Tips for Breaking Bad Habits and Developing Good Habits


Most of life is habitual. You do the same things you did yesterday, the day before and every day for the last month. It’s estimated that out of every 11,000 signals we receive from our senses, our brain only consciously processes 40.

Habits, good or bad, make you who you are. The key is controlling them. If you know how to change your habits, then even a small effort can create big changes.

I’ve been using these techniques for years to re-engineer many aspects of my life. That includes overhauling my diet, exercising regularly, cutting out television, and bulking my e-mail and work routines. Little changes that, when put on autopilot, can result in an improved quality of life.

Here are some tips to get you started:

One Habit For 30 Days – Steve Pavlina, popularized the 30 Day Trial. You focus on one change for thirty days. After that time it has been sufficiently conditioned to become a habit. I’ve used this as the basis for most of my habit changes. It definitely works to sculpt the automatic programs that run in the background of your mind.

Use a Trigger – A trigger is a short ritual you perform before a habit. If you wanted to wake up earlier this might mean jumping out of bed as soon as you hear the sound of your alarm. If you wanted to stop smoking this could be snapping your fingers every time you feel the urge for a cigarette. A trigger helps condition a new pattern more consistently.

Replace Lost Needs – If you opened up your computer and started removing hardware, what would happen. Chances are your computer wouldn’t work. Similarly, you can’t just pull out habits without replacing the needs they fulfill. Giving up television might mean you need to find a new way to relax, socialize or get information.

One Habit at a Time – A month may seem like a long time to focus on only one change, but I’ve found trying to change more than a few habits at a time to be reckless. With just one habit change you can focus on making it really stick. Multitasking between three or four often means none become habits.

Balance Feedback – The difference between long-term change and giving up on day 31 is the balance of feedback. If your change creates more pain in your life than joy, it is going to be hard to stick to. Don’t go to the gym if you hate it. Find diets, exercise, financial plans and work routines that are fun to follow and support you.

“But” to Kill Bad Thoughts – A prominent habit-changing therapist once told me a great way to nuke bad thinking. Anytime you feel yourself thinking negatively about yourself, use the word “but” and point out positive aspects. “I’m lousy at this job – but – if I keep at it I can probably improve.”

Write it Down – Don’t leave commitments in your brain. Write them on paper. This does two things. First, it creates clarity by defining in specific terms what your change means. Second, it keeps you committed since it is easy to dismiss a thought, but harder to dismiss a promise printed in front of you.

30, 90, 365 – I’d like to say most habits go through a series of checkpoints in terms of conditioning. The first is at thirty days. Here it doesn’t require willpower to continue your change, but problems might offset it. At ninety days any change should be neutral where running the habit is no more difficult than not running it. At one year it is generally harder not to run the habit than to continue with it. Be patient and run habits through the three checkpoints to make them stick.

Get Leverage – Give a buddy a hundred bucks with the condition to return it to you only when you’ve completed thirty days without fail. Make a public commitment to everyone you know that you’re going to stick with it. Offer yourself a reward if you make it a month. Anything to give yourself that extra push.

Keep it Simple – Your change should involve one or two rules, not a dozen. Exercising once per day for at least thirty minutes is easier to follow than exercising Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays with yoga the first day and mountain biking the third day, except when it is raining in which case you will do… Simple rules create habits, complex rules create headaches.

Consistency is Key – The point of a habit is that it doesn’t require thought. Variety may be the spice of life, but it doesn’t create habits. Make sure your habit is as consistent as possible and is repeated every day for thirty days. This will ensure a new habit is drilled in, instead of multiple habits loosely conditioned.

Experiment – You can’t know whether a different habit will work until you try it. Mix around with key habits until you find ones that suit you. Don’t try to follow habits because you should, but because you’ve tested them and they work in your life.


By: Scott Young

Source: Grow Yourself

Ten years ago, Jeffrey Braverman was living the dream of many business school graduates. With a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in economics, he landed a job in 2002 at the Blackstone Group, a Wall Street firm specializing in private equity and investment banking.


Less than a year later, however, Mr. Braverman stepped away from Wall Street and returned to his family’s New Jersey nut business, the Newark Nut Company. It struck some as an odd choice: the family-owned company, which had been started by Mr. Braverman’s grandfather, Sol Braverman (known as Poppy), and had once employed 30 people, was down to two employees and two family members, Mr. Braverman’s father and his uncle.

