Other luminaries who have lived a thousand lives include SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who believes that reading is the fastest way to learn. The members of Chromeo spend most of their time in the library, while business magnates Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger frequently spend entire days reading. Reading alone doesn’t guarantee success, but most successful people share a love for words.

What’s more interesting, however, is how they read. Because more than absorbing the words themselves, the best readers are putting what they learn into action — and that requires them to truly retain the information, which can be tough for even the brightest minds. Ask yourself, for example, whether you can recall the main points from the article you just spent 10 minutes reading. What about that biography you tore through last month? How many novels have faded in your memory once you put them down?

If you’re like most of the population, your retention is probably far lower than you’d like to admit. No matter how much you read, confronting how little you retain might have you feeling more like Guy Pearce in Memento than Bradley Cooper in Limitless. And you’re not alone.

So here’s a process to ensure you learn from what you read, retain that information, and apply it to your life — just like the world’s best readers.

Identify your purpose.

In order to actually learn from reading, you must understand why you’re reading in the first place. Your purpose, or objective, will be your literary North Star. It will keep you from less useful information, like articles with juicy headlines or unimportant curiosities, and orient you toward information that is truly useful. Your objective will inform your reading decisions, so you don’t read mindlessly, which can be tempting. When we talk about the importance of an information diet, this is the first step.

But what makes for a good objective? In short, whatever serves your goals and interests, and helps you prioritize how you spend your time.

For example, one of your objectives might be to climb the ranks of the sales department at your company, which will require you to both up your sales game and learn to manage other people in your division. That intention might guide you toward the best books on sales technique and strategy, which you’ll complement with books on psychology, happiness and motivation. That will help you avoid clickbait articles on trite sales theory and the allure of pop-business books, which are mostly just empty calories.

At the same time, you might also want to unwind before you go to bed with some mindless fun — another perfectly good objective — giving you the greenlight to pick up A Song of Ice and Fire, which you’ll enjoy a few pages at a time over several months. Even a great sales guy needs to relax — and be able to talk Game of Thrones with his customers.

Your goal to advance at work will also guide your journey through multiple books. Once you finish your sales and psychology reading, your objective might lead you to study the best salespeople in your field, and how they got to where they are. That, in turn, might force you to learn about how to maneuver office politics and work on your personal brand. That North Star will keep you on course while remaining open to surprising discoveries, which is one of the joys of reading.

What about learning for learning’s sake? Pure curiosity is a great reason to read, if you balance it with your other objectives. For example, if you’re looking to improve your knowledge on marketing within the next three months, spending 100% of your time reading about deep sea diving will not be an effective use of time. But you might spend 75% of your time reading about marketing and the other 25% reading about the ocean (and find yourself making interesting connections between the two), and satisfy both of your interests.

Whatever your objective, the important thing is to constantly scrutinize your reading diet — just like your actual diet — to make sure you’re taking in the most nutritious material. If you’re about to read an article, take five seconds and ask yourself whether it fits your objectives. Prioritize your sources and check only the ones that are related to your goals. (To that end, you might find journalist Farhad Manjoo’s reading system useful.)

In a world that bombards you with information, and where the cost of clicking is so low, being conscious of what you read is crucial.

Engage with what you read.

Reading should be more of a conversation than a lecture. By reading someone’s words, you’re engaging in a silent dialogue with the author. You can keep up the conversation, and retain the information for years to come, or let the author “speak” until the book is done, and let the words fade into memory. Creating that conversation is one of the best ways to actually learn from reading.

So as you read, don’t just let your eyes read the words. Think about the material. Highlight or mark the passages that jump out at you. Connect passages with related ideas or opposing ones. Write down your questions, your objections, your impressions. If something challenges you, make a note of it. Acronyms can help you remember why you highlighted certain passages. For example, author Tim Ferriss uses “BL”, which stands for “Beautiful Language,” to indicate that he highlighted a passage because it was written well.

