.
Part of the mission of Little Blog of Positivity is to bring you practical, implementable solutions. Everything I’ve listed here ticks this box. I know you are going to love these essential resources for a happy life! 🙂
Some are completely free, others have a small cost to them. What they all have in common is that they come fully recommended by me!
This page contains affiliate links which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase. This is at no extra cost to you. I only ever recommend products and services that I love and that I think you will love too.
I’ve split the resources into the following categories. Click to jump to the category that you need most at this moment!
1. Personal Growth & Self Improvement
This topic is dear to my heart and many of my blog posts to date have been in this category. For example, check out the following posts:
How To Find Your Superpower & Build A Life You Love
Great Things Never Came From Comfort Zones
As part of my research for posts in this category, I’ve utilised a LOT of resources! Here are some of my favourites.
The Work
The Work is a free resource which helps you to identify your limiting beliefs and what might be holding you back.
It’s a very simple process based around a worksheet and a series of questions.
According to the website, people who do The Work commonly report:
- Alleviation of depression
- Reduced stress
- Improved relationships
- Reduced anger
- More energy
- Increased mental clarity
- More peace
The author of The Work, Byron Katie explains that the process came from the realisation that she couldn’t change the world around her, but that she could change how she reacts to it.
The Work also includes some useful videos which I would recommend watching to get the full benefit from the process.
Brian Tracy
I first discovered international motivational speaker and coach Brian Tracy when I downloaded his fabulous FREE e-book The Power of Habit: 7 Steps to Successful Habits
According to Brian, the book covers:
- How to think more effectively, make better decisions, and take purposeful action
- The specific habits shared by the most successful people on the planet
- How to accomplish 10-20 times as much as the average person
His website is a mine of useful, free information plus you can also sign up for any of his famous courses on the site.
Tony Robbins
Another internationally renowned leader in the world of personal development. Tony has worked with a number of top entertainers and athletes. Usher, Pitbull, Serena Williams and Andre Agassi to name a few. He is also highly sought after by billionaire business leaders for advice and coaching.
Mere mortals such as you and I can access his words of wisdom for FREE! For example, you can check out numerous videos featuring Tony right here. I promise you that his energy and enthusiasm are infectious!
There really is too much good stuff for me to cover it all here, so check it out for yourself!
VIA Institute On Character
Another fantastic resource I’ve discovered is this completely free survey tool from the VIA Institute On Character.
This survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and will identify your top character strengths. (There are 24 in total, examples include honesty, creativity and kindness).
Why do you need to know your character strengths?
The VIA Institute explains:
Knowing your character strengths isn’t just interesting information. When skillfully applied, character strengths can actually have a significant positive impact on your life. Research shows that using your character strengths can help you:
- Buffer against, manage and overcome problems
- Improve your relationships
- Enhance health and overall well-being
So what are you waiting for? Check it out right now!
Alignment Is The New Hustle
This brand new course from Psychologist Jennifer Willemsen is blowing me away! I’ve not seen anything quite like it anywhere else and let me tell you, it’s working for me!
If you are struggling with overcoming limiting beliefs then this course is for you.
The course blends practical psychology and mindfulness with understanding universal laws and manifesting what your heart desires.
Why is it called ‘Alignment Is The New Hustle?
Jennifer explains that hustle means to ‘push roughly’, i.e. requires effort. She goes on to say that life doesn’t need to be like this. The moment we become in alignment with our true selves, we can experience our desires unfolding in front of us without any hustle at all.
There’s so much to this course, I highly recommend it. Find out more about it here.
Udemy
Speaking of courses, I’m a huge fan of the Udemy platform. In case you haven’t heard of Udemy, it’s the world’s largest online learning platform. There are a whopping 80,000 courses available on-demand!
They very often offer HUGE discounts. I’ve taken a number of excellent courses for only £10.99! And you get lifetime access! Cool!!
Some of the courses I’ve signed up for and enjoyed are listed below.
Tarot Card Success – The Complete Tarot Reading Course I’m loving this course. There’s so much to learn about the tarot and this course breaks it down into simple stages.
Ignite Your Life– this is another course to help you to create the life you’ve dreamed of living.
It’s also available as part of The Ultimate Productivity Bundle detailed below. 👇👇👇
Ultimate Bundles
I love Ultimate Bundles! They’re a super way of getting numerous resources all in one for a tiny price.
Ultimate Bundles produce bundles on a variety of topics throughout the year. In my experience, they are of excellent quality and even if you only use a few of the resources, they more than pay for themselves.
My current favourite is The Ultimate Productivity Bundle.
You can read my review of the bundle here.
Here are the other bundles currently available.
Healthy Meal Planning
Master Your Money Super Bundle
2. Mindfulness, Meditation & Yoga
Free Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course
One of my favourite free resources for Mindfulness is Palouse Mindfulness. This fabulous website offers a full Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course for free! What’s not to love?
If you don’t want to do the full course, you can also dip into the resources on the website and even download guided meditations to use whenever you like.
Insight Timer
My all-time favourite app for mindfulness and meditation is Insight Timer where you can access numerous guided meditations of all different types for free!
