You Choose

by Sam Vijay Kumar

How is your work going? 

It was the question an associate of mine asked me. I must also admit that it was not a pleasant question. I am sure we encounter this question so many times that we dare not avoid thinking a little about our work. Personally I have hated this question so much that I have often become defensive or angry when people asked about my work.

The other day I was so much into thinking about my work and how I can better it, that I decided that I needed to calm myself down to get some insights if not solutions to my quest. So off I went and I found myself sitting in the prayer hall of our institution, thinking about how to improve my working habit. I must admit that I asked divine guidance. And it was then that some thoughts seem to have floated into my mind.

Right before we go further, shall we remind ourselves that there is always some work for everybody; many a time we look at our work as a dull, jaded chore that we have to chug on with. We think of work as something that we have to bear, as if a punishment. We look at it the way a prisoner looks at the grills in the prison window.

When will I stop working?

When will the clock strike five?

When will the boss leave?

When we wake up in the morning, we are not enthused by the thought of going to office. We dread the mails, deadlines are dread-lines for many and that results in a decreased performance. Our graph tilts downwards and then we somehow try to make ourselves invisible so we don’t need to answer any uncomfortable questions.

We start avoiding the lift. We stop going to the coffee corner when most of our colleagues are going. We try to take the back entrance. Oh, the pain of not liking one's job!

This spills over into our mental attitudes, capabilities and performance. We are afraid to pose out our ideas. We are afraid to ask for a pay raise. We can't look into the eyes of our boss and speak. We think we will doomed if we lose this job. We don't want to believe that there is a whole world out there ready to welcome us if required.

And how do I know? I have gone through all of this.

What are the obstacles?  Let's read more:

https://motivateus.com/stories/how-is-your-work-going.htm

Renewal of Life

Marlene

Try and remember this as you go through your day, please.  We are not guaranteed unlimited time here on earth.  Be your best self today, right now.  Be kind, when you really don't feel like it.  Be strong, when you think you can't.  Be loving when others are not loving towards you.  Be hopeful and optimistic because what is the alternative?  Decide to be the person you always wanted to become.  Do it now.

Talking out loud:

Marlene
Remember you are not alone here.  Everyone will have their heart broken, more than once.  Sometimes your heart breaks for reasons other than romantic ones and hurts equally as much.  You can feel sorry for yourself, for a time, but not as a way of life.

Pick yourself up, dust off and get going again.  Live in today!  Get ready for great and wonderful things to happen.  If you don't show up, you may miss the opportunity intended for you.

Talking out loud

Marlene
You usually get what you focus on, right?  So why not choose to focus on good things happening?  It's your choice, Yeremiah; I can't imagine you choosing negativity.  There's no where to go with that kind of thinking.  Expect joy, happiness, kindness and love to start your day.  Get up and say I feel great, I wonder what wonderful things will happen today?

I've done this for years and it truly makes a difference in my life.  If you don't have something like this to say each morning, develop your own saying that resonates with you.  Speak your words out loud and you provide energy to them.  Try it for a week and then let me know what happens.

Take a Stand

Marlene

Sometimes you just need to take a stand, especially for those who cannot stand up for themselves.  Be their voice, be their champion, be the one who cares and does something positive to affect their lives. 

Maybe it's a charity that you give time to, maybe it's the older person who lives in your neighborhood that seems alone and needs some help.  We all know of people and situations that need some attention. 

Never give up

You can do this.  Don't give up yet - success could be right around the corner.  It's happened before and will happen again.  Be persistent, be tenacious, be the one who stays when others leave.

Customer relations

Are you mostly talking about you when with a customer?  If so, it might not be the best idea.  People like to talk about themselves, so let the customer do that.  Ask questions to get them to open up a bit.  

Since you are not buying anything, the focus shouldn't be on you.  Remember customers love to buy but hate to be sold. So make the customer the focal point; make their needs and wants first on the list; help them discover if there are any objections to finalizing the sale - answer their concerns and let them buy.

Here's to you today - show your customers some love and let them win because if you help them get what they want, you will get what you want too.

Question: How can we improve our emotional intelligence?

The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do to Build Emotional Intelligence

by Jennifer Guttman, PsyD Clinical Psychology.

The most important factor in attempting to cultivate emotional intelligence is the importance of listening and not talking. When people feel like they are having difficulty with a social skill, their insecurities bring on talking. So, when people are insecure about something, they tend to talk a lot. The most important thing when you're trying to learn a skill often is to just be quiet. Listening is a vital part of trying to learn about emotional intelligence.

