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

Stress reduction: Life’s challenges create pressure. I can’t always eliminate these challenges, but I can reduce the pressure by being smart about how I respond to them.

Action

I feel stress when I put things off.

To overcome procrastination, I simply agree to do one small thing. A common example is to go for a walk, I lace up my shoes. To do odd jobs around the house, I lay out my tools. Often, this one thing sets in motion my completing small tasks.  To reduce stress, I break projects down into multiple, simple steps.

When I am stuck with writing an article, for example, I write a statement. From there I write the information to explain the statement. I might write one paragraph.  I save what I have written as a draft.  Over a few hours, I may stop several times. However, by coming back a new information through the day, I complete the article.

Write Things Down.

When something is bothering me, I can write it down.  Writing takes the sting out of stress. Further writing helps me process anxiety. Moreover, the further writing often leads to solutions to solving problems that bother me.

From there, I have a plan of action that gives me the confidence to be more productive. I have a sense of accomplishment.  I feel less stress.

Eat Healthy Food First

When hunger makes me anxious between meals, a snack cuts my anxiety until mealtime.

Sugar snacks make me hungrier.  The sugar demands insulin to burn the sugar. Somewhere in the lack of balance between sugar and insulin, I feel anxious.

Therefore, I try to keep more satisfying snacks handy.  Cheese, nuts, peanut butter are calorically dense, but reduce cravings and quiet the anxious voices in my head.

Take Breaks

Being tired clutters my mind. I become less productive. My cluttered mind focuses on problems.

For me, a power nap or a walk help me recover from the fatigue of working on most projects.  Simply walking for a few minutes reduces my anxiety.

To remind myself to move each hour, I have notifications on my calendar to leave my desk and move around.

Get Plenty of Sleep

Not only do I take breaks. I try to get plenty of sleep.  Allowing my brain to rest enables me to make better decisions. Better decisions increase success and cut stress.

Lack of rest is one of the steps to burnout.  We reach a point where overdoing our job cripples us in ways that we can’t perform at work.

Keep It Real

It is so easy for me to want to control national or international events.  Thinking that I can control these things is completely fruitless and painfully stressful.

People in forums say things that annoy me.  Correcting them is pointless.  I can’t police the Internet!

Likewise, I can easily believe that I can change other people.  There are things that I can do that affect how other people react.  However, just changing my own behavior is not always easy.  Believing that I can change other people is often impractical.

Frustration over the things I can’t change creates stress.  I try to keep it real about the things that I can change and not change.

Talk with Friends

Just having friends helps me beat stress.  Talking to friends gets me out of my own head and into the present moment.  Furthermore, in talking with friends, I get practical information on dealing with challenges in my life, thereby increasing success and stress reduction.

Stress Reduction

Reducing stress clears our mind and increases our long-term success. The steps to stress reduction include steps to increase our health.

Bias dictates to our reason and wisdom, but is it always bad?  What role does it play in decision-making and in governing our actions? Knowing that we have bias and learning how to manage our bias empowers us to act intelligently to the world in which we live.

The biggest challenge is managing our bias is recognizing that they exist, and that fact is not a bad thing. Biases create an awareness that we are dealing with things that are important to us.

How Bias Dictates Our Decisions

Bias is the visceral, negative, or positive feelings that we have about a person, place, or thing.  These feelings simplify our lives to interpret the world to our liking.  It bypasses our ability to reason.  Also, it is that noisy voice that drowns out wisdom. Biases drive the way we want to see the world.

This voice is an essential element of human nature.  Patriotism, faith, political ideology, and fandom sit atop our biases.  The powerful effect of bias can bring us together to form successful groups.  In sports, business, or other matters of competition, the voice of our bias motivates us to support our team and defeat or competitors.

Additionally, these feelings can make life fun.  The excitement, love, and joy we feel for our sports team, political party, religion, or family members come from these feelings.

We hear the word “biased” often from the proud parent who brags about a child.  The parent closes with, “Of course, I am not biased.” Nod, nod, wink.

Furthermore, these feelings bring us peace.  They help us overcome doubt and fear.  Bias can create healthy, positive emotions that carry us through periods of uncertainty.

At other times, bias can create tension when our feelings conflict with the thoughts and feelings of other people.  Discussing religion, sports, politics, and any other feelings about our core beliefs with people who don’t share those beliefs can undermine the bonds of loyalty within a team or among co-workers who interact with each other.

