Only in the spirit of love and respect can we look at the whole person and work with them to express and exchange views on actions, words and behaviors that offend us. In doing so, we not only allow others to understand our viewpoints, but gain knowledge of their perspectives and accordingly are more easily able to enter a dialogue that brings not only grievances to light, but the associated falsehoods that keep those grievances in place.
When watching a news cast or reading an internet site, what we believe to be true or not is based on our own thinking, associations and biases about the topic being analyzed. News media often plays on our biases and assumptions to elicit a particular response, often along political party lines, and it is up to each of us to challenge our assumptions and biases to arrive at our own true. We each have the ability to make our own assessments and conclusions rather than letting our automatic and most often unconscious thoughts, associations and biases determine our conclusions.
Breaking the loop or pattern is key to managing your energy and continuing to resonate at higher energy levels, thereby attracting higher energy people, places and things into your life. To maintain higher levels of energy or move yourself out of victim energy, practice these 9 simple in-the-moment steps.
Your attention determines the experiences you have, and the experiences you have determine the life you live. Rather than allowing distractions to derail you, choose where you direct your attention at any given moment, based on an understanding of your priorities and goals. To do this, you need to control external factors like technology (turn off that phone!) and the environment (keep those interrupting colleagues away!). But you also need to learn to control internal factors, like your own behavior and thoughts. Learning to practice attention management won’t eliminate all distractions from your day, but it will give you more control over how you spend your time — and your life.
Backpacks for the Street is a non-profit organization working to give some hope to the homeless people living on the streets of New York City by providing them with some of the basic necessities of life in a backpack. This year-round operation adjust the contents of the packs for winter and summer weather. Please support this organization by donating to its Facebook page. See a CBS News summary of the work being done at the link on this page.
Balance is key to a happy and successful life. We live in a highly stressful world and a key to resilience is to destress and balance out your life. This article discusses how. resilience is about how you recharge, not how you endure, and makes some recommendations to build resilience by strategically stopping.
“If you’re trying to build resilience at work, you need adequate internal and external recovery periods. As researchers Zijlstra, Cropley and Rydstedt write: “Internal recovery refers to the shorter periods of relaxation that take place within the frames of the workday or the work setting in the form of short scheduled or unscheduled breaks, by shifting attention or changing to other work tasks when the mental or physical resources required for the initial task are temporarily depleted or exhausted. External recovery refers to actions that take place outside of work—e.g. in the free time between the workdays, and during weekends, holidays or vacations.””
“If you really want to build resilience, you can start by strategically stopping. Give yourself the resources to be tough by creating internal and external recovery periods.”
See the full article at the link below or the link. in the title above.
Self-control theories sometimes gloss over something critical: reward-based learning is based on rewards, not behaviors. How rewarding a behavior is drives how likely we are to repeat that behavior in the future, and this is why self-control as an approach to breaking habits often fails.
By using mindfulness training to make people more aware of the “reward” reinforcing their behavior, they can tap into what is driving their habit in the first place. Once this happens, they are more easily able to change their association with the “reward” from a positive one to a more accurate (and often negative) one.
1. Map out your habit loops - figure out your trigger and identify behaviors you engage in once acting out - e.g. checking social media instead of doing work.
2. See what you actually get out of those actions.
3. Replace the reward with curiosity - find a new reward that is more rewarding than the existing behavior.
Focus is key to progress and key to ensuring energy flows into a particular project. However, in today’s email, text and cell phone world, we can be constantly distracted by the whims and demands of others without proper distraction management.
“Constant distraction leaves a trail of scattered thoughts and partly done tasks in its wake. It leaves us feeling overwhelmed and tired. And when our busy, exhausting days don’t come with a sense of accomplishment, our work feels unsatisfying at best — and demotivating at worst. This is a recipe for burnout because progress is what drives us.”
“Distraction is the single biggest barrier to meaningful, satisfying work. Studies by Gloria Mark and colleagues show that we often switch what we’re doing every few minutes, and these frequent interruptions “causes us to work faster, which causes more stress, higher frustration, time pressure, and effort.” And this sabotages not just our performance but the way we “show up” in the world.”
