am better than anyone else. I am still going through the process of improving myself every single day, and this reader understood that.

I was so worried that people would expect our answers to be a one stop cure to everything that they struggle with, but the truth is, we can only offer each other a new path to journey; a new perspective and new tools to carry with us in our growth.

Writing these articles week after week, working through my problems with you and hearing your insights has helped me to grow in ways I could never have imagined.

So I’m writing this post for you, our readers, as a thank you for giving us the opportunity to grow with you.

I’ve written about my fears, my dreams, and my mistakes, and every time we have helped each other work through these difficulties.

With our growing popularity I have often become tempted to leave out the blood, sweat and tears from my stories for the fear that people will think I am not a worthy teacher.

But as always you have shown me that these struggles are what connect us. We all go through tough times, it is what makes us human.

So thank you for teaching me every day, for growing with me and for accepting me as I am, at my highest and at my lowest.

I will continue to serve you to the best of my ability, and maybe one day in the future we will sit underneath the stars and have those beautifully deep conversations about the trials we’ve struggled through and the dreams we yearn for.

Until then,

Steven Farquharson, 2HelpfulGuys

Becoming A Fountain Of Ideas

I’ve been going to the gym for about three years now.
Wait, that’s a half truth

The first two years down my muscle building journey I was inconsistent. I would work out with a strict regimen for three months, then I would fall off track and miss weeks at a time. I repeated that cycle over and over again without seeing the results I really wanted to.

Now that I have been going to the gym consistently for just over a year I have seen results that I never imagined possible. I still have a long way to go, but now I see constant improvement. I can lift more, run more, and my body looks completely different.

Last year I decided that I wanted to become a never ending fountain of ideas. I wanted to have a hundred ideas to overcome any obstacle that came my way.

Heck, I wanted to be able to spout off ideas to solve the problems of everyone around me. And I had learned my lesson from the gym.
Consistently exercise a skill, and it grows.

So I created my idea exercise regimen and I’ll share it with you now.

Write at least 10 ideas every day.

They don’t have to be good!

I say that first because every time I mention this to someone they always say “How on god’s green earth could you come up with ten ideas in a day?”

When I tell them that it usually takes me about 12-15 minutes they look at me like I’m some sort of super human.

But then I tell them some of the ideas I’ve come up with and their face changes.

Don’t worry if your ideas are bad. In the first six months of going to the gym you are going to be weak compared to everyone around you. Your muscles haven’t developed yet. It’s the same with your idea muscle.

The point is to consciously make your brain struggle every single day. If you want to become a never ending source of ideas, especially good ideas, it’s going to take time.

One of my ideas recently was a themed restaurant where the waitresses/waiters get paid really well, and they decide how much they tip the customers.

Is the idea interesting?
Sure.

Is it good?
Nope.

Always be on the search for problems.

This is something that you need to train yourself to be vigilant in. Every time you hear someone complain about something, think of ways to fix it.
Even if they’re bad ideas; even if you’ll never follow through.

You need to be able to apply your idea skills to real world situations and just like anything else, that takes practice.

If you hear someone complain— or notice something that doesn’t seem to work correctly—just write it down and make it the subject of your next 10 ideas.

After enough practice with this, ensuring that you do your 10 ideas every day, you will be well on your way to become a fountain of ideas.

Combine your ideas.

This is a crucial skill to learn if you ever want to create something new.

Combining to totally different ideas, or objects, will provide weird and sometimes very amazing results. I learned this concept from a book called ‘Creative Thinkering.’

A lot of history’s greatest ideas have happened this way, whether the person has realized it or not.

The natural way this happens is you think about something for a long time, then when you stop focusing on it and you mind wanders to something else, that other focus causes a eureka moment.

A man named Christopher Sholes was watching a piano recital when he noted that each key of the piano produces one specific note. He thought, why not create machine that writes in the same manner, with each key creating a specific letter.

Through the combination of playing a piano and writing, the first type writer was born.

I believe that you can improve any skill with practice, and you ability to create quality ideas on a whim is no exception.

If you follow these tips consistently, you will see results.

First you will be able to come up with ideas with ease, whether they are good or bad. Then you will start to come up with quality ideas, or novel ideas more and more often. Then you will start to come up with truly innovative ideas and you will naturally have the motivation to start executing them.

Just like my body has grown stronger from training at the gym, my creativity has improved drastically with this idea training.

Don’t wait for some amazing idea to hit you, start training your creativity and light your own light bulb.