Emotional Intelligence: A Healthy Relationship with Our Bias Dictates

Since bias has beneficial effects and adverse effects on how we think, having a healthy relationship with these feelings is important.

The first step is recognizing that we have biases.

Unlike the emotions that float through our daily lives, biases become hard-wired to our beliefs.  These feelings respond to triggers. When we hear or see things that instantly and subconsciously stir our emotions, the noisy voice of bias can drown out the voice of reason.

We believe in the things that we like.  We get angry when we hear or sear things that we don’t like.  When we interpret the world as good or evil based on our emotions, it is difficult for us to know what is true or false in the world.  Likewise, it is easy for biases to deceive us into making bad decisions.

The second step in having a healthy, productive relationship with our bias is learning to pause. We can let our emotions settle. From there, we can attempt to take an objective look at the things that are happening.

Additionally, we can speak with other people who are not involved in the situation. People who are not driven with the same bias as you.  From their thoughts, we can create a plan based on emotional intelligence.

Bad bosses can destroy your career as they make your life miserable before you get away from them. Here are ways you can protect yourself and your career.

If you are working for a bad boss, you have my understanding and empathy.  I have had a couple of bad bosses.  One had no interest in his job and was a roadblock to my career.  The other one was verbally abusive.  In the first case, I left the company for a better opportunity.  In the second case, I adjusted to my supervisor’s difficult behavior.  He promoted me before he went to another job.

The Mental and Physical Risks of Working for Bad Bosses

Working for long periods of under the stress of a bad boss damages your health and your life.  Common experiences include:

• Fatigue
• Impaired mental ability
• Depression and anxiety
• Mental and physical damage that may continue for years after leaving the bad situation

How can You Protect Yourself and Your Career?

There are things you can do to reduce the stress and to work more effectively with bad bosses. Here are some of them.

Keep a Journal

Writing about your experience helps you in several ways.  The process helps you clarify your thoughts and find solutions.  Additionally, writing help you process the emotions and reduce the sting of dealing with your boss.

Keeping a journal with the details of your experience can help you to protect yourself.

List the details:

• Include documents, including emails, text, and memos.
• Track the details with dates and times.
• List what happened and how you responded

Respond with Emotional Intelligence

Discuss your situation with your mentor or other people you can trust to keep the information private.  Through these discussions, you can find comfort and solutions to handle the situation and reduce the stress of working for your boss.

Do not retaliate.  If your boss criticizes you, criticizing your boss in turn will create greater tension.  If your boss yells at you, yelling back will only heighten the confrontation.  Reply to your boss in a normal tone.  Listen to the criticism and say that you will make the changes your boss is telling you to make.

Develop skills to work with your boss.  Learn the way that your boss wants things done.  For example, your boss may like options or choices before making a decision. Make recommendations with choices of action or material.

Seek New Ideas for Dealing with Bad Bosses

Going over your boss’s head is not always a good idea.  At some companies, bosses will fire you for going to their supervisor or other people in the company.  The ill will alone can cost you support for pay raises and promotions.  However, building relationships and learning how other people are working with your boss can help you. Don’t talk with everyone about your issues with your boss. However, chances are that you are not alone.  Some of the other people in your company, people who are your peers, may have found ways to work more successfully with your boss.  You can learn from these people.

Showing Support for Your Boss May Reduce the Pressure.

Recognize times when you can show support for your boss. Give your boss credit when he or she deserves it.  The reason that a supervisor benefits from an employee doing a great job is that the results benefit the boss.

Additionally, you can show support for your boss by doing what they ask you to do without discussion. Making your boss justify their decision will only heighten tension.

Are Your Problems Temporary

Bosses come and go.  Do not ruin a career over a passing situation.  Try to see the bright side of things.  Your boss cannot eat you.  He or she may even promote you or give you a pay raise.  Eventually, your boss may just go away.

Find Another Opportunity

Explore your options to getting another job.  If there appears no end to the madness of dealing with a bad boss, look for opportunities to transfer within your own company or ways to get another job.

Confidence Development: Stress loves mental clutter.  As the pile of clutter grows in a person’s mind, stress becomes more powerful.

The clutter creates confusion and undermines our ability for confidence development. Instead of planning for upcoming events, we worry about upcoming events. The growing stress robs our energy.  Lower energy leads to inaction, procrastination.  Inaction creates greater mental clutter.

