By Glenn Leibowitz
The other day, I was walking out of the elevator lobby of my office building and looked outside the front doors. I stood for a few moments to look at the streaming white and yellow light from the sun pouring through the entrance to the building. The sky was blue that day, and was mercifully clear of the depressing blanket of gray haze that has too often blocked the sky.
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Guest post by Nate Regier for Seapoint Center
Ask anyone about “conflict” and you’ll most likely hear negative descriptions such as: painful, damaging, draining, upsetting, disrespectful, demeaning and relationship-destroying. Most people dread conflict and can’t imagine how they could turn conflict into an energy source because they don’t understand what it really is. Conflict is simply energy – the energy caused by a gap between what you want and what you are experiencing. The energy of conflict can be misused in “drama” or it can be harnessed to create something positive and useful. The Cost of “Drama” Drama is created by “struggling against self or others, with or without awareness, in order to feel BY DR. JOSH DAVIS
Most tasks, at least for professionals and knowledge workers, lead to some mental fatigue. After all, we are constantly engaging in activities that involve decision making and self-control. The key to limiting mental fatigue is recognizing the work that is most likely to deplete your resources in a substantial way and, when you have any say in the matter, to simply not engage in that work before you want to be at your best. So how can you identify the tasks that lead to mental fatigue and keep you from being incredibly productive? If you feel spent after doing a task, there’s a good chance it is tapping into your self-control. The degree to which tasks take a toll on self-control, decision making, or other executive functions varies with each person. Here are some examples of common activities that can lead to mental fatigue: By Marcel Schwantes
Are you a negative person? If you're at the point where you're seriously looking to shift to the positive, step one is to change your attitude and alter your perception about your current situation. Since that may border on cliché, allow me to suggest a practical plan of action focused on three mental hacks that work. This will take some commitment and intent, but it's what the most positive people have mastered. By Adam Hoette
If you’re like most people, the idea of being the center of attention makes you uncomfortable. For many of us, just the thought of doing something to stand out is enough to give us butterflies. It’s easy to feel like every unique move is being monitored by our our network of family, friends, coworkers, and even complete strangers. By Rachael Mueller-Lust
The first weekend of this year I helped out as the coordinator and support person for a retreat at The Garrison Institute. It was a great fit for me because I already knew most of the instructors, the location is very familiar because I go there every Wednesday morning for a community meditation group and I am very organized. My role was as the go-to person for the instructors and the participants. The voluntary position allowed me to witness... by Nora Battelle, Multimedia Staff Writer at Thrive Global
76 percent of Americans — a clear majority — said they have or recently had a toxic boss, according to new research conducted by Monster and released today. A positive work environment is crucial to performing good work — and to managing your own stress — and leadership often plays a vital part in setting that positive tone. Toxicity, in the survey, took several different forms, and the numbers on all of them were high: 26 percent of bosses, according to Monster’s survey, are “power-hungry,” 18 percent are “micromanagers,” 17 percent are “incompetent” and 15 percent are simply absent (“What boss? He/she is never around,” as the survey phrased it). These numbers are a stark contrast to the 19 percent of employees who see their boss as a mentor and the 5 percent who indicated that their boss is someone with whom they have “the best relationship.” Alan Benson, Ph.D., a professor of Work and Organizations at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, explains the significance of these numbers to Thrive Global:...... by Benjamin P. Hardy, Author, husband, father
According to the British philosopher, Alain de Botton, “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.” How different is your life, right now, from where you were 12 months ago? If it’s quite similar, then you haven’t been learning very much. To learn, by nature, is to change and evolve. In order to change and evolve, you need to regularly create peak experiences — those moments which create deep awe, gratitude, and a shift in how you see yourself and the world. When was your last peak experience? What was the last time you flexed your courage muscles? When was the last time you tried something that might not work? If you’re ready to make wild progress during 2019, you need to make some tweaks. This isn’t anything to be upset, distraught, or frustrated about. Life is, inherently, a learning experience. Life is beautiful. You get to have fun with it. One thing that is really beautiful about moving forward intensely in your future is that, simultaneously, you change your memory about the past. The past, regardless of what it has been — great or disappointing — will change in meaning as you make new decisions in your future. Your future is flexible. Your past is also flexible. What you have is now. You get to decide what you’re going to do. You get to decide how you’re going to live. Look around… No one is stopping you. Want to make a shift? Here are 30 behaviors to get you started: 1. Wake Up Earlier “You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling, than feeling yourself into action.” — Dr. Jerome Bruner by Marcel Schwantes