DAILY AUTOMATIC PROGRESS

I’m not going to lie…

I’m lazy by nature. Left unchecked, I would never get anything done. I always had trouble handing in assignments at school, and I always look for corners to cut.

In recent years I have become very ambitious, which mixes with my lazy attitude like oil and water. I’ve learned that most people are lazy to some extent. It is human nature to want to experience the most amount of pleasure with the least amount of pain.

I have often created vast plans for achieving my goals, but they would only work in a fantasy reality. I imagine myself turning into some sort of robot overnight that can work twenty-four hours a day without eating, sleeping, or needing to relax.
But these plans never stand the test of time.

Eventually I give up, and feel ashamed.

Does the progression towards your goals have to be this hard all the time?
No, and I think I’ve figured it out.

Daily Automatic Developmental Habits

This is something that fellow HelpfulGuy Leroy Milton and I discuss quite a lot with each other and with the new year starting, we want to really delve into how to internalize these habits and which habits to pursue.

A daily automatic developmental habit is something you do every day that guarantees you will get closer to your dreams.

Unlike baseline habits—sleep, diet and exercise—these automatic developmental habits focus more on accomplishing repetitive tasks that support you in accomplishing your goals.

I’ll use myself as an example.

My dream is to become an expert in the field of personal development. I want to write books, engage in the self help community, coach people one-on-one, give speeches and learn as much as I can in my field.

The daily automatic developmental habits that I enact to support this vision are:

• Writing one page of content
• Reading for a minimum of thirty minutes while taking notes
• Engaging with someone in the community
• Sharing a 2HelpfulGuys article
• Coming up with ten ideas

Now, unless you have the memory of a goldfish you will be thinking to yourself “Wait, I thought he said he was lazy and took the easy way. That doesn’t sound easy to me.”

Well it can be, if you have the right approach.

Making Your Habits Automatic

In recent years the scientific community has discovered that your willpower is like a muscle, and you can only exert it so much before it needs time to recover.

When you first start trying to incorporate a new habit into your routine, it takes up a lot of your willpower.

After daily practice of your new habit for a period of time—some say twenty-one days, but I’ve also heard up to forty-five—your habit will cease to take up nearly as much willpower. This means that you won’t have to convince yourself to do it, it will just be natural.

This is where I always went wrong. This is why I found it so hard to get anything done.

I tried to incorporate too many habits at a time and didn’t internalize any of them.

Setting up your daily automatic developmental habits will be a long process, but I prefer long and stable over frustrating and short-lived.

No matter what you want to do with your life pick three daily habits that would guarantee you’d inch closer to your goals, and give yourself a month and a half to internalize each individually before incorporating the next.

After internalizing each habit they will become second nature to you, and you will be automatically progressing towards your goal every single day.

Live Like The Tortoise, Not The Hare

It is important that you become completely content with the idea of the long term, and taking it one step at a time. This is the only way to end up with automatic habits that transform your productivity.

Remember, I promised you automatic, not quick.

I love experimenting with different daily habits and seeing how they can improve my life.

It has taken me almost two years to get my habits in place and I’m still working on them, which is fine. Maybe I wouldn’t become a robot even if I could, because then I would cease to improve.

I’d rather be slow and stable, than to go Gung-ho and burn out before I get anywhere.

But this could all just be an excuse to take the long way around because, well…

I am lazy.

CHANGE YOURSELF TO CHANGE THE WORLD IN 2015

When I was young I wanted to have an impact on the world.

I went through different stages of how I would want to accomplish this task. While going through my blood disorder I wanted to become a doctor, after that I wanted to be in a famous band, and after that I wanted to do something in politics.

I dreamed of changing the world, but I could barely get a handle on my own life and the world that surrounds me, never mind the world at large.

With the coming of the new year I finally feel like I have positioned myself to impact the world on a scale far past anything I have done in the past.

In my dreams I always imagined this point arriving much sooner, but I had a lot of lessons to learn up to this point. Changing the world may seem out of reach, but you can slowly pull yourself towards this goal if you know where to start.

So, here is the behind the scenes. This is the part of changing the world that no one ever talks about. The stages that you must go through that never get the spotlight, the glamour, or the glitz.

Change Your Inner World.

Before you can have any real impact on the world, you must first create your own foundation of excellence within.

When Leroy and I were heavily interested in politics, we got as far as creating an organization called “EFFP: Education For Freedom and Prosperity.” It was a huge milestone for us and I was excited.

The problem was that even though I had all of this ambition, I had no solid foundation within myself. I was sand, not a rock. With the slightest change in the winds of fate I would be distracted, blown this way and that way.