Located in an indoor mall in a desolate part of Newark, the nut shop’s retail sales were fading and its wholesale business was, at best, stagnant. But Mr. Braverman harbored entrepreneurial ambitions.

At the beginning, he agreed to work with his father and uncle for a salary tied directly to how much new business he attracted. He focused on Internet sales and before long, they began to dwarf the existing business.

Now based in Cranford, N.J., the company has grown to more than 80 employees with more than $20 million in revenue, 95 percent of it online. The following is a condensed version of a recent conversation.

Q. Who leaves investment banking to work at a struggling family nut company?

A. Only someone nuts, right? My dad and my uncle both thought I was crazy. I was making more than they were at the time.

Q. Then why?

A. Have you ever read the book “Monkey Business”? It’s a fairly accurate profile of what it’s like to be in investment banking, at least at a junior level. You know, there’s this economic concept called deadweight loss, and I think a lot of investment banking is like that: it doesn’t really add anything to the world, to the economy. I just wanted to do more.

Q. I assume your father and uncle made you take a pay cut.

A. The one thing I did was, I didn’t want to take anything away from them. I structured it so that my compensation was 100 percent based on incremental profit improvement. So from their perspective, there wasn’t very much risk. I also got a small piece of the business. But at the time the business was worth nothing, book value. No one would have bought it.

Q. Did you have any experience in Internet sales?

A. In 1999, I was a freshman in college and I started our Web site, Nutsonline.com. I spent my second semester of freshman year working on that thing four or five hours a day. It kind of just trickled along. In 1999, very few people were buying from Amazon, so they certainly weren’t going to buy from Nutsonline. In 2000, I remember I set a goal: I wanted to do 10 orders a day.

Q. Did your father and uncle like your ideas?

A. I started to do things with the business that they couldn’t do and that they didn’t understand. Around July 2003, I told them it’s all about the Web. We’re going to sell online and do a much better job. We got very aggressive with advertising online. My budget for advertising per day had been $3 and I raised it to like $100. That’s nothing now, but then it was huge.

We flipped the switch on the site, with the new marketing campaign, and let’s just say we suddenly started doing five times the orders in one day. My dad’s response was, “Shut it off, we can’t handle it!”

I also realized that while we were working Saturdays, we were in Newark and we weren’t doing much business on Saturdays. And I said, “Guys, what are we making? One hundred dollars for our entire family?”

So I told them we’re going to close on Saturday. And they said, “No, no, no. Let’s do half-days. We can’t close. Poppy would never let us do this.” My uncle told me he was so nervous he couldn’t sleep the entire week. But we ended up doing it. They came in Monday, and they both said, “This is the best decision we ever made.”

Q. What other changes did you make?

A. Investment banking taught me how not to run a business. People are only driven by one thing, money. People don’t talk the right way, and they’re not respectful. One of the first things I did was read all sorts of books on customer service, books like “How to Win Friends and Influence People” that dealt with how people want to be treated.

It’s interesting, when you think from a business perspective what a core competency is, you think, it’s cost, it’s first-mover advantage, it’s trademarks, it’s brands. Often people will say, “Customer service? Anybody can do it.” But the truth of the matter is, not everybody can. We decided early on that we were going to try to be really great. The concept was underpromise and overdeliver. We ship into the evenings, we ship on the weekends, various things to get packages to people ahead of expectations.

Q. Did it work?

A. When I started, annual revenue was about $1.25 million and Internet sales were next to nothing. After that, the growth compounded at about 42 percent for four years, to over $5 million in 2006.

Q. And then it really took off in 2007 and 2008. What happened?

A. It was one of these very serendipitous things. We had gotten a few suspicious-looking orders — one-pound bags of nuts going to CBS. There was a postapocalyptic show on CBS called “Jericho” and the network said it was canceled. During the show, this town Jericho was being attacked by a neighboring town and the leader of the neighboring town said, “Surrender.” And the leader of Jericho said, “Nuts.” So fans took this as their battle cry. They said, “Let’s go send nuts to CBS.” This thing went crazy. At first we shipped U.P.S.

Then we did a few stunts. One day, I showed up with my uncle in our delivery van and dropped off 1,000 pounds. Then we hired a trucker, and I went and we dropped off 10,000 pounds. We ended up sending 40,000 pounds to CBS.