By engaging with the material, and not just passively absorbing it, you’re creating a dialogue that will build on what you read and dramatically increase how much you actually remember.

Don’t speed read.

In the age of lifehacks and efficiency, we’ve become obsessed with processing as much information as quickly as possible. We’re all for getting things done quickly, but reading is one activity that actually benefits from slowing down, especially during the most meaningful parts of a book.

Speed reading is also a skill that needs to be perfected. In most cases, speed reading amounts to absorbing words quickly, at the expense of processing the underlying information. Your objective will help you here, too: Do you just want to check a book off your list, or actually learn?

The other benefit of taking your time is to actually enjoy the process of reading. Without waxing philosophical here, the ultimate goal of life is joy. Some ideas are too important, or beautiful, to speed read through. Remember, the goal is to learn, not to get through as many books as possible.

As you become a better reader, though, your reading will naturally increase. You naturally read faster as you grow more familiar with general concepts or ideas that you’ve seen before, and your brain will process language and ideas faster the more you engage with them.

Pick the right format for you.

Between print books, e-books and audiobooks, pick the format that works best for you. I personally prefer print books (usually hardcover) — I like being able to touch the pages and mark them up, I like the smell of paper, and I like the happy accidents that come from other people seeing what I’m reading. Book covers make for great conversation starters, and you can pass along a book once you’ve finished, which is a great relationship-builder.

Some people, especially auditory learners, prefer audiobooks. These usually put me to sleep and feel more like lectures, but they can be excellent formats for people who need to listen. They also allow you to get more reading done on the go (subway rides, road trips and gym workouts will suddenly become much more productive) and can help people who aren’t as keen on reading to benefit from the power of books.

E-books, of course, are the most attractive option for most people, and generally more budget-friendly. They’re also delivered instantly, so you can pull information as you need it. And they make traveling with your reading dramatically easier.

The tradeoff with e-books, though, is retention. Multiple studies suggest that digital formats make it harder to comprehend information, prevent you from navigating text in a satisfying way, and can drain or fail to recruit key mental resources. That seems to be the (pretty steep) price we pay for convenience.

Still, your intentions and engagement with your reading will determine how valuable your reading ultimately is. When it comes to format, choose the one that you feel serves your objectives and experience best.

Record and revisit.

As I mentioned, creating a conversation with your reading is key — and that conversation doesn’t end when you finish the book. Revisiting your favorite passages over time is a great way to keep the most important parts of a book alive. This allows you to enjoy a book long after you finish it, and to apply its lessons as new opportunities and insights arise.

So once you’re done reading a book, return to the passages that resonated with you, using your annotations. I prefer to organize my notes in Evernote — this is by far the best tool I’ve found, and with the “tag” function, your notes will be way easier to search through. If you want to kick it old school, you can also write them in a commonplace book or journal.

Transcribing notes from books into Evernote or your own book used to be painful. Apps like TextGrabber have changed that, by turning book text into readable text with a single photo. They’re great for capturing large segments of text (so that your highlights have context). Truthfully, snapping a photo and double checking the accuracy of the text with TextGrabber is probably a bit slower than typing it out, but it’s easier on the wrists and more relaxing. It affords me a bit more time to think about the quote in question (especially while I’m double checking the text). If you use an eBook reader, you can migrate your highlights into Evernote with the Web Clipper tool.

Whichever tool you use, your goal is to rediscover your favorite passages later, so leave as many cues as possible in the form of tags or headers. (To develop good tags, ask yourself: Who said it? Was it a stat or a quote? Who was this said about? What was the topic? What were the themes? Was it an article or book?) That will make it possible to enjoy your favorite passages later, so that you can…

Process and analyze.

Unless you have a photographic memory, you will almost certainly forget a large chunk of what you read. I actually forget a lot about the specifics of what I read (e.g., exact phrasing, specific references, etc.), which is why I prioritize re-learning. I consider this a vital part of the learning process.

