An important aspect of self-development is the ability to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. You might be wondering what opportunities you have. It’s nice to know that your life is full of unknown gems waiting to be discovered!
Try these methods to ensure you’re open to new opportunities:
Recognize that you have opportunities all around you. The first step is to believe the current people, places, and situations you’re involved with may lead to something bigger.
If you engage in “limiting thinking,” it’s difficult for you to notice the opportunities around you. You’ll open yourself up to new things if you can broaden your thinking.
Get acquainted with new people. Whenever you meet someone, get to know them. It’s good to have another business connection to network with or personal contact to develop a friendship with. These associations can blossom into opportunities you hadn’t considered.
Maybe your new colleague’s brother owns a business that you’d like to reach out to. Or a new neighbor does marathons and you’re interested in running.
Discard the limiting thinking pattern. Many of us adopt a style of thinking like, “This is all I’ll ever have and I’ve got to make do with it.” How does this type of thinking affect your life and your ability to notice new opportunities?
When you limit your thoughts, you may be passing up fabulous love, career, and monetary riches.
Make a conscious decision to curb the limiting thinking. The next best thing might be just around the corner.
Avoid running from challenging projects at work. You might be thinking, “There’s no way I want to get involved in this project.” Yet, those who take on those types of work tasks learn so much and are given even better opportunities in the future.
You can develop a reputation as the “go-to person” and advance your career.
Voluntarily step in to fill voids. Maybe there’s something that needs to be done at work, but others balk at it. Perhaps they think the project sounds boring or that the task is monotonous.
For example, maybe no one wants to write the job descriptions for your department. Everyone thinks it sounds useless, but your boss wants it to be completed. Step up and get it done.
Another example might be that your neighborhood wants to turn a piece of land into a small park, but nobody is interested in making it happen. Take the lead and contact your city council to initiate the project.
When you step in to fill voids, others notice your efforts and you develop some new skills. Plus, some of these tasks can serve as resume builders.
Your life is filled with an unknown brilliance that you probably haven’t tapped into yet. Put these strategies into action today. Be ready and willing to notice and take advantage of all opportunities presented to you. A life filled with abundance is waiting for you!
“If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” ~Zig Ziglar
Good news, people. You can be anything you want to be–and as Mr. Ziglar said, if you can dream it you can achieve it!
Take a moment for yourself. Sit back, relax and allow yourself to dream for a bit about whom you’d like to be and what you’d really like to do with your life.
If you could simply paint an image of who you want to be, what would that look like? Free-association like this can be incredibly helpful in realizing your goals.
Spend some highly productive time meditating on your dreams with these strategies:
1. Find a quiet time and place. This will be somewhere where you can reflect without interruption. You might take a walk in the park or a bike ride for an hour. Maybe you’ll choose to lay out on a blanket under that big shade tree in your back yard.
2. Focus on what makes you happy. Think positive thoughts. Think about what you wanted to be when you were 10, 15, and 20. Was it the same occupation or way of life at each stage of your development? Or were you always coming up with something new you wanted to do?
3. Think about your deepest desires. What do you really want? Do you want to have a lot of money and travel the world? Or just settle down and have a family? Maybe you picture yourself surrounded by many close friends with whom you spend a lot of your spare time. Maybe your preferred way to live is an independent, quiet lifestyle alone with your books, paints, and hobbies. Whatever–just “do you.”
4. Visualize your living space.Focus on what you’ve got in your living space that is GOOD. Where you live largely determines the kind of life you have. Living in a warm southern climate means you can be more physically active in warm weather year round. If you live in an apartment in the middle of the big city, you might live a life filled with wall to wall people, ethnic foods, and cultural experiences of all kinds. There’s rarely any quiet and you’re incredibly active, partaking of all that city life has to offer. A rural setting, on the other hand, provides its own sense of stability. You enjoy nature frequently. The sights, sounds, and smells of plants, animals, and the four seasons surround you as you walk or work outdoors. Stress levels are lower.
5. Make a wish, take a chance and break away (from your old, negative thoughts). You might think that making a wish is just for kids. But for the sake of this exercise, if you could have just one wish for your life, what would it be? To be a husband someday? To be a mother? To travel to a few exotic countries you’ve wanted to see? To be an accountant or small business owner? Your wish will reveal a lot about you and what you desire.
6. Dream about your ideal career–or, if you’re already there, dream about taking it to the next level. Continuing to paint the picture of who you would choose to be, where would you be working? What kind of job credentials would you hold? What would you be like in that situation? Because work is almost one-third of your life, consider your career choice as profoundly integral to your happiness.
7. Get your planning on–let’s go! Now that you’ve reflected on your life and who you’d like to be, how close is your actual life to your desires? What can you do to help yourself become who and what you want to be?