Nobody likes to fail. Yet failure is the secret to success. If you haven't been rejected a number of times, the current mantra goes, you just haven't experienced success. Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, swears by this premise. At Virgin, they encourage and even celebrate failure. There's an underlying theme there that, without trying something new and failing, it's virtually impossible to innovate and grow. Branson says, "Do not be embarrassed by your failures. Learn from them and start again. Making mistakes and experiencing setbacks is part of the DNA of every successful entrepreneur, and I am no exception." Wherever you are on your career path, it's time to acknowledge that failing is common, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. But here's the thing. There's one superhuman quality -- a mindset -- every person needs to master on their journey of failing forward. Without it, you may as well toss in the towel now and never try again. I speak of resilience. by Daniel Goleman, author of the international best-seller, Emotional Intelligence
In hindsight, the questions only become more nagging. Why didn’t Kodak jump into digital photography? Couldn’t BlackBerry, with such a hold on the corporate market, have adjusted better to the iPhone? And then there is Sears, probably the granddaddy of the never-saw-it-coming firms. We call the missing skill set here adaptability. Companies (and the executives who run them) continually need to balance exploring new possibilities with exploiting what works. Adaptability takes many forms, from simple flexibility in handling change and juggling multiple demands to coming up with innovative approaches and openness to fresh ideas. You stay focused on your goals, but adjust how you get there. By Carol Tuttle
Overwhelmed, scattered, totally worn out. Does that ever sound like you? Even though you’re committed to work-life balance, sometimes equilibrium isn’t as easy to find as you’d like. Most advice suggests that you set boundaries, manage time better, and practice self-care. Yes, those are important. But if you’re juggling a hundred balls, you need an overall strategy to calm things down — not just tactics that give you more to do. Consider the possibility that you can have work-life balance with a simpler (and even counterintuitive) approach. Where your balance (and imbalance) actually comes from It’s easy to look at your emails, phone calls, meetings and to-do’s and believe that they are the problem. Everything coming at you is just too much! by Suzie Doscher, Executive and Life Coach, Zurich, Switzerland
In the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of a “control freak” is “a person who feels an obsessive need to exercise control over themselves and others and to take command of any situation.” The Merriam Webster dictionary says that a control freak is “a person whose behavior indicates a powerful need to control people or circumstances in everyday matters.” One way or another, control freaks are not always easy to be around. I understand this personality trait could stem from a chaotic childhood. Such experiences can make it hard for people to trust others or relinquish control to others. The fear of falling apart pushes them to control what they can. As their emotions are all over the place, they feel loss of control. For this reason, control freaks will micromanage whatever they can with the belief that this makes them strong. People who feel out of control tend to become controllers. Elon Musk Once Gave Some Surprising Business Advice - 4 Years Later, It's Clearly Quite Brilliant9/8/2018 By Marcel Schwantes
Does a high IQ contribute to success? Certainly. But not without hard work, experimentation, failing forward, and an undying devotion to self-improvement. Take Elon Musk, one of the smartest people on the planet. The driving force behind Tesla, SpaceX, and OpenAI is never satisfied with where he is, and he knows that there's always room for improvement -- whatever the challenge he's tackling at the moment. But he takes the cake with this quote from a 2014 interview: You should take the approach that you're wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong. To Musk, being wrong (and failing) is always an option because if you're not, he says, you're not innovating enough. This is what we call a growth mindset -- the ability to fail, learn something new, and then approach the problem from a different angle until you find a solution that works. By Marcel Schwantes
Ever wonder if you're true leadership material? Perhaps you've been told you are, but the question is, by what standard? Thousands of leadership books are written each year, many of them with marketing agendas to rehash and repackage what has been talked about for decades. What is true about leadership that will remain unchanged through the centuries is this: It's about people and relationships. And that requires that leaders have a natural bent for both. If you're not into either, you're not a leader. And you can start with the proven fact that great leaders aspire to lead by serving the needs of their people. You don't need flavor-of-the-month books and expensive formal training to learn this concept. But you do need to develop and measure yourself against the standards of great leadership (which I strongly propose to be servant leadership). Here are four top leadership characteristics I have witnessed that float to the top. Do any describe you? Your First 90 Minutes Can Make or Break The Rest of Your Day (The 90 Minutes Focus Technique)21/6/2018 by Thomas Oppong
You are most productive in the morning, according to research. Your best work happens within a short time span of the day. And you should be making the most of it.