Q. That’s a lot of nuts.

A. Forty thousand pounds of peanuts in 50-pound bags, floor to ceiling, is a whole 48-foot tractor-trailer.

Q. What happened to the show?

A. We got a lot of coverage and CBS brought back the show. They flew me out to go to the fall lineup party. I met the actors, went to the set. But then it was on for another seven episodes or so and then they canceled it.

Q. Sounds like it was better for you than for the show.

A. Yeah. We ended up getting a ton of Internet traffic. When we were on KROC Los Angeles, we got like over a million visitors from that. We sold a lot of nuts to the “Jericho” fans too, but the majority didn’t come back. But with The New York Times and CNN, and the funny press, like The National Enquirer, you get all these visible, authoritative sources online, and they’re linking to you. It does a lot for your credibility in Google’s eyes.

Q. How big do you think your business would be if the “Jericho” thing hadn’t happened?

A. I would like to think we would have gotten to the same place by now. But I have no idea.

By Ian Mount

Source: The New York Times

How to Conquer the Fear of Selling

You own your own business but you hate selling? You're not alone. Even though being a good salesperson is essential to the success of almost every business, a lot of people feel uncomfortable about the act of selling.

“Fear comes from the unknown and it is a psychological response to a perceived threat. You can chip away at this fear by creating a sales process and following some simple steps that give you confidence in your own skills,” said Dave Mattson, CEO of Sandler Training, a leading global sales and management training company.

Mattson proposes five steps that business owners can take to minimize their sales fear:

Recognize that selling is a science. Contrary to what you may have heard, selling is more of a science than it is an art. It is possible to use mathematical calculations, numerals and formulas to approach the sales process in a measured and practical manner. The most experienced sales individuals in successful companies will tell you that sales is a numbers game; it is based on tracking every single step of the sales process and monitoring the results along the way in order to develop a formula for success. What all this means is that it is possible to train and coach inexperienced business owners to develop an ideal sales process that works for them.

Deactivate the unconscious scripts. When it comes to selling, many of the actions and behaviors you were taught when you were younger become counterintuitive, and in order to be successful in a sales environment, you need to reprogram your perceptions of what is, and is not, acceptable. Messages like “don’t talk to strangers” and “never talk about money” may linger in the back of your unconscious mind and you will be required to make a deliberate effort to accept that your behaviors need to change in order to be successful in a sales environment. As a business owner you now have to be prepared to talk to every stranger you can find and discuss difficult subjects, such as money, openly and honestly.

Don’t practice on prospects. Before every sales call write down five pieces of information that you need to get from the conversation and create a set of goals that you can use to assess your performance once the call is complete. When faced with the daunting prospect of meeting a new customer you may be tempted to create an extensive presentation that you can use as a prop and support throughout the meeting. Don’t fall into this trap. Open the meeting by inquiring about the issues that your customers face and use this information to drive the rest of the meeting. Showing an interest in your prospects will put them at ease and they will be much more likely to buy from someone they feel comfortable with. If you approach the sale in a relaxed, informal manner, you will find that people are more receptive to your sales messages and will be more likely to share information with you. Above all, always have confidence in your product knowledge and expertise. You may not be a natural seller but you do know what you’re talking about.

Don’t get emotionally sucked in. Without an established sales process it is easy to get caught up in your emotions during a sales call, and this only serves to generate further fear and nervousness. Rehearse and refine your sales messages again and again, preferably with someone you know and trust who can give you constructive feedback. The more familiar you are with your pitch and the information that you need to share with your prospects, the more confident you will feel. Always visualize a positive outcome before every sales meeting. Your thoughts can strongly influence the outcome and if you are able to imagine a situation in an optimistic manner, then the result will be much more likely to be positive.

Catch a psychological wind. Once you have a set of sales processes and practices in place you will find that you will start to develop your behaviors and establish routines and milestones. Soon the selling fears that paralyzed you will diminish and the selling momentum will start to take shape.


By: BusinessNewsDaily Staff

Source: Business News Daily

Hard Work: What's It Good For?

A meme has been floating around for some time now about hard work – and how it is overrated. I’ve come across a number of "How I Work" articles by prominent entrepreneurs that talk about the merits of “sometimes” heading into the office, watching lots of television, and questioning the need for a 40-hour workweek. 

