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Category: Personal (Page 23 of 63)

The 4 A’s for stress relief

Happy events, such as a wedding, as well as unhappy events, such as overwork, can cause stress. When your stress level exceeds your ability to cope, you need to restore the balance by reducing the stressors or increasing your ability to cope or both.

In this article are described the following four A’s to cope or reduce stress:

1 Avoid

You can simply avoid a lot of stress. Plan ahead, rearrange your surroundings and reap the benefits of a lighter load. In particular, try to avoid people who bother you, learn to say no and clearly define your priorities

However, some problems can’t be avoided. For those situations, here are the other A’s.

2 Alter Take inventory and attempt to change the situation for the better.  In particular you can respectfully ask others to change their behavior, communicate your feelings openly, manage your time in a more efficient way and state limits in advance.

3 Accept

Sometimes you may have no choice but to accept things the way they are. For those times try to talk with someone, forgive (it takes energy to be angry), practice positive self-talk and learn from your mistakes.

4 Adapt

Sometimes adapting can be the most helpful and only available solution. In particular in those situations stop gloomy thoughts and adopt a mantra, try to reframe the issue and recall all of the things that bring you joy in life.

In general, you should adjust your standards and stop striving for perfection and always try to look at the big picture.

Stress

Image: Flickr – Jesper Sehested (CC BY 2.0)

5 Tips Become a More Empathetic Person

Empathy is the ability to see the world through the eyes of another. Highly empathetic persons sense the emotions of those around them, and have the ability to tap into those same emotions within themselves.

Empathy is something we tend to reserve for our personal lives, however, empathy should also be practiced in our professional relationships.

Indeed, business relationships form because of a fundamental trust between you and your network. When you express empathy, you are delivering an experience to people that they’re not just listened to; they’re heard. And because they’re heard, they’re understood. This gives your network a sense of connection and safety directly associated with you, ultimately laying the foundation for them to trust you with their business.

Empathy is a skill, and skills can be learned. In this article are presented 5 tips to develop empathy:

1. (Actively) Listen More Than You Speak

Empathetic persons listen first and only speak after they’ve carefully heard.

2. Express Your Perspective

Put yourself in their shoes, experience the moment as if it were happening to you, and let your emotions guide you.

3. Be Vulnerable

Asking for help shows vulnerability, and vulnerability often leads to that greater sense of connection and relation.

4. Don’t Make Assumptions

When you make an assumption, the understanding you draw is rarely a good match to the problem this person is facing. As a result, the connection you try to make feels forced and unnatural. So don’t rush empathy, and don’t try and empathize before you truly understand the situation.

5. Use Your Imagination

The ability to imagine what someone else is feeling—even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves—is critical to empathy. And one way to develop this skill is to develop your imagination.

Empathy

Image: FlickrKaiwan Teanngam (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) 

Emotional First Aid

We’ll go to the doctor when we feel flu-ish or a nagging pain. So why don’t we see a health professional when we feel emotional pain: guilt, loss, loneliness? Too many of us deal with common psychological-health issues on our own, says Guy Winch in this TED Talk. But we don’t have to. He makes a compelling case to practice emotional hygiene — taking care of our emotions, our minds, – with the same diligence we take care of our bodies.

By taking action when we’re lonely, by changing our responses to failure, by protecting our self-esteem, by battling negative thinking, we won’t just heal our psychological wounds, we will build emotional resilience, we will thrive.

A hundred years ago, people began practicing personal hygiene, and life expectancy rates rose by over 50 percent in just a matter of decades. According to the author, our quality of life could rise just as dramatically if we all began practicing emotional hygiene.

First Aid Kit

Image: Flickr – niche (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Learning the Growth Mindset

Ever heard of mindset? This word is becoming more and more common in the modern world because experts in many fields such as sports, parenting, business, school and relationships are becoming aware of the importance of mindset in facing life’s challenges. In her insightful book “Mindset: The new psychology of Success”, Carol Dweck talks about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset through real-life examples and then gives us the tools to apply a growth mindset in all aspects of our lives. Basically, people with a fixed mindset believe that you either have it or you don’t: natural talent is the only possible way to succeed. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe that their talents can be developed (through hard work, successful strategies and input from others).
Many studies have shown that having a fixed mindset can help us to reach our goals and to do so with greater ease and enjoyment: we can actually appreciate the process of learning, regardless of the outcome.

Be sure to check out Dr. Dweck’s book, it is sure to give you a new perspective on how to go about life and how to interact with others, whether they be your children or you colleagues.

https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means

 

 

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