This home, located in Portland, Oregon, and dating from 1967, was recently remodeled. The home is surrounded by large outdoor spaces, terraces to share and enjoy the good weather with family or friends, and an unevenness in the terrain that has served to create terracing for plants, seeking to give greenness and life to the exterior of the home. Although on the outside we can still see vestiges of its..
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The sloping dunes and curving shadows at Great Sand Dunes…
The sloping dunes and curving shadows at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado make this special park a photographer’s dream. Ranger Patrick Myers has been capturing amazing scenes here for years. With golden sunrises, epic blue skies and every color sunsets, taking pictures never gets old. Photo by Patrick Myers, National Park Service.
How Awareness In Business Can Predict Your Future Success
In 2000, Reed Hastings met with Blockbuster’s CEO, John Antioco, to propose adding another video rental delivery system. Antioco rejected the proposal and ignorantly followed the path that eventually led to the closure of Blockbuster. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, achieved success while Antioco missed the opportunity.
In 1999, Mark Cuban sold his publicly traded company, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo for $5.7 billion and proceeded to further expand his successful empire. By 2002, Yahoo shut down its broadcast services and also discontinued Broadcast.com. Cuban sold at what seems to be just the right time.
Antioco and Cuban were successful businessmen at the time and each made an important move at a critical time in their businesses. Antioco’s move led to the eventual closure of Blockbuster and Cuban’s move further propelled his successful career as an entrepreneur.
Those moves involved one thing: awareness. It’s a critical element in strong emotionally intelligent people. While emotional intelligence focuses on personal and social awareness, contextual awareness is just as important. The act of being aware can predict whether someone succeeds or fails in his career.
Awareness Exposes Past Shortcomings
Failure without learning is a missed opportunity.
People who have the ability to recognize why and how the failure occurred in the past can gain insight into ways to grow. Unfortunately, failures or shortcomings are not always easy to identify.
If you only chalk up failures as when something catastrophic happens in your life, you are going to miss on the opportunity to grow through them. Failures are priceless and far too many people would rather ignore failures in order to feel like they are successful.
As much as possible, do not ignore your failures and use them instead. If you are more worried about being right or winning in all situations, you will miss those losing moments where experience has a valuable lesson to teach you.
See Also: 5 Ways To Make The Most Of Failure
Push back from your present situation and reevaluate those moments where you messed up, where you did not meet up to standards or where you did not meet a goal. These are the failures that can leave you with a valuable set of lessons.
Your awareness in the past will help you succeed in the future. Truthfully recognizing your past successes and failures will open the doors to a successful tomorrow.
Awareness Brightens Present Situations
Awareness has the ability to let you see your current situation accurately. With all the distractions fighting for your attention every day, it’s easy to feel overloaded and even burned out. They can stop you from seeing life clearly. And the less clarity you have, the harder it is to successfully pursue your dreams, plans and goals.
Recognize your present situations, their benefits and consequences. The more awareness you have in the present, the better you’ll be in making decisions. Awareness helps you decide what you should and shouldn’t pursue. Your decision in these matters will be a deciding factor to your level of success.
Mark Cuban saw his present situation within his company as a good point to sell high. Without this present awareness, he might have missed the opportunity to sell high and build his empire off of his company being sold.
John Antioco missed his current situation because he was blinded by his current success. Blockbuster was very successful when Reed Hastings approached Antioco, but Antioco didn’t see the true colors of Blockbuster’s present success. Blockbuster was making most of their money on people’s late fees and Hastings and Netflix eliminated this pain from customers. While Blockbuster was successful on other people’s failures to return their movies on time, Netflix grew in success because they solved customers’ problems.
Do not be blind to your current situation. A true reality check will allow you to see if you are in a healthy situation or not.
Awareness Sheds Light Into The Future
People who can honestly identify past successes and failures and see their present situations accurately will have the advantage to see into the future. Things today are changing constantly and those who are able to identify the changing tides have the upper hand.
See Also: How To Maximize Your Potential While Embracing Your Weaknesses
A surfer, for example, will sit in the water to wait out on his desired wave. He must be aware of the movement of water and the timing of the wave before he jumps. That is awareness.
Mark Cuban didn’t miss his success wave. In fact, he caught it just in time.