 
Many of these articles profile people who have built multi-million dollar businesses – companies that required a 24/7 work ethic during the start-up phase. No doubt, in the early days, these same folks had rigorous schedules, spent long nights overcoming major technical challenges, and developed loyal communities – user by user – through ceaseless efforts.

So why all this talk about chilling out from those who must have worked tirelessly to get where they are? Something doesn’t add up. This trendy new approach to work seems absent of the ambition and relentless drive necessary to make ideas happen.

Certainly, it’s possible that these successful entrepreneurs have started to coast a bit – and with millions of customers, it is their prerogative to do so. I’m also aware that as we get older, start families, and settle down, it’s natural to think about how to work smarter. A 24/7 schedule isn’t sustainable forever. But I still can’t help but wonder if these entrepreneurs are sharing the right message?

So why all this talk about chilling out from those who must have worked tirelessly to get where they are? Something doesn’t add up. 

The push towards tremendous achievements – the determination we see in visionaries ranging from Steve Jobs to your everyday start-up founder who quits her day job to pursue a dream – is what drives bold entrepreneurial pursuits. Such journeys, I have found, require incredible amounts of sheer energy, focus, and time.

Having recently concluded four years of interviews for a book on the topic of making ideas happen, I can say one thing for sure: Hard work is the single greatest competitive advantage. Ideas don't happen because they are great. The genius is in the execution, aka the "99% perspiration" that has become this site's namesake.

Perspiration implies sweat, self-discipline, and (yes) occasional exhaustion. I think this is what Malcolm Gladwell teaches us in his book Outliers when he proposes that a true mastery of anything requires 10,000 hours of doing it. There are no shortcuts to lasting success.

Hard work is the single greatest competitive advantage.

Hard work is always the baseline of great achievements. And I don’t think these successful entrepreneurs-turned-naysayers have defied the odds through casual effort.

They have either chosen not to share this part of their past or have forgotten the drive that started it all. Perhaps their new take on work is akin to an adult’s take on grades or playground politics in elementary school – in retrospect, you wonder why you stressed so much.

One lesson here is to question the nuggets of wisdom we take away from success stories. Retrospective insight is a dangerous thing: it can taint advice. Hindsight becomes biased based on the luxuries one enjoys from his or her hard work – four-day weeks among them. Needless to say, once a ball is rolling, it's easier to keep it going.

That said, a contrarian perspective is always valuable when it makes us rethink the status quo of normal working hours, meetings, and traditions of the daily grind that we're all liable to fall into without measuring the outcome and remembering our intentions.

I agree that lots of energy is misappropriated. And I agree that we must preserve the sanctity of our minds, creative stimulation, and always strive for balance. But I think it is dangerous to gloss over the merits of tried-and-true persistence. The importance of hard work is a timeless truth. Rather than fight it, let's roll up our sleeves and run with it.
--

How About You?
Could you have arrived at your current success without hard work? Do you think hindsight clouds our perspective on how we could have done things more efficiently in the past?


Source: 99%
By Scott Belsky

12 Tips to Overcome Laziness

What is laziness? It is a state of idleness and inner resistance to exerting effort and acting. It is a state of passivity and of letting things stay as they are. Sometimes we enjoy being a little lazy, such as after working hard for several hours, or on a very cold or warm day, but if this state occurs too often, something has to be done about it.

In order to perform our chores and work efficiently, and to live a full, active and successful life, we must learn how to overcome laziness.

Here are a few simple tips for overcoming laziness, which I hope you will find useful:

1) Break down a task into smaller tasks
We often avoid tasks because we find them too big, too overwhelming, too tiring or taking too much of our time. Breaking a task into several smaller tasks can solve this problem. Then each one will not seem so difficult or intimidating. Instead of having one big task, we will have a series of small tasks, which do not require too much effort. This approach can be applied not only to tasks, but also to goals and everything else we have or need to do. This will tend to melt much of the laziness and inner resistance we often experience.

2) Rest sleep and exercise
In some cases, laziness is due to being tired and lacking energy. If this is true in your case, you need to give yourself the rest and sleep you need, and also give your body enough exercise and fresh air.

3) Motivation
In some cases, the reason for laziness is due to lack of motivation. You can strengthen your motivation through affirmations, visualization and thinking about the importance of performing your task or chore or achieving your goal.

