Tag: Kids

A typical mind is estimated to generate something like twenty five to fifty thousand separate thoughts over the course of a single day, and during a rough patch, that volume of chatter can feel like an overwhelming amount of darkness. Anxiety and stress are often not taken seriously enough, and many people simply give in to negativity because it does not seem to carry any immediate, visible cost. The truth is that it quietly catches up with you eventually. Being trapped in a particular mindset is never easy to escape, but it can be done. Nothing, not even your own mind, needs to stand permanently in the way of your happiness, and positivity is not some unreachable goal. It starts with changing your filter and choosing to look at the world as though you are seeing it for the first time.

Find where the negativity is coming from

To eliminate or cure anything, you first need to identify its source, otherwise it is like trying to fight an opponent you cannot see. Many people carry around issues that feel like they cannot be solved at all, a large debt inherited from circumstances, deep dissatisfaction with a career, or the aftermath of a difficult breakup. None of these situations comes with an obvious person to blame, but that does not mean their negative pull on you should be ignored.

Change your routine and allow some adventure

Not everyone is naturally spontaneous, and that is fine, but spending time with people who are a little more wild and unpredictable can loosen your own spirit as well. Routines feel comfortable because they offer stability, yet real enjoyment of life, and the memories worth keeping, tend to come from staying open minded and occasionally stepping outside that routine.

Keep building your confidence

Feeling capable and needed matters a great deal, and confidence is usually one of the first things to erode once negativity gets a grip on your mind. Deliberately working on your confidence, even in small ways, makes a real difference to how you feel day to day.

A stumble is not a catastrophe

Negativity shows up in many forms, and frustration is one of the most common of them, whether it comes from a genuine setback or from something as small as plans ruined by the weather. Almost everyone struggles with setbacks in some form, and treating them as a normal part of life rather than a catastrophe takes away much of their power.

Focus on what you want, not on what you fear

A common trap is spending more thought on what you do not want than on what you do want, which makes the thing you actually want harder to reach. If the goal is a healthier financial picture, for instance, it helps to focus on building strong finances rather than dwelling on debt or a shortage of money.

Rehearse the outcome you want

Mental rehearsal is a simple way to improve performance and ease anxiety before an important moment. Before a meeting or a difficult conversation, take a few minutes to picture how you want it to unfold, imagine seeing and hearing it go well, and notice how good that outcome would feel. As people who have built real success often point out, falling down is not the measure that matters. What counts is how many times you are willing to pick yourself back up.

Manners are not a small thing to brush aside. Good behaviour earns you respect, adds to your sense of dignity, and quietly supports growth in almost every part of life, from home to the workplace to the shop around the corner. Here are the ways good manners pay off, often in places you would not expect.

Manners set the example for the next generation

Children watch how the adults around them react to every situation, so parents who are polite and consistent about following good manners are showing, not just telling, what proper behaviour looks like. A child who grows up seeing courtesy in daily life is far more likely to carry it forward.

Good manners get noticed at work

Being skilled at your job is important, but skill alone is not the only thing colleagues and managers notice. Following the unwritten etiquette of a workplace, being polite and consistent in how you treat people, earns respect and can even play a part in who gets considered for a promotion or a raise.

Politeness is good for business

Speaking to customers politely and giving them room to explain what they need makes them far more likely to return and to recommend you to others. The same courtesy works with friends. People who know you care enough to be considerate are more likely to keep including you in their plans and gatherings.

Respect brings you respect in return

Whether you need help finding something in a shop or have a complaint to raise about a product, showing good manners makes the people helping you want to make the effort. Something as small as holding a door open for someone struggling with bags, or smiling at a stranger, can genuinely brighten another person’s day.

Listening is a form of good manners too

Being a good conversationalist is not about knowing the right words or filling every silence. It is about giving the other person a real chance to speak and taking the time to actually hear what they have to say. That alone tells them their thoughts matter to you.

We all have a fight or flight response to stressful situations, and some of the most stressful situations are difficult relationships. When the odds feel stacked against you, act with honesty, tap into your inner dignity, and respect yourself. People will respect you for it too, and you will boost your own self esteem along the way.

Find your own release

Instead of giving in to the impulse to fight or flee, it helps to first find how you like to stay in control of your power. If you still have the leftovers of stress after dealing with difficult people, have a good cry, or go for a walk. Fresh air and a change of scene release stress and let you regain your power sooner, so you can live fully in spite of what others do.

Say sorry properly

Ordinary people do not have a team of image consultants and press handlers standing by to script the right words for them. Saying sorry is probably the most difficult thing to be done right, and it needs to be done with sincerity. Apologising is difficult in itself. It means acknowledging wrongdoing, admitting our mistakes, never saying sorry only to be done with it, and doing it with real sincerity from the heart. It takes a great amount of difficulty in getting past our own guarded stress, unwelcome side effects such as illness, insomnia, overeating and lethargy multiply until it hurts all round and only the negative emotions remain.