Mental Clutter>>Confusion>>Doubt>>Stress>>Fatigue>>Less Action>>Greater Mental Clutter>>Greater Confusion>>Greater Doubt>>Higher Stress>>Greater Fatigue>>More Procrastination>>Mental Clutter. So goes the cycle.

Writing Can Open Our Mind to Greater Confidence Development

When I suffer from worry, I often write about it. When I am feeling stressed about something, writing takes the power from my anxiety.  Sometimes, just putting something on my calendar helps clear my mind.  I name the problem and create a to-do list for the solution.

For example, I might write, “I am afraid that I will miss my flight.” Then I can write a solution.  “I will make my flight, because I will go to the airport early and relax until my flight begins boarding.”

Case Study

A more complex example is how one of my friends prepares lectures he gives to large audiences. Public speaking is stressful for nearly everyone. My friend is an expert in his field. The first time he gave one of his lectures, just thinking about the presentation made him nervous.  As he spent more time thinking about speaking to an audience, he became more nervous. Confidence development was lost.

The Solution

As he prepared for his speech, he found that writing about his feelings had powerful results. He wrote, “I am nervous about giving this presentation to this group.”

Then he outlined what he wanted to say.  It occurred to him that he was not the subject of the presentation. His knowledge was the subject. He began to see his audience as people who needed the information that he could give them. Additionally, he saw how his presentation could help his audience become more successful in their professions through learning what he had to say.

He focused on writing out the details that would benefit his audience the most.  As he wrote, he gained confidence.  He saw the value in his knowledge.

He has given the lectures for over a decade.  As new developments occur in his field, he updates his presentations.  His ideas are current, relevant.  New audiences need his knowledge as much as the first audiences did.  He keeps his mind clear by sweeping out the clutter by naming his fear and focusing on the solutions he is giving his audience. He has learned the tools of confidence development.

Mental Flow: Living in the present moment is like riding a canoe. You have control with your paddle, but you ride effortlessly in the river’s current.
~ www.jaywren.com

In a previous article, Becoming Aware: The Power of Living in the Present Moment, I wrote,

“Doing one thing at a time and clearing my mind of everything else: these steps empower my mind to a higher level of thinking.”

To some people the phrase “the present moment” implies an instance in time. And that understanding is correct. However, the concept that I am discussing is to experience a mental awareness flowing freely and without distraction.  For example, if you are engrossed in a movie, your mind is not thinking about the theater, the people around you, or things from your past or your future. Instead, you mind flows with the movie.

Flow is critical in athletic sports or chess or poker or any competition for that matter.  The greats don’t analyze.  They just see solutions and flow through them. A baseball fielder doesn’t mentally stop and analyze how to make a catch. Through training and mental awareness, the player’s mind carries the player through the catch and into the next motion to throw the ball to the pitcher or to another player to complete a play.

When they sense a change in the circumstances around themselves, their instincts can kick in to enable them to adjust to the new situation.

During the game, in all sports the greatest coaches, don’t want their players thinking about the score, the crowd, or the players on the other team. They want their players in a mental flow of executing a play exactly the way that the coach has trained them.

Benefits of Living in a Mental Flow

When in a mental flow, you experience a higher level of thought. You become intuitive, mentally receptive.  You release the pain of ruminating over the past or worrying about the future.  From my point of view, I can’t change the past, and most of the things that I worry about never happen.

Attitude: How is it that some people remain calm, positive, and objective, when life gives them challenges and hurdles?  Is this powerful trait of attitude management is a teachable skill.

Understanding Moods and Attitudes

When I am in hungry, tired, or rushed, things can seem more personal.   I may feel more anxious or impatient.   My mood declines and my attitude declines with it.  I may feel angry over things that might not otherwise bother me.

It is easier for me to treat other people the way I feel.  Then I infect them with my bad attitude.  By simply taking a deep breath, having lunch, or taking a break, I can often change the way everything looks and improve the way I treat other people.

By understanding that other people experience the same decline in attitudes based on what is going on with them, I can avoid catching a bad attitude from them.  They are human.  I am human.  I can allow them the same understanding people have so often given me.

My response to other people in this light relieves me of the stress of owning their bad feelings.  I can let those actions toward me to pass.  I feel healthier when I can to see that, as humans, we share the same wiring.  I can find compassion for people who need compassion.  I can find patience with people who are being impatient.  I can stop and listen to people who are being rude without agreeing but simply letting them air out their thinking.

