But peer pressure is really just anytime our peers encourage us to change our values, attitudes, and behaviors. And it doesn’t always need to be a negative thing.

When surrounded by the right people, peer pressure can be positive.

If a peer encourages you to work hard, do well in school, exercise, eat a healthy diet, and be kind to others… it’s still peer pressure. It just happens to be encouraging a set of values that most people find acceptable.

People are always going to influence each other. And we should accept that. Unless you live in a bubble, there will always be family, friends, and peers that reshape who you are.

The goal isn’t to avoid peer pressure, but try to surround yourself with peer pressure that is healthy and productive.

If you hang around people who are always encouraging you to do things that go against your core values, then you may not want to keep hanging around those people.

On the other hand, if you hang around people who encourage you to act in ways that you want to change, then they can be an excellent source of motivation.

Want to start working out at the gym more often? Then find a friend or coworker who already does it on a regular basis. They can help you find a gym, teach you how to use the equipment, and encourage you to go 3-4 times every week.

Want to boost your grades at college? Then find a student in your class who knows the material really well. Try to set up a date to study for the next exam. Or exchange research papers and give each other constructive criticism.

These can both be considered a form of positive peer pressure. The key is you want to change something about your life, so you find people who can guide you to make that change.

A lot of the habits we do are influenced by our environment and the types of people we associate with. So when we take an active role in changing these things, we can often change our habits as well.

One of the number one ways recovering alcoholics fall back into their old habits is by continuing to hang around people who they associate with drinking.

Sometimes it’s direct peer pressure: “Come on man. Just one drink. It’s your birthday!” And other times it’s indirect peer pressure. Just the mere presence of being around your old friends make you want to crack open a beer.

These social influences play a huge role in how we think and behave.

The guide Regaining Consciousness talks about “vampires” that can ruin our life. These are people who suck up positivity from us, and motivate us to think and act in destructive ways. They are negative peer pressure.

“Vampire slayers” are the opposite. They crush the negativity in our lives and instead serve as a valuable source of inspiration and encouragement. They are positive peer pressure.

As painful as it may be, sometimes in life we need to separate ourselves from the vampires, and instead find ourselves some vampire slayers.

It can be difficult to end relationships with people who we’ve been friends with for a long time. But if they only feed our negative habits, it’s probably best for us to walk away.

Then we can build a more supportive social circle by finding people who encourage us to embody the values that we really want to have.

The takeaway message here is to pay close attention to the people you are engaged with on a frequent basis. Because they can have a very real effect on your thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors.

Instead, surround yourself with people who help bring out the better you.

I feel I’d be doing my readers a big disservice by not mentioning these excellent resources, and that’s why I want to dedicate a post solely to raise awareness toward these personal development sites that have been on my radar lately.

Of course, these sites are going to appeal to different people. Some are focused on minimalism, others are more about achieving goals and motivation, a couple are geared toward business, and some are very philosophical and introspective. Despite these differences, I believe a well-balanced individual can take something positive away from each one.

Before we get started, let me just share the criteria I’m using for choosing which sites to recommend:

1) It has to be a site related to some realm of personal development.

2) It has to be a site I honestly enjoy and read on a frequent basis.

2) It has to be a site that gets less traffic than me (one of my goals is to promote sites that I believe deserve more recognition).

So without further adieu, here are the personal development sites I highly recommend you check out. Also, feel free to share your own recommendations in the comment section below.

Advanced Riskology is a site that focuses on bold living and how to take smart risks. Blogger Tyler Tervooren recognizes that uncertainty is an unavoidable aspect of our lives, but the difference between successful people vs. not-so-successful people is their ability to face these uncertainties with a little more faith, courage, and intelligence. I recommend his site to anyone who is looking to better face their fears.

Free Download: Take This Job and Shove It

Featured Product: Guerrilla Influence Formula: More Followers for Your Cause

2. Becoming Minimalist

Becoming Minimalist is a very practice-based blog on how to live a more minimalist and self-sufficient lifestyle. The author Joshua Becker strongly believes in the “less is more” principle that is commonly advocated on minimalist blogs, but he does it in a down-to-earth way that can help anyone de-clutter the waste in their lives and realign their focus toward what really matters.