Every 4-6 weeks, author Ramit Sethi sets aside a 30–45-minute block of time to review his annotations from books and articles. This system reminds you of any important points you might have forgotten or otherwise overlooked. Whether the note is from a month, a year, or three years ago, Ramit figures out how these notes apply to what he’s working on in the moment.

While friends can remind us of advice they shared, a book can’t. That’s up to us. So we have to remind ourselves of what we took away with our own personal process. If you use Evernote, develop a routine to revisit your notes — either a monthly review of your notes, or a search for tags that relate to your current career, relationships and life. You can develop a similar process with a traditional notebook, though the analog format might make revisiting your favorite passages more serendipitous and random.

Apply what you read.

If you follow everything we’ve talked about so far, then you’ll definitely be learning more from what you read. (Hooray!)

Now the question is: What do you do with that material?

This begins by really engaging with the material, as we described above. Ask yourself: Is this point valid, or is the author off base? Do you agree with the information? What makes this an especially beautiful passage? Why is the author tackling this problem? How does this argument square with your existing beliefs? Do you have new questions or concerns as a result?

If you really try to answer these questions, the process of answering them will reveal all sorts of exciting ways to apply what you learn. A surprising study in a psychology book might inspire you to send a summary of the passage to your boss, so you can improve team meetings. An approach to sales you disagree with might make for a great conversation with your team the next day. A well-written passage about friendship might be just the thing you need to reconnect with an old friend. Or maybe you don’t know what to think or feel about something you’ve read — which can be the beginning of a fruitful discussion with your colleagues, partner or friend.

The key question to guide this process is why. Why does a passage move you? Why do you agree or disagree? Answering the why will lead you to the how — how to put the material to good use out there in the world.

As you read, continue to move between the why and the how. If you’ve just learned about a new marketing concept, spend five minutes thinking about why it might work — and how it could apply to your job or company. Push it even further: Imagine how a hypothetical strategy, product launch, or campaign would look using that concept. If this brings up new gaps or questions, then that might send you seeking out new reading material, and the process begins again.

As you apply what you read, continue to record your responses. Evernote would be a great tool here too, as would an organizer like Trello.

Package and share what you read.

Done right, reading can transform your life. Done exceptionally, it can transform the lives of the people around you.

One powerful way to maximize the value of reading is to pass a book or article along to someone else. Tons of life-changing insights are stored in books that sit on bookshelves or on Kindles, unused. That information could make someone else’s life easier or more fulfilling, and help you build a stronger relationship. (In fact, sharing knowledge is one of the most effective ways to network. Handing someone a book with your annotations can be more powerful than an email or a gift.)

You can also pass along the insights you’ve shared, without handing someone an entire book (which, especially for important people, can feel like yet another to-do). Remember those quotes and passages you highlighted in your books? Those make for great communications. You can pass quotes along to people by email when the opportunity arises, providing encouragement, celebration, perspective, and insight they might not have gotten otherwise. There’s no need to be ostentatious or go overboard with these. The goal isn’t to look smart, but to extend the lifespan of the ideas that helped you.

Work is a terrific place to share your ideas in the right time and place. You can contribute to your team and stand out as a thought leader by sharing industry data, book excerpts, or expert opinions from your reading. Most people don’t do this at work, which makes any knowledge-sharing stand out as exceptional.

Reading can also become fuel for your relationships. I forward cool excerpts and links to articles (or entire books) to clients or musicians I’ve interviewed, keeping those friendships alive. I’ll pass key insights to researchers at my agency for their own personal development. The Art of Charm team constantly exchanges scientific studies and productivity tips, and has created deep bonds with staff and clients by making reading a big part of the conversation.

So let’s look at how reading might look using this approach.

Let’s say that you have a stable 9-5, and you’d like to make some additional money freelancing. You figure that there are two ways to do this — either to increase the amount of work you do, or to increase your rate.

So now you know your purpose: to improve your personal productivity and to study how pricing works.

