Words for Life and Personal Growth

Anxiety is a state of restlessness, and most of the time such state cannot be justified. It is not fear of something concrete at the outside but expresses our inner emotional conflicts. The person feels threatened by something of unreal nature, and is unable to handle such emotions. The anxious person may have been conditioned very early and may continue to be anxious in adulthood. It then becomes a characteristic of his nature that pervades all their actions and which turns the person in a candidate to suffer stress. Anxious people are fast, are always in a hurry, can not afford the time for all the activities they want to develop and are used to work on two or three things at once. When eating, anxious people swallow whole foods -tasteless- and consequently often suffer from dyspepsia, indigestion, bloating, irritable bowel, etc.

Anxious people are often balancing their legs when sitting or drumming their fingers on the table. They respond before you ask a question, and are also ahead of events and “fleeing forward”. When anxious people fear the may lose control they can suffer panic attacks. They need to have control over things and processes, and they cannot cope with contexts in which they are not in full control of the events.

Anxiety, luckily, can be controlled and reversed and we can learn to live a more balanced and relaxed life, and improve our quality of life overall:

1. Learn to breathe.
2. Sit down to eat slowly and chew all food. If needed, put a sign in sight to remember to eat slowly.
3. [Read more →]

The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts: and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

Montaigne

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There are truths that are not for all men, nor for all times.

Voltaire

You’re a wondrous being, a miracle called life. You’re unique. You’ve followed a path, a path which has turned you into what you’re now: energy, dreams, smiles, a lovely human being. Maybe you want more things, maybe you wish for more… that’s OK. Don’t blame the past for anything, as such past has allowed you to be here. And that past is offering you the opportunity to be better. The Beatles said it: All you need is love. And for loving, we have to start by loving ourselves. We have to love ourselves, we have to accept ourselves as we are right now: with our fears, our limitations, our physical image, our weaknesses, and our beliefs. If you do not love yourself, how may you be able to really love others? If you don’t accept yourself, if you don’t love yourself, you’ll probably end up looking in other people for such traits and features you don’t have and would like to have for being happy… but you will likely end up being hurt if that people go away. Love yourself, right now:

1. Accept your weaknesses. They’re are part of you.
2. Forgive yourself. All those things that you “perceive” you have done wrong… they’re past. You don’t live in the past anymore. You can only control the present time. Past & Future are just images, not reality.
3. Express your feelings with total freedom.
4. Don’t worry about things you cannot have control over. Instead, focus on the only things you can really control: your decisions right now.
5. Trust your inner values and your personal resources. Don’t be afraid of losing, go ahead!
6. Believe in your positive experiences, believe there’s an abundance in health and life for you.
7. Don’t fight your negative thoughts or your fears… when you’re feeling negative or scared, thank your mind and your body for such thoughts and emotions, and leave them behind, you’re very positive and brilliant and have a lot of wonderful things to do.
8. Do this exercise: write a little and happy song about those things that you fear the most. And sing it occasionally
9. Do this other exercise: close your eyes and visualize yourself as a small child. Imagine this child laughing and running through some beautiful scenery, full of colors, full of life. Hug this child close to you. Tell him or her how much they are loved, and how special he or she is.
10. Enjoy your body and care of it through nutrition and exercise.

Life is beautiful. Enjoy it

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

G. K. Chesterton

During a recent trip I had the pleasure of reading and commenting a wonderful book about management: Lead Well and Prosper (15 successful strategies for becoming a good manager) by Nick McCormick. Please, note that I’ve read several books about management, but this is the first one I read on the management subject that does not feel boring in any way, in any moment. It’s a very concise book, not wordy and not vague. In fact, the book grasps your attention from the first chapter, “Adopt a serving attitude”, which sets up the dynamic for the rest of the book, and clearly demonstrates that the author has plenty of practical experience on the subject, i.e., that he knows what he is talking about. The book tries (and succeeds) to improve the reading and learning experience, by using a direct language and funny cartoons at the start of each chapter. Cartoons humorously depict a wrong management attitude or behavior, which the rest of the chapter will explain how to correct. Besides, cartoons are refreshing and provide and outlook of the topic to be presented in the chapter. More than a guide, the book turns out to be a friend.

The book’s structure is lovely simple. Fifteen chapters which focus on specific management issues:

Chapter 1 – Adopt a serving attitude: Be humble, serve and love your team (but don’t let your team members to walk all over you either… balance is the key).
Chapter 2 – Teach: Management is a teaching experience. Improving your staff skills, sharing your knowledge, will yield better results. I liked the book’s suggestion about hiring people with potential, rather than focusing solely on experience.
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Self-confidence may stagger when we face up to our flaws severely and frequently. If we follow this approach in our lives, our flaws and failures will become our main source of concerns. We may become very good at spotting defects… so good that we may spend most of our time detecting flaws, focused into the bad things rather than the good ones. Such obsessive attention to the wrong things (flaws, manipulating or using other people, hurting other people, lying, and generally, those facts or actions that we think bad) may become the center of our lives.

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Herman Melville said: “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation“. I totally agree. Let’s try. Let’s pursue innovation and originality. Most of time, our inner fears lie in failure… the fear to fail. In itself, fear is not that bad. It reminds us of dangers and the possibility of losses, and motivates us to think our actions carefully. But fear should be controlled. Fear should not paralyze us. I’ll try that idea in which I believe. I believe in myself, in my ideas, and thereby, I’ll pursue my goals, my projects. The process of trying is, already, our first reward. Let’s enjoy it.

There are plenty of available jobs in the market, and there also are a lot companies recruiting right now, but it is possible that those job openings are never advertised or published in newspapers or on the Internet. Further, important or high-rank job openings are rarely advertised. How to approach this hidden job market? Certainly, it’s not enough to investigate listings of job openings. The key is word-of-mouth or networking.

Networking means building a list of contacts. Contacts are people you’ve met during your business or social activities. More often than not, such friends and acquaintances will provide you information about job openings, companies and industry leads. Moreover, they’ll introduce you to other so that you can grow your network. Therefore, it is important not only to inform them about your job search, but also give them some résumés.

This list will provide some hints about the people and organizations we should include in our network:

• Relatives
• Friends
• Recruiters
• Former Employers
• Neighbors
• Professional Organizations
• Other Job Seekers
• Academic Contacts (School, University)
• Business Associations
• Merchants

Organizing your Network of Contacts

Please, organize your network. Save information about your contacts in a spreadsheet or a database. Include their names, titles, company, address, phone and fax numbers, and email. It’s also important to register a few notes about the way in which any of your contacts is valuable, for instance, what do they know?, who can they refer you to?, and so on. Further, organize their business cards.

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