“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get,” complains the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. This, usually expressed in different terms, is a lament most of us can relate to on Mondays through Fridays. Tasks seem to all take longer than expected, interruptions are constant, and just when you need to speak to a colleague before being able to continue, he’s disappeared.
Some words are abstractions of a tangible thing, while others are abstractions of a state that is in itself an abstraction. Forcing precise meaning through so many layers is bound to lead to some confusion. In the case of the words “happy”, “content” and “euphoric”, we can easily figure out some kind of progression where one is in some sense more desirable than another, but the difference between “rich” and “wealthy” is much more subtle.
Probably upwards of 99% of people are experts at making excuses for not doing what they know they should – if not to others, then to themselves. Perhaps the best example of this is people not exercising because they “don’t have the opportunity.” As it happens, the busiest people regularly make time in their schedule for exercise and don’t skip a workout if there is any way to avoid it, and here’s why:
There are plenty of getting rich quick schemes out there, but the only ones who have gotten rich in that way are the con artists who run them. When talking about getting happy quick schemes, you could make a similar point about drug dealers.
Time is money, but knowledge is also power. In the days before the internet, someone wishing to expand his skill set would have to take time away from work or relaxation to attend a course, or gather knowledge the hard way, by working through a book on their own without being able to ask for explanations or knowing how well they really understand the material.
The situation is completely different today. For little more than the cost of a good textbook, anyone can attend a virtual course offered by video, audio and lecture notes. Lecturers are available to answer questions, progress can be checked through assignments and tests, and many courses offer bankable diplomas or academic credits.
There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so why do we often go to sleep feeling anxious about not having achieved anything? Of course, you’ve just spent 30 of those seconds checking to see if the above figure is correct, while almost 30,000 more of them are spent sleeping (or trying to). If your daily commute takes an hour and you like to spend four hours each day just relaxing, that leaves you with about forty thousand seconds to get on with things. Assuming that work takes 8 hours out of that, there still remains more than ten thousand seconds to fill with the things that make your life better, or will in the future, meaning three hours to eat, study, dream and think.
Life at the top of the corporate ladder may be rewarding, but it is also just as challenging as can be expected. The most successful executives also tend to be those who put in a frighteningly high number of hours each week. These individuals are expected to make critical decisions on a daily basis, often with insufficient information or time to think, and they have no one to turn to for advice when they aren’t sure what to do. They communicate with more than a hundred people each day and may have to chat cheerfully with a client one minute and then negotiate aggressively with a supplier the next without allowing the emotions from one conversation to affect the other. The level of pressure, the load of responsibility and the amount of self-discipline required to do this successfully, day after day and year after year, is difficult to imagine.
It is often enlightening to learn more about something by studying its extremes. If you wanted to improve your race time, you wouldn’t be interested in what the majority of average runners eat or how they train, but rather try to find out what approaches the best in the world follow. Similarly, anyone who is interested in being successful at work while still finding time for their families, and managing to do all of this without going bonkers, will likely find some useful lessons from those at the corporate apex.
Everybody has experienced stress in their lives, especially at work. What many people fail to realize is that unexpected and unfortunate things are bound to happen, but stress, anxiety, anger, and discouragement are states of mind that are internal to ourselves. The first step to learning how to control our emotions is to make this distinction between circumstances outside of ourselves and possibly outside our control, and our inner lives, which all of us can more or less get a grip on.
The second thing to realize is that there is a difference between mind and consciousness. The mind is the whole movie, the entire painting; consciousness is the part we are watching or the detail we’re focusing on. Before we get into pointless and unanswerable questions like “Is my mind and I different things?”, let’s see what the practical benefits of meditation are.
Work life balance is defined as a person’s ability to meet their work and family commitments, as well as other tasks and responsibilities outside of work. There is a widespread interest in this subject especially from big work organizations primarily because it affects all aspects of a worker’s life. Work has become more demanding of time. What’s supposed to be just an 8-hour job can easily turn into a 12-hour grind. For some employees, extra working hours mean extra pay. But these additional work hours are subtracted from personal time. And if this process continues, it will fire back to the employee in the form of physical and mental fatigue; it will create great conflict within the other key areas of his life—family and personal. How do you make sure family is still cared for? You would need help with wellness not only for you but for your loved ones as well.
When you are dealt with the devastating news that you are infertile, how can you honestly go on? It’s devastating news and not something you ever want to hear, whether you’re young or old but unfortunately, it happens on a day-to-day basis. When it does happen, it’s shattering and for some, they cannot process the news. Worst still, there are many emotional ramifications to come from infertility.
For the most part, people start off very emotional, they cry and feel very upset but that can soon turn into anger and that is the number one emotion for most people. When someone finds out they’re infertile, they can become very angry and it’s one emotional ramification of infertility. It’s human nature to become angry and you don’t want to think there is something wrong with you as to why you cannot have a child. It’s frightening and something that destroys a person so much so they don’t want to go on living. That is why it’s necessary to find an outlet for the grief. Continue reading