“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
- Steve Jobs
Archive for 'energy'
Job search is a vulnerable time. Fears and worries can fill the mind and bring energy and confidence levels down big-time. It is a critical time to control your focus! Here are a few things to remember to keep it all in perspective.
- Know that you are worthy of acceptance and belonging just as you are.
- Embrace the vulnerability. Job search is a part of life for most people. Face it with the courage to be yourself.
- Develop empathy which is essential in order to be liked by others…and being liked is essential to being hired.
- Catch yourself if you begin catastrophizing then proceed with a knowing that all will work out.
Get your R&R, it’s important. Prescription: watch before turning in for the night.
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The Rest Movie, Quotes
“There are two things which will make us happy in this life if we attend to them. The first is never to vex ourselves about what we cannot help; and the second is never to vex ourselves about what we can help.” –Anonymous
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” –Ovid
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” –Sir John Lubbock
“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.” – Charlotte Brontë
“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” –Etty Hillesum
***End Transcript***
I have learned a lot over the past few months from Ester Hicks.
First and foremost is to care enough about myself to control my focus. I feel so good so fast by being aware and tweaking this one aspect about my thinking. What I do is imagine how I will feel when I have what I want and choose to feel that now. I get jazzed about all the experiences I want to have and what I want to create and I go with that feeling as long as I can.
Another huge change for me is clearly understanding that I cannot control what someone else is thinking or experiencing…and I don’t want to. What I want is to leave them to their creation and focus on mine. The freedom and heightened energy I have from this release is astounding.
I have also appreciated the idea of wellness as a natural state of being. I remind myself periodically throughout the day to relax, allow, and enjoy.
***Video Transcript***
Stress Relief Quotes
“Is everything as urgent as your stress would imply?” –Carrie Latet
“What different lives we should lead if we take things by the minute!”
–Gilbert-Ann Taylor
“In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.” –Lee Iacocca
“Hope is as cheap as despair.” –Proverb
“In times of stress, be bold and valiant.” –Horace
“They who live in worry invite death to hurry.” –Anonymous
“Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.” –Margaret Fuller
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” –Chinese Proverb
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Feeling a little stress is a normal part of the working day but when stress gets to be too much it can affect your judgment causing you to make rash decisions. Or, it can affect you physically causing tension in your muscles, increased heart rate, or aches and pains.
The key is to keep stress at a manageable level. One way to do this is with a simple breathing exercise.
- Sit still in a relaxed position with your back straight.
- Clear your mind as much as possible.
- Breathe in slowly, for a deep breath.
- Hold, but only as long as is comfortable.
- Breathe out slowly.
- Hold.
- Breathe in.
- Hold.
- Breathe out.
- Hold.
Repeat as necessary. Take a few seconds here and there and use this simple breathing exercise on a regular basis to help lower your stress level.
“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” –Etty Hillesum
Step #1 Pay attention to what you’re focusing on.
This step alone can do wonders for you almost immediately. First understand that what you focus on affects your emotional state, or how you feel.
If what you’re thinking about makes you feel bad it affects your energy level in a bad way. If you’re thinking about something that makes you feel bad you will quickly start to feel stressed or tired or just generally have a bad attitude.
On the other hand, if what you’re thinking about makes you feel good it affects your energy level in a good way. It doesn’t really matter if what you’re thinking about it is true or not what matters is if it helps you feel good.
So use this to enhance your career. For example if thinking about the weekend or free time makes you feel good then don’t wait until Friday to daydream about the weekend. But if thinking about the weekend makes you feel bad because you want it to be the weekend now or it makes you yearn for the weekend, then avoid thoughts about the weekend choosing to focus on something to make you feel good instead.
Here is another example. On a recent episode of Dancing with the Stars, Olympian Evan Lysacek was being coached by his dancing pro Anna Trebunskaya. Evan is a top notch technician but was not good at showing emotion in his dancing. Anna asked him, “What makes you happy?” Evan mumbled something about cars and then said, as his face lit up, “my baby nephew!”
He then proceeded to show cute little videos of his nephew on his phone to his coach smiling & laughing the whole time. Anna capitalized on that reaction and brought it to his attention. Long story short, he danced like a whole new man in that week’s competition. Even more importantly, he now knows a trick (shall we say, a Jedi mind trick?) for something to focus on when he notices he is not feeling as happy as he could.
Step #2 Use your strengths in your career.
Strengths as related to careers are activities that you enjoy doing, that you do well, and that you don’t mind doing repeatedly. This new hot philosophy on strengths was developed by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton in the book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths.”
They promote the idea that we can be happier in our careers by focusing on strengths instead of trying to improve weaknesses. In fact, they say that one can advance further and faster in skill attainment by practicing and developing one’s strengths rather than one’s weaknesses (for example, their idea that you can work everyday to improve a weaknesses and achieve only lackluster results). The book is a little long winded because of all the theory and development talk, but when you buy the book you get an assessment code to enter online to take the assessment. The more recent version is StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The book is much more of a friendly, quick reference which also includes an assessment.
Step #3 Be selfish.
No, I don’t mean selfish in a bad way. It is simply that factoring in everyone else’s opinion of what you should be doing in your work, (or for that matter what anyone thinks about the work you do) is exhausting and fruitless…so be selfish! After all, YOU are the one putting in the time and attention to whatever you choose for your career, and you are the one noticing everyday how you feel about your career (see step #1). So be selfish, and take charge of your career development to make sure your work is life-enhancing.
There’s a difficult time between where you are now and where you want to be that must be managed when you are changing careers. One thing that helps is to focus more on what you want next rather than what you don’t like about where you are currently because that makes the current day-to-day very difficult and keeps a negative vibe going in you. So during times of change, its important to focus on the excitement of what is coming but with an ability to be appreciative of where you are now and how far you’ve come.
You have to control your focus to be happy…in fact it is the only thing you do have control of. You can’t control others or at-the-moment situations you find yourself in but you can control what you think about and give your attention to.
Go and see!
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