Featured Product: Inside-Out Simplicity: Life-Changing Keys to your Most Important Relationships

3. Beyond Growth

Duff McDuffee and Eric Schiller at Beyond Growth are probably some of the most critical and rational thinkers in the personal development community right now. They are never afraid to call out other personal development “experts” on their BS, and they approach personal development from a uniquely clear-headed perspective that is very rare to see these days when discussing these topics. I consider Beyond Growth a very essential counter-force to a lot of personal development mythology out there. It’s the place I go whenever I need some of my common beliefs and assumptions challenged. Definitely check them out, but be willing to do some serious thinking and reflection.

4. Hustler’s Notebook

JK Allen describes his blog The Hustler’s Notebook as “growth and development from a street-smart perspective.” His writings are thorough and comprehensive – but always fluff-free. JK seems to have an uncanny ability to get right at the core of motivation and “hustling,” without getting too ambiguous and conceptual. His ability to communicate simple but profound ideas is virtually unmatched by other bloggers. Not only does he know how to hustle, he knows how to hustle hard – I recommend his site to anyone who needs that extra boost in motivation.

5. Live Bold and Bloom

Live Bold and Bloom is a site by blogger Barrie Davenport which focuses on how we can live more meaningful and purposeful lives. She covers many areas in personal development, including balanced living, how to reframe our thoughts so that they are more positive and productive, and how to step outside of our comfort zone for truly transformational experiences. I recommend this site to anyone who is in need of positive and uplifting advice. Her posts will definitely make you smile.

Free Download: The Bold Living Guide: 7 Key Ingredients to a Meaningful Life

Featured Product: Discover Your Passion: A Step by Step Course for Creating the Life of Your Dreams

6. Living Authentically

Living Authentically is a site by Evan Hadkins which focuses on how to live at the core of who you really are. Evan takes a very personal and introspective approach to personal development, but it’s accompanied by very practical and informative advice. Unlike many other personal development bloggers, Evan respects individual’s independence and autonomy, but at the same time he offers highly applicable information to anyone who is seeking a more grounded direction in their lives (and he carefully does all of this without commanding you on how you “should” think, feel, or act). He also shares considerable knowledge on how to overcome trauma and other deep-rooted phobias and anxieties.

Free Download: Satisfaction from Authenticity

My Interview: Living Authentically with Evan Hadkins

7. Mindful Construct

Mindful Construct is an excellent blog that focuses on healthy mindfulness and other important teachings in psychology and personal development. The author Melissa Karnaze has a BS in Cognitive Science and is currently pursuing her Masters in Experimental Psychology. She offers a great amount of critical reading on some of the potential dangers of mindfulness and how we can avoid these dangerous while still maintaining the benefits of mindfulness. She advocates nurturing a healthy ego, questioning our programmed thinking, taking responsibility for our lives, practicing emotional intelligence, and self-love.

Free E-Class: Your Life is Your Construct

8. Mind Adventure

Mind Adventure is a very wise and practical resource on how to cultivate inner strength and outer freedom in our lives. The author Rob White is a former philosophy professor turned multi-millionaire after running successful businesses in a variety of industries including selling real estate and owning a couple restaurants. His bog is filled with stories, anecdotes, and metaphors that awaken readers to their true inner potential and how they can live happier and more successful lives. It’s worth noting that Rob was also kind enough to mail me a copy of his 30-day workbook 180, which is a phenomenal (and beautifully designed) step-by-step guide on how to cultivate new attitudes that improve your well-being in almost every domain of life. There’s no doubt about it, he’s a very generous and hard-working dude who fully lives by the maxim that “we reap what we sow.”

Featured Product: 180: Climbing The Two Ladders to Inner Strength and Outer Freedom

My Interview: Rob White of Mind Adventure

9. Sam Spurlin

Sam Spurlin is a writer, coach, and graduate student at Claremont University, currently pursuing his MA in Positive Psychology. His blog offers incredibly sensible advice on how to live more consciously, especially when it comes to our values, health, work, thinking, and relationships. Although he started his personal development journey within the minimalist movement, his current writings offer simple and useful strategies that anyone can begin using to integrate more consciousness into their daily living.

Featured Product: Regaining Consciousness

10. The Shrink for Entrepreneurs

Peter Shallard from The Shrink for Entrepreneurs is a psychotherapist and business consultant who specializes in helping entrepreneurs overcome the mental obstacles that often come with running a business. Being an entrepreneur himself, he has a very intimate understanding of the worries, fears, and anxieties that often plague aspiring business owners. His site is the #1 resource for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs who want to stay productive, but sane.