So you search for blog posts, articles, and books about the subjects. You realize that both have quite a bit to do with psychology — your productivity is about managing your own psychology, and pricing is about working with other people’s psychology. That objective guides you to works on behavioral psychology, cognition and economics. You clip specific email scripts or sentences and drop them into Evernote, filed under tags like “career,” “freelancing,” “value” and “perception.”

A couple of weeks pass, and you’ve been slammed with work. The information you’d acquired earlier falls to the back of your mind, as usual, but you made a 30-minute appointment in your calendar to revisit your annotations. You pull your notes up in Evernote, and after five minutes of browsing, you realize that you can try a couple of different pricing techniques with one of your existing clients.

You write down these notes in Trello and try them during the week. One pricing technique worked, but the other fell flat. At the same time, you noticed that your personal productivity spiked, then crashed by the end of the week. So you make comments in Trello to stick with the first technique, tweak the second, and pay attention to how you spend your time next week.

Over the following weeks, you continue to use and adjust your techniques, and measure your progress by total hours spent and freelance income earned. You write down your thoughts and techniques, and tag them for future reference. Your reading, put into action, becomes a kind of ongoing playbook for your life.

Along the way, you become friends with a freelancer in another industry, and you send her your reading list, along with some of your favorite references and best insights. She puts them into practice, starts to see the results, and starts forwarding information back to you. Together, you build a collaboration that was born from your reading and continually feeds on it.

Living a thousand lives

Despite their simplicity, each of these tweaks will dramatically change the way you learn from reading. Follow your objectives and curiosity to read with a purpose. Have a conversation with the book or article. Make notes and review them constantly. Think about how you can apply these lessons to your life. Share your insights with friends, family, and colleagues. Then watch as you extract multiples of value out of each book, blog post, and article.

Remember, knowledge is only potential power. It takes on a kinetic energy when you retain it and apply it. So happy reading, and happy sharing!

The post How to Get the Most out of Your Reading appeared first on The Art of Charm.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. These feelings can just as easily become the key to making us extraordinary, if we know how to process, understand and capitalize on them. If Robert Greene’s motto that everything is “material” to work with—even the ugly, unpleasant, often shameful habits we tend to develop—then envy, procrastination and fear are actually our greatest teachers in disguise.

That’s what this piece is about: what our “ugly” emotions can offer us, and how to use them to our advantage.

Envy as Fuel

Of all our ugly emotions, envy is probably the most prominent and the least pleasant. Amplified by the success theaters of Facebook and Instagram, our envy only grows as we increasingly compare ourselves to friends, family, and strangers. But if you can harness it properly, envy can serve as a high-octane motivational fuel.

But first, we need to differentiate between two forms of envy identified by researchers: malignant and benign. Malignant envy is a frustrating kind of desire, usually perceived to be unfair or unjust, which often makes us feel angry or resentful. It aims to damage the position of the person you envy, effectively pulling them down (if only in your mind) so that both of you are more comparable. This brand of envy is more hostile, and is designed to restore a sense of self at the expense of its object. As the late author Gore Vidal once said, “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” Classic malignant envy.

Then there’s benign envy, which has an element of admiration and optimism, though it might still bring up feelings of lack and frustration. But instead of pulling someone down, benign envy compels you to move yourself up. The same researchers found that respondents with benign envy showed greater motivation to study for exams, and actually produced better results on a test.

One feeling, two forms: a damaging, hostile brand of envy; and an aspirational, motivating sort. The difference between being consumed by envy and being driven by envy is the ability to convert malicious envy into its benign form.

Is this possible? Definitely.

The first step is to recognize the distinction between destructive and positive envy. The second is to take an inventory of the feelings that come with each: the hostility and paralysis of malicious envy, the inspiration and momentum of benign envy. Which feels better? Which would you prefer to live with? The third is to accept that while envy is inevitable, what we do with that envy is largely up to us.

