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

Happiness is easy when everything is going our way. Some people seem happy all the time. How can we be happy even when life is challenging?

Feeling unhappy is normal.  Staying unhappy is not.  ~ www.jaywren.com

Happiness Takes Place Inside of Our Head.

When things frustrate, disappoint, or anger us, we feel unhappy.

These unhappy feelings have a healthy purpose.  They alert us to problems.  The discomfort of unhappiness motivates us to make changes either in ourselves or our circumstances.

When we are mentally and emotionally healthy, we can make these changes.

Furthermore, realizing that feelings take place inside of us helps us understand that we can have control over our feelings.

The Questions for Overcoming Unhappiness.

First, can we simply let the feelings pass?  Thinking about the unhappy experience heightens our unhappiness.  Even years later, when we think of bad experiences, the unhappy feelings can return.  Therefore, not thinking about the cause of our unhappiness allows us to find happiness and return to the present moment.  A process for letting feelings pass is to sit with a feeling and focus on the feeling, not the things that we think are causing our unhappiness.

Second, can we change things that make us unhappy?  If we can, we can concentrate on solutions and not the problem.

Third, is the situation beyond our control? We can concentrate on not making the situation worse. Furthermore, we can avoid repeating mistakes that we made to create the problem.

Fourth, what is our role in the problem? Nobody enjoys looking at their mistakes. Why should we look at our role in the problem when we can blame other people, places, or things? A useful process is to write why we are unhappy. We include in our description what happened and how it affected us. Then we look at our role in creating the problem. From there we correct the mistakes that we made. In this process, we find that we can more easily accept what happened and move on beyond our happiness.

Fifth, is our unhappiness mood related?  To understand how moods affect the things that make us unhappy, pay attention to what is going on when the unhappiness returns.  Are you hungry, tired, or lonely?  These things and other things push us into lower moods.  Consequently, the things that make us unhappy swing into force with our moods.

Career Burnout: In a culture where people believe that working hard can overcome any obstacle, reality teaches us that we have limitations. We burnout. ~ www.jaywren.com

I am a few days late writing this article on purpose.  For the past two weeks I have had trouble writing.  During that time, I sensed that I needed a break.  Career burnout is not new to me.  I have learned from my experience that relentlessly pushing through obstacles leads to not being able to work at all.

Now that I feel better, I want to talk about the trouble that career burnout has caused me.

When Relentless Effort Becomes Destructive

The term “burnout” in reference to job performance comes from an article “Staff Burn-Out” by Herbert J. Freudenberger, first published in January 1974  in the Journal of Social Issues.
In 1980, Herbert Freudenberger collaborated with Richelson Géraldine to write the book Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement.

My Experience with Career Burnout

I am a high achiever who believed for years that I could work past any obstacle.

Whatever the job requirements, I would exceed them.  I believed that exceeding requirements would always create greater success. When my results did not match my expectations, I worked harder.

Pushing myself this way has led to periods in my life when I just could not work.

For me, recognizing the difference between a challenging period in my career and real burnout are hard to see. Here are symptoms I respond to before burning out.

• Depression
• Physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion
• Inability to engage mentally in my work
• Apathy
• Fear, anger, and uncertainty
• Despair of achieving my goals
• Inability to be present for my work or my family
• Inability to accept that my relentless pursuit of success was self-defeating

8 Steps I Take to Prevent Burnout

Here are 8 simple steps I take to prevent going over the edge into career burnout.

1. Taking breaks.
2. Finding emotional support through friendships and family.
3. Trying new things: new routine, new skills, new tools
4. Making a list of my work priorities.
5. Doing one thing at a time.
6. Getting regular physical exercise.
7. Using techniques for resting my mind from work: meditation, short breaks, meeting or calling friends to relieve stress.
8. Watching or listening to things that are relaxing, motivational, or inspirational

I continually work on balance in work, entertainment, exercise, family, and quiet time.  Experience has taught me that balance more than relentless effort leads to long-term success.

Perspective: How is it that some people live balanced lives while other people damage themselves and their relationship through a loss of perspective?

When perspective is not automatic, the happiest people create perspective. ~ www.jaywren.com

Perspective: How to Refocus, Realign, and Create Happiness

These three steps help me keep perspective. They may help you.

Refocus.

When we focus on any thought, that thought becomes the largest idea in our head. When we focus on things that people have said that angers us, we lose perspective on the value of what people say.

To get perspective, we must step away and try to understand what the person is saying.  Just because we are angry doesn’t mean that we don’t need to hear the other person out.

To get enough space to understand the point of the other person, we may need to take time and get advice on how to handle the question.

Gaining perspective is not always automatic.

Realign

Often our thinking is out of line with things that are best for us.  For example, when we hang on to damaging habits, our thinking is out of line and our reasoning can’t reach us.

At one time, I was a three-pack of day smoker.  I grew up in a culture where everyone smoked.  Smoking just made sense of as a way a of life.  It was sort of rite of passage into adulthood.