4) Have a vision of what and who you want to be
Frequently reflecting on the person we want to be, the goals we want to achieve, and the life we want to live, can motivate us to act.

5) Think about benefits
Think about the benefits you will gain if you overcome your laziness and take action, instead of thinking about the difficulties or obstacles. Focusing on the difficulties of the task or action lead to discouragement, avoidance of taking action and to laziness. It is important that you focus your mind and attention on the benefits, not on the difficulties.

6) Thinking about the consequences
Think about what will happen, if you succumb to laziness, and don't perform your task or chore. Thinking about the consequences, if you do not act, can also push you to take action.

7) Doing one thing at a time
Focus on doing one thing at a time. If you feel you have a lot to do, you will probably feel overwhelmed and let laziness overcome you, instead of you overcoming laziness.

8) Visualization
Your imagination has a great influence on your mind, habits and action. Visualize yourself performing the task easily, energetically and enthusiastically. Do so before starting with a task or goal, and also when you feel lazy, or when your mind whispers to you to abandon what you are doing.

9) Repeat affirmations
Tell yourself:
"I can accomplish my goal."
"I have the energy and motivation to act and do whatever I want or have to do."
"Doing things makes me stronger."
"Doing things makes things happen."

10) Regards a task as an exercise
Consider each task as an exercise to make you stronger, more decisive and more assertive.

11) Procrastination
Avoid procrastination, which is a form of laziness. If there is something you have to do, why not do it right now and get through with it? Why let it stay nagging at the back of your head?

12) Learn from successful people
Watch successful people, and how they do not let laziness win. Learn from them, talk with them and associate with them.

Overcoming the habit of laziness is achieved through a series of daily actions and activities, when you choose to act, instead of remaining passive. Every time you overcome your laziness you get stronger. Every time you choose to act, you increase your ability to win, achieve goals and improve your life.

By: Remez Sasson
Source: SuccessConsciousness.com

Six Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs

I recently read an article in The New York Times about a program that had been proving for many years what lots of people had long suspected — that SAT scores are not necessarily great predictors of college success. The piece got me thinking about my own observations about the relationship between college success and entrepreneurial success. Or perhaps I should say the lack of a relationship.

Choosing entrepreneurship might be one of the most simple and pure adventures you can take. No permission needed, no essays to write, no tests to take, no interviews to get through, no one to tell you what to do or what not to do — and of course no one else to take the credit or blame.

You need only the possibly crazy notion that someone wants to pay you money for your goods or services — and the guts to quit your job, sign the lease, borrow some money, spend the money and tell your spouse, parents, and/or parole officer. For some, this is invigorating. For others it is intimidating. It can be both. Certainly, it is very different from the more predictable paths of going to graduate school or getting a job.

As I said, in my 30 years in business, I have never seen a relationship between being a good student and being a successful entrepreneur. If anything, there might be some correlation between people who were bored or annoyed with school and people who succeed in their own businesses. I have my own theory that I have shared with college classes over the years — often at schools that would not have admitted me as a student but are happy to have me speak to their students.

I always enjoy telling the soon-to-be graduates that if they decide to go into business for themselves, the straight-A students will no longer have the advantage. While it certainly doesn’t hurt to be smart, I find that it is not enough — just as being tall isn’t enough to make you a basketball player. I believe successful entrepreneurs are likely to have six attributes that they don’t test for in school. Many people don’t know if they have these attributes until they take the leap.

1. Ambition. Most people believe they are ambitious, I think. But there is ambitious, and then there is 70-hour-a-week obsessive, driven, hungry ambitious. Can you make it if you are just kind of ambitious? Probably, in some cases. But most successful entrepreneurs I know paid some serious dues. They did not want to be successful, they needed to be successful.

2. Creativity. I’m not talking about painting a picture or writing a love song. I’m talking about coming up with innovative ideas about marketing, management or finance (preferably not too creative in finance). Not all business schools do enough to encourage creativity, but it can really bloom in a business and have a huge impact on its success.

3. Tenacity. I did not know this when I started, but tenacity is critical to starting and staying in business. Rookie entrepreneurs make many mistakes, and they have to be fixed. Plus, bad things and bad economies happen, and they have to be survived. Being stubborn can be a terrible attribute to have in school — but a great asset in business.

