Be in the Top 1% in Mindset – Leadership – Personal and Professional Growth
Facebook is not the place for political discussions.
I recently posted an article on how weary people are from reading about politics and political discussions.
“Pause Before Posting: Sharing online stories on is as easy as clicking a share button. However, if the story is about politics, pause before posting. Your friends and connections are probably tired of hearing about it. They get more than a daily dose from major media.”
Thank you for not giving us your political opinion. ~ www.jaywren.com
The news of politics wears on people. Most Americans are tired of hearing about politics.
Looking for headlines to cover, the media hover over current events for political sound bites. Add to those soundbites the in-depth coverage of speeches and now conventions. Furthermore, candidates are starting to hit the media with advertising campaigns.
Sharing online stories is as easy as clicking a share button. However, if the story is about politics, pause before posting. Your friends and connections are probably tired of hearing about it.
They get more than a daily dose from major media.
If you feel the need to wake people up to your cause, they are probably already tired of hearing about that cause. Apathy in politics is different from political exhaustion. People aren’t indifferent. The media have burned them out on politics.
It is always good to remember to ask ourselves why we are on social media. Is it our goal to make new friends and expand our business network? Is it our goal to reconnect with friends and business connections?
Or is our goal really to promote a political agenda?
Knowing the goal is important.
When politicians are on the campaign stump, the best politicians say things that draw headlines. The media people pick these things from political speeches and write their headlines. Conservative, liberal, and progressive media use headlines to draw subscribers. Promoting your career with politics is a good idea for people with political careers. It is less of a good idea for people who are not in politics.
Image: Jay Wren
It is helpful to know how to unfollow a LinkedIn connection.
Do some of your connections annoy you with the things that they post on LinkedIn? Does it annoy you that some of you connections post political opinions or that other connections post puzzles or brain teasers. Do you have connections who spam the news feed with post after another?
Even worse, do you find that people who aren’t your connections are fulling your news feed with their post?
There are at least three things that you can do to end your frustration with the annoying things that some of your connections are doing on LinkedIn.
One thing you can do is to break the connection. When you break your connection, you lose access to the connections in this person’s network. You lose their persons’ first-degree connections and on a larger scale, you lose the person’s second-degree connections. These people no longer show up in your news feed. They no longer show up in the list of automatic invitation connections among the people “you might know.”
A second thing that you can do is to criticize your connection for annoying you. In this case, you risk damaging a relationship that might be valuable to you later on.
A third option is to unfollow a connection. The person will still be your connection. The process is simple. Go to the person’s profile, find the send button, click the down arrow, and click view recent activity. You will land on the person’s updates. This is a very cool page. You can not only follow and unfollow people. You can see how many total contacts they actually have!
Remember your options. Use those options to expand your network and build your relationships.
Images: Jay Wren
Unfollow and down vote are consumer power on the Internet. As a shopper, you have the consumer power of choosing where you spend your money. As an Internet user, you have the same power with your choice of sites that you visit and the posts you see.
You can’t police the Internet.Even worse, complaining only makes things worse. Whenever you complain about an Internet post, you spread the post like a virus. You make it viral.
Today I saw a political post on LinkedIn. The post pulls two triggers. I hate this. I like this.
The haters jumped in. They barked that the post did not belong on LinkedIn. They whined that it was unprofessional.
By complaining, they reposted the original post into the feed of everyone in their connections.
Don’t complain. Unfollow and Down Vote: Your Real Power on the Internet
The better way to punish the people who annoy you on LinkedIn and Facebook is to unfollow them.
On LinkedIn, go to the person’s profile, find the send button, click the down arrow, and click view recent activity. You will land on the person’s updates. This is a very cool page. You can not only follow and unfollow people. You can see how many total contacts they actually have!
Unfollowing people on Facebook is somewhat simpler. Just go to their profile and find this button. You can not only follow and unfollow people and pages. You can see the priority for your news feed.
Images: Jay Wren
Changing my attitude creates self-wins. Sometimes I believe that I need to negotiate better conditions at work. A good place to start those negotiations is with that voice between my ears.
