Did you start your New Year with a bang or a hangover?
Most party on New Year’s Eve then wake up late with a hangover. If you partied last night till early morning you are like most people and you are excused. But do not let the day pass without some serious revisit of your goals for 2019.
Even if you have articulated your goals for 2019 earlier, you need to revisit these goals daily to imprint in your mind, heart, body, and soul!
People say I know all this stuff. However, it is not what you know that counts; it is what you do! Doing requires reminders, focus, and accountability!
Make 2019 a year of execution, not excuses! Happy New Year!
Unlock the life-altering power of your attitude, and embrace change as an opportunity for growth.
Here are some things you can do to respond constructively to change:
-Become adaptable.
-Anticipate change.
-Use your problem-solving and coping strategies when faced with changes in your life.
-Use major crises to create breakthroughs.
-Engage in lifelong learning to stay abreast of change.
-Keep your principles intact despite change.
-Use change to break bad patterns.
-Grow from your experiences of changing circumstances.
-Realize the rewards that come with change.
In essence, embrace change as an opportunity for growth!
You can do almost anything in life, but not everything. When two desirable values contradict each other, it’s necessary to strike a balance.
Meritocracy, effectiveness, and efficiency are valuable qualities. But what do you do when they clash with pluralism, diversity, principles, and values? Well, you strike a balance.
We all want to put aside something to pass on to our children and grandchildren. But what if maintaining our own well-being requires all the resources we can muster? Care first for yourself. Otherwise, you may become a burden to your children before you can pass anything on to them.
To create a fulfilling life, we first need to grow our awareness about the choices we must make. Then, we’ll learn to make those choices consciously until we achieve mastery. After that, appropriate choices will come naturally to us.
21 years ago today, at 10 AM on the tenth day of the tenth month, I received a phone call that would change my life.
The call was a request to volunteer my time to help refugees in Asia. My inner voice and the encouragement from my wife made me say yes, and what I would go on to learn shook me to the core. It made me change my career from accounting for business to accounting for life!
Today, 21 years later, not only am I ahead in my new career than I was in the accounting career but also I do what I love to do every single day. Therefore the phone call 21 years ago was for me priceless!
How about you? Have you had your very own phone call moment where your soul was shaken?
The respect you garner from others is determined by the respect you have for yourself. It is hard to imagine that someone else will have higher respect for you than
you have for yourself.
Begin by looking at all your good qualities and express gratitude. Next, respect others and expect respect back. If others show disrespect to you choose not to associate with them. When you show respect for yourself, others will follow too.
The respect you garner from others is a reflection of self-respect. The higher your self-respect, the higher the respect that you will receive from others.
Prophets, saints, holy people all had their share of pain and sorrows. Why would people so close to divinity go through this unless there was some merit in it? The 12th century Sufi poet said: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” In other words, No wound, no light! When you are hurt, your heart and soul is open to receive the light of wisdom and insights.
Knowing how to find sense and meaning in tragedy is an important skill for anyone. Begin learning by going back in your life and recalling how you reacted to your own past pain and sorrows, and how some of your friends, family or colleagues reacted to theirs. You will notice positive and negative responses. Learn from them— noticing which ones were helpful, and which ones caused sadness or stress — and adapt them to work should another such circumstance arise in your life.
The Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran said: “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain; And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy.”
Inertia refers to the resistance to change — in particular, resistance to changes in motion. Inertia may manifest in physical objects or in the minds of people.
We learn the principle of inertia early on in life. We all know that it takes a force to get something moving; to change its direction, or to stop it.
The issue with status quo is that it is not necessarily the optimum solution.
Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion is that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object that is in motion continues in motion until an external force acts on it.
A good example would be how inertia keeps us in bed on a lazy Sunday morning. Whereas, a ball rolling down a hill will continue to roll unless friction or another force stops it.
The important thing about inertia is that it is only the initial push that is difficult. After that, progress tends to be smoother. Ernest Hemingway had a trick for overcoming inertia in his writing. Knowing that getting started was always the hardest part, he chose to finish work each day at a point where he had momentum. The next day, he could pick up from there already having the idea about where to go – giving him momentum. He also shared another method, which was to write just one sentence. If he could think of one true sentence, the rest would come. And he knew that he could always come up with one true sentence. As with physics, the momentum from getting started can carry us a long way. We just need to muster the required activation energy and get going.
So in conclusion, the best way to remove inertia from your life is to take the first step. The first step sets the wheels in motion. If you want to go for a jog or brisk walk, you need to wear your runners; step out the door, and take your first step. The rest will happen. If you dilly-dally in taking your first step, you will not accomplish much. As Dr. Covey would say: “The best way to begin is to begin.”
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21 years ago today, at 10 AM on the tenth day of the tenth month, I received a phone call that would change my life.