When you're in a social situation, listening to what people are saying in order to understand their emotional experience helps develop a sense of compassion and empathy. This will allow you to better understand what it would be like to be in their shoes. A key part of emotional intelligence is being better able to understand life from their experience, as opposed to making assumptions that their experience is the same as your experience. None of our experiences are the same.

Developing emotional intelligence is developing more breadth of a word bank or a mood. A lot of people struggle with having enough words to describe moods. They have a limited word bank. If you're listening carefully enough, that might help develop a broader word bank to describe mood states. The broader the word bank you have to describe a mood, the more effective you will become in being able to ask targeted questions to people about how they feel. Listen, then move to mindful questions about how a person may be feeling.

It's important not to overwhelm people with questions, because people don't respond well to that. Instead, be mindful about the questions you ask by trying to relate to how they may be feeling. Try pulling the words you use in conversation from a bank of words that you've developed over time from listening.

Let's continue to the rest of the article:

https://www.inc.com/quora/the-single-most-important-thing-you-can-do-to-build-emotional-intelligence.html

Talking out loud

Marlene
We all have fears, Yeremiah, and they can hold you back or propel you forward.  You can be a mountain climber or stay on level ground.  The view is quite different from both perspectives.  Ask yourself, "Which one do I need to see right now?"

Once you decide, take a deep breath, eyes facing forward and GO!  You will know your next step after the first one.

Stop criticizing

Marlene

The same way you don't want others to tell you what to do or criticize you for what you think or believe, don't do it to them.  Bring positive words and feelings to everyone and every situation.  Be the one who leads, in an optimistic good way.

The Power of Now

Marlene

If not today, the when?  We all know today is where we live.  Yesterday is gone and we don't know for sure about tomorrow.  Make the decision to live large today.  Be as productive as you can.  Go to bed knowing you did your best and you can sleep in peace.

Do You Solve Problems Or Create Them?

By Sam Vijay Kumar

Are You A Solution Supplier?

Life is filled with lots of fun. It comes with its share of struggles as well. Problems are an integral part of our lives. Problems are not bad always. Problems reshuffle our usual thought patterns and revamp our approach by getting us to think creatively so that we get to some resourceful results.

Hence, would it be discreet on our part to detest problems as if they were germs? And for that matter it is even proven scientifically that some germs (probiotics) are good for us. Problems come in many forms: career, habits, destructive thought patterns etc., and not in a few cases they take the form of humans.

Now, a significant proportion of problems in our life are caused by people; people who have a part-time job creating problems (have you met someone who does it full time? Ha ha ha! ). Simply put, they are 'Problem People'. They create... evolve... refurbish... and give life to problems.

You can meet such kinds of people anywhere...  in our workplace, family, in traffic, the shopping mall or any other place of our interaction. And this one aspect, small as it seems to be, constitutes a noteworthy part of problems that we face. They bring petty, trivial, inconsequential issues and make problems out of it. It might be connecting your breakfast, your car, electricity bill, official document, shopping list, and so on.

Now that need not daunt us, if we are willing to be constructive and prepared to work on this, regardless of all the stops and weariness that we would encounter in the course. We have just one expense for such a project - our sweat; I mean our relentless effort.

Now let us get to the issue at hand:

Knowing why problem people are the way they are.

Let's continue to the rest of the article:

https://motivateus.com/stories/solution-provider.htm

Teams Win With Character, Not Characters

By Bill E. Williams

What Is Football Really About? (Or All Types Of Teams)

"It amazes me that so many coaches think this great game of football is about x's and o's."
--- Coach Bill E. Williams

CHARACTER - the mental and ethical traits marking a group or an individual

TRAIT - a specific quality of a person

QUALITY - the degree of excellence

ETHICS - a set of moral principles or values

VALUES - something that is important to an individual

MORALS - principles of right and wrong

PRINCIPLES - a code of conduct

Teams win with character not characters. Character is the mental or ethical traits that mark an individual or a group. A trait is a Quality of a group or an individual and ethics are moral sets of principles or values. A principle is an individual's code of conduct. A value is something that is important to an individual.

To have character, as individuals and as a team, one must first have a code of conduct (principles). This code of conduct is the standard of behavior that individuals and teams hold themselves and teammates accountable for (morals). This code of conduct is something that becomes important to the individual and the team (values).

What else is important? Let's continue to the rest of the article:

https://motivateus.com/stories/youwin.htm