You deserve to live the life you choose. Reflect on who and what you want to be. Let your mind go for a bit. Then, ask yourself what you want for yourself. Think about where you’d prefer to live. Think about the career you’d have if you could do it all over again.
Finally, ask yourself what you will need to do to get to the place of your dreams, physically, emotionally, and career-wise. You can be anything you want to be. Make some effort now to find out who that really is.
What do you think? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section, below.
There is no way that you can go happily to a job every day if you don’t feel good about yourself, are overworked, under-appreciated, and disorganized.
But you can begin to increase the peace, productivity and overall happiness in nearly any work environment by adding feng shui to your workplace, at least on some level.
When you can learn to balance the energy in your work environment, your own energy will be in harmony. When that happens, all of the things you want in life will be on their way to you–it’s a simple case of cause and effect, the law of attraction in action.
When your energy is in harmony, you feel good. That’s when you’ll start naturally draw people and opportunities to you that reflect this balance and create the kinds of things you want in your life.
Your environment is so important–it even indirectly determines the type of relationships, finances, career opportunities you attract, affecting your overall quality of life.
Five feng shui tips to improve productivity in your workplace
First, if you are not comfortable in your designated work space and have a disorganized mess piled around you, you are going to start your day on a negative note, and waste your valuable time searching for things.
Keep the things you use all the time close at hand, and have proper storage for those items that you use now and then.
Good lighting and a comfortable chair will help, too. Let coworkers know that this is your work space and that you need to eliminate distractions.
Those interruptions keep you from achieving, which in turn frustrates you, increases your work load, and adds to your stress.
Second, you need to set definite goals. If you know what you want to achieve, you will get there much faster.
Is it power you want? Whatever your motivation is, it is a reminder of why you come to work each day.
Don’t hang negative labels around your neck…nobody is “just” a secretary, or “just” a salesman! Be proud of what you are doing and you will always do the best job possible.
Think about the positives; don’t list the negatives. If you had a cranky customer that you managed to soothe and make the sale, give yourself kudos instead of giving him black marks.
Third on the list of tips is to stop procrastinating. Every time you choose to do the least you possibly can in a day, it leaves you with more than you possibly can do the next day.
Granted, there are times when it is hard to concentrate, or you are tired, achy, and unmotivated. Taking regular breaks will help to ease the tedium, a jolt of caffeine will wake you up, or a cup of herbal tea will soothe you.
Don’t snack on too much. You’ll want to take a nap!
Fourth on the list is to do relieve your stress level. Tips 1, 2, and 3 will help, but sometimes you need more help.
Meditation, deep breathing, and yoga are really good ways to relax the body and clear the mind.
Delegating authority will also ease stress. Let others do some of the routine tasks in order to clear your mind and time for the problems.
Tip number five is simple. The last thing you should do before you go home is to plan the next day’s activities.
It makes it easier for you to start up quickly when you get there in the morning. Prioritize your tasks.
These five feng shui tips to improve productivity in your workplace are going to help you feel better about yourself and your job, ease your stress, and make you glad to be going to work!
About the Author
Mike Schnippering is the founder of Feng Shui at Work. In 1996 he studied Feng Shui with Master Sang whose ancestors can be traced back to ancient China. He is committed to the true art and science of Feng Shui. His Feng Shui practice has taken him to various parts of the United States, Germany, France, Spain, Colombia and Argentina.
I’m not going to lie. I’ve done my share of gossiping over the years, and I’ve also been the subject of some interesting gossip here and there. But the truth is that negative gossip can be hurtful and can cause a number of issues, both personal and professional.
On a personal level, gossip can become so toxic that it can negatively affect your day-to-day life–and professionally, it can cause dissension among colleagues and can even go so far as to ruin careers or entire businesses.
That’s why managing workplace gossip is important for organizations and for the employees who work there. Here are some important steps you can take as a team and as an individual to encourage communications that benefit your emotional health and career.
Dealing With Gossip as a Team
Consider a ban on gossip. Some employers have adopted an official ban on workplace gossip and require employees to sign a pledge. Opinion remains divided about whether this practice is too extreme, but it can send a strong message.
Encourage open communication policies. A more moderate step is promoting open communication policies. Let employees know that they’re expected to talk directly with each other about conflicts before calling in a supervisor or other outside parties.
Comply with personal blog and general internet use policies. Keep an eye on e-mail and chat too. Appropriate blog and online policies can balance an employee’s right to personal expression while protecting the company and related individuals from harassment, defamation and other threats.
Confront rumors promptly. Minimize anxieties by responding to rumors promptly. Factual information about layoffs or other difficult issues serves people better than leaving them to speculate on their own.
Discuss the impact of gossip. Use staff retreats and other gatherings to remind everyone about the difference between positive communication and gossip. Prevention is better than singling people out after the damage is already done.