Free Download: Seek and Destroy: How To Identify Entrepreneurial Obstacles and Overcome Them (PDF)

My Interview: Peter Shallard: The Shrink for Entrepreneurs

Thanks for checking out these sites. I sincerely hope you found something valuable, and I’m sure these bloggers are going to keep providing quality content well into the future. Please feel free to recommend your personal favorites in the comment section below!

I recently put together a folder of 100 images I’ve collected over the past few months, and I decided to share it with anyone who decides to sign up to my newsletter.

Here is a sample of some of my favorites:

These are just some of the motivating and insightful images that I’ve found within the past few months. I’m always discovering more and sharing them. If you want more, make sure to join my Facebook or personal development newsletter.

Before I knew anything, I actually had no idea that our minds could be reprogrammed and modified to better serve our needs.

Instead, I used to just believe: “this is the brain I have, and this is the brain I will always have.” It was a passive thing – something I had no control over. It just was.

But the more I learned about personal development, the more I learned our mind is actually very flexible and very capable of changing itself.

In fact, our mind is always changing. Every new experience we have, and every new thing we learn, changes the neural pathways and structures in our brain. Today, scientists call it “neuroplasticity.”

The key to personal development is to actively change the structure of our brains by conditioning and reprogramming our mind in new ways. And we can actually achieve this using a variety of different strategies. Here are some things you can start working on right away:

Change your perspective. Try having more solution-oriented thinking instead of problem-oriented thinking. When you think only about the stuff that sucks in your life, it’ll often make you feel worse. But when you start feeling capable of finding solutions and overcoming obstacles, you condition your mind to find the answers you need.

Modify your self-talk. We all talk to ourselves inside our heads – that’s what thinking is. The problem is some of us talk negatively about ourselves, while others talk positively about themselves. The more you tell yourself something, the more likely you are to believe it and act on that belief. So the more you feed yourself healthy and motivating thoughts, the more those thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes can have a positive effect on your life.

Take risks. Sometimes the best way to learn something is to step outside of our heads and experience it. You might be used to getting a cheeseburger at every restaurant you go, but until you take a risk and try something new you’ll never know what else life might have to offer. Will you fail and make mistakes sometimes? Sure, but it’s a part of the growing process.

Use your imagination as practice. Studies show that imagining yourself taking a course of action is a really good way to motivate yourself to take that action in the future. So by practicing visualization techniques on a regular basis we can actually reprogram our thoughts and behaviors. One great example of this is professional athletes mentally rehearsing before a game or match.

Stop victimizing yourself. One of the most common traps our culture teaches us is that we are helpless victims of circumstance. In other words, we have no control over our destiny; instead, reality rears its ugly head and we get whatever we get. As a result, we become programmed to shift blame to external factors and never seek responsibility for our lives.

Stay present with your goals. By taking small and gradual steps on a daily basis, we can end up covering a lot of ground in the long-run. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the only real power you have is in the present moment. Only in the “now” can you think, decide, act, and make changes to your life. Don’t dwell on the past or wait for the future – start making progress today.

By applying these things in my own life, I have improved myself dramatically over the years. I now have a different perspective about life, I think and talk to myself differently, I take smart risks more often, I visualize my future more clearly, I take responsibility for the direction of my life, and I stay focused on what matters the most to me in each and every moment.

And in return – I’m happier because of it.

Social Dynamix covers all the bases for how to reprogram your mind more effectively, but it also makes a crucial point about achieving happiness for yourself:

“The only person that your happiness is dependent upon is you. You have to start being happy from within, and not look toward externals things or people to make you happy. Even when you’re in a relationship you want to be a whole person instead of this ‘you complete me’ thing. External things may make you happy for a little while, but it often doesn’t last. People and things can be taken away from you in a moment – but if you are happy from within then that is a very hard thing to take away.”

You have to remember that your happiness can only be achieved by you and you alone. No one else can take control of your mind and make you happy.

Program yourself for happiness.

Everyone from Buddha to modern day positive psychologist like Dan Gilbert understand that we synthesize our happiness by reprogramming how we think about ourselves and our world. As the William James quote adequately puts it, “The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.” If you understand this simple fact, then you are halfway down the path to personal development. The other half is now taking action and making it all happen.

