Discomfort can be a pain or a springboard for success. When you are uncomfortable you want to change your status. You are not happy with the status quo. This creates the impetus to take action.
When you are comfortable you can easily become satisfied with status quo. This can potentially lead to mediocrity.
Therefore do not view discomfort negatively but rather use it to provide the impetus to change – and change for the better.
To get to the next level of success, you need to leave your comfort zone and learn new things and seize opportunities. You have to make yourself accountable for going the next level or find a mentor who can make you accountable.
I am not a relationship expert. However, I do run into relationship issues while I coach business executives.
What I have noticed is that the biggest lament for women in a relationship (marriage, common law) is the lack of expression, appreciation, and priority from the man in her life.
Women find men to be misers in expressing their love and appreciation and give priority to other things (business, sports) compared to the relationship.
Men, on the other hand, are confused. No matter what they do, women can find fault with them.
If men started to take every opportunity to express their love and appreciation and assign priority to their relationship things would get much better.
If women, on the other hand, picked their battles instead of making every battle a big one, things are bound to improve.
It would be good to do a weekly checkpoint of how this is working as follows:
– what worked well last week?
– what could have been done better?
– what are the goals for the coming week?
I believe when an important relationship is rock solid in terms of communication, respect and understanding the rest of the challenges are far easier to handle. When the foundation of an important relationship is shaky, the rest of your life gets impacted!
“Your reason and passion are the rudder and the sails of the seafaring soul,” wrote Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-born philosopher, poet, and painter who wrote magnificently in both English and Arabic. “If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.”
An equilibrium between reason and passion – between head and heart – is one of the essentials of Life Balance. It has been said that when the mind and the heart go to war, the body becomes the battlefield.
The mind allows us to think, to reason, and to apply our wisdom to make a difference. The heart is where we feel. Through it, we love and use our creativity without inhibition. When we merge education of the mind with education of the heart, we strike a dynamic balance. We look with “both eyes” – the eye of the heart and the eye of the mind. We look at life as a whole, realizing that one element affects the other.
Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel peace prize laureate and first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, stresses the importance of a balance in our relationships with others.
“In our African language,” he notes, “we say, ‘a person is a person through other persons.’ I would not know how to be a human being at all, except I learned this from other human beings. We are made for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence. We are meant to complement each other…. not even the most powerful nation can be completely self-sufficient.”
Reason without passion is lame, and passion without reason is blind. Reason alone is dull, whereas passion alone can lead to destruction. When we marry the two, we have a wonderful synergy. Our reasoning protects us from doing silly things. Our passion gives us the drive to excel and go the distance.
Reason draws from the mind, passion from the heart.
In fact most popular leaders are able to use a good mix of the heart and head to drive successful results. While they are able to skillfully (head) assess and leverage the distinguishing qualities of each of their team members, they are also able to develop strong bonds with them by being transparent, collaborative, and empowering (heart).
To conclude, like Martin Luther King, Jr. puts it, “One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness-shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.”
Our work is an integral part of who we are, and if we are not able to feel joyous when we are at work we are probably falling short of living our true potential.
Not only is joy our very state of being, but it is also a touchstone of all that is going well in our lives.
So let’s explore some methods that can help put the zing back into work.
➢ Define your mission – The articulation of who we are, what we want in life, and how we want to lead our lives can spell the difference between dragging yourself to work every day and choosing a workplace that helps you crystallize your vision.
➢ First things first – Before you go to sleep at night, write down three priorities you would like to accomplish the next day. If you complete these three priorities the next day you will feel terrific. So try your best to do them as early as possible.
➢ Widen your circle – We spend 70% of our waking time at our workplace, so it’s only natural that we want to spend it with people we enjoy being with. However, you also need to create meaningful relationships with other people. So go ahead and widen your circle.
➢ Treat every problem as an opportunity – Every challenge or problem carries within itself the opportunity for growth. What is needed is an open mind and self-awareness. Once you decide to view every challenge as an opportunity, life begins to unfold in amazing ways.
➢ Help someone – The fastest way to get out of misery is to help someone. To start with, it immediately diverts attention from your own misery. Second, it enriches you by adding value to your life. Third, the other’s relief and happiness are infectious.
➢ Create your own special ‘Joy Ritual’ – Whether it’s having that peppermint tea at four in the afternoon, or going out for a walk, create your own special moments to savor.
➢ Be in the moment – The past is no more, and the future is not yet here. All that we have is the present, and the present is loaded with opportunity.
Attending to a difficult discussion with someone close can lead to either a lot of arguments & stress or objective discussion leading to a mutually beneficial outcome.
Keep your eye on the goal to create the breakthrough.
To achieve the latter, you have to be calm with only one objective in mind which is to create a mutually beneficial outcome.
Having done so, you can then share your feelings and watch with pleasant surprise a breakthrough in your communication.
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional,” said the Dalai Lama, quoting an old Zen saying.
Life inevitably brings pain and temporary defeats, even on the road to success. Nothing is better for softening blows than developing a good sense of humor. Learn to laugh at yourself.
When you see the humor in embarrassing situations, they cease to be stressful. The person who can laugh often can keep going when others fail.
You can’t win all the time. Michael Jordan, considered to be the greatest basketball player of all time, scored on fewer than half of his field goal attempts. Great athletes know that they will fail often on their road to victory. They also know that every failure carries the seed of success.
Every failure makes room for future success if you allow the failure to teach you a lesson. In a particular week, you may miss your deadlines or have an argument with your spouse. This may make you lose hope and become fearful. However, respond with faith and persistence!
If you are involved in negotiations, it is always good to be on top. Do not assume things, as your assumptions can be wrong and misguided. What you don’t know could hurt you. Ignorance of a situation is not bliss. Being on top of things is the best strategy. Find the real problem and make it an opportunity.
Ask:
• What is really preventing me from meeting my goals?
• Find out why the other party is acting the way they are?
• Problems are only the sharing of one’s paradigm. They usually can be turned into negotiation opportunities. Getting to the bottom of the situation is the best way to resolve it!
Attending to a difficult discussion with someone close can lead to either a lot of arguments & stress or objective discussion leading to a mutually beneficial outcome.
