Posts from — January 2008

The initial answer against fear and panic would be stress. Typically, this reaction causes anxiety, wake up panic and lost of self-confidence. Fear and panic have their roots in circumstances and settings which we feel are no longer under our control. When we are dealing with a lot of variables simultaneously, the mind tends to flood with negative thoughts regarding our fears about not being able to handle the situation willingly. All humans have instincts, and we all share most of them in different stages. Stress, therefore, is a state of the body and mind reacting to a perceived danger. Ideally, such alert state would wake up reflexes for coping with danger and problems. However, when the alert becomes too big (for internal or external reasons), it has an opposite, paralyzing and unhealthy effect. Now, why did that happen? Think of your mind as a computer disk. You store all your information there, but some processes have allowed it to receive garbage information. You have to remove such garbage from your disk, and restore it to its original state. For the time being, the following tips may prove useful:
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In the following, I’ll briefly expand on the key points for achieving success when you have to work in groups. As a result of the complex and dynamic nature of human interactions, you may find working in groups a challenging issue. In fact, the coordination and agreement required by groups is a research topic by itself. But the powerful rationale behind groups is the divide-and-conquer approach: a bigger workforce may lead to bigger results (but not always, and in some fields, such as software engineering, it may easily be the opposite.) In this respect, I’ll propose 10 aspects we should strive for when working with other people. You may find this discussion useful for the college, the office or life in general.
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In a recent motivation talk, an attendee asked me for a succinct list of the things we should care for if we wanted to live longer. Well, I frankly have no idea about how to live longer, nor about how to look younger (plastic surgery perhaps?). However, I have 7 recommendations we could pay attention to if we want a healthy life:

1. Variety: In your physical exercises and activities, in your habits, leisures, and meals. Besides, your mind should have a reasonable daily rotation of ideas (please, don’t focus too hard, too long into a single thought.)
2. Regularity: For eating, for sleeping and of course, for working.
3. Eat more, eat less: Have plenty for breakfast, less for lunch, and a very frugal dinner. Eat your antioxidants, mainly fruits and vegetables (including vegetables oils). Some coffee, tea, chocolate and wine is also ok.
4. Self-confidence: If you are hoping that another person makes you happy, you’re asking to be disappointed and framed. Be yourself, and trust your feelings. Love life.
5. Exercise: Your body and mind must be in equilibrium. Remember that you live in a material world, and your body is your direct communication with it. At least take some long walks, in order to fortify your muscles (and your mind).
6. Relax: Switch your mind and body, and forget about work, conflicts and hardships. Look forward for better times.
7. Patience:As time goes by, you will see the things you have worked for… to come true.

But foremost, discover the things that work for you!

A post answering a question from a student (you know who you are!). It’s mostly a compilation of experience about visualization, proposal and creation of your thesis or dissertation. Some students fear (or panic) when the time of thesis arrives. I’ve even met people with the EBT (Everything But the Thesis) syndrome, but that is a very complex problem and I’m no psychologist. Please, keep reading if you are not afraid of the document we refer to as “thesis”, and you are determined to succeed. Effectively, the thesis represents a written expression of your specialized knowledge, with an scope scarcely above that of the toughest work you fulfilled during your studies (sometimes not even that). Nothing out of the ordinary. It is a document in which you express, typically as the last requirement for the degree, your command over a concrete subject. Often, the thesis is a document of regular transcendence.

The problem lies in the huge load of stress students have to endure, stemming from the academic and social environments: you have to deliver a work with superlative quality (and has to distinguish you from your peers), the haste to innovation, the won (or lost) prestige, the opportunities, the castles in the air, the afterward, failure poking its head out of the window, the defense, among other factors. But sometimes, to tell the truth, it’s simply that the student has acquired no significant skill in the career’s subjects (not so unlikely as it may seem), or suffers from a traditional chronic laziness. Nevertheless, for the time being we will focus on the essence of the document. Upcoming posts (perhaps) will touch on those surrounding topics.

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Hello, this is the first content post Life. Money. Development. Here, we’ll speak about goals. First, do you know what a goal is? According to Wikipedia’s entry:

An objective or goal is a personal or organizational desired end point in development. It is usually endeavored to be reached in finite time by setting deadlines.

And that’s it. A goal is that thing you want to achieve. Normally, those achievements are not isolated things. On the contrary, they imply several subgoals you have to reach first. In this sense, we have to define how are we going to conduct in order to reach the subgoals. Remember, it’s not only the arriving point what matters… the integrity you show while following your path is the most important fact.

Now, what are your life’s goals? Or better stated, what do you want? Money? Family? Health? Education? Fame? A superb job? Please, answer this first. Oh, and… where do you belong? To the material or to the spiritual type?

Now, before continuing, do you have the bases to achieve your general goals? Let’s assume you want that very-well-paid-job. Do you have the required education? No? Then you have to introduce a subgoal related to academic formation. Yes? Then, have you researched the job’s field thoroughly? Do you know the current information trends related to that job? Do you know what is the state-of-the-art in such knowledge area? Do you know who are the best representants of that job? What are the biggest companies? Now, do you have a solid contacts network? Please, start thinking, and start answering.

My own goal with this post is to flame your awareness, cognition and self-view on yourself. That’s the starting point of the journey we will be revisiting in upcoming posts.

Hello, and welcome to my blog Life. Money. Development. Here I’ll write and discuss my thoughts on self-development, education, and life in general. I have 20+ years of experience working on pedagogic, workgroups and laboral topics. I’m always looking for ways to strengthen my students’ self-confidence and self-awareness.

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