I shared a late dinner with my friend Janice recently. Janice is mostly successful pursuing her own projects, but often lets her pessimism impede her success. She’s always thinks something bad will happen that will totally derail one of her projects. Then, when something good does happen, she doesn’t believe she deserves it and waits for the other shoe to drop.
Does this sound like you? Too often we allow negativity to get in the way of our success by feeling undeserving of that success. We all must learn to receive and accept the good things that happen to us as the rewards of our hard work. If you do not know how to receive, you may never get what you want. Here’s how you can be more receptive.
1. Notice Your Work. Success more often comes from working smart rather than working hard. But since most people believe that success is they payoff of hard work, they do not feel like they deserve it if it came from smart work. This is not true. Always take time to think about the effort you put in and commend yourself for working smart to achieve your goals. This will help you feel more [...]
This weekend, I met with my friend Mark who explained to me that his overconfidence actually got in the way of his success. I know, this flies in the face of everything we keep hearing about “confident people are successful people.” But the problem for Mark was his cockiness; thinking he knew it all. Believing he always knew what was best often ended up tripping him up in the long run.
Confidence is good, and something we should all strive for. But some lament being overconfident and getting in over their head. The secret is to know your limitations and strike a balance between confidence, which inspires others, and cockiness, which alienates others. Here are three ways to cultivate confidence while tempering overconfidence:
1. Display confidence, but always question yourself. Even the most confident among us have doubts. But lingering doubts undermine the confidence of those who work under us, eventually unwinding the trust others have in your leadership and the task at hand. Leaders need to be a source of guidance to inspire others and keep group confidence strong. But at the same time, you should always continue to question and reassess your decisions in private.
2. Know when to back down. [...]
January 27, 2011 – 11:08 am
A Kodak moment can capture a memory in time, but more often than not, tourists take unnecessary pictures of attractions that a million other tourists have already photographed. The camera can be a mental barrier between seeing something and experiencing something. Ask yourself, am I here to experience a new culture or am I here to have a new picture to show off on my Facebook page?
December 31, 2010 – 10:52 am
Have milestone goals within projects, relationships and partnerships. Commit yourself to that goal and then once reached, assess whether or not you want to move forward. If there are other parties involved, make sure that they are in agreement with the milestone that is set.
November 24, 2010 – 9:06 am
The things we are most grateful for seem to come to us from the most unexpected places. This guest blog post for ConnectCops and how I met the site owner are no different.
After the 140 Conference in Boston, I began conversing with some amazing people I had met earlier in the day. Next thing I know, I began sharing a small bit of my story in which a few detectives helped me realize I had to turn my life around. After a few tears (yes, I cried. Don’t tell anyone. ), Lauri Stevens asked for the following from me.
This post is dedicated to Detective Brown and Detective Burke of the West Haven, Connecticut Police Department.
You can save a life. You may not be aware that it is happening—it could be a simple conversation, a violent interaction, or just your presence in a situation. Some small part of your day-to-day that you wouldn’t normally blink at could be the life changing moment for someone else. It was for me.
I was dragged into the station on two counts of mail fraud. Who knew that sending threatening letters to people through the mail would be a federal offense? I had already stolen (or [...]
My surrogate sister, Sara, has been over in China studying and teaching for about a year and a half now. Her experience of acclimating into another culture made me curious to see what creative benefits there are to living aboard.
In Psychology Time’s article,”Can living abroad make you more creative,” Art Markman asks just that:
The idea here is that when you go to a different culture, there are often subtle differences that you have to learn about. For example, in the US, if you go to someone’s house and they offer you a drink or snack, you respond “Yes” or “No” depending on whether you want a snack. In Russia, though, it is impolite to say “Yes” the first time something is offered, and so you refuse the first request. The host asks again, and after a brief negotiation, you may settle on having a snack. A Russian visiting the US for the first time might refuse the offer of a snack, only to be surprised that she is not asked a second time. Eventually, she must learn that the practices are different.
To read the entire article, click here.
What are your thoughts? Have you ever lived abroad? Did you feel [...]
As a minister and an artist, I am always intrigued as to how spirituality effects the creative mind. So, when I saw this article from Deepak Chopra on Spirituality and Sex, it was a must read for me.
My favorite is #1:
Sexual energy is the primal and creative energy of the universe. All things that are alive come from sexual energy. In animals and other life forms, sexual energy expresses itself as biological creativity. In humans, sexual energy can be creative at all levels — physical, emotional and spiritual. In any situation — where we feel attraction, arousal, awakening, alertness, passion, interest, inspiration, excitement, creativity, enthusiasm — in each of these situations, sexual energy is at work. Whenever we feel these states of awareness, we must put our attention on the energy that we are experiencing, nourishing it with our attention, experiencing it with joy and keeping it alive in our awareness.
Read this Huffington Post article and tell me what you think.
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“Did he penetrate?” Those were the first words I spoke to the doctor as she was examining me upon my arrival back to the US in 2004. I had been studying Italian in Perugia when I was sexually assaulted by a neighbor. Needless to say, I have not been back to Italy since that incident. However, I intend for all of that to change this summer.
I believe that one’s experiences make them the person they are. I will go a step further and say that it is really how a person handles those experiences and who they become as a result of them that really tell the tale. With that being said, I have been in a state of reflection over the past several months. I know that if I strive to move forward and be the person I am capable of being, then I need to do just that: move on.
In order for that to occur, I need to go back to Italy. I need (and want) a better memory of that beautiful country. This is why my arts summer program is so special to me. What better way to move forward than through the creation of art. A [...]
I have been thinking a ton about the artists program I’m putting together in Assisi and my spiritual pilgrimage to Taizé. Of course, it brought back great memories of my last trip to the monastery and a conversation a friend and I had over a pint of Guinness:
Sam: “You do a lot of sh*t, Nae. I am not sure if you sleep.”
Me: “Of course, I sleep. Didn’t you have to wake me up this morning?”
Sam: “Yeah, but how do you tell people what you do and who you are?”
Me: “I believe that we can sum up who we are in one word. Sooo….what’s yours?”
Though I won’t go into our answers, I still firmly believe this. As Americans, we put a lot of emphasis on what we do instead of who we are and what we believe. Isn’t who we are and what we stand for more important than what we do for work (unless you are completely aligned with doing what you love)?
People connect with people, not tasks or jobs. So, I figured I would reach out to some of my Facebook peeps and see who they are. Which one word represents each of them. Here are some of their [...]
