Tag: Young Adults

Picture yourself holding a cup of coffee. Someone walks past, knocks into you or jogs your arm, and coffee goes everywhere. Why did it spill?

The obvious answer is that someone bumped into you. That is not quite right.

What was inside

Coffee spilled because the cup held coffee. Had it held tea, tea would have spilled. Whatever is inside the cup is exactly what comes out when it is shaken.

Life does the same thing to us. Sooner or later it will come along and shake us, and when it does, whatever we are carrying inside will pour out. Keeping up appearances is easy while things are calm. It is the jolt that shows what is really there.

A question worth asking

So each of us has to ask: what is in my cup? When life gets hard, what spills over? Is it joy, gratitude, peace and humility? Or is it anger, bitterness, harsh words and harsh actions?

That part is up to us.

Filling the cup

Today is a good day to start filling our cups with the things we would be glad to see spill: gratitude, forgiveness, joy, kind and encouraging words for ourselves and others, gentleness and love. Then, when the next bump comes, that is what the people around us will receive.

Adding a few words to your vocabulary for describing yourself can lift your self-confidence. The key is to highlight your strengths instead of dwelling on your limitations. It is time to change the way you speak to yourself, using a few positive words to describe who you are.

Articulate

Are you good at communicating? A strong way to say so is to call yourself articulate. Some people may admire how well you put your ideas across. In a job interview, an employer is looking for someone who is self-assured. Tell them you are articulate, back it up with a quick example, and your communication skills will speak for themselves.

Graceful

Grace has more to do with poise than with avoiding awkward moments. Handling difficult situations in good spirits is the clearest way to show how graceful you are.

Thoughtful

You may well be considerate and compassionate, but thoughtful is an especially powerful and positive word to use about yourself. It shows that you go the extra mile for the people around you.

Words shape belief. When the words you use about yourself are accurate and generous, you begin to carry yourself the way you describe yourself.

Many people, particularly young men according to the clipping this post draws on, seem to be forever on the lookout for a partner. That is rarely a good idea. Here are a few reasons to stop.

You may be trying to fill a gap

Anyone who feels they must always have someone by their side is often short of something else in life that they are trying to make up for. It might be self-confidence, or a sense of not having achieved much. If you keep craving the attention of a girlfriend or boyfriend, pause and ask what stops you from being content by yourself.

It can pull you away from your goals

Focusing too much on someone else can stop you focusing on your own goals. Say you want to travel the world. That gets much harder when your attention is all on a relationship. Setting goals for yourself is a wonderful feeling, and it is far easier to do when you are not tied down.

You have a whole life ahead for others

If you are in your late teens or early twenties and stressing about finding a partner, think about the freedom you are wishing away. You have a decade ahead in which to travel, build your career, live cheaply, pay off debts and enjoy yourself. Nobody wants to marry too young, start a family and then regret it. So do not rush. Even if the right person does not come along until you are thirty five, you can spend the years in between discovering who you are and doing what you love.

Most people’s thinking follows a fairly predictable, textbook pattern, which is why most of us have recognisable character traits. Because of that, an average person may find it hard to follow how a creative person’s mind works. There are several things about creative people that others may never quite understand.

Creativity makes noise

Someone with a more ordinary turn of mind tends to sleep easily at night. A creative person, on the other hand, will often tell you their head is constantly busy with sound and chatter. In most people that might be a cause for worry. In creative people it is simply what a crowded, idea-filled mind feels like.

A creative mind never slows down

Creative people have even been known to complain about it. An average person’s mind eventually stops turning over ideas, unknown scenarios and possible outcomes. A creative mind keeps going.

There is always another solution

Creative people are not easily bound by what everyone else accepts. Instead of taking something as it is, they challenge an outcome, a theory or a rule. While others accept a situation, a creative person offers different ways to solve the problem. They are always asking questions, where others simply accept whatever they are told.

Creativity comes in waves

People with more average minds are likely to work more steadily than creative people. Believe it or not, creativity arrives whenever it chooses. There are stretches when nothing happens at all, and other times when ideas pour out with ease. Successful creative people have learnt to accept this rhythm for what it is. Great ideas do not arrive on command, so creative people can seem rather inconsistent.

If you live or work with a creative person, these traits are worth remembering. What looks like restlessness, argument or unreliability is often the price of the ideas they bring.

We all enjoy meeting people who share our interests and beliefs. Yet we also need people who can disagree with us, because they sharpen our choices and deepen our understanding of each other. Here is why disagreement matters so much, and why the people who often disagree with you deserve to be valued.

They are the ones talking to you

Like it or not, disagreement is one thing everyone can agree on. It means someone is listening to you and trying to engage with you. It shows when someone takes the trouble to explain their feelings and their reasons for differing. You may bristle at first, yet in the end this is someone who values your relationship enough to be honest with you. People take a risk when they tell you they disagree, because they believe you are worth talking to.

You see the world more clearly

You are not always right, however unwelcome that thought may be. If you only ever look at the world through your own eyes, you may miss the things you cannot see or do not know about. When people disagree with you, they bring experience, knowledge and views you may never have come across or understood.

You learn who you can trust

A disagreement is one of the best ways to see a person’s true self. Anyone can act kind and pleasant, but when there is a disagreement, the pretence falls away and the real person shows. When you disagree with someone, you find out whether this is a person you want to be with and whether you can truly enjoy their company.

The years after college can be rough. We land in the working world with low pay, relationships that shift under our feet, and a strong feeling of being adrift. Most of us gather a few hard lessons on the way to adulthood. If you have not yet, these are worth hearing.

A life is simply a string of days. Make each one good, notice it, enjoy it and love what is there, and over time you will have built a good life. That is really all it takes. Read these reminders often. They tend to let more light into your days and more calm into your heart.