4. Risk tolerance. It is almost impossible to go into business without taking risk, and it doesn’t necessarily get better along the way. Bigger buildings, more employees, more expensive computer systems, the list goes on and on. Some people can’t handle having a credit card balance, and other people can borrow big money without hesitation. Some people obsess about everything that can go wrong, some people don’t think about it or are confident they can deal with whatever happens. Nature or nurture? Don’t know. Doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that you know your own tolerance. Again, this is not tested in school.

5. Intuition. Some people are just better at seeing what is coming down the road and coming up with the right answers to vague questions. Think Steve Jobs. Even just a little bit of Steve Jobs can go a long way.

6. Personality. You remember the person who was always the life of the party in college but almost didn’t graduate? That person might be a successful entrepreneur (or might be living in a van down by the river). The meek may inherit the earth, but they are probably not going to be entrepreneurs. For an entrepreneur, an optimistic personality is a gift — and an occupational hazard.

That’s my list. It is the product of many years of observation and self-analysis. It is not scientific. I can’t prove any of this. But no animals were harmed, and the government was not involved. Let me know what you think — especially if you are a successful (or unsuccessful) entrepreneur.

By: Jay Goltz

Source: New York Times

No Free Handouts - You Have to Work for Your Happiness

Are you waiting for happiness to fall in your lap? Are you waiting for someone to drop it in the tin cup of your life? Well, sorry to break it to you this way, but it won’t happen. It can’t happen. Happiness is not a thing someone can toss at you like change from a passing car window. It’s something that much more resembles the paycheck you earned at the end of a long and hard-fought work week.

Here’s the thing. Happiness is not an easy thing to get. In many ways, it’s even more difficult than another perennial New Year’s resolution: weight loss. And here’s the reason why: measurable weight loss requires the consistent application of only one principle: Burn more calories than you swallow. Or, put another way, swallow fewer calories than you burn.

And unlike happiness, weight loss can be pursued directly. Happiness, on the other hand, is an indirect pursuit. It’s attained as a sort of side effect or byproduct, something caught while out doing other things.

There are Two Reasons Happiness can be a Hard Egg to Crack

• Most of the keys that unlock the door to happiness are character and personality related traits. These are often very difficult for most of us to acquire quickly ... or permanently. In fact, a quick survey of the final resting place of most of our New Year’s Resolutions over the last several decades will attest to the difficulty of making permanent changes to character.

• Happiness requires much more than the single magic bullet necessary to kill the weight demon! Happiness requires bullets from many different guns, so to speak. They include conditions and traits that are themselves, difficult to master. To improve on your current state of happiness, for example, you’ll likely need to make changes in one or more of the following areas:

• Kindness (just try imagining a happy mean person)
• Gratitude (do you count your blessings or complain about your burdens?)
• Optimism (do you believe things will work out, that bad things are temporary? Or are you the victim floating in the waters of someone else’s bath?)
• Love (both giving and receiving it)
• Finding meaning in life generally
• Passion (for work, a hobby, your family, a club, something)
• Growth and improvement (stagnation is no recipe for more happiness)
• Human decency (indecent people find looking in mirrors a disturbingly empty experience)
• Patience (this one in itself already pushes happiness to the top of the difficulty list!)
• Faith (in yourself, in humanity, in a code of decency, in something higher than yourself, in God)
• Overcoming obstacles and challenges in life
• Accepting and coping with challenges that are insurmountable (age-related challenges, chronic pain, others’ poor use of free will)
• Developing a positive attitude (seeing the good in others, self and circumstances)
• Overcoming debilitating, growth-limiting fears, doubt and insecurities
• Building character (another inclusive condition itself of many parts)
• Overcoming character flaws (selfishness, greed, hate, hyper-judgmentalism, etc.)

Mastery or even improvement of any characteristic on the list above can add a measure of happiness to our lives. So pick one and begin the exhilaration of self-improvement! As we live life with greater passion and human decency, we elevate the sense of who at the deepest level to something we recognize as more noble and deserving of respect.

We start to feel increasingly good about ourselves, more confident in our own skin, comfortable about staring deeply into the mirror, beyond the surface, into our own hearts. Not a bad stab at happiness!

