Tag: Adults

Feeling lonely is not a life sentence. It is possible to soften it, and sometimes to shake it off completely. The key is to stop turning the problem over and over, and to fill your mind with activities that draw your attention elsewhere. Here are three simple ways to begin.

Stay busy and get out

When loneliness settles in, resist the urge to sit and dwell on it. Get up and go somewhere with plenty of people around. It does not matter if you know none of them. Simply being among others can lift your mood more than you expect.

Reach out to someone else who is lonely

You are far from the only one. Many people feel exactly as you do and have no idea how to cope with it. If you seek them out and make an effort to ease their loneliness, you will find in the end that you have eased your own as well. Kindness travels in both directions.

Change the pattern of your thoughts

Notice what you are feeding your mind. If your evenings are filled with films that leave you reaching for tissues, it may be time for a change. Try listening to music that lifts you, reading poems or other writing that inspires you, and watching programmes that leave you feeling lighter. Each of these helps to break the cycle of heavy, negative thinking.

These are only a few of the ways to loosen loneliness’s grip. The common thread is simple: move your body, turn towards others, and choose what fills your mind.

Many of us long for a wise guide, someone who has travelled further along the road and can show us the way. Without one, we may feel unsure how to grow, and some people spend years searching with little to show for it, ending up frustrated and even lost.

The teacher is already with you

The encouraging truth is that the finest teacher you could hope for never leaves your side. It is your own life.

The people and events we meet each day have a great deal to teach us, provided we are willing to receive it. We often miss these teachers because they do not look or behave the way we imagine a wise person should. Yet they may carry real wisdom.

There are also people whose lesson is a warning: they show us precisely what we would rather not become. Every situation, from the trivial to the life changing, seems to arrive with the very lesson we need at that moment. Patience, compassion, perseverance, honesty and the art of letting go are all taught in this one classroom.

Honour the lesson each day

A few simple words can help us stay aware of this. Each morning, you might pause and say something like: “I respect the teacher my life has become. Let me have the wisdom to notice the teachers and lessons of this day, and the openness to take in what they offer.”

It also helps to set aside a little time every day to ask what life is trying to show you right now. The answer is often hidden in ordinary things:

• A hard stretch with your child could be a lesson in letting go.
• A person you pass every day who has no home may be showing you where your compassion and generosity end.
• A run of lost or misplaced things may be asking you to pay closer attention to the world around you.

Learn at your own pace

Trust your own sense of what the lesson is. Move at a pace that suits you, and question as freely as you need. Everything you need to learn is already unfolding in front of you.

Looking after customers is an essential part of any business. These habits help a company excel at it.

Be available

Clients like to know there is someone they can reach. Always be ready to respond to their needs, be it a question on delivery dates or on product features. Answer phone calls, emails and messages as quickly as you can, and certainly within a day. Responsiveness tells a client they matter.

Listen to their needs

The best service comes from people who really listen. Instead of suggesting that a client change something they have already invested money and training in, listen to why they use it the way they do. Can your offering be adjusted to suit what is already in place? Manage that, and you may earn a reputation for outstanding service.

Set up a feedback loop

An ongoing feedback process is ideal for improving service. Clients report how well you served them. Where all is well, wonderful. Where you need to do better, you learn precisely which areas. You then work to improve exactly where they would like to see it, and the loop carries on.

Why it pays

Availability, listening and feedback together tell a client that you care about their success, not just the sale. Clients who feel that way stay longer, and they send others your way.

Hard times do not create heroes. It is during hard times that the hero within us is revealed.

Improving a handful of habits is the key to raising your sales, your business revenue and your profits. Here are five worth building.

Find the right customers

To do really well in sales, you must spend more of your time with people who are genuine prospects. Treat looking for new business as the bulk of your work, most of your time in fact, and never let up on that effort until you have so many customers that there are not enough hours in the day to serve everyone who wants to buy from you.

Understand their needs clearly

Most prospects do not realise, when they first meet you, that your product or service could improve their life or their work. The more questions you ask about their situation, and the more clearly you connect what you offer to what they need, the more open they become to learning about it and, eventually, to buying.

Present persuasively

Once you have found someone who can benefit from what you sell, built a comfortable level of trust and understood their needs, the presentation is where you show them why acting on your recommendation makes excellent sense for them.

Answer objections well

Think through every objection a serious prospect might raise, and prepare a logical, complete answer to each one, so you are ready if and when it comes up. The best salespeople have clear, solid answers prepared, so that objections can be settled quickly and calmly.