Awareness Will Predict Your Future Success or Failure
Step back and exercise your ability to be aware of yourself, your relationships, social environment and context. The stronger your awareness of the past, present and future, the greater your chances of being successful.
Use awareness in business to learn lessons, measure conditions and plan for growth. These things can surely set you on the right track to achieving your goals.
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Stylish apartment in New York, exquisitely decorated by Jennifer Post
New York City is known for being one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, always at the forefront in everything. It is perhaps for that reason that we always have high expectations when seeing its avant-garde designs. These two apartments are located in a building designed by one of the most renowned architectural firms – Zaha Hadid Architects. The first one is an apartment in which its designer,..
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Playing Great Defense With Money
Gaining financial independence won’t happen overnight, nor will it happen only by knowing how to cut costs. But, those are great ways to start.
As many sports fans say, defense wins championships.
Playing great defense with your money is the best way to rack up small victories and quick wins in your quest to achieve financial security. It’s the first thing you should think of. Defense is where you learn what you truly need and hone your sense of discipline.
Some people might first think of trying to earn more money to keep more of it. That’s great–nothing wrong with making more!
I’m all for that, but defense comes first. Simply trying to bring in more money won’t make you rich if you don’t know how to use it.
If you can’t manage $500 well every month, you won’t manage $2,000 any better.
“The really good business manager doesn’t wake up in the morning and say ‘Today I am going to cut costs’ any more than he wakes up and decides to practice breathing.” -Warren Buffett
Think about what’s under your control. Choosing to play great defense is almost entirely up to you. It’s unlike getting a raise at your job, returns in the stock market or clients hiring you as a freelancer. These aren’t bad things, but they aren’t as much of a sure bet.
If you cut costs, you immediately keep that money. It’s a guaranteed win for you.
Think about how to cut costs and which areas you can do it. Here are a few quick suggestions from my own life.
The Gym
Do you use it? Is it worth your money?
For many gym members, it’s not worth the expense, especially if it’s more of an aspirational statement rather than part of an actual routine. I gave this up. I run almost every day, and it doesn’t cost me anything.
See Also: How To Train For A Marathon
Car
Drive the kind of car you need, not the newest or the biggest. Don’t get caught up in those TV ads with cars doing all sorts of rough-and-tumble things you would never actually do. What it does on a closed track with a professional driver is completely irrelevant to you. Don’t get taken in. You may not even need to own a car.
TV & Cable
Spending lots of time and money on TV is a good way to be less healthy and keep less of your money. The same is true of many entertainment choices. Try this new lullaby: “Netflix and chill / kill the cable bill.”
See Also: 5 Ways to Cut Down on Your TV Costs
Add 25%
Remember that everything you buy is bought with after-tax income, meaning that you should add 25% to account for your tax bracket. 25% is easy math, even if it’s not your bracket. Keeping this in mind can only help you cut spending.
Timing
Most things have some element of timing built into the price. Restaurants with happy hours or special deals, stores offering time-sensitive deals, vacation spots with off-season discounts…you get the idea. Use it to your advantage.
Lifestyle creep
Avoid it. Stay away from spending more on luxury goods, like high-end gadgets or designer clothing just because you can. That’s a good way to end up owing more than you own and spending more than you keep. It’s what you keep that will matter more.
Save more than 10%
No matter your income, you’ll likely thank yourself later in life for saving more now. Compound interest needs time to work in your favor, and you need to give it a push. It’s commonly recommended to save 10%, but I see this as insufficient in a world of longer lifetimes, potentially lengthier retirements and rising healthcare costs. Try to save more if you can.
Keep the network alive
This relates more to advancing in your career than it does saving money, but staying connected with people you’ve known in the past or work with now can only help you. Even if you don’t experience the benefits right now, continue building your relationships by helping those you can. Learning how to cut costs counts, but human capital pays dividends too.
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An Ingenious Vertical Home Honshu, Osaka, Japan
This house, which is only 3.5 meters wide and was built vertically due to the narrow space that was available, is surprisingly comfortable and spacious on the inside. Built in a district known for its modern architecture and located in the center of Honshu, Osaka, Japan, it was designed by the local architectural firm FujiwaraMuro Architects. The first need to fulfill was to provide a space full of natural light..
