Unless your business is politics or religion, using politics or religion to promote your business is a bad idea. ~ Jay Wren
What happens is that brand identity conflicts with deeply ingrained beliefs that inflame emotions and sway decisions.
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When I feel frustrated, in doubt, or angry, stepping away from a situation gives me the opportunity to calm my emotions. The separation allows me to reduce the noise in my head. I think more clearly. I make better decisions. I can try to reduce tension between another person and me by saying things like this:
“May I get back to you?”
“If I were in your shoes, I might feel the same way.”
“I understand.”
But first, I must pause.
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Have a purpose for the things you plan to do. Ask yourself questions like these: What do you want to accomplish? Who will benefit from your purpose? Will the purpose reward you for your time, effort, and money? Will your purpose lead you to even greater opportunities?
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Stick with winners. Surround yourself with people who will make you smarter, healthier, happier, and more successful. Spend time with supportive people. Good company does more than make life fun. People who encourage you build your confidence. Furthermore, these people can help you find solutions and succeed in tough times.
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In a material world, it is easy to think that peace of mind comes from getting the things we want. However, getting what we want often only leads to wanting more things. Even more painful, there is the anxiety of losing the things that we wanted so badly. So, what do we need to have to find peace of mind? We must find freedom from want, freedom from fear, and freedom from anxiety.
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Authenticity and self-honesty are critical to success. You can’t solve a problem until you admit that that you have a problem. However much it may hurt, the first step to bouncing back from a mistake is to be honest, with absolutely no excuses, that you made a mistake
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In sports, athletes and coaches decide whether an athlete should continue to play or stop and receive medical attention. Is the athlete hurt or injured.
A common phrase in sports is “Rub some dirt on it.” Athletes just take their mind off the little pains in sports and get physically and mentally back into the game.
Hurt feelings in the workplace can be like be pains in sports. Somebody may say something or behave in a way that hurts or feelings. The best response is to pause. Are we hurt or are we injured?
If we get angry and raise the issue to a higher level by saying or doing something to hurt the person’s feelings in return, we can make matters worse. The best response is to pause. We can put the issue out of our mind until our anger has passed. We can speak with someone to get advice. We can “rub some dirt on it” and continue to focus on our jobs for the day.
In sports and in relationships, no response or silence is the best response.
For hiring managers, the chemistry of the job interview influences hiring decisions as the much as the skills of the job applicant. Think about it. The interviewer has read your resume. Before the applicant arrives, the hiring manager has seen the applicants qualifications.
Successful people have setbacks. Everyone does. But successful people bounce back. They have resilience.
~ www.jaywren.com
How is it that some people can overcome setbacks while other people can’t? Are there skills for resilience that everyone can learn?
Here are ways to overcome those five obstacles.
When we have setbacks in threatening circumstances, it is natural to experience fear.
Fear can shut us down mentally and block our willingness to bounce back.
Dealing with fear starts with an understanding that fear is in our head. We scare ourselves with the way we think.
If you are continually struggling with fear, find knowledgeable, positive mentors who can help you make great decisions and build your confidence to act on your setbacks.
Pride is a healthy view of our accomplishments. We find satisfaction in our achievements and the people with whom we associate. Pride gives people confidence.
Other the other hand, when pride covers our insecurities, it prevents us seeing our role in our problems.
To recover, we don’t have to swallow our pride. We don’t have to be ashamed or embarrassed for our mistakes. We just need to recognize our role in our setbacks and work to correct those mistakes.
To recover from setbacks, we need to understand what has happened to us and what we need to do to bounce back.
Confusion is especially common when the things we were doing have stopped working. Try as we may to use old skills, they fail us. We can’t bounce back until we recognize the problem and develop new skills and resources to become resilient.
Ugh. Procrastination is an annoying reluctance to do the things that will correct our problems.
The way to overcome procrastination is to break the process to recovery into small, individual steps. Just do at least one small thing. Doing one small thing has two potentially positive effects on recovery. A single step each day adds up as we work toward solving our problems. Furthermore, doing just one step often leads to doing all the steps to correct a problem and put the work behind us.
Resilience is not about getting even with people who have harmed us. It’s about getting ourselves back on track.
Holding resentments or grudges hold us back from moving on with our lives. They are obstacles to resilience.
Grudges are simply a way to feel superior to people who have harmed us. We ruminate on how we can set them straight. Furthermore, resentments can become destructive obsessions.
The stress of a grudge not only blocks us mentally, it damages us physically. The loss of energy from holding grudges makes it harder from us to work on solutions. Long-term stress from grudges creates mental and emotional problems.
Letting go of grudges and focusing on rebuilding relationships is a powerful way to bounce back from setbacks. These relationships increase our effectiveness and empower us with people who support us.
Happiness and Joy don’t happen in the past or the future. Everything can only exist here and now. Becoming happy and finding joy today gives us energy and brings joy to our lives.
The past and the future are just thoughts. They are only as real as we make them. www.jaywren.com
Thinking about the past opens the door to regret and guilt. Thinking about the future opens the door to the fear of losing something or failing to get something.
When we are living inside our heads, the world moves along without us.
While many people spend time thinking about the future, other people are living in the present moment to build success and security. They are allowing themselves to know joy and happiness. They live fuller lives. Their minds are free and energized with focus.
Most people have found satisfaction in achieving a goal. There is peace of mind in having financial security.
But happiness must happen as we go along in life. Being happy gives us the energy to achieve our goals and create security.
If we say that I will be happy when I get that job or that car or that other person in our life, we are cheating ourselves but putting conditions on our happiness. What happens to our lives when we find that we have plenty of money for our security but live in fear of losing that money? How happy are we when we have plenty of security, but are jealous of people who have more prosperity than we have? The fact is that we are not happy.
The first step in achieving joy and happiness is to get out of our head and into our world. Thinking about the past or the future creates risks to our happiness. Resenting people for their success takes our mind off the things we need to do to ensure our own success.
Here are things I do to find joy and happiness in the present moment.
Gratitude: I simply make a short list of things for which I am grateful.
Perspective: Why fret over things that we can’t control? I can’t control the weather, media, behavior of other people, fluctuations of the stock market, ad infinitum. However, I don’t have to think about those things.
We don’t have to wait for success to be happy. We just take action to create a healthier mind.
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