When I am in a bad mood, I see the negatives in other people and in my circumstances more easily. When I am in a good mood, I see positives.
On the other hand, gratitude is a choice. It is a mental tool for negotiating with negative thoughts. It is a mental tool for negotiating for even better thoughts when my mood is good. It is a tool for negotiating with my default mode thinking whether that thinking is good or bad.
The exciting idea of a new job or falling in love, spontaneous expectations of happiness. We don’t just picture the relief and joy of leaving our current situation. We can fall in love with just the idea that a new job will be wonderful. “Oh, please, please, God. Give me that new job and I will never ask for anything again.”
At the same time, we can recognize that falling in love repeatedly can bring us joy. However, it can ruin our lives. As we move from one relationship to another, we sacrifice the support and security of a long-term relationship.
What is the point? Happiness in long-term situations is about making choices and commitments. We make choices and commitments on staying in our jobs.
In addition, we make choices and commitments as to how we feel about our job and our lives.
When our default mode thinking tells us our situation is bad, we can choose how to deal with those thoughts. We can act on them. We can sit there and stew in them. As a third choice, we can focus on the positives of our situation. We can practice gratitude.
In a virtual world, the skills for successful telephone meetings are as important as the skills for face-to-face meetings. Before a telephone meeting, prepare as though you will be sitting in a room with other people. Your goal is to learn and contribute as much as possible as quickly as possible. Even if you are uncertain of the value of the meeting, don’t let you lack a preparation make the meeting a waste of your time.
Have these things on your desk:
Select your phone location carefully.
Even though you are on the phone, let your personality shine.
Focus on the meeting.
Do not allow outside interruptions.
Remember to close on an upbeat note.
Thank the other people in the meeting for taking time to speak with you. Emphasize that you hope to have a chance to speak again.
There are many career skills for success. These six simple skills save time, increase productivity, and reduce stress.
This is such a simple skill, which makes everything else much simpler. If I have an empty coffee cup on my desk, I can easily take it with me when I walk to the kitchen. When I come in at night, I can hang my clothes as I take them off. There is little effort required to put clothes on a hangar when I already have them in my hand.
I can’t always act when I first think of something. But often I can. I have found that when I act on the first impulse I can complete many small tasks as I go through the workday. Just recognizing that acting on that impulse can get me into action helps me get many small tasks out of the way.
The difference between a procrastination list and a to-do list is the reality of a deadline. If I am just putting something off, I have a procrastination list. If I have something to do that has a deadline, I put it on my to-do list.
I have been editing a book for about a year now. Much of the work is repetitious. I am going back over material that I have written and rewritten. The job is boring. I have found, however, that I can work on a couple of pages a day and over time have made excellent progress in completing this tedious task of finalizing the book.
There is so much stress in watching the clock while I get dressed. I hate the feeling of panic that I am running late. There are times when I have other tasks to complete before I get dressed. But more likely than not, I am just putting off getting dressed until it is nearly time to leave.
When taking flights, I can relax at home before leaving for the airport or I can arrive early and relax at the airport. Relaxing at home and having the stress of scrambling through flight check-in has become too painful. I have found that it is helpful to find out what time I need to be at the airport and then add a half hour to that arrival time. At the doctor’s office, I find that they take me in early when I arrive early. One of my doctors has a late-arrival fee for patients who come in after the appointment time. I can avoid that expense and reduce my stress by arriving early.
With a laptop and smartphone, I never waste time no matter where I go. The question is whether I want to relax before I go or relax before the appointment.
Image: Jay Wren
People do many ways to think clearly.
Here are five of them.
Make lists. For me, having a list of things to do helps me clear my mind. Working with my list, I can think of one thing at a time. I can focus on what I am doing.
Write things out. When I am worrying about something or angry about something, I can write down what is bothering me. I can write something as simple as, “I am angry at John, because he took criticized me in front of the other people in the meeting.”
Take responsibility for my actions. When I make mistakes, I can admit my mistakes. When I have offended someone, I can clear my mind by saying to that person that I regret what I said or did and that if I had it to do over, I would hopefully handle things differently. Strangely, when I admit that I am wrong, I stop being angry or resentful.