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May 1st
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#quotes #deepquotes #lifequotes #saddquotes #heartbreakquotes #lovequotes #love #inlove #Iloveyou #relationshipgoals #relationshipquotes #quoteoftheday #photooftheday #art #poetry #Empoweringquotes #positivequotes #inspirationalquotes #motivationalquotes
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5 Ways to Craft Your Own Happiness at Work
You’re reading 5 Ways to Craft Your Own Happiness at Work, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life – or so the saying goes. But what does it really take to find a career that you’ll be truly happy in?
Although most of us know what makes us happy in our personal lives, translating this to our professional lives can be a more difficult task. Research shows that today’s job seekers believe more strongly than ever that their careers should be fulfilling and meaningful, and one study found that 72% of Generation Y wouldn’t apply for a role with an organization if they didn’t believe in what it stood for.
Despite this, many workers aren’t happy in their chosen careers and a recent survey by Deloitte found that if given the chance, 44% of millennials would quit their job to join a new organisation or do something different within the next two years.
If this sounds familiar and you’d like to change careers or simply gain more satisfaction from your current job, here’s what research says about crafting happiness at work.
- Use your strengths and talents
Although when choosing a career we tend to gravitate towards the things we love, it’s a lot more realistic to pursue something we are good at, or at least, have the potential to be good at. Research shows that working in a job that allows you to use your strengths and talents is the best way to reduce stress, increase productivity, and feel happy and fulfilled.
For the study, researchers had 577 volunteers pick one of their signature strengths and use it in a new way for one week. After this week, the volunteers reported feeling significantly happier at work and their levels of happiness remained high for a full month after the initial experiment.
Of course, it’s important to realise that loving something and being good at something aren’t necessarily the same thing. You might love painting, movies or music, but if you lack talent, it’s unlikely that you’ll gain much satisfaction or fulfilment from working in these areas.
- Look for work that challenges you
Although you might think that a low-stress job would make you happier, research shows that dealing with some stress at work can be a good thing because it helps you feel challenged. If you have no stress whatsoever, you’ll likely become bored with your job and as a result, you’ll be less productive.
Moderate and short-term stress, on the other hand, can actually energise you, improve your job performance and increase your overall job satisfaction.
One study even found that workers in stressful jobs are a third less likely to die than those with easier jobs, as long as they’re in control of their own workflow. So the key to using stress productively is to find a job that challenges you, but also gives you the freedom to set goals and decide your own schedule.
- Find a supportive work environment
If you want to be happy at work, one of the most important things to look for is a supportive work environment, because studies show that social support is one of the top predictors of job satisfaction.
Of course, you can’t and won’t become friends with everyone you work with, but a supportive work environment is less about having a lot of friends and more about knowing that you can count on your colleagues and supervisors for help when you run into difficulties or need feedback.
So when looking for a new job, focus on the workplace culture and find out whether or not you’ll be able to get help and feedback when you need it.
- Look for ways to help others
Although it might seem like a cliché, a number of studies have found that when you’re able to help others in some way, your job will seem more meaningful and satisfying. But this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a doctor or social worker in order to be happy at work.
Some research indicates that employees can “craft” their own jobs to become more satisfied and engaged, and one way to do this is to work on consciously changing the way you view your job and the tasks you perform on a daily basis.
For example, one study found that although zookeepers aren’t usually very highly paid and often perform menial tasks such as scrubbing animal enclosures, they’re passionate about what they do because they view it as a way of helping animals, which makes it more meaningful to them.
- Don’t try too hard
Finally, try not to put too much pressure on yourself to be “happy” in your job, because if this is your main focus at work, it may actually become harder to achieve it.
One psychological experiment found that when people were asked to read out a statement about the importance of happiness in life before watching a positive film, they felt less happy than those who simply watched the film. The researchers speculate that when being happy feels like an obligation, people will feel worse about themselves if they are unable to feel that way.
In another study, researchers had volunteers keep a detailed diary for two weeks and found that those who placed more value on happiness tended to feel lonelier and more disconnected from others.
So while it’s great to pursue a job that will challenge you and allow you to use your strengths, it’s also important to remember that work is work. If you’re constantly trying to be upbeat about your job, you’ll only be putting unnecessary pressure on yourself.
Marianne Stenger is a writer with Open Colleges. She covers career development, workplace productivity and self-improvement. You can connect with her on Twitter and Google+, or find her latest articles here.
You’ve read 5 Ways to Craft Your Own Happiness at Work, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Sig Nordal 