Close the sale

However good your presentation, and however strong the trust between you, there is always a moment of tension when a buying decision is made. Your job is to move through that moment calmly and professionally, by asking for the order in a confident, courteous way and then completing the sale. The best salespeople plan how they will close in advance. They watch for signs that the customer is ready, ask questions to make sure no doubts remain, and then ask plainly for the customer to go ahead.

Anyone who dares to waste an hour of time has not yet understood the value of life.

Controlling what you spend is difficult, no doubt about it. Yet secure finances depend on putting a lid on how much you spend and on what. Only then can you be sure you are not wandering into financial quicksand. If you love shopping and tend to buy on impulse, here are some ways to rein in the habit.

Find absorbing hobbies

Many people end up at the shops simply because they have nothing better to do, and once there they splurge on whatever catches their eye. So find an interesting hobby, such as pottery, painting, sketching, writing or reading, to keep you occupied. It keeps you away from needless spending and means you spend your time on something worthwhile rather than frittering it away on things you do not need.

Keep budget cards

This takes a little time and commitment, but it is a smart and effective way to cut back. At the start of each month, make a card for each category of expense: groceries, bills, school fees and so on. It becomes much easier to avoid spending on anything that does not already appear on a card.

Put spare money to work

The spending habit thrives when there is extra money lying around. That is one reason to save and invest regularly, so the money is working for your future instead of sitting there tempting you. There are many ways to do this; a qualified financial adviser can help you choose the ones that suit you.

Spend time with friends who hold you back

This can be remarkably effective if you have a couple of good friends who know what sets off your spending. A visit or a chat with them can take the edge off the urge to splurge. Friends who remind you of your goal strengthen your resolve. Besides, time with friends is far more fun than trawling through shopping centres.

Choose free pastimes

Any enjoyable activity that costs nothing, a game with the family, a walk, a book, can fill the gap that shopping used to fill, and keep you away from excessive buying.

This is general guidance, not financial advice. For your own situation, speak to a qualified adviser.

Most of us have something we would like to change: one small thing that might add a touch of contentment, or simply more joy, to each day. We read tips and guidelines on improving life all the time. Here are a few habits that actually help.

Give yourself something to look forward to

When the mind is anticipating something good, we start to feel happy before the event has even happened. You can use that on purpose. At the end of a tiring working day, tell yourself you are going home to watch a programme you enjoy, or picture the family trip you have planned for the weekend. The anticipation pushes negative thoughts aside.

Keep moving

Many people have to sit for most of the day, which does far more harm than we realise. Exercising two or three times a week is vital for physical fitness and mental stability, but it is also important to avoid sitting too long during the day. Make a habit of getting up and walking about for a moment every 45 minutes. Take any excuse you can find.

Make decisions together

In many situations we decide things alone, sometimes rightly and sometimes not. Independence matters, but there is often a better way. When a decision will affect the people around you, it is far better to include them in thinking it through and making the choice.

Keep learning something new

People who keep investing time in learning new things, even in later life, tend to report richer lives and greater happiness. Part of the reason may be that the mind stays busy. It is also likely that the sense of achievement, and the break from negative thoughts that learning offers, both do good.

Set yourself a bedtime alarm

We have endless content at our fingertips: television channels, the internet, games and apps. It tempts us to keep watching one more thing before bed, and we end up sleeping much later than we meant to. Try an alarm that rings not to wake you, but to tell you it is time to go to bed.

Say what you feel

Telling someone you love them strengthens a relationship and adds to your own joy. Adding a specific example of what you love about them makes it far more meaningful. It warms them and lifts their confidence, and when they are happier, you will be too.

Notice the good that is already here

How much did you enjoy your last meal? When did you last stop to smell a flower? How glad are you to go home to your family? Most of us cannot answer, because these are the things we take for granted. For one whole day, try paying attention to these small pleasures. They will light up everything good in your life and quieten the gloomy thoughts that usually take up most of your attention.

Pain can be one of life’s greatest teachers. What matters is moving through it, rather than getting stuck in it.

Pain is part of the cycle

Pain comes, and pain goes. It is only one part of the larger cycle of life. Experienced that way, it can teach us a great deal. The harm starts when we get stuck in it, because then it begins to damage our wellbeing and hold back our growth.

How to tell you are stuck

If you notice that you feel closed off, resentful or heavy-hearted, or that you are working very hard to avoid ever being hurt again, part of you may still be caught in old pain.

Why we get stuck

There are many reasons. As children, we cried, stormed and let each experience wash straight through us, quite naturally. Feeling our pain fully like that let our emotions wash us clean and left us open to whatever came next.