It does also have a paid subscription/premium option which in my opinion is well worth the very small monthly fee. Mainly as you it gives you unlimited access to numerous high-quality courses from world-class meditation gurus.
3. Health & Wellbeing
For keeping fit at home, you can’t beat a good YouTube video. Here are some of my favourite channels to follow:
Joe Wicks (aka The Body Coach) has seriously changed my life. I started doing his HIIT (high-intensity impact training) videos more than two years ago. Unlike other forms of exercise which have come and gone for me, this I’ve kept up on a regular basis!
I think it’s because the videos are short and quick to do but still show results.
I also love PMA Fitness which is along similar lines.
For looking after your mental health, there are loads of free resources out there.
For example, the ‘4 Rs technique’ described in this article from Psychology Today to help with anxiety and identifying unhelpful thought patterns is useful.
These guides from Moodjuice on a range of mental health topics are also very helpful.
If you are in the US you can find support with mental health through mentalhealth.gov
In the UK check out this list of helplines. The charity Mind also has an excellent website.
This list of health and well-being resources is comprehensive.
If you are in crisis the Samaritans have a crisis hotline in both the US and the UK.
Cutting down on booze
Taking a break from booze is something that has done wonders for my mental and physical wellbeing. I definitely couldn’t have done it on my own so I’m so glad that I joined the wonderful community which is One Year No Beer
One Year No Beer run challenges of 28 days, 90 days and 365 days so you can take your pick on duration! I started with 28 days but kept going as I’d seen so many benefits. I’m now well past the 365-day mark!
You could also join the Facebook group Sober Fit Tribe. This group is completely free and is run by a group of people who have changed their relationship with alcohol (I’m one of them!)
4. Blogging
If you are new to blogging or thinking of setting up a blog, check out my beginners’ guide and make sure you set your blog up the right way.
If you are a bit more (or a lot more) advanced, then you are sure to love my list of favourite resources I’ve discovered so far.
Web Hosting
Siteground is one of the most popular shared hosting companies around. With packages starting at just $3.95 a month they consistently rate highly on Trustpilot for customer service.
Lyrical Host is another shared hosting company which is top-rated for customer service. As well as excellent support, Lyrical Host also provides you with a whole heap of goodies to help build your blog including stock photos and a blogging resource library.
Use the discount code LBP10 to get 10% off your first month’s hosting.
Blogs & Podcasts
Here are a few blogs and podcasts on the subject of blogging that I follow. All of these have given me so much learning and inspiration.
A brilliant and practical podcast covering all aspects of building and growing a blog
Another highly practical resource with tons of tips and tricks
Cate from Sweet & Simple Life is extremely helpful and provides loads of advice on blogging on her blog and also in her fab Facebook group.
Ell is another extremely helpful blogger (there’s a theme here – the blogging world is very friendly and helpful!). Again loads of great advice here.
If you are in the blogging world, I’m sure you’ve heard how utterly BRILLIANT Pinterest is for growing traffic to your blog. I can confirm that in my experience it definitely is! Using Pinterest has increased my daily traffic 10 fold and it’s still growing!
I recommend ensuring your set up Pinterest properly to get maximum benefit.
Cate from Sweet & Simple Life offers an excellent FREE 5 Day Pinterest Challenge to get you started. She also offers an upgrade to a paid course which I highly recommend if you want to get deeper into Pinterest.
Now, you can totally make it work with Pinterest with manual pinning. If like me, you are simply not disciplined enough for that then I can’t recommend Tailwind enough. Tailwind is an approved automation tool with loads of cool features. It also means you can pin when your audience is awake but you’re not!
For making pin-worthy pins for Pinterest, I highly recommend Canva. Canva is a bit like an app, in that you can use it entirely for free with the option for ‘in program’ purchases such as a wider variety of fonts and graphics. Personally, I’ve used the free options so far and have found this to give me tons of flexibility and choice.
It’s really easy to use. Whilst you are getting started, I’d recommend using the many templates on the platform. Simply search ‘Pinterest templates’ and take your pick! I would recommend changing the templates a bit. In particular, background images and fonts, otherwise, you may well see many the same on Pinterest itself!
Here’s an example I made on Canva. Pin it now!
I also recommend playing around with making click-worthy headlines for your Pinterest pins as well as your blog posts.
Top tip: You can test out several different headlines for your pins, you don’t always need to keep them the same as the title of your blog post. Something I only realised recently, duh!!
To help you with writing better headlines, check out Coschedule’s headline analyzer. I totally swear by it!
Keyword Research
Last but by no means least, you may have heard how important keyword research is for your search engine optimization (SEO)?
There are tools out there with free access such as Keywords Everywhere, Google Keyword Planner and KWfinder but I was finding their limitations frustrating and was struggling to find good keywords I could use in my blog posts.
Now, for a successful blog, keyword research is ESSENTIAL So, I started researching paid plans and MY are they expensive!!
I was so happy therefore when I received a recommendation for Keysearch which is an amazing and affordable option!
What’s more, if you sign up through my link using the discount code KSDISC you can get a fantastic 20% off!
I hope that you find this mega list of essential resources useful! Bookmark it for later to refer back to as I intend to keep adding to it as I come across fabulous new stuff!