The answer

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.  I don’t believe in circumstances.  The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.  ~G.B. Shaw, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, 1893

What do you want?

Many people don’t know what they want except that they want something they don’t have.   People seek an answer to the mystery and some spend their lives seeking the answer that they already have,  for most of their life.   The answer is within.

ideal career

What would you do if you had the opportunity to choose any career?   That is to choose the career that you could be 100% passionate about, the one that you could love to do and do because you love it.

Many people choose a career based on the economic rewards that the career offers, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.   Some people choose a career because of the title and prestige of that role, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Some people end up in a career that takes more out of them than the work puts back into them.

It is often at the end of their career that people begin to assess what the value of their life’s work was.   How important was working all those extra hours?   Was the relationship that ended in divorce worth it for a more prestigious title and larger paycheck?   Was missing the children grow up the right thing to do?   Maybe the obvious answer is “No”, but when you are headlong in that effort to climb the ladder, or to just keep the job maybe the answer isn’t so clear.

Consider the amount of time you spend at your job or your career, eight, ten, twelve hours a day and then ask yourself is it worth it?   If you aren’t passionate about what you do, why do you do it?   What pulls you out of bed each morning to get you moving towards a job you don’t really love?

Looking for a career?

no matter what happens …

Here is a great article on keeping your heart in the right place.  We are going to face challenges and at times they are going to feel like huge obstacles, unpleasant at the best and dangerous at the worst.  No matter what your thought is as long as your eyes are open, as long as your heart beats you have an opportunity of some kind.  

What trial are you facing?   What would you want help with?   What areas in your life do you stuggle with?

Go ahead leave a note, tell me what are those isues that you wish you didn’t have to deal with?

What challenge in your life is holding you back?  Let me know.

six steps to manage anger

Anger is a problem.   Just writing that will cause people to say, “It’s not a problem”.  The fact is that one out of five people have anger management issues.   Anger by itself isn’t a problem it is when anger becomes destructive to others or to the self that is becomes a problem.  Anger is a response to a threat and sometimes the threat isn’t really a threat at all and yet the body reacts as if it was.  Sometimes anger becomes a habit and that habit reacts to situations that result in emotional outbursts, destructive actions or behaviors, and that is a problem.

People that put others down, that are highly critical of others, and that speak negatively of others behind their backs often have issues with anger.   As you can imagine people with unmanaged anger issues often have difficulty in relationships with others.   It is easy to see that people that with negatively charged attitudes and behaviors can suppress positive interactions at work, at home or in other social settings.  

Suppressed anger can cause serious problems as well, leading to high blood pressure or even depression.  Physically expressed anger can also be harmful to people that are in close proximity to others.   Even angry words can be harmful to those near the angry person.

So, what do you do?  How do you manage anger?

1. Define the threat?   What caused you to get angry?  
2. What are the facts?  Was the threat a real threat,  an imminent danger to you? 
3. Step back, take a deep breath
4. Remember a time that you were peaceful, let the experience in.
5. Shake it out, release the tension.
6. Create a new possibility – what positive action can be taken from this experience.

 Oh, the steps are simple enough alright but in the moment where the heat is the highest how are you to be calm enough to work the steps?

It takes practice.   It takes time to recognize that anger is upwelling in you and then it takes energy to stop and look at anger objectively.  It takes practice to stop and review your feelings. It takes practice to recognize the source of your angry feelings.

What makes you angry?

What thoughts or actions create anger for you?

What do you experience when you are driving down the road and you suddenly realize that you coming up way to fast on the car in front of you?   How do you respond?

If everyone is doing the best they can in the moment then anger may be misplaced.  It is only our interpretations of the issue that creates anger.  The situation itself has no emotional content.

Take the time to practice the steps.   If that doesn’t work, get help, find someone who you can work with to help you reduce anger in your life.

be inspired

The words of a picture tell a larger story.   What words do you see in this picture?   What challenges do you face today that a new thought or inspiration would help you overcome it?

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”  Bernice Johnson Reagon

you must go forward

“Playing safe is probably the most unsafe thing in the world. You cannot stand still. You must go forward.”    Robert Collier

 When was the last time you read something positive or heard something positive in the news media?   Most of the time news is about tragedy, the economy going down, jobs becoming more scarce, drugs, homicides, stress, school performance declining, and worse.  That is what you hear every day, bad things, and eventually that is what you believe as well.  It is easy to get conditioned to believe that everything is going wrong and it is even easier to forget what has gone right.

What happens when people begin to believe everything is going wrong?   They step back and they retreat from the world so that they can feel some sense of safety. 

When people retreat to a safe place they are intentionally retreating from opportunity.   The time to be bold, new and different is when everything appears to be falling apart.   The time to make your move is when everyone else has stopped moving.   This is the time for leaders to emerge; this is the time for influencing others and making a difference.

The great financial wisdom of buy low sell high is applicable right now in terms of making personal change.  This point in time, this point in history is the “low” and this is the time for bold people to act.   If your career is going in the wrong direction, make a move, make a change and make that change soon, get prepared to do something different, something new, and something exciting.   If your relationships aren’t on track, make a change and get help to improve the relationship.  

This is the right time to make those changes you have always wanted to make.  It is time to make the move, the move that you have already said you wanted to make, make it today.   Don’t put off another day making the change that will improve your life.  What is holding you back from doing what you have said you wanted to do?

your world

“What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.”  Joseph Campbell

Your world is perfectly unique to you.  Your experiences, feelings, thoughts and adventures are totally your own.  You live in a world that you own.  There is no other world like it, your world is your world and you share it with 6 billion other worlds.   Your world is like a huge table covered with billiard balls and the balls move around colliding with each other either sparking conflict or creating great relationships.  What is your world creating?

You can share your world with others but on the inside your world is unique and your own, no one else can possibility know all there is to know about your world.

your destination

“It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal. “
Helen Keller

The lines of battle have been drawn, you have a destination in mind and you’re ready to move forward and reach the destination with purpose and zeal.  You’re on an adventure in life to experience life to its fullest, that is your dream and you’re on your way.   What will you experience when you get there?

a powerful idea

It started as an idea and your thoughts took this idea you had and it grew and grew and grew and you became more and more exited as you played with the idea.  The idea grew into a vision of what could be, of what you could do in life if you only had …

Then the dream stopped.   It took a backseat to everything else that was happening in your life.   The dream that was so alive, so real, that you could touch it, slipped away.

“To dream anything that you want to dream. That’s the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do. That is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself to test your limits. That is the courage to succeed.” Bernard Edmonds

 Then one day that dream woke up and spoke to you.  You remembered that dream and a little spark of that memory grew, a flame started to arise out of that dream and it awakened a sleeping passion.   A smile formed for a few minutes, a laugh, a burst of joy and then silence.  “How could that dream from so long ago come true?”, you wondered, “How could it come back to life?”.   

What idea lives deep within you that you’d like to see it come to life?

lift others up …

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch,
 a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment,
or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential
to turn a life around.”  Leo Buscaglia

Lifting others up is a powerful leadership technique.  Look for the good in a person and then build them up.   Everyone is doing the best they can all of the time.   Now that may seem like a strange statement.   It is only when we judge others that we see them in a light that appears they are not doing the best they can.  

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”  Booker T. Washington