Take breaks. For me, a break can take many different forms. I can step away from my desk and take a short walk. I can spend time organizing things around my office. Once a day, I stop for twenty-five minutes to lie down and focus on letting my muscles relax. I just become aware of which part of my is not relaxed and release the tension.
Reduce distractions. I cannot watch a television program and listen to a person at the same time. I cannot type on my computer and learn anything from a podcast at the same time. Whenever I am expecting myself to handle two mental tasks simultaneously, I am not able to think clearly.
How you negotiate salary depends on many things.
Here are three of the things that affect how you negotiate salary.
The size of the company: Larger companies have structured compensation plans. The plans have pay grades. The pay grades have three levels: entry range, mid-range, upper range. Smart hiring managers don’t hire people into the upper range of the pay grade. If they did, they could not give the person a pay raise without promoting the person.
The level of the job: For entry-level jobs, companies pay at or slightly above the market minimum, or entry range, for inexperienced people. Companies pay all inexperienced people closely the same amount. As a person gains experience, their compensation package becomes more complex and varies more greatly. Job seekers have greater differences in their compensation based on their time in industry, their performance, and generosity of the hiring company.
The type of compensation plan: Some companies pay based on performance. People who perform better receive higher bonuses or commissions. I have seen medical sales jobs and marketing service sales jobs where the base salary was half what a person had made in base salary at their previous company. However, the performance compensation was three to four times their compensation at their previous job.
You can do many things to have a successful salary negotiation.
Here are three things to do to win when you negotiate salary.
Know the numbers: It is easy to know the value of a job in the marketplace. There are pay range calculators online. The top sites are Salary.com and Payscale.com. Use these calculators.
Save everyone’s time. Put compensation on the table before you start. Ask the recruiter or hiring manager what the salary range is before you go to the interview. During the first interview, ask the interviewer what the salary range of the job is. You are not asking what they plan to offer you. You are just clarifying whether your interviewing for the job is worth their time and yours.
Show the benefits. Have solid reasons why you need the compensation you expect. Show how your reasons benefit the needs of the hiring company.
Related articles.
Good luck with your interviews and negotiations.
There are countless ways to beat stress. Here are ten things I see winners doing that help me.
They correct them. They move forward. They don’t let the life’s little mistakes lie around and create problems and stress.
People who are apologizing all the time aren’t correcting mistakes. They are just trying to deal with the stress of insecurities without understanding why they feel insecure.
Just having friends helps us beat stress. Talking to friends helps gets us out of my own head and into the present moment. Talking to friends helps me get my bearings. Talking to friends can also help me deal with the stress of insecurities that can cause me to apologize all the time.
Of course, we feel stressed when we keep putting off what we need to do. I win when we I do the things I need to do.
When something is bothering me, I can write it down. Writing takes the sting out of stress. If I have something that I need to do but can’t do now, I can write it down. Having a list creates a plan of action. Having the plan helps me become more productive. When I become more productive, I have a sense of accomplishment. I feel less stress.
We have to eat. Sometimes our cravings are going to make us eat junk. Winners don’t worry about it. But they eat the healthy stuff first.
No one can run wind sprints all day long. Winners take breaks. Breaks make us more productive. People who work in virtual offices can easily forget to take breaks. I stand up. I walk away from my desk and walk around for a few minutes. I lie down for a couple of minutes. I take breaks by getting away from my work. Not taking breaks creates fatigue, which screws up our perspective and stresses us out.
Lack of sleep causes depression and anxiety. Lack of sleep creates stress. I get plenty of sleep and live with a clear, rested mind.
It is so easy to believe that we have some kind of control about some national or international event way beyond our control. Get real. We can’t police the universe! Being the cop of the universe is completely fruitless and painfully stressful.
Asking for help does many great things. First, you might actually get some help. Second, by getting in contact with someone else, we get out of own head. Third, we may even make some friends. Fourth, we may get a lot more things done! Fifth, we will have less stress in getting things done.