As we grew older, though, many of us decided that showing emotion was no longer acceptable, and we built all sorts of ways to cope with the discomfort. We learned to push our feelings down, or to run from them. We may have come to believe that staying closed, and refusing to try anything new, would keep us safe from heartbreak, rejection and failure. Some of us have lived with hurt for so long that imagining life without it feels frightening.

The cost of holding on

If we keep holding on to pain longer than we need to, we spend a great deal of energy that could instead go into making our lives better.

Give it room to move

If you keep finding yourself drawn back into the same familiar patterns of hurt, try accepting your feelings and letting the hurt go. Whether the pain comes from childhood or from something that happened last week, try letting it shift and flow. Once it does, a remarkable store of your own energy becomes available again.

“Could you do me a favour?” Does saying that make you uncomfortable? It should not. Asking for help is an ordinary part of life, and doing it well strengthens relationships rather than straining them. Keep three steps in mind.

Set the stage

Whenever you ask for a favour, openly acknowledge that it is a favour, one you will repay, not simply a need of yours that someone else should meet. Make it a two-way exchange. People are far more willing to help someone who clearly values their time and intends to return the kindness.

Give a reason

When you ask someone to do something for you, offer a reason. People respond well to the word “because”. Even when the reason is only loosely connected to the request, they like to understand why they are being asked. A short, honest explanation turns a demand into a request.

Leave them a way out

Your aim is really double: to receive the help you need, while leaving the other person glad they were asked. The surest way to achieve both is to give them an easy, graceful way to say no. Something as simple as “and it is completely fine if you cannot” takes the pressure off. Paradoxically, people who feel free to decline are often more willing to say yes.

Why it matters

A favour asked well builds trust on both sides. The person asked feels respected rather than cornered, and you keep the relationship intact whatever the answer. Next time you need help, you will find it easier to ask, and they will find it easier to give.

Most of us take it for granted that thinking positively produces positive results. In truth, that is more a personal belief than an established fact.

Whether positive thinking actually delivers good outcomes has become one of the most debated questions of our time. Even leading scientists and doctors have not reached agreement. Some say it works. Others say it does not.

It does not work everywhere

One thing is clear: positive thinking does not guarantee good results in every case. In some situations it may help. Facing a job interview, for example, a hopeful frame of mind makes you more confident and readier to give the right answers.

But picture someone inside an aircraft that has lost both its wings. No amount of positive thinking will help that person. Some situations are simply beyond the reach of attitude.

Where it clearly helps

Positive thinking has a strong effect on management, production and many everyday situations. Good management combines problem solving with image building. Solving problems depends on skill and sharp thinking, and attitude plays only a small part there. Building a good image, however, flows directly from a positive outlook.

Where it may not help

Fighting disease is the contested ground. Some doctors claim positive thinking can cure many illnesses, even very serious ones. Others dismiss the idea as a modern myth, arguing that every illness has a physical cause that must be found and removed before a cure is possible. A hopeful attitude is a companion to proper treatment, never a replacement for it.

Keep it anyway

Even so, it is better to think positively, even when it produces no measurable result. It costs you nothing. You do not have to buy it; you only have to cultivate it, until it becomes part of how you see things.

On a personal level and on a global scale, all of us keep meeting challenges and hardships that test our emotional strength: illness, injury, grief, unemployment, or even a brand new venture whose outcome nobody can predict. However harshly luck treats you, there are always strategies that can help carry you through. Here are the most effective.

Accept life as it actually is

An old teaching holds that the secret of life is not to want what you do not have, but to want what you do have. There is a great sense of freedom in taking life as it comes. Once you learn to hold the good and the bad parts of your life together, you have a real chance to enjoy it fully and to value everything it has given you.

Do not rush through life

We have all heard that slow and steady wins the race, yet few of us realise how much that approach matters. By always hurrying, we end up undermining our own success. Cut corners now and you can be sure of paying for it later.

Be more grateful

Many of us count our worries far more often than we count our blessings, dwelling on what we lack instead of what we have. That attitude shrinks your ability to live a happy, fulfilling life, because it keeps you weighed down by negativity. A far better recipe for emotional health is to notice all the good your life holds and receive it with gratitude.

Treat success and failure as parts of the journey

Everyone alive is always learning, whatever their age. That is why it matters not to be too hard on yourself, and to accept that trying, succeeding, failing and trying again is the only real way to build lasting confidence. However successful or mature we become, the child inside us will always need friends and mentors to help see us through.

Empathy means losing yourself so fully in another person’s joys and sorrows that you feel them as your own.