Of course, we feel envious of different characteristics, some of which we can develop, some we can’t. Differentiating between the two will help you identify which goals are worthy of your benign envy. For example, you might find that you envy people who are tall or naturally athletic. Not surprisingly, this envy will almost always be malicious, because these aren’t capabilities you can choose to develop.

But other abilities are worthy of your envy. Good writing, for instance. Microsoft Excel chops. Sales skills. Yoga game. Strong social dynamics. There will always be an element of natural talent involved in skill, of course, but the role of talent is generally eclipsed by hard work, as multiple studies, have found. If a skill is attainable through hard work, then it’s worth being envious of—and therefore worth converting into benign envy, so you can attain it too.

(This also connects to growth vs. fixed mindsets, which we talk a little bit about here, and why Khan Academy founder Salman Khan will never tell his son that he’s smart.)

But to really capitalize on envy, you will eventually have to take action. This is the essential step. The moment we begin investing in ourselves, seeking out learning opportunities, putting in practice time, setting goals, viewing the objects of our envy as models rather than competitors, raw envy begins to transform into motivational fuel. Once we decide to make a change, the things that easily cause us shame and discomfort become the very things driving our improvement.

That’s the key: identifying objects that deserve your envy, converting that envy into fuel, and using that fuel to take action. Without action, however, no amount of envy—even benign—can produce results.

Envy can also serve as an extremely useful guide. Author Alain de Botton, for example, believes in learning from the people you’re envious of. When he meets someone who makes him feel envious, he runs a simple thought exercise:

Why do I feel envious of them? Is it how they look? Is it the job they’re doing? What aspect of their job? What is it that I could use? [our emphasis]

Using this simple framework can help you create a highly personal guide for your own life.

Examining the motivation of your envy—why do you want this particular thing?—can reveal your true interests. Do you want to be an excellent sales manager, or do you want the money it brings? Do you want to be a successful writer, or do you crave the recognition? Whether these motivations are pure or derivative, productive or misguided, they will help you decide whether something is worth pursuing—and why.

Studying the objects of our envy can also help us identify the actions, mindsets and habits that lead to success. When de Botton asks what it is that I could use, he’s actually converting malignant envy into benign envy, and forcing himself to study the objects of his envy. In this way, the people we envy can become useful models for our own behavior. That’s what envy can do when we use it well: turn competitors into templates, and fantasies into actions.

Interestingly, this mindset will push you to grow closer to your sources of envy, not (as many would prefer) further away. While most people try to repress their envy, or (as author Neil Strauss points out) mask it with dislike, disdain and disinterest, the only way to truly capitalize on envy is to move closer to its origin. The object of envy might be a person (an entrepreneur, athlete or thinker you admire), a community (the group of people excelling in your field, an online forum or league), a physical location (a conference, theater or club), an object (a book, blog or app), or a skill (coding, storytelling or writing). If we’re going to allow our envy to teach us, then we need move closer to the people and things causing it.

Whatever the source of your envy, this will always be true: The closer you grow to your envy, the more it can ultimately teach you. That means embracing the feelings of envy along with its objects. Ultimately, it’s unlikely you’ll remain envious forever. As you grow, your envy will inevitably subside, and it will subside because you’ve embraced it.

Productive Procrastination

Procrastination is one of those paralyzing, all-consuming tendencies that derails projects, demoralizes teams and compromises careers. That awful feeling of inertia has visited people at every level in every field, and never disappears completely. We can hack away at procrastination with productivity techniques, but when it comes to the deeper feelings of apathy and resistance, we need a more profound solution.

Fortunately, procrastination can also be used to our advantage.

And just like envy, researchers have found that procrastinators come in two types. Passive procrastinators tend to be more avoidant, paralyzed by doubt and indecision, while active procrastinators tend to put off their commitments in order to work with the adrenaline that results from an approaching deadline. Both can be highly effective.