Know your legal rights. In general, employers have a duty to take action against verbal harassment if they’re aware of it. An employment lawyer can advise you on what options are available in your individual situation. If you’re on limited budget, your local bar association may be able to help you find free or low-cost legal services in your community.
Dealing with Gossip As An Individual
Share information. Being generous with non-confidential information can put a check on gossip. Keep employees informed with regular progress reports about work issues or projects. If your work is likely to affect someone else’s responsibilities, ask for their input and invite them to meetings.
Be sensitive about appearances. Closed doors can set off alarms even when the explanation is innocent. Let people know that you’re just watching a webinar with the speakers on and it’s okay to knock or send you an instant message if they need something.
Reach out to new people. Resist the tendency to form cliques by inviting someone outside of your usual circle to join you for lunch. Sign up for the company softball team or volunteer for a charity drive.
Walk away. Gossip doesn’t spread easily if it lacks an audience. You can tactfully suggest a more constructive channel for stating a complaint or just remove yourself from the discussion.
Focus on your colleagues’ good qualities. Tensions can build easily at work. Remind yourself about what you like about your co-workers and the things they’ve done to help you in the past. You’ll automatically have nicer things to say about them.
Cultivate relationships outside of work. Devote adequate attention to your private life, especially if you work long hours. Having close relationships outside the office can provide you with sources of emotional support and objective advice when issues arise in the workplace.
Get busy. The best antidote to harmful gossip may be just staying busy. If your day is full of tasks that you find challenging and gratifying, you’re less likely to get distracted by less constructive activities.
An office grapevine run amok can take a heavy toll on morale and productivity. Help your colleagues and yourself to create a work environment where open and respectful communications flourish.
“A lot of people don’t enjoy their job, they may even hate it, but I am lucky enough to be able to make a living through my passion.” ~Martin Yan
Seven years ago, I was working a job I didn’t love. I had a cubicle (albeit a big one) and I lived in the corporate world.
My career, while it was interesting and certainly kept me busy, was completely unsatisfying.
What I really wanted was an opportunity to do what I really loved–to be a writer. I even took on all the writing work my corporate job would allow.
I wrote letters to patients and to insurance companies, forms, brochures, training manuals, articles for the company website and more–you name it, I wrote it.
And then, one day, it happened–I lost the job for no legitimate reason. My boss of just a few months (who I had trained myself) decided he didn’t like the fact that I was a female running an all-male department (very successfully, for the record).
When he fired me, I asked him for any legitimate reason or proof of my inability to do the job–he could provide none.
It was simply a case of office politics gone wrong, and at first, I was really upset and angry.
But I quickly realized that I had manifested the situation myself.
You see, while I didn’t absolutely hate my job, I definitely didn’t love it. I had to talk myself into going to work each day, and I watched the clock closely as those eight hours draaaaaaaged on each day.
I secretly hoped I’d be fired, because then, I thought, I’d have an opportunity to focus on my true passion–writing.
And that’s exactly what I got.
So, I started my freelance writing business. It took a couple of years to really start bringing in a “real” income, but I loved the work, and it was worth it to me.
(Tip: Want to get out of the rat race? Check out my work-at-home jobs board or my freelance writing jobs board over at Practical Freelance Writer’s Guide!)
I am so grateful to be among the ranks of people who get to get paid to do what they love, and I want everyone to have that opportunity.
That’s why, this week, Project Blissful will offer daily posts on work and career fulfillment. Along with my guest posters, I’ll be covering a variety of work and career-related topics each day this week.
We’ll cover how to know you’ve found your life’s work, how to stay sane at work, tips to improve productivity and working simple, and more.
An important aspect of self-development is the ability to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. You might be wondering what opportunities you have. It’s nice to know that your life is full of unknown gems waiting to be discovered!
“If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” ~Zig Ziglar
There is no way that you can go happily to a job every day if you don’t feel good about yourself, are overworked, under-appreciated, and disorganized.
First, if you are not comfortable in your designated work space and have a disorganized mess piled around you, you are going to start your day on a negative note, and waste your valuable time searching for things.
Fourth on the list is to do relieve your stress level. Tips 1, 2, and 3 will help, but sometimes you need more help.
I’m not going to lie. I’ve done my share of gossiping over the years, and I’ve also been the subject of some interesting gossip here and there. But the truth is that negative gossip can be hurtful and can cause a number of issues, both personal and professional.
Share information. Being generous with non-confidential information can put a check on gossip. Keep employees informed with regular progress reports about work issues or projects. If your work is likely to affect someone else’s responsibilities, ask for their input and invite them to meetings.
A lot of people don’t enjoy their job, they may even hate it, but I am lucky enough to be able to make a living through my passion.” ~Martin Yan
