Author: Steve Mueller

Having to deal with a rejection can be tremendously difficult. But something that many people find even more difficult is to be the one who has to reject. And so it happens that many of us accept obligations that we would have rather avoided. Sometimes we accept out of politeness, in other cases because we simply don’t know in what possible way to say no. Nonetheless, we always end up with dreadful responsibilities or massive amounts of extra work. So why not learn how to politely decline a request and save a lot of time and nerves? It’s time to stop being everybody’s darling…

… because you already are. Throughout the years, I’ve read many books about personal development. Whenever I was literally starving for more information about self-growth, there was an interesting book or website that helped me to take my own development to the next level. Nevertheless, the more I read about personality development, the more did I realize that some (!) of the personal development coaches and authors were not only focused on development but were more often striving for perfection instead.

In September I wrote an article that included some really interesting and famous corporate mottos of huge companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, McDonald’s, LG and many more. But, it was rather a compilation of really interesting company slogans, without going into further detail or evaluation. This time, I have picked just a couple of the most intriguing and thought-provoking corporate slogans (or advertising slogans) and analyzed these company sayings a bit more in-depth. First off, what exactly makes a good corporate slogan? What differentiates an effective and successful corporate motto from a meaningless slogan?

Throughout the years, my breakfast consisted out of two slices of toast with hazelnut/chocolate spread, jam, cheese or cereals with milk. When I was younger I was used to drinking a glass of milk alongside with my breakfast, but the older I grew the more did I start to replace the milk with tea. Over all the years, I never spent many thoughts on how to “optimize” my breakfast and on how to get a kick-start in the morning through the breakfast, if you so want. My awareness on the topic rose, when I was reading in a magazine about…

How I started having lucid dreams – Insights on lucid dreaming: This article sums up my lucid dreaming endeavor, aka “from zero lucid dreaming to hero”. During this article, I will describe you exactly what I did in order to experience the beauty of lucid dreaming and show you the important insights I gained during my endeavor. I’ll furthermore show you what exactly you’ll need to know if you are also interested in lucid dreaming. As a sideline and for your better understanding of this article; I started writing this article months ago and have added each day important occurrences…

The majority of people are like drones, nowadays. It seems as if they are living their lives in a trance – numb sleepwalkers that do the same things day in and day out – while being stuck in various routines that have accumulated during the years. Routines that give them the sensation of stability in an unstable and ever-changing world. There is no variety other than the regularly changing television program, new computer and console games or the newest scandals of celebrities and politicians. People have no time anymore to call their friends and to spend time with them, but waste…

Back in the days, when I was a little child at the age of eight years I had forgotten to do an important homework. I guess I simply missed to write it down and therefore had completely forgotten to accomplish it. Now, what should have happened normally in such a situation was that the pupil informed his teacher that he had forgotten to do his homework. Well, I decided to do otherwise. Rather than acknowledging my mistake, I decided to lie about it and pretended that I had done my homework. As you can guess, it wasn’t a very good…

This article will show you how you can overcome exam nerves and exam stress with the same techniques I was able to combat test anxiety effectively and leave it behind forever. Exam nerves, test anxiety, academic anxiety or exam fear… no matter how you call it the fearfulness about upcoming tests and exams seems to have been an omnipresent element of my thoughts whenever the time of an exam approached. One night before the actual test started I was often lying awake in bed for hours, worrying about all possible occurrences during the test, inclusively the possibility that exam anxiety could…

In this article, I’m going to show you an effective at-home exercise workout program that can be practiced from home, in case you don’t want to spend money for an expensive membership in a gym or simply prefer to train and exercise in a comfortable environment. Having a proper at-home workout plan can be very helpful for everyone who isn’t quite sure on whether to join a gym or not, but also for the one’s that do a lot of business traveling and others who simply don’t want to be tied to a year-long contract with a gym. All it takes…

Decision-making skills are essential capabilities for every person that wants to live his life consciously and independent. Nevertheless, many people seem to lack these skills and feel more comfortable if another person makes the decision – even if these decisions could influence their lives negatively. Allowing others to decide over one’s life does not only open room for manipulation but also takes away the burden of responsibility, which is why many people rather accept this kind of “deal” than being actually responsible for something.