Passive procrastination, for example, can create an opportunity to make progress on other less urgent, but still important, tasks. Stanford professor John Perry famously embraces passive procrastination and exploits it to his advantage. By avoiding important tasks, Perry says, passive procrastinators can easily keep themselves busy by doing less important tasks that are still worthwhile, and that will contribute to their momentum in taking on more important work.

Active procrastination comes with its own challenges, including elevated stress, a need for external pressure and possible self-sabotage, but the urgency it creates can be a powerful fuel. Here too procrastination can become an advantage, with the help of artificial deadlines. For example, I often set a deadline for myself three days ahead of an actual deadline, so that I know I’ll be done in time—and even if I cut it close, I’m not actually at risk of missing a commitment. In this way, I get the best of both worlds: I get the adrenaline and the time. (If you need to have some skin in the game to take an artificial deadline seriously, check out Stickk.com or tell a friend to keep you accountable.)

But procrastination can help us in other ways, too. Even when you’ve completed a project on time, waiting until the deadline to submit it can give other people the impression that you gave your project more thought and effort. On the level of perception, this can be powerful (especially in corporate environments, where optics, for better or worse, do matter).

Frank Partnoy, author of Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, points out that procrastination can also be powerful in personal relationships. In cases where we’ve done something wrong, he says, waiting makes for better apologies:

If we wait, the other person can process information about exactly what we did: the who, the why, the how, the details of what happened. If we apologize too quickly they don’t have time to figure all that out and our apology doesn’t mean as much.

Delaying an apology—or any uncomfortable conversation, for that matter—is its own form of procrastination. But a swift apology can be even more damaging than a late one. Similarly, submitting a project far ahead of a deadline might give the impression that you rushed, or tried to get the project out of the way quickly. Procrastination can give the opposite impression, by forcing you to work down to the wire.

Of course, delaying a project might rob you of the time to actually invest in a project—but purely on the level of perception, it could just as easily make you look good.

Examining the root causes of procrastination is essential. Most procrastinators assume that they merely have poor habits (and many do), but there is usually something more meaningful happening beneath the surface.

So ask yourself: What exactly are you avoiding by procrastinating? The discomfort of struggling with a project? Your own limitations? Your feelings about the subject matter? If so, then your procrastination might in fact be a way to avoid deeper feelings (of failure, shortcoming, or ignorance) that would be exposed by doing the work. If this is the case, then you’ll discover that you’re not really avoiding the work—you’re avoiding yourself. This will direct you to the areas of yourself that need development, and possibly inspire you to reengage with your work, since work is one of the best ways to strengthen those aspects of yourself.

On the other hand, it’s possible that you’re procrastinating in order to avoid your own boredom, impatience, or belief that what you are doing isn’t important or interesting enough. If so, then your procrastination can teach you a great deal about what you find meaningful. Author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, for example, relied on procrastination to cut the sections from his book, Antifragile, that he didn’t feel enthusiastic about. His procrastination on those sections was actually a sign that they weren’t worth pursuing. If they were, he realized, he would have been dying to write them.

That’s how procrastination can actually become a powerful guide for your priorities, desires and goals. Sometimes, we avoid things precisely because our deeper self knows that they aren’t worth pursuing. In those cases, procrastination functions as the opposite of envy: while envy signals that you should pursue its object, procrastination might signal that you should avoid it.

That’s how these two “ugly” emotions (envy and procrastination) can ultimately serve you, not just individually but in tandem—by creating a kind of emotional geartrain that, by meshing in the right proportions, generates some serious motivational torque.

Fear, That Great Teacher

Your breathing shallows. Your heart rate speeds up. You want to run away—anywhere—but you’re too busy trying to keep your knees from buckling. Fear, Frank Herbert writes in Dune, is the mind-killer.

But it can also be a mind-builder. Like envy and procrastination, fear can reveal our deepest desires and priorities, if we can learn to reframe it as a guide to what’s truly important. As the old adage goes, “Follow your fear.” Which is precisely what author Tim Ferriss suggested in one of his interviews:

If [I’m] ever in doubt about the most important to-do item on list is, typically it’s what makes me most uncomfortable. Like drumming with Foreigner … I’ve never been comfortable with music. And surfing … I’ve never been comfortable with water and have had a fear of drowning. And, of course, parkour, because I have a fear of heights and falling and a bad ankle.