Now is where you live

Your life is not somewhere ahead of you. It is happening today, in this place, at this minute. Give yourself wholly to the present and you will feel more awake than ever before.

Everything has its season

Some days call for solitude and some for the company of those you love. Some bring happiness and some bring grief. The sooner we make peace with that rhythm, the calmer we feel, and the less any change or challenge throws us.

Every dawn is a clean slate

Life is kind in one simple way: each new day offers another chance to begin, to put yesterday down and set out again.

We only borrow what we hold

Nothing stays as it is. We love to grip things and call them ours, yet in truth we keep none of it. When our time here ends, we leave with empty hands.

Hard times come sized to your strength

Each experience and each encounter, however painful, can shape you into who you are meant to become. When life piles a great deal on you, take it as an invitation to find the courage and strength buried deep within.

You already have wings

You carry more strength, beauty, wisdom and power than you realise. Trust yourself as fully as you hope others will trust you, and you will find the potential you were born with. Then use it, and let it lift you.

Do not abandon your own road

You have a path that is yours and a purpose only you can serve. However strongly people around you press you to pause your life for theirs, do not give in.

Choose solitude over poor company

Keep close to people who are wise, kind, loving, honest and principled. If no such companion can be found, then walk on by yourself, as a king walks away from a kingdom he has won, or as an elephant roams the forest on its own.

Your worth is not your output

Do not let ego convince you that you are not enough as you are, or that you must turn into someone important to prove your value. Being busy and capable is fine. Trouble starts when you measure your worth only by how much you get done and how well you do it.

Real generosity grows out of caring for another person without conditions. Each of us depends on others for the good things in our lives. We thrive or struggle together through a web of generous acts, coming from the kindness and integrity of people, many of whom we will never meet. That is the power of generosity, and when we practise it with awareness, we come into contact with its joyful, healing strength.

Letting go through giving

Practising generosity means setting out to free ourselves from the need to feed our ego, by giving freely of whatever we have that is of value. What we give may be material, or it may be our time, our energy or our wisdom.

We practise generosity to loosen the attachments that come from feeling that there is never enough and that we stand apart from others. It lets us see the world in terms of what we have and what we can give, instead of what we do not have and badly want.

Generosity all year round

Seasons of gift giving are a good time to ask how you might practise generosity through the rest of the year. There are many ways to build a generous attitude into daily life. A few are especially powerful:

• Be generous with your attention when someone is speaking to you.
• Be generous in celebrating another person’s happiness.
• Be generous with your sympathy for someone who has suffered a loss.
• Be generous with compliments and praise for others.
• Be generous with respect for others, without conditions.
• Be generous with your willingness to help.

None of these costs money. Each of them is something only you can give.

Do not give less than your best, and do not let yourself get sidetracked. You either finish strong or you finish badly. There is no comfortable middle ground.

The last runner in the stadium

The setting was the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico. The marathon was the final event, and the stadium was packed and buzzing as the first runner, an Ethiopian athlete, came in and crossed the line to a huge roar.

Far behind him was another runner, John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania. The other runners had long since left him behind. After thirty kilometres his head was pounding, his muscles ached, and he fell to the ground. His leg injuries were serious, and officials wanted him to retire from the race. He refused.

With his knee bandaged, Akhwari got back up and hobbled the last twelve kilometres of the course.

About an hour after the winner had finished, Akhwari entered the stadium. Only a few thousand spectators were still in their seats. He circled the track at an agonisingly slow pace and finally collapsed over the finish line.

Why he kept going

It is remembered as one of the most heroic efforts in Olympic history. Afterwards a reporter asked him why he had not dropped out. Akhwari replied that his country had not sent him to start the race. They had sent him to finish it.

A question for each of us

Put yourself in Akhwari’s shoes. Would you have kept going to the end? Most of us are not running marathons, but we all start things: a course, a job, a promise, a plan. The story asks whether we are only there to begin, or whether we see it through to the end, even when no one is left in the stands to watch.

Late one night, a teacher known far and wide for his wisdom walked up to a king’s palace. The guards recognised him and let him pass, and he went all the way in to where the king was sitting on his throne. The king knew him at once.

“You are welcome here,” said the king. “What brings you?”

“I would like a bed in this inn for the night,” the teacher said.

The king bristled. “An inn? This is my palace!”

Quietly, the teacher asked whom the palace had belonged to before the king.

“To my father, naturally. He passed away.”

“And before him?”

“My grandfather. He too is gone.”

“A place where one person after another stays for a time and then leaves,” said the teacher. “Is that not exactly what an inn is?”

Why the story stays with us

We speak of our homes, our positions and our possessions as if they were ours for good. The teacher’s gentle questions remind us that we are all guests passing through. Nothing we hold stays with us forever, and remembering that makes it easier to hold things lightly and to treat the people who come after us with care.

If you want to take your life or your business to the next level, you need to make full use of all twenty four hours in each day. That starts with a strong routine that sets you up for the day ahead. A few habits help build one.

Note what you learned and what went well

Write down the things you learned during the day and list at least three big wins. This builds the habit of recognising what you have achieved.

Look ahead

Think in advance about any roadblocks, difficult conversations or other problems that might come up, so they do not catch you off guard.

Keep your goals in view

It helps to keep a list of goals you are working towards across the different parts of your life. Give each one a few minutes of thought and picture it as if you had already achieved it.

Do not wait for motivation

Counting on waking up fired up every day is a recipe for disappointment. Drive rises and falls, even for the world’s highest achievers. What you need is a routine that helps you feel motivated and inspired, whether or not you woke up that way.

Give your mind a question for the night

Your brain keeps working while you sleep, just as it has all day. So before you sleep, hand it something to chew on: say aloud, or jot in a notebook, a question about a problem you are still stuck on.