My thinking was so out of line that I could not even reason that the warning labels on cigarettes applied to my health.  For me, cigarettes were an addiction.  Like other addictions, nicotine addiction creates a denial of reality.

I couldn’t align my thinking to reality until I came down with bronchitis three times over a few months.  I finally said to myself that smoking was not for me.  I knew people who might, on occasion, have a cigar after dinner.  However, I was smoking myself to death.

It took a bit of work, but I built up a system of defense and support that enabled me to quit smoking decades ago.

Create Happiness.

I learned how to create a happiness perspective.  I found that I could not just stop being angry.  I had to do things to things instead of being angry.  I had to take a deep breath.  Second, I had to learn to listen.  Third, I had to learn to step away until my anger passed.

Perspective: How to Refocus, Realign, and Create Happiness

In closing, I still have trouble remembering that happiness comes from the inside.  Even when I have wonderful things happen to me, my attention can turn to the things in my life that I don’t like.

Furthermore, I am still at risk of not aligning my thinking to the realities of my life.

Therefore, I must continue to grow and work on creating perspective.

It is your responsibility to stop thinking negative thoughts about yourself before they become fixed in your mind as beliefs. Smile. Say something nice about yourself. Make a list of your blessings.

Social Anxiety: Is It Killing Your Career?

“Don’t let the world change your smile.  Let your smile change the world.”  A Work in Progress by Connor Franta

Social anxiety is common.  People who are shy are not the only people who experience social anxiety.  People who are confident about what they say or do around friends and family may feel social anxiety when they are among strangers or in front of an audience.

Social 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

“I’ll take a person with humor much more seriously than someone without one.” Networking is a Contact Sport by Joe Sweeney

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.  “Fake ’till you make it” is an ambiguous term.  Some people see it as a disingenuous way of faking your skills.  Another view, is that faking confidence can help you gain confidence. A smile triggers thoughts that generate happiness.
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.

People do many ways to think clearly.

Here are five of them.

Make lists.  For me, having a list of things to do helps me clear my mind.  Working with my list, I can think of one thing at a time.  I can focus on what I am doing.

Write things out.  When I am worrying about something or angry about something, I can write down what is bothering me.  I can write something as simple as, “I am angry at John, because he took criticized me in front of the other people in the meeting.”

Take responsibility for my actions.  When I make mistakes, I can admit my mistakes.  When I have offended someone, I can clear my mind by saying to that person that I regret what I said or did and that if I had it to do over, I would hopefully handle things differently.  Strangely, when I admit that I am wrong, I stop being angry or resentful.

Take breaks.  For me, a break can take many different forms.  I can step away from my desk and take a short walk.  I can spend time organizing things around my office.  Once a day, I stop for twenty-five minutes to lie down and focus on letting my muscles relax.  I just become aware of which part of my is not relaxed and release the tension.

Reduce distractions. I cannot watch a television program and listen to a person at the same time.  I cannot type on my computer and learn anything from a podcast at the same time.  Whenever I am expecting myself to handle two mental tasks simultaneously, I am not able to think clearly.

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Workplace Relationships: Accept, Change, or End (A.C.E.)

Sometimes, working with other people becomes difficult.   Carrying the problems in my head is stressful.  Understanding that I do have options helps me stop worrying and start working on solutions.

In dealing with relationship problems, in fact, in dealing with most problems, I can ask myself three questions.

Should I accept the situation, change the situation, or end the situation?

Accept

Accepting something does not mean that I like it.  It simply means that I am not going to focus my attention on an ongoing situation or behavior.

When should I accept the situation?  For example, if a co-worker is a few minutes late for work every day, the person’s behavior may annoy me.  The behavior may inconvenience for me.

I could try to correct the person.  However, correcting people can causes stress between those people and me.

If I go to a supervisor and complain, I create in the supervisor’s mind a mental connection between the bad behavior and me.  Even with the best intentions of improving a work situation, I become involved in a negative situation involving a co-worker.  I create stress for the supervisor, who now has to deal with a problem.

Additionally, I become known a person who gets involved in other people’s business.   Therefore, I should often accept the situation and focus on my work.

Change

Can I change the person’s behavior?  Changing my own behavior is not always easy.  I have to break old habits to start new habits.  Quitting fast-food restaurants, giving up junk food, failing to exercise, and staying up too late are hard habits to break.  Some positive habits are hard to form.  Arriving at appointments on time, remembering to say thank you, and letting people have room to merge in traffic are sometimes difficult things to do.  It is good for me to remember how difficult it is for me to end bad habits and form good ones.

When people do things that annoy me, I first take a look to see whether I can change my own behavior and make the situation better.  If necessary, I can speak with people about their behavior.  I remember to focus on the behavior and not the person.

Dealing with Difficult People

End

Should I end a relationship?  People change.  Their interests change.  People learn new things about each other.  I may need to end an unhealthy or a meaningless relationship.

Some work relationships are not required for getting a job done.  Ending unhealthy meaningless relationships is often the best thing for both people.

I try not to burn bridges.  I try not to make ending the work relationship a moment of closure.  Sometimes I find that it is better for me to just drift away from a work relationship.