Conditions Affect Moods

Driving has a profound territorial impact on attitudes.  In my car, I have a sense that I am in my personal moving territory.  My mind says that the area around my car is like the yard around my house. It is my space, my yard, my safe distance between from other people and cars, my mobile territory.

If another driver moves into my mobile territory, I have a sense of violation and frustration.  My sense of mobile territory can even extend to a sense of injustice when I see a driver cut off another driver.

Among the thousands of other drivers on the highways every day, there are people who feel overwhelmed, experiencing grief, living in fear in failure, or experiencing other very difficult situations. There are other people who are simply tired and hungry and have just had a dreadful day and caught a bad attitude from someone else.

However, I can’t change their attitude.  On the other hand. I can change my attitude.  Maintaining a bad attitude is painful.   If I allow myself to stay angry or anxious, or fearful, I am trying to punish other people when I am hurting myself.  Bad attitudes are very painful.

 Furthermore, good attitudes have so many benefits.

1. I am healthier.
2. I feel better.
3. I can focus.
4. I can feel joy in the present moment.
5. I can celebrate life as a flow of passing events.

When someone has a cold, I do not see them as being a bad person.  I see them as a person with a temporary disease.  When someone has a bad attitude, I see them as a person with a temporary attitude disorder.

When you can, avoid people with bad attitudes.

Most people avoid those types of people.  However, when that person is your boss or coworker, you may find that the best way to keep from catching negative attitudes from these people only takes some practical steps.

1. Be very positive and upbeat around these people.
2. If the person is your boss, try to understand what your boss wants done and try to do those things without expectation of approval.
3. See them as people and not as evil forces.
4. Angry, rude, difficult, even obnoxious people are just people.   When I see them as human just as I am human, I realize that they are the one in pain not me.

Surrounding Myself with Positive People

The most important thing that I can do is to stay close to positive people and read or watch positive things. I love the healing that I get from positive people, places, and things.  Today I am going to catch the good attitudes and heal the bad ones, in myself and in the people around me.

A deep breath will never dissolve my problems, but it will give me a clear head to solve them.
~ www. jaywren.com

Deep breath:  How does this simple action lead to greater success?  What are the many rewards of focusing on our breathing?

Health

Worrying about our problems steals our energy.  Our muscles tighten.  Our nerves become stressed and our nervous system becomes out of balance. We can get headaches, stomach aches. and aches in our back and neck.  Worrying is dangerous to our health, because it puts stress on our internal organs, especially our stomach and our heart.

Mind

Anxiety clutters our mind. Rather than dissolving our fears, anxiety hardens and fixes fear. We put the things that bother us under a mental microscope. We lose sight of the big picture.

And what am I really doing when I am worrying? I am not solving my problems. I am just scaring myself with my own thinking.

A Deep Breath is Normal

Breathing is healthy and normal. Panic causes shortness of breath. The decrease in oxygen only further increases the mental and physical harm of anxiety. Therefore, the physical action of a deep breathe helps restore our oxygen levels to a normal state.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, every healthy person is capable of taking a deep breath. However, we simply don’t use this normal, healthy process.

The Benefits

When we take a deep breath, our chest and lungs expand. The extra oxygen from deep breathing helps restore our mind and body to a centered and healthier state. We suffer less from nervous and physical tension.

Our problems still exist. But with a deep breath we can have greater mentality clarity to solve our problems. Focusing on our breathing helps us to return the present moment. We can look at our problems objectively. Our problems don’t dissolve, but solutions are easier to see.

Furthermore, we become available to our friends, our coworkers, and supervisors. Our lives not only become more productive with a deep breath.  They become enjoyable.

Unconscious bias is part of being a human. We all have emotions and points of view tied to our core beliefs. These core beliefs affect how we think and feel about everything in our life. How can we make our bias an asset?

Our biases lead us to seek out or even create an environment that reinforces our beliefs.  We build our daily activities around people, places, and things that make us feel safe and bring us comfort. As a result, in our daily lives, we don’t broaden our point of view.  Instead, we harden our biases.

Surrounding ourselves with people we like is normal.  People who look and think the way we do become our friends.   Following our biases, we become a member of a group that helps us advance our interests.

Therefore, in this case, unconscious bias is a good trait.

The Risks of Unconscious Bias

The painful triggers from our biases make us angry, even before we fully understand the situations that trigger us.

In these cases, unconscious bias is a thief.  It steals our happiness.  We not only suffer fear and anger.  These feelings can hijack our judgement. They can damage relationships and put us in pointless confrontations.