Set boundaries

Having good boundaries means caring for yourself as much as you care for other people. It means you value yourself and deeply value the other person too. It means you have the right to a different opinion and a different way of seeing the world, and having good boundaries also includes being conscious of and understanding the boundaries you do not share.

Shake it off

Animals get the idea. If they are stressed by anything unwelcome, they shake it off immediately, bark, buck, bite, run and scratch, and then get on with life. We tend to hold in our problems, and holding them in causes stress, which we tend to carry as our own, resentments fester and our progress stalls.

Weigh your decision

Whenever you are called upon to make a tough decision, whether personal or professional, keep this one thing sacred: your dignity. If you stay true to yourself, looking back on the choice will bring no regret, because you weighed it carefully in the moment and decided on that basis.

Being a perfectionist means being overly concerned with personal achievement, to the point where everything has to be done exactly right or it feels like it has not moved forward at all. This usually comes from all or nothing thinking, where a result is either perfect or it is simply not good enough. In trying to improve, some people fall into a never ending pursuit of flawlessness. It is not the desire to change that causes the trouble. It is the over-doing, and the obsessing that comes with it. Being perfect can drain the enjoyment out of an effort that no longer feels quite right, however much work goes into it. The useful balance sits between making positive changes and obsessing over them.

Signs you might be a perfectionist

A few patterns are worth watching for. Judging yourself harshly, and judging others just as harshly. Obsessing over lifestyle commitments. Turning highly competitive with the people around you. Dwelling on a single mistake long after it is over. Feeling an intense need to correct someone else’s small error. Demanding perfection from other people as well as yourself. Staying with a task well past the point where everyone else has moved on. Any one of these on its own is ordinary. Several of them together are worth a second look.

Take charge of your inner voice

Beating perfectionism starts with controlling the inner critic, the voice that keeps telling you that you have fallen short. That voice can turn an ordinary mistake into supposed proof that you are a second rate person, and it wears down self esteem every time it speaks. Left unchecked, it feeds a growing fear of failure and of criticism from others. Learning to notice that voice for what it is, rather than treating it as fact, is the first real step out of the trap.

Do you long for that sense of accomplishment, the feeling you get after a perfect day when nothing else needs doing? If you want more fulfilment in daily life, three habits help you take control.

Put first things first

At the heart of it, the answer is simply to put first things first. We are often pulled between what we would like to do and what we ought to do, and we struggle to use our time well. Trouble begins when what we do fails to match what we hope to achieve, because we have not made room for what matters most. To get the best from your day, learn to put first things first. The enemy of the best is the merely good.

Say no to urgency

When you are trying to finish something important, find a corner that belongs to you and no one else, and focus on what counts. If someone arrives asking for your attention, you already know the answer, and it is no. That way you are not only taking action, you are getting results that carry you toward a satisfying day.

Nurture self awareness

We rarely stop to register the present moment or what is happening around us. That keeps us cut off from our own core. If you cannot explain why you keep repeating a habit that harms you, put it down in a journal. If you criticise someone for a fault and then spot it in yourself, record that as well.

Being carefree, at peace, happy or confident, whichever way you want to describe it, is a choice. It means taking charge of your emotions and seeing that you can feel well without anything around you changing. Only your outlook has to shift. You can decide to feel good whatever anyone else does or says.

Letting go

The moment we release our fears, doubts and regrets, along with everything that no longer serves us, we return to how we once were. We go back to ourselves, to a kind of innocence, because that is where our true nature lies.

Caring without clinging

This does not mean you should stop caring. Caring means something matters, and it is perfectly fine to want what you want. The trouble starts when you become so attached that things must turn out one particular way to count as a success. Then you have set yourself up for disappointment.

Why it is hard

We are conditioned not to be carefree. Nine things may be going well and one may not, yet all our attention goes to the one that is not. That is the human tendency. We also carry fear, worry, guilt, resentment and old anger into the present, and most of what we brood about is not happening now. We simply spend our precious energy filling ourselves with anxiety over it.

Take a lesson from a child

We spend much of our lives chasing happiness, looking for meaning and balance without knowing where to search. It is wise to pause and think about what matters most. Watch a child at play and you will see what living in the present looks like. Learning that lesson sets you free.

Think of the feeling when a friend or your spouse keeps you waiting. If you dislike it, remember it when you are the one who is late. Keeping people waiting can damage your relationship with them.

What lateness says

When someone is left waiting, it suggests they do not matter, or that you do not care. That is an unpleasant feeling. There are people you should never keep waiting, such as the interviewer at a job interview or a spouse who is waiting for you at the end of the day.

