Category: The Top 1% Mindset: Optimism, Mental Clarity, Happiness, and Motivation

Life is a lot less stressful when we stop worrying about what other people are thinking.
~www.jaywren.com

 

 

Photo by Fernando Paredes Murillo on Unsplash

Feeling Anxious? Try Smiling. ~www.jaywren.com

Is Anxiety Killing Your Career?

Anxiety can make you avoid opportunities for work, fun, and networking.  It can cut your opportunities for leadership roles.  Your anxiety can generate signals that make it harder for people to reach out to you.

Smile

There are many things that you can do to calm your jitters.  Perhaps the most overlooked way is simply to smile.  People smile when they are happy.  And equally important is that smiling can help you feel happy.

The smiley face emoji says to other people you approve of what they have to say.  Smiling has a similar effect.  It tells people you approve of them.  It creates trust and helps people open up to you.

You are generating charisma.  People find your presence attractive.  Your smiling helps people feel more confident and comfortable being around you.  In turn, they smile and you feel confident from their signal of approval.

A frown will chase away friends.  Ah, but there is something about a smile that attracts people and draws people to you.

So, let it go.  When you see people, start with a smile.  As people approach, nod and smile.  When you are shaking hands with people, look at them and smile.

Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash

Helping Others is Rewarding

Some of the best things I have done for myself involved helping other people.  Giving my time to help other people in turn benefited me mentally and emotionally. Helping other people increased my self-esteem as a person of value. I had activities to plan and anticipate. I got to know as many new people as I did in high school. This work introduced me to professionals outside my specialty. My personal network expanded to include friends in medicine, law, education, technology, broadcast media, politics, religion, and so on across the spectrum of professions. I was able to use the leadership skills I develop as a Navy officer and as a businessman. Then, from my experience in volunteering, I learned from other people how to create new programs and build volunteer teams. Moreover, I had the positive feeling that I was making life more fun and rewarding for other people.

Here are places where I had so many personal benefits from helping other people. Perhaps my experience can benefit you.

Schools

If you have kids in school, you may find that volunteering in your kids’ schools has many benefits.

In Sacramento public schools, my wife and I created a program to increase school safety in a way that benefited the faculty and students.

I had the privilege of working with education experts in understanding and creating a forum for communicating across different cultures and ideologies.

With my wife’s support, I started the High School Safety Summit, a district-wide program to introduce students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators, and members of the community to programs for higher student engagement and higher graduation rates. To create pride in students for the school my own kids attended, I created the annual Cornell West Distinguished Award. In the first year, one of the school’s alumni, Dr. Cornel West, returned to speak to 700 students on the John F. Kennedy campus in Sacramento. Using this program, the school continued in future years to honor influential alumni.

At the request of a high school administrator, I worked with the school district’s facilities manager and a cell phone company to build lighting for on-campus nighttime football games.

Adult Recreational Sports

Never an elite athlete, I did enjoy playing adult softball and soccer. At first, I played on teams that friends organized through city parks and recreation. Overtime, my wife and I worked with the City of Sacramento to create new adult softball and soccer teams.

Teen Sports

One of the most rewarding experiences I had was coaching my second daughter’s teen soccer team. I recruited two adults to help me with training the team skills and stunts.

One of the most important things that I did was to hold a parent meeting before the beginning of the season. Given the freedom, at youth soccer matches, parents will set their lawn chairs along the touch line and yell instructions at and criticize the players. I instructed the parents to set up their chairs ten yards away from the field. Additionally, I told them not to speak to individual players directly during the game. No one could raise their voice or criticize one of my players. However, I did encourage cheering.

Personally, I never yelled coaching instructions or criticized my players during a play. I used the games to learn the things I needed to teach the players in the next game.

My method of coaching is not for everyone. However, from a personal point of view, I found it distracting when coaches yelled at me during a game. My focus went from the game to the person yelling. I didn’t want my players to have that distraction.

At halftime, I did make adjustments and helped my players see how they could take advantage of the weaknesses of their opponents.

More on personal growth:

Anxiety and Emotional Intelligence

 

Self-Honesty: There are two types of honesty. Cash register honesty is one. Certainly, the cash register is important for building trust and staying out of jail. However, self-honesty enables people to see their shortcomings. More importantly, self-honesty enables people to correct their mistakes and strengthen their weaknesses. To have self-honesty, we must be open-minded and have a willingness to change.

Wise Choices: Little Adjustments Can Change the Day

Anger Management: When Your Emotions Damage Careers

Worrying: The Pointless and Painful Abuse of Fear

If you don’t like what you are getting, stop doing what you are doing. Maybe you are following the wrong crowd. Maybe, you don’t need to follow any crowd. Meet new people. Try new things. Worry less about mistakes and focus more on doing things that inspire you and bring you joy. ~ www.jaywren.com

Mental Strengths: Some people are stronger at solving problems with one correct answer. They are convergent thinkers. Other people are stronger at solving problems with multiple solutions. They are divergent thinkers.

Aligning your career with the way your brain works will increase your ability to excel in the workplace. How can you shape your career around the way you think? Here are some ideas that may help you understand your strengths and weaknesses.