Likewise, the pleasant triggers put us at risk of accepting and even doing things that are not always in our best interest.  We fail to see the benefits of changing our beliefs and, therefore, our behavior.

Pause Before Acting

When unconscious bias triggers our emotions, we can do and say things that we soon regret.  Rather than risk harming ourselves socially and professionally through hasty reactions, we can do things to deal with the feeling before we act.

Here are some ways that we can pause before acting.

• Step away from the situation. Literally go to another location.
• Take a deep breath.
• If you are in a situation where a person is pressing you to act, ask for time to think.
• Write our feelings in a private note, but never send angry letters or emails.  Simply writing can take the sting out of painful feelings.
• Discuss the situation with a person who is not involved in the problem.
• Realize that doing nothing is, in some cases, the best way to handle a situation that stirs our bias.

The mere awareness of acting out of anger is a signal that we are at risk of increasing the size of a problem. Accept this awareness and pause before acting.

Understanding Unconscious Bias

By understanding our unconscious bias, we can grow.  We can learn ways to make better decisions.  We can become more effective as a friend, co-worker, or leader. Our lives can become more rewarding and happy.

Anger Management:  People who cannot control their tempers can ruin their career and the career of others.  How do some people manage anger to create success for themselves and their organization?

Anger protects us against danger. However, acting out of anger clutters our thinking and undermines our success.
~ www.jaywren.com

Four Steps to Anger Management

Here are four areas of anger management that can help you be more successful in building great relationships in stressful situations.

Pause Before Acting

When you first feel anger, pause and wait for your emotions to become less intense.  If possible, step away to process your emotions.

Avoid saying things when you are angry. Rational thinking can evaporate when our feelings hijack our reasoning.

Certainly, don’t say things or send angry letters or emails that you may regret later.

Seek Mentoring

A mentor might be anyone who can help you work through your feelings and take constructive actions.

Discussing our feelings with a person who is not involved can help us process our anger. Furthermore, just writing about our feelings can help remove the sting of our experience.  Once we have those feelings on paper, we can use our notes for our discussion with our mentor.

Let Go of Unproductive Emotions

If people have offended us, we feel sore.  A common response is to hold onto our anger.  Resentments are dangerous.  They can damage our health and our relationships.  When we feel angry for past wrongs, focusing on our breathing can help us get out of our head and into the present moment.

Set Boundaries

Negative, angry people cause us stress and damage our performance. They create anger in the people around them.

It is not always easy to avoid negative people. Likewise, changing the behavior of other people is difficult. However, speaking out to set boundaries on behavior that you will not tolerant is often all that we need to do.  Where possible, seek alliances with other people to help protect your boundaries.  Report abusive behavior.

Mindful Moments: How do great minds gain focus to make great decisions?

In the existence of humans, infinity is a series of moments. Mindful moments empower us to be alert, aware, and engaged. ~ www.jaywren.com

When I focus on my thoughts, I give them power.  Productive, healthy thinking leads to success. Distracted, painful thinking leads to mistakes.

When I am regretting the past or fearing the future, I am creating distractions with my own thoughts.  Furthermore, when I am analyzing my work instead of simply doing my work, I am creating mental clutter in the pathway of clear thinking.

Clearing My Thinking

I am responsible for the thoughts I hold in my head. Sometimes, all I have to do is change the conversation I am having with myself.  However, sometimes, I have to do some simple things to change my thinking.

A Fresh Mind

Getting plenty of rest from a good night’s sleep is the first step in having a fresh mind.

A second step is to take breaks during the day.  Going for a walk or simply stepping away from my desk and sitting quietly help refresh my mind.

Meditation also helps, both in the short term and the long term.  People who practice daily meditation in the form of breathing, mantras, or prayers develop healthier, more trusting minds.  These practices allow the person to become centered or have faith.  They see the world around them.

A Higher Level of Thinking

When athletes are at their highest level of thinking, their mind intuitively adjusts. They process decisions without analysis. They enter a state of mental flow.

This state is the healthiest form of thinking.  We are free from anxiety, regret, and distractions.  Our mind makes decisions before we realize that the need to make a decision.

Mindful Moments

Most people have mindful moments.  They sense life around them and have healthy emotions that are appropriate to their experience.  Likewise, they think clearly.

Building the flow of mindful moments leads to a more powerful way to think for success.