If I had a bad day, a problem with a friend, or a lack of energy I would make no progress that day and possibly fall into a spiral that could take days or weeks to get out of.

If you want to change the world you have to start with yourself. You can’t solve anyone else’s problems if you are still losing the battle against your own.

• Learn to create unshakable happiness. Balance yourself so that you can help balance others.
• Instead of automatic knee jerk reactions to the situations in your life, step back and ask questions first to avoid falling off of your path.
• Stop the constant cycle of regret or nostalgia for the past, and anxiety or worry for the future.
• Learn how to control your mind, rather than have it control you.

If you can build a strong foundation within yourself, you will be able to walk your path towards changing the world without worrying about the next situation that is going to derail you from your goals.

Change Your Environment.

I moved out of my parents house recently. I didn’t realize just how much of an effect that environment had on me until after I had left.

The house was very messy so I stayed in my room. It was tiny and I felt very claustrophobic. Other problems arose and it become unbearable to stay there. It weighed on my mind where ever I went, even when I was at work I felt the residual stress.

Your environment is so important if you want to change the world. If you can’t focus because of mess, negative people, or a bad workplace then you will end up unable to help anyone while trapped in your own problems.

Remember, if you don’t have a solid foundation, you will be too subject-able to the winds of fate and you won’t make it very far down your path to changing the world.

• Learn to stop letting the negative people around you have so much control over your emotions and mentality.
• If you work at a job that you hate, leave and get a new job.
• End the cycle of materialism in your life. Clean your environment and get rid of any unnecessary clutter.
• Surround yourself with things that motivate and excite you. Write down to-do lists and keep them where you will see them every day.

If your surrounding environment is set up properly, even when you have a bad day it will not last long. Everything around you will help you to see why you are on the path that you are on, and encourage you to push through any difficulties.

You should be surrounded by things that make you happy, your goals, and good people.

Once you have changed your inner world and your environment, you will be ready to change the world at large. You will be able to move forward with full focus and truly make a difference.

It’s taken me years to learn those lessons and I’ve spent the last two years dedicated to creating the best version of myself that will best serve the world.

You can’t fight the good fight if you are losing personal battles. Change yourself, then you will change the world.

So until 2015, With love,

Steven Farquharson.

Pour Out Your Soul, Fill The Void

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been depressed in the past. I’ve looked in the mirror without being able to understand the person looking back at me.

What do you want? What makes you happy? Why do you feel this void inside regardless of how things appear on the outside?

During these slumps I spent most of my time sleeping, eating out of boredom, devouring whole seasons of shows and consuming whatever I could to satisfy the feeling, or lack there of, inside me.
I felt unfulfilled and useless.

I still feel this way sometimes but I’ve learned how to push through it with one simple question that I ask myself every morning.

Do I want to be a consumer, or a producer?

Logically, if you feel an emptiness inside you, you are missing something that will make you feel complete again. I learned that this isn’t the case.

Instead of taking things in I started to pour everything out of myself. I poured out my heart, my emotions, my soul into my writing. It made me feel something that I hadn’t felt in a long time…

Producing pride.

Downward spirals and never ending consumption will lead to guilt. It’s a cycle. You’re empty so you try to distract or satisfy yourself with movies, video games or food but it doesn’t change anything and the more you consume, the more guilty and empty you feel.

Pouring out what you have left in you into something, anything, can make you proud again. You have something to look forward to instead of just passing the time.

It doesn’t have to be art.

You can start a business, volunteer to help build homes for people or even just create deeper connections with the people around you. As long as you are producing something that allows you to look forward and feel like you are useful.

Think of anything you can put into the world today and start on it. Happiness is more about where you are going than where you are now.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to take things in.

You just have to find a balance. Someone who spends all day being creative and working is bound to burn out eventually. That can be just as bad.

I feel that most people are unbalanced right now. As a society we have lost a lot of creativity and self-esteem. We think that we don’t have anything of value to add to the world, but imagine if people tried to live up to their full potential.

Imagine if they stopped trying to fill the void with material possessions, or distract themselves from it with movies, games and Facebook.

Writing in this blog and creating deeper connections with the people around me has helped me so much. I feel like I have something to offer the world again and although I go into slumps sometimes, I can pull myself out much quicker.

Maybe the void is meant to push you forward. I don’t know if I will ever be completely happy, but if I was, would I continue to push on?

I’ll probably never have to find out because the void is a part of me, and for now, I’ll pour out my soul from it.

With love,
Steven Farquharson, 2HelpfulGuys