As we grow in optimism, gratitude and patience, we add even more layers of happiness to whatever level of happiness we enjoyed before. But the bottom line is that the realization that the true potential of happiness is dependent on our own willingness to do the work of developing those traits and characteristics that allow happiness to flow into our lives allows us to take decisive action, to draw up a game plan, to stop waiting for happiness to wonder up and smack us in the kisser..

Instead, we can reach out and touch it, cup it in our hands, deliver it to ourselves, one trait, one characteristic, one thought, one belief, one step at a time.

Afterthoughts

So, you get the idea. Happiness can seem elusive because often we associate it with doing just one thing, like thinking positively.

Then we try it on for size trying to convince ourselves that the cup is more full than empty. We tell ourselves that there must be a silver lining to the recession and that the growing bald spot up top is more like a halo than a vacant lot and the wrinkles only add texture.

It doesn’t take long before we start feeling cheated by all the seemingly false promises of exhilarating joy that were made by its advocates, even if we feel some improvement. The hype just wasn’t equal to the results. It’s therefore critically important to understand, as we search for that sometimes-elusive condition, that each addition, each area of growth, each improved characteristic is not itself the game-changer, but will add happiness to happiness or remove unhappiness from unhappiness, drawing us closer and closer, deeper and deeper into the longed-for state.

That way, measure by measure, we can grow our happiness until we realize one day that life is beautiful, even joyful, despite the difficulties inherent to living.

No Free Handouts – You Have to Work for your Happiness

So stay with it! Attaining a happy life is worth the effort. It may be helpful to look at it as though you’re starting a business. It takes lots of work and lots of time. Most start-ups, as a matter of fact, don’t see a profit for quite a while, sometimes several years. It may take you a while too before you begin to taste the fruits of your efforts in the area of happiness.

There are no shortcuts to building a happy life like there are no shortcuts to building a successful business. So don’t waste any time worrying about your happiness now and go get to work on making it better, one “paycheck” at a time!

After all, there is no government program that can give it to you and you won’t get paid for just wanting it; It’s gotta be earned. So start earning it!

By: Ken Wert
Source: Dumb Little Man




 
 
  

Nursing Leadership Traits and Behaviors for Success

To be a successful nursing leader demands a lot. There are certain vital traits and behaviors you need to acquire in order to succeed in the career. You don’t just wake up one morning to be a leader. You must work it out through various processes.

In nursing leadership development, there are vital traits and behaviors the nursing leader ought to have in order to impart her team. Such leadership traits and behaviors open the wide door of success both for the nursing leader and her team. Let’s examine some of the vital traits and behaviors required.

• Problem Solving

Your ability to handle and solve problems effectively as a nursing leader makes you a leader to be cherished. From time to time, diverse kinds of problems will always raise their ugly heads in your nursing team. You need to engage your mind and senses in dealing with such problems without causing harm to any member of your team. One of the best ways to deal with problems is never to rush into dealing with them. You need to take your time to think through a problem in order to find possible solutions to it.

 

• Honest Communication
This is another vital trait or behavior a nursing leader must possess. Honesty is indeed the best policy in any endeavor in life. Your ability to remain very candid in your dealings with the members of your team can easily endear you to everyone. You have to be honest when you handle every issue that may be coming up in the course of your leadership. When it comes to finance and accounts, your honesty is highly required if you must remain relevant as a nursing leader.

• Sound Judgment
Any nursing leader who desires to carry her team along must have the trait of sound judgment. This is to be exemplified in the way the leader handles various cases that concerns the members of her team. You must never take sides with any member of your group for whatever reason. You have to make sure that each group member is equally treated on an even platform.

• Self Confidence
The nursing leader must be self confident at all times. She must be able to show her capacity to carry the team along at every point in time. Her self confidence should be a morale booster to the rest of team members who are always ready to learn one or two things from their leader.

• Hard work
A good nursing leader must also show the traits of hard work all the time. She should act as the goal getter of her team. She takes the lead in every task and also fined time to delegate others to engage in certain tasks.

• Responsibility
The nursing leader must also be very responsible in all her dealings. She must be ready to accept responsibility for whatever happens in her team. She must always be on the alert to handle whatever issues that may arise at any point in time.

In all, nursing leadership traits and behaviors are not automatic. They are acquired with time. If you must succeed well as a nursing leader, you need to cultivate the traits discussed above and put them into daily practice.

By: Chris D'Cruz
Source: SelfGrowth.com