Mental Strengths

What Kind of Solutions Come to You More Easily?
To understand how your brain works, consider these two types of problem solving.

Convergent Thinking
Some people have terrific skills for solving problems that have only one answer.
2 + 2 =?
The specific answer is 4.

When people solve this type of problem, they are using convergent intelligence. Their reasoning converges or comes together to settle on this one answer. Their mental strengths can give them happier lives and more successful careers by working in roles that require convergent thinking.

Divergent Thinking

Divergent thinking skills enable people to see multiple solutions to the same problem. For example, many people climb a mountain by following a well-marked, well known path. This is the path most people know and the only path that most people take.

However, other people see multiple paths for climbing the same mountain. These people not only discover new paths. Their discoveries may help other people find ways of doing the same thing in new and more interesting ways.

Their mental strengths can give them happier lives and more successful careers by working in roles that require divergent thinking.

What Type of Problems Do You Like to Solve?

If you like to solve problems with convergent thinking, developing careers for solving those types of problems should be enjoyable for you.

Nearly every industry needs convergent thinkers. Whether you are an English teacher grading papers or an engineer confirming the structural integrity of a bridge, you must have the ability to see fundamental answers specific to individual problems.

On the other hand, some industries rely heavily on creative solutions. Inventors are people who have success with divergent thinking. They find better ways of doing things. These people innovate. They look at existing platforms like computers and create innovative solutions using this platform. In the case of building bridges these people can design new bridges and turn the convergent tasks over to architects and engineers who can solve the integrity issues.

When to Use Both Ways of Thinking

If you are starting a company, you may have to solve problems that require convergent and divergent solutions. You are alone or have a small staff.

However, as your company grows, you can outsource jobs that challenge your patience and effectiveness. Furthermore, you can become more successful working in the areas where your attention focuses on your mental strengths.

Career Intelligence

There is no rule that baseball catchers cannot develop the skills to play first base or that a pitcher cannot also be a pinch hitter. Likewise, broadening your skills in both convergent and divergent thinking can increase your career intelligence. You can play at a higher level in jobs that require both types of thinking.

In this case, career intelligence is viewing opportunities to become smarter and more capable by using both types of skills. Finding jobs where you can broaden your career intelligence (that is, convergent and divergent thinking) most effectively will help you become more successful.

Moreover, developing skills in areas of both convergent and divergent thinking will help you throughout your career.

At the same time, stick to your core strengths. Working in the areas where your mind is more powerful will more easily enable you to succeed. Natural catchers are more effective behind the plate than playing a secondary, more challenging position.

Summary

When are you most effective? What roles play to your mental strengths?

Some people are naturally more gifted to think convergently. These people learn quickly and can apply what they learn to solving problems

Other people are more gifted to think divergently. With less knowledge than convergent thinkers, the people see options intuitively. They excel in helping companies find new ways to succeed in failing conditions.

 

Anger Prevention: Anger is a normal feeling when we have experiences that threaten our beliefs or possessions. We can learn skills that give us a choice in the way we respond to that feeling.

Anger Prevention: Different Triggers for Different People

We all have individual triggers.  I say individual triggers, because different things create different feelings and different responses in different people.

For example, heights frighten some people. For other people, heights are thrilling.  Furthermore, the amount that people feel fearful or thrilled varies from person to person.

In the case of bungy jumping, some people are fearful of leaping off a high place to the extent that they cannot even walk out to point where other people jump with glee.  Between these extremes are people who have more intense or less intense feelings about jumping off high places.

How Powerful are Triggers?

When triggered, we experience the impulse to act.

Emotions are not thoughts.  And, under some circumstances, our emotions can fire faster than our ability to think before acting. For example, two people see a person fall.  One laughs.  Another one winces.

Neither person thought about how they would respond to what they are seeing.  Instead, they are experiencing feeling in their unconscious mind.

Becoming Smart to Avoid Triggers

The first step in anger management is recognizing sources that create patterns in the emotions governing our thoughts.  These patterns are circumstances that increase the likelihood that we will respond emotionally rather than mentally. However, we can become smart to avoid triggers.

When we recognize these patterns, we can make changes in our behavior that affect our ability to deal with stress.

For example, in rush-hour traffic on the freeways, there are miles of cars.  The way that each driver experiences the drive varies from calm awareness to rage.

Rage can lead to dangerous actions.  If we recognize the patterns of behavior that precede the rage, we can change that pattern.  For example, caffeine, hunger, fatigue, and starting late increase anxiety before we even get on the road.

Additionally, anxiety can press us to try to drive faster than the flow of traffic.  When we become frustrated with drivers who slow us down, our anxiety increases further.

The solution is to eliminate or change our emotions before we get on the road. Before dashing out the door, we take a break to relax.  In other cases, such as making appointments, we can leave early.  Additionally, we can eliminate caffeine or eat a light snack to reduce intense feelings that come from pressures of being on the highway. 

Once we start our drive, we can decide to be part of the flow of traffic and not an intimidating threat to our own safety and the safety of others.

Conclusion

It is not always easy to overcome anger.  However, it is smart to take action to prevent the anger in the first place.