Instead of letting others dictate your priorities, give yourself at least an hour to focus without external distractions. From Bad Bosses to Safe Spaces - How to Create Psychological Safety in Management Relationships7/6/2018 by Maktuno Suit - Leadership Consultant & Psychotherapist
Christine dreads going into work everyday to face her manager, Paula. She feels as though Paula is ready to criticise her for any mistake that she makes and hence tries to avoid her due to the anxiety that she feels in her presence. Christine spends excessive amounts of time trying to make her work ‘perfect’ before presenting it to Paula - fearful of the critique she will receive. Christine feels like she is constantly undermined and that Paula is threatened when she performs well. Christine describes her as a ‘bad boss’ who makes her feel unsafe and she is looking for a new job. Recently, the notion of creating psychologically safe cultures and teams in the workplace has become central to our understanding of an effective organisational environment. By Ellie Kaplan
Most people fail to achieve their goals and the success they want — here’s why.The classic “marshmallow test” proved the universal importance of delaying one’s gratification. The ability to resist immediate rewards in anticipation for much bigger things is a test of character that only successful people benefit from. However, while you strive to reach your long-term goals, energy-draining struggles and challenges will come your way and affect your mindset. If you are not in your best shape mentally and physically, your performance will become compromised. The good news is that Harvard Business Review found a solution to this dilemma through a series of extensive studies. Read on to get some tips on how to properly motivate yourself over the long-term and crush your goals, without having to give up on what’s truly important in life. By Peter Barron Stark
On a scale from 1-10, how would you rate your productivity as a leader? Many of us, if not all, wouldn’t rate ourselves as high on the productivity scale as we would like to be. Sometimes leaders feel like they are constantly busy but are somehow still unable to accomplish their goals. Have you ever started your workday with a list of things to do and at the end of the workday STILL had the same number of things to do? If you are nodding your head in agreement as you read this, take a look at our recent blog post [1] which will walk you through conducting a time audit [2]. Once you have completed at least one time audit, you will be able to take a more objective look at how you spend your time. Chances are good that you will have several tasks on your list that can be delegated to your employees, freeing up more of your time to work on higher level assignments that will help you and your team achieve the organization’s goals. It’s important to remember that as we rise further up the ladder in organizations, our responsibilities change from less emphasis on the operational or the “doing” tasks and more emphasis on the leadership tasks (managing, planning, leading). By Ken Wert
“When I am happy, I see the happiness in others. When I am depressed, I notice that people’s eyes look sad. When I am weary, I see the world as boring and unattractive.” ~ Steve Chandler Happiness is not a quality easily had by those who fear challenge and difficulty. Happiness, as a matter of fact, can require quite a bit from us if we would develop those traits that produce it at its highest potential. In other words, happiness is not for the squeamish. It requires us to get our hands dirty in the ditches and mountain sides of life. It requires us to climb and learn and overcome and develop in ways that are not always easy. Here are four reasons happiness is not for wimps: Written by marcandangel
As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back. Here are some ideas to get you started:
by Suzie Doscher
Emotional Intelligence can be defined as having:
I believe your Personal Power is intact when you: As Simon Sinek says: “There is no app for job satisfaction and strong relationships / friendships. These take time! Require patience! – Trust and open communication cannot happen when people have their mobiles with them ALL the time! Hard habit to break but worth the quality of life you can gain. Simon Sinek is always worth listening to gain clarity and understanding. Many wonderful insights in this video. Looking for some support with any of these issues?
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