The start of a new year is a good time to reflect on the past year and your achievements. Are you plodding along with life, or do you fancy kick-starting bigger plans? We’re here to help motivate you to achieve more. It's one thing going to work, coming home, cracking open a bottle of wine and clocking off for the day, but it's another to really live; to get up at six am and work on that novel for two hours, to train for that marathon, to set up that start up….

‘Relationships can be repaired, reputations can be regained but time once squandered is lost forever' - Anon. Yes, that's one of our favourite quotes here
PICK THE BRAIN
www.pickthebrain.com
Pick The Brain

Possibly our favourite of this week's crop - Pick the Brain is a little box of positivity. The site is host to great articles, guaranteed to inspire a little bit of motivation in the most apathetic brains.

Follow their tips on five things you should do in the first hour of the morning and take heed of their motivation principles to help you change your life. Jumpstart your new year and read their story on how to stop being scared of success.

LIFE OPTIMIZER
www.lifeoptimizer.org
LIFE Optimizer

This site was founded by Donald Latumahina, an Indonesian who combined his two main interests – IT and personal development – and created a site to help people live their lives to the full. Naturally it’s packed with great ideas on how to optimize your life, including how to minimize regret, write a manifesto, and educate yourself online. In fact there’s so many inspirational elements to the site, we simply can’t get off. No more excuses!

ANTHONY ROBBINS
www.tonyrobbins.com
Tony Robbins

This American motivational speaker has published books on self-help and self-motivation, and works as a professional motivator. He's got celebrities like Donna Karan and Serena Williams backing up his work, whom both have found working with Robbins life changing. On his site we're greeted with informational videos where Robbins displays his self-help strategies, as well as a few free online coaching sessions.

‘Tony Robbins provides an amazing vehicle for looking at your life, mapping out a mission, and determining what’s holding you back and what you need to move forward,’ says American fashion designer Donna Karan. ‘Tony tapped into my soul and helped me see my life’s work more clearly.’

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN
thisiswhatimean.tumblr.com
This Is What I Mean on Tumblr

Blog wise we've got an adorable little Tumblr blog chock-full of quotes, from inspirational people, to movie gifs, to motivational typography. This is a great site to turn to when you're feeling a little down. We can't get enough of the handwritten nuggets of life advice - there's just something that makes it that touch more moving because somebody's taken the time to scribble it down on a piece of paper.

POSITIVITY BLOG
www.positivityblog.com
Positivity Blog

Run by Swede Henrik Edberg, the author of a multitude of self-help guides, this little site goes the extra mile in ensuring its readers stay positive, stop worrying or procrastinating and boost self-esteem. The guides are more akin to advice from your mum than instructions from a teacher, which makes our visits to the site a lot more pleasant. Our favourite guide at present is the insightful post on the topic of ‘selflove', with great tips on how to learn to be a little bit less hard on yourself. We've printed out Edberg's 25 Simple Ways to Motivate Yourself and hung it by our desks - it's wall-mountingly good.

HYPNOTHERAPY AND HEALING
www.shomitmitter.com
Shomit Miller

If looking at a site just isn’t enough and you’re seriously in need of some outside help, then take a look at the site of the esteemed hypnotherapist and past life regression expert Dr Shomit Mitter. We can vouch for him personally as a facilitator to huge life changes. A miracle worker and then some.

THE IDLER ACADEMY
idler.co.uk
Idler Academy

The Idler Academy is another genius resource to make you sit up and reassess the way you live your life; maybe it's not about doing more, but doing less more awareness and less rush. The Academy ‘of philosophy, husbandry and merriment' cannot fail to make you look at your life in a whole new light.

The Idler magazine was founded in 1993 and is going from strength to strength. In 2016, the Idler magazine (which was founded in 1993) raised more than the £125,000 target via investment platform Crowdcube. ‘The Idler’s philosophy is the perfect antidote to the noise, fury and vapidity of so much of life, a pure radio beacon in an age of static, a rose garden for the soul,’ said investor Dominik Armstrong.

THE SCHOOL OF LIFE
www.theschooloflife.com
The School of Life

Looking for some communal input into how to change your life? Then look no further than ‘The School of Life’; based in a tiny shop in central London, the organisation offers a wide range of classes and tutorials on how to ‘live well.’ Plus you’ll most likely meet some great friends in the process – what could be better?

MOTIVATIONGRID
motivationgrid.com
Motivational Grid

Whilst the aesthetic of the site could do with some sharpening up, we like MotivationGrid’s content, which comes in bite-sized, digestible chunks. Want to find a motivational video to watch before going to the gym? This is the place. Looking for inspiring quotes? Get ‘em here. Habits to transform your productivity, how to train your brain to hate junk food, how to get up earlier and how to find a hot web developer for your business project. It’s all here in both generally and specifically inspiring glory. Read it and feel your blood pump with excitement about the days, weeks and months ahead.

MARK MANSON
markmanson.net
Mark Manson

We love this site. Mark Manson is the NYTimes bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and an internet entrepreneur. As he sets out on his homepage, ‘I write about big ideas and give life advice that doesn’t suck. Some people say I’m an idiot. Other people say I saved their life. Read and decide for yourself.’ Though he is yet to actually save us from actual death, we find ourselves firmly in the fan camp. Via the site, you can download his 25-page ebooks on happiness, self-knowledge, habits and relationships. But if you’d rather just dip in, there are brilliantly written articles on subject matter as diverse as creating life purpose, understanding how the world works, establishing your personal values and improving your emotional intelligence. Great, great stuff.


MARK AND ANGEL HACK LIFE
www.marcandangel.com
Marc And Angel Hack Life

This slick, blog-style website is clean-looking and offers a glut of regularly updated excellent motivational advice. Marc and Angel Chernoff are self-described ‘New York Times bestselling authors, professional coaches, full-time students of life, admirers of the human spirit, and have been recognized by Forbes as having one of the most popular personal development blogs.’ Their goal? Oh not much, just to unlock the secret to happiness, success, love and peace. The podcast is well worth a listen and is an excellent complementary resource to the blog, which tackles big, useful, life-changing topics as its raison d’etre. Twenty questions that will open your mind in 2020; 20 uncomfortable things you need to start doing in 2020; 20 tiny changes you can make in your home to make life simpler; 5 ideas you must leave behind to get on in life: these are just some of the practical posts that can help you look ahead feeling positive. Looks great, reads even better.

Updated January 2020