Social Dynamix

Before I mentioned Social Dynamix. It’s a personal development product I just recently got a copy of and I’ve been really impressed with the breadth and depth of information in it.

So far, I’ve only watched the first module – “Mind Jack” – which is three 20 minute videos explaining how your thoughts, perception, and attitude affect your life (a lot of the stuff I’ve been talking about in this article). The 2 other main modules are “The Shyness and Social Anxiety Annihilator” and “Social Re-Boot.”

I’ll definitely be sharing more about these in the future once I watch them. You can stay updated by joining my newsletter.

The product also comes with a slew of other related bonuses that I would like to write about at some point (about a dozen other PDFs, audio files, videos, etc.) If you want you can head over to the page and check it out.

Buyer Awareness: If you happen to buy it, I will get paid a % of the commission for referring you. But please remember that I don’t work for the company (so please don’t send me e-mails for customer support – but you can send me an e-mail if you want to talk about the content in more depth) and I only recommend it because I have tried it out myself and found it to be valuable.

Questions.

• What do you do to help reprogram your mind to be healthier and more positive?
• What were some old thought patterns and beliefs you needed to change in the past?

Please answer these in the comment section below!

For example, one aspect of my life I’ve been trying to improve on is exercising more often. I haven’t become a health nut yet, but I’m starting to see improvement – and it’s motivating me to keep going. In fact, there’s been a couple times over the past month where people have commented on my “more fit” physique. I know I still have a lot more room for improvement, but it’s inspiring to get that kind of external validation because now I know that I’m doing something right.

Another thing I’ve been trying to work on more is making a viable income from The Emotion Machine. I really enjoy writing about these kinds of topics and it’s been my goal over the past two years to try and turn this into a way of making a living. For two years I wrote new content several times a week and experienced very minimal success when it came to making money; I experimented with advertising, affiliate marketing, and even trying to offer my own services, but nothing “clicked” right away. Instead there’s been a lot of trial-and-error involved, and the good news is that I’m finally beginning to see some success – and that too is motivating. I’m not making a living yet (I’m only 22 and still living with my parents), but now I at least have some money to splurge on some new clothes and music equipment. I haven’t had spending money in awhile, so it’s nice to finally look into my bank account and see something there.

Both of these “success stories” aren’t anything spectacular, but I recognize them as part of something that will continue to grow – and there is a power to that perspective.

Before I had any success with health or business, my attitude was much different. I was coming from a place of desperation. Sure, I liked exercising and working on this blog, but a part of me was dependent on seeing immediate results. I fell for the myth of overnight success, and when I wasn’t getting results right away I quickly got frustrated and started doubting myself. Luckily I remained faithful and persistent during these dark times and now I’m beginning to see it finally pay off.

And now that I’m seeing results in these domains of my life, I feel a weight beginning to lift from my shoulders. My desperation has turned into inspiration. Now I know that I can overcome obstacles. Now I know I can experience success if I really work at something. And now I also have some positive history to draw confidence from and continue to build off of.

I believe this quote really hits the crux of the message I want to send out right now. Once you begin making progress in your life you should cherish it, no matter how small or minor you think that progress is. Because reaching big goals is really nothing more than reaching a bunch of small goals over and over again. And when we recognize the value of reaching these small goals, we can motivate ourselves to accomplish some tremendous things in the long haul.

• Why your past attempts at social anxiety have failed.
• How to become as relaxed and easygoing around strangers as you are around your closest friend.
• How to use new breakthrough discoveries in science and psychology to help you eliminate the anxiety, nervousness, self-doubt, fear and insecurities that are destroying your chances at making friends, getting a girlfriend/boyfriend and building a social life.
• The seemingly harmless action your parents or relatives did that reinforced your anxiety at a young age.
• How to use the secrets of psychological conditioning to manage your anxiety.
• How the “Power Of Expectations” keeps you shy or socially anxious.
• An enlightened guru’s forgotten mind-trick that gives you the stone-cold, unshakeable confidence of self-made millionaires and natural-born leaders.
• How to patch up the holes in your self-esteem FOR GOOD.
• A 2-step exercise to identify exactly how you are letting people control your actions.
• How you should act to make people value and respect you.
• An ancient Buddhist technique for becoming absolutely calm and in control.
• Why shy people are afraid to wear cool or stylish clothes.
• And much more…