“This is why I have become convinced that the path to improved productivity lies not in “time management,” but in attention management and kicking the distraction habit. Three easy things anyone can do to begin this process are to become aware of it, devise plans to overcome it, and take advantage of the principle of activation energy.”
Read the full article at the HBR.org link below.
“One of the things that stands in the way of many leaders’ success — and therefore the success of their companies — is their ego. Leadership expert Jim Collins found in his seminal study on what makes companies sustainably great that in two thirds of the comparison cases, it was “the presence of a gargantuan ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.” Fortunately, mindfulness can help. In fact, in my work teaching meditation to hundreds of executives, I’ve seen that one of the most valuable — and largely unrecognized — benefits for leaders is the ability to transcend their egos.”
Ben Horowitz is out with a book called What You Do Is Who You Are, that emphasizes the power of culture, rather than technology or money, as a driver of business success.
One of his most intriguing insights is that powerful cultures are built around what he calls “shocking rules” — rituals and practices that are memorable, so “bizarre,” that people inside the organization “encounter almost daily” and that people who hear about them wonder why they are necessary.
Horowitz’s argument is as simple as it is powerful: You can’t create something unique and compelling in the marketplace unless you first create something unique and compelling in the workplace. Truly great organizations work as distinctively as they hope to compete.
“As a leader in any kind of organization you must candidly look in the mirror, get feedback about what you do well and where you are lacking, and then work to close the gap. In startups, however, the rapid evolution of the business requires those on the leadership team to engage in these activities in short, intense cycles.” See the full article at the link below.
Research suggests that pursuing your passion does improve your well-being but where you do it is far less critical. Studies show that doing something you are passionate about outside of work rather than in it benefits both your career and personal life.
The Unexpected Benefits of Pursuing a Passion Outside of Work
hbr.org
Business consultants are subject matter experts in the workings of business dealings and are hired by governments, corporations, non-profits and many other types of businesses. For most of these businesses, profit maximization is the objective. For others it’s achieving a social entrepreneurship model, or perhaps impacting a larger number of people for non-profits.
Business consultants can play a valuable role by rationalizing the decision-making process in the early stage of intelligence gathering. Outside experts offer fresh perspectives and revitalize change and transformation efforts. Business consultants help rationalize decision-making through their knowledge and training.
To better understand how the role of experts plays out, it’s useful to consider three phases of decision-making: intelligence, design, and choice. In the intelligence phase, experts can bring knowledge, data, and experience to bear as they identify and investigate policy problems. In the design phase, they can apply their knowledge to design, analyze, and evaluate alternative courses of action, ideally with impartiality. In the choice stage, experts can steer leaders away from whim, impulse, and other biases, ensuring that decisions emerge from an appropriate deliberative process after weighing pros and cons of the alternatives.
Limiting beliefs are generalizations, stereotypes or ideas that we learned and accepted about ourselves, about the world, or about other people. Just by believing them, we do not think, do or say the things that they inhibit and therefore may not reach our full potential in taking on new endeavors or in getting the best results from the ones we do take on. Interpretations are stories, opinions or judgments that we create our own selves about events, situations, persons or experiences and believe them to be true.
Here are a few examples:
If you are not married by the time you are 35 years old you never will be.
Only the young are able to go to the gym and get in shape.
Only a person that is creative/analytical/mathematical/good at selling can be an entrepreneur.
What is meant to be will happen.
I can’t do anything else career wise - I’m pigeon-holed in banking. This is all I know.0’s
He didn’t say hello back to me and therefore must not like me at all.
You have to work hard and burn the midnight oil to be successful.
Cloudy, grey, cold days reduce productivity.
For any of the statements above, they may either be just false or subject to interpretation. When we have limiting beliefs and interpretations, our ability to make positive change is nipped in the bud as we don’t even take the chance to explore all of the opportunities in front of us. If you feel you are not in a career or place in life that you would like to be, contact Fielding for discussions and analyses of your limiting beliefs and interpretations and move your life forward, up to the next level. We are all unlimited. The only limit to our own success and growth is our own thinking.