All of which became major achievements for Ferriss as he embraced his fear.

As we did with envy, we must ask what we are fearful of. Almost always, we are fearful of things we need or want—otherwise, why would we feel anything at all?—which tend to be new, foreign, and largely unknown. Unfamiliar objects of desire: that is the greatest source of fear. As playwright David Mamet wrote, “Every fear hides a wish.”

To understand what those wishes are worth to us, we have to consider the sacrifices we make by suppressing them. Ask yourself what it’s costing you—financially, emotionally, physically, and in missed opportunities—to continue living the way you’re living right now. What is the fear of stepping into a new career costing you today? What will it cost you in ten years? If you’re afraid of meeting new people, how does the prospect of not going on a date for another year sit with you?

These are uncomfortable questions to ask, and we can only understand them through the prism of our fear. The more the consequences make you cringe, the more your fear has to teach you about what you find important. You begin to fear the effects of your fear. When your fear of the status quo becomes greater than your fear of change, change becomes possible.

The next step, of course, is to take action in spite of the fear. And a great place to start is to chip away at your fear in private. As author and marketer Seth Godin once said, in an excellent meditation on fear:

What we need to do is say, “What’s the smallest, tiniest thing that I can master and what’s the scariest thing I can do in front of the smallest number of people that can teach me how to dance with the fear?” Once we get good at that, we just realize that it’s not fatal. And it’s not intellectually realize—we’ve lived something that wasn’t fatal. And that idea is what’s so key—because then you can do it a little bit more.

Notice that the strategy here isn’t to eliminate fear and then to act (a common belief, and one that keeps us stuck in fear). The only way out is through. To capture our fear in small doses, to try it on, to survive it—that’s the practical formula for reducing our fear.

So if you’re afraid of water, take a walk on the beach, then stand in the shallows, then slowly wade in. If you’re afraid of public speaking, talk to a friend, then talk to a group of friends, then invite several over to your house for a low-stakes presentation. If you’re terrified of approaching a stranger, talk to your barista, then to a fellow patron, then to a person standing outside your cafe. You’re on no one’s timeline but your own. The goal is incremental progress.

Through gradual exposure, your sensation of fear will eventually dissipate. On a cognitive-behavioral level, this is a proven method to reduce and learn from your fear at the same time.

(By the way, that’s another fascinating thing that this ugly emotion can teach us: We are generally not afraid of the sources of our fear, but by the sensation of fear itself. Hence Franklin Roosevelt’s famous saying: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” which he called the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance”—in other words, the irrational stuff that stops us from getting better.)

So examine the sources of your fear, discover the desires that motivate it, and embrace your most compelling interests. Consider what your life has become, and will remain, if you shy away from your fears. Recognize that fear ultimately only fears itself, and begin to play with your fear in small, contained, safe conditions, until you slowly desensitize yourself to the terror and paralysis, and eventually learn to operate with it. With time, and much more quickly than you probably anticipate, you’ll become the person you’ve wanted to be.

Ugly is Powerful

It’s tempting to avoid our feelings of envy, our tendency to procrastinate, and our sensation of fear. These are, after all, some of the most difficult and shameful emotions we possess. But once we learn how to use them, they become a gift. The key is to confront them, and make them a deeper part of who we are.

Because when we repress our envy, procrastination, and fear, they fester, confuse, and paralyze. But when we examine them, they teach, illuminate, and instruct. When we engage them, they soften, retreat and make room. And when we embrace them, they become tools for greatness, and pave the way for our growth.

Image 1 credit: SeRGioSVoX

Image 2 credit: Kristof Magyar

The post How to Use “Ugly” Emotions to Your Advantage appeared first on The Art of Charm.