The message you send

Many people count their time as a form of wealth. It is valuable, and they spend it only on what and whom they cherish. Asking someone to meet you is asking them to spend some of that wealth on you. Being late then quietly says that the other person’s hours are worth less than your own.

But I am paying them

You may tell yourself that you pay your staff well, so a late arrival at a meeting is excused. The point is that you pay people for the work they produce, not for the time they spend waiting for you.

Fair exceptions

Some things lie beyond your control: a real emergency, an accident, a natural disaster. Even so, being on time is usually within your reach. Wake earlier, plan the event ahead, allow for traffic, and leave home in good time.

Stress on both sides

No one enjoys being kept waiting, though few admit it. Some people take offence when you are late. They may not take you seriously, they may think you are disrespectful, and worst of all, they may turn up late for the next meeting with you. Do yourself and the other person a favour and be on time.

When penicillin was discovered in 1928, it became one of the first antibiotics to defeat infectious disease. Ever since, antibiotics have been essential for preventing deaths that could have been avoided.

The troubling turn

All through the history of life, organisms have changed and adapted. Single celled bacteria do it faster than most, so fast that a majority are now resistant to a wide range of antibiotics. The United Nations rates the problem as a crisis, in the same class as the HIV epidemic.

What scientists tried

Researchers have taken up the challenge. One group at a university in the United States reported a possible weapon against resistant bacteria, published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Their answer lay in a specially built molecule, a peptide conjugated phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer, or PPMO for short. They believe it can block an enzyme that some bacteria make, one that carries the code for resistance along with several other genes.

The test

In the study the team paired the molecule with meropenem, an ultra broad spectrum antibiotic of the carbapenem family. Together they worked in mice infected with E. coli that carried the resistance enzyme. Testing on people was expected to begin in about three years, so treat the report as an early step and not a finished cure.

What you can do

Resistance grows every time an antibiotic is used where it was not needed. Take one only when a doctor prescribes it, and finish the course as directed.

Most of us have tried to reason with someone who simply will not be reasoned with. It is frustrating, maddening and sometimes a little frightening. The five skills below help you stay steady, so that you walk away from the conversation with your dignity intact.

Remember that it is about them

When someone lectures you, hands out advice you never asked for, or blames and attacks, they are often describing themselves. Before you react, imagine the same words aimed at the speaker. Do they fit better there? You can even turn the question around and ask whether the person has lived through what they describe, or felt the way they say you should feel.

Ask to be heard without being advised

Sometimes you do want to share something, just not to receive a fix. Say so at the start. Tell the person you would like to tell a story or describe an experience, and that you are not looking for advice. Ask whether they can simply listen while you unload a little. That one sentence heads off a good deal of irritation.

Listen like you mean it

Work out what the person is saying and what they seem to feel underneath the words. Then say it back to them, so they know you understood. Acknowledging what someone has said removes much of the friction from a conversation. You do not have to agree. You only have to grasp where the other person stands.

Give them some room

Perhaps a colleague wants to talk through personal troubles yet again, and you have neither the time nor the energy, with your own work waiting. Answer kindly. Say that you would like to hear more, but that you must get back to your task.

Speak your own truth

Do not be afraid of your feelings, or of saying what is true for you as it arises. Many people get emotionally hijacked because they dread feeling something uncomfortable. They want to get along, so they bottle it up, and the pressure comes out later in a worse form.

Emotional intelligence, often shortened to EI, is the ability to understand and handle your own feelings and those of the people around you. It affects how we manage our behaviour, get through social situations and make personal decisions. People with a higher level of it read the world and its people well, and they adjust their emotions to the place and the moment. Here are seven things they tend to do differently.

They are driven

They see the problems in the world and in people, yet they do not lose heart. They look for new ways around the obstacles and want to improve things for everyone.

They are self aware

They know their strengths and their weak points, and how to work on the weak ones. They are comfortable being who they are and feel secure in it.

They are empathetic

They listen to other people’s troubles and feel real compassion, placing themselves in the other person’s position. They feel the pain without letting it swallow them, and they look for a solution. They do not stay in the dark place of negative feelings.

They are curious

Everything interests them. They keep learning, enjoy new experiences and try several ways of solving one problem to see where each leads. They share what they learn, because knowledge grows when it is passed on.

They handle change well

Most people fear change. They believe it brings something good, that a few things may go wrong for the greater good, and that they will get through whatever comes.

They strike a balance

They are neither all work nor all play. They know what must be done on time and what can wait, and they give themselves breaks. They keep a routine and stick to it.

They do not chase perfection

They know perfection is a myth. They do what feels right at the moment, taking their strengths and weak points into account, and get on with it.