Today, I was recommended an interesting article and after having it read half through some worthwhile ideas started to evolve, which finally led me to start writing this article with the basic message of why it is so important to scrutinize yourself and to reflect your actions continuously. The article I read was about the luxurious lifestyle of Bernie Ecclestone’s daughters along with the question if these two are the most spoilt girls in the U.K. For those of you who don’t know who Bernie Ecclestone is – he is the man behind the Formula One racing, widely considered as…

The characters of world’s history that truly amaze and fascinate me are those who had the courage to step up to challenge and question the level of knowledge of their time. Inventors, scientists, and researchers who didn’t accept the commonly known “facts” that they were taught told in school, but started to investigate things on their own, whenever they saw discrepancies. Galileo Galilei, for instance, is an excellent example of such a type person, as he questioned the commonly accepted fact that the sun was revolving around the earth and proved the status quo of knowledge of that time to…

Let’s face it how it is… There are some wonderful professors out there that truly want to share some of their (very valuable) knowledge with us students; the ones who love their jobs and consider teaching/lecturing as a noble profession and are therefore devoted to impart knowledge to students in an understandable, precise – often even interesting – way. Every one of us knows of these great professors whose top priority are students; the ones that never hesitate to implement some of their existing real-life experiences into lectures, in order to illustrate the contents from a practitioner perspective in a…

I don’t know about you, but I have definitely noticed that the time I spend on the internet has fairly increased over the past two years. In 2008 and 2009 I was so busy with my full-time job and evening classes that the internet was just a “part-time activity” in the evening, whenever I was searching for something I wanted to know on Google, connected with a friend via a social network or just wanted to be entertained for a while by watching a video on YouTube, etc. So, basically, my internet usage was very low, as I was working,…

Back in the day when I was writing my article on the different methods to overcome writer’s block, I discovered the exceptional positive impact of orchestral movie soundtracks in regards to the stimulation of my creativity, as a lot of these songs helped me to get inspired in an amazingly refreshing way. Within a couple of months, I found more and more inspiring movie scores and started to put on my headphones and play these songs whenever I needed to be creative in any kinds of ways. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but whenever I listened to…

Today, I was walking through the streets of my city and hummed the melody of a song by the artist Kid Cudi, as I had listened to its catchy tune just a few minutes earlier on the radio. I was barely thinking about the songtext, but as I remembered that the song was called “Pursuit of Happiness” I started thinking a bit more about its fantastic title. Isn’t our whole life a pursuit of happiness? Isn’t it the quest for fulfillment and joy what motivates and empowers us to get up and to give our very best, day after day? A…

A characteristic that many brilliant thinkers and extraordinarily successful people have in common is their courage to think different and to view things from another perspective than the vast majority of people. Their willingness to forge an own opinion and to express their own opinions and thoughts caused these people a lot of trouble in their lives and didn’t increase their overall popularity (think about Galileo Galilei’s prosecution by the church, after supporting the view that the sun is the centre of the universe), nevertheless, it also enabled these people to come up with solutions for problems no one else could…

Buckminster Fuller is not only known for being one of the brightest inventors of his time but also for having received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his “contributions as geometrician, educator and architect-designer” that were “benchmarks of accomplishment in their fields”. Richard Buckminster Fuller’s amazing ideas and inventions were often the results of approaching practical problems with both scientific knowledge and “outside the box thinking”. The following success story about Buckminster Fuller is separated into two parts; the first one consisting of the achievements in his life, the second one focusing on his personal life, which is also quite…

My former marketing professor couldn’t stop pointing out how important it was for a company to have a unique selling proposition (also: unique selling point, USP) if that company wanted to succeed in the nowadays market. I could swear I heard him mentioning the marketing concept of having an USP at least once a week, accompanied by a long explanation that included some of the wisest chosen USP’s and how they helped their companies to succeed. By the way, I nearly forgot to explain what a “Unique Selling Proposition” is… So here we go: A Unique Selling Point is a feature or…

Television is an extraordinarily great invention and has become the #1 form of entertainment in many countries. It allows us to stay informed about recent events, breaking news and entertains us whenever we feel just the slightest strains of boredom. Besides all positive benefits that came with the television there are also a lot of negative aspects of it, especially when it comes to living a conscious life and personal development. When I was a teenager I was used to spending some hours watching TV daily. I wasn´t addicted to television and fulfilled all my obligations, however, it was a habit…