Tag: Young Adults

Age, background and occupation aside, almost everyone wants to succeed. There is nothing wrong with that wish. Whether the arena is business or ordinary life, much of what we do is aimed at getting somewhere. Often there is a missing piece between wanting a goal and reaching it. Here are seven qualities, each beginning with D, that tend to supply it.

1. Determination

If we only want something, the first hard obstacle sends us looking for an easier prize, and we end up achieving nothing. Determination is the tool that stops this. Trying once more, and then once more, however many attempts it needs, calls for courage. Each attempt brings us nearer and shows the target more clearly. Without determination we get close and never arrive. Determination is what closes that last gap and improves us along the way.

2. Dedication

Commit yourself to excellence, and remember that excellence is a road, not a place you reach. Be ready to give up almost anything for the goal, except the things that carry you there: persistence, commitment, enthusiasm, diligence, tenacity, self-belief, appreciation and motivation. Above all, commit to learning for life and stay a student always. Put your time, energy, money and every other resource behind what you want.

3. Discipline

Discipline means doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, as well as it can be done. It also means following rules that exist for the good of both the individual and society. Everything has a process and a set of rules, and we follow them not only for ourselves but for the community we live in.

4. Decorum

Decorum is behaving well whatever the situation. Success depends on knowing how to conduct yourself in each setting, because people watch your actions and gestures all the time. A well-mannered person is welcomed everywhere. Decorum reveals character, and others judge where you come from by it.

5. Decency

Decency means being polite in speech, humble in action and efficient at work. Anyone who wants to succeed must be decent in every respect, and that decency shows in everything from how you behave to how you dress.

6. Devotion

Devotion must be sincere and honest. Success comes only to a person who is fully devoted to the work, doing each task wholeheartedly. People who treat their work as something close to sacred are the ones who rise.

7. Development

The seventh D is the destination of the other six. Follow those six and you move naturally towards development. Overall growth is emotional, inner, mental, physical and psychological growth taken together.

An extra D: deadline

Do not let your dreams become a comfortable hiding place you visit when life gets you down. Turn each dream into a goal and give it a deadline. Write the goals down. Doing so pushes you to make the dream real, instead of treating it as an escape from reality.

Plenty of students feel their stomach drop when a teacher says, “You are next, and you have two minutes.” That fear makes sense. It is also beatable, because speaking on the spot is a technique, and a technique can be learned.

An extempore speech is built in the moment. At best the organiser gives you a minute or two to collect your thoughts. What gets judged is how well you think, frame and carry yourself under that pressure, in a short burst of words.

Know your subject, and know your listeners

You cannot speak well about something you do not understand. Any fact or figure you use must be correct and must fit the point you are making. Put your ideas in a sensible order, so one leads into the next. Give steady information that stays on the topic. A well-chosen quote can lift the content, but only if it belongs there. Hold on to your core points, tell them in sequence, and resist wandering off into side roads.

Let your body speak for you

Your posture tells the room how sure you are before you say a word. Keep your head up. Hold the microphone at one steady distance from your mouth. Look people in the eye; that is how the message lands. Let your face show that you understand what you are saying. This is a stage event, so aim to leave a good impression.

Confidence comes from knowledge

There is no preparation time, so your confidence rests almost entirely on what you already know. Whether the topic is abstract or familiar, the test is the same: presence of mind, consistency and sound reasoning. Trust what you know and speak without fear.

Vary your voice

Voice carries character, mood and feeling. It should shift with what you are saying. A speech delivered entirely at a high pitch tires the ear, and so does one held low throughout. Mix your range, so tone and intonation match the content.

Respect the clock

Impromptu speaking runs against time. Skill, energy and delivery matter, but so does finishing within the limit. A valuable speech that fits the given duration is exactly what an audience hopes for.

Choose a direction before you begin

Decide how you will deliver the speech before you open your mouth. The quickest way is to read the room. Who is listening, and which approach will they accept most readily? A speech pitched in language that suits the listeners earns far more praise.

Sketch a quick outline

Take a moment to plan in your head. Many of the worst speeches come from people who started talking before they had sorted their thoughts. The outline does not need detail. It only needs to keep you on track.

Why the practice is worth it

• It trains you to think creatively and on your feet.
• It builds communication skills and a sense of time.
• It pushes you to produce ideas without any preparation.
• It teaches you to handle a question in the moment.
• It sharpens logical thinking and reasoning.
• It is excellent training for the interviews and meetings that come later in life.

Opportunities slip by while we wait on the sidelines for conditions to be just right. The truth is that everything is never going to line up perfectly, and the only real answer is to stop waiting and start taking small steps forward.

How the waiting shows up

Our fears show themselves in many disguises, procrastination, frustration, anger and a long list of excuses. The simplest way to stretch out any delay is to insist on perfect alignment first, telling ourselves we cannot do one thing because another thing is not yet in place. Almost everyone does this before taking any kind of risk, using the idea of perfection either as a yardstick to compare themselves against or as a convenient way to keep putting things off.

Perfect will never arrive

No job posting is ever going to line up with your skill set down to the last detail, and you will never land a role you never apply for in the first place. A niche market is never going to sit there completely untapped waiting for you, and a website is never going to feel entirely finished. Yet if you never apply, never choose a market, and never publish that website, you will never move any closer to what you are aiming for.

Failure rarely hurts as much as feared

Failing, or falling short of perfect, almost never turns out to hurt as much as we brace ourselves for. Nearly everyone has failed at something, some more than others, and everyone has lived to tell the story afterward. It is not always kind to the ego, but it remains one of the biggest sources of real learning. Failure shows us what to avoid the next time and pushes us to try again. Missing out on a job offer is not really failure, it is often a useful sign that the fit was not right, and it is far better to learn that before investing months settling into a role that was never going to work.

Start before everything is lined up

Perfect alignment is not coming, so waiting for it only holds you back from creating, exploring, achieving and becoming who you want to be. Begin taking small steps if the big leap feels too overwhelming. Stop telling yourself one day, and start going after what you actually want, even while pieces of the picture are still out of place.

The path ahead keeps shifting, and the direction our life takes can turn dramatically at almost any moment, once we decide to actively steer it rather than drift along. Nothing about that direction happens on its own, without some effort from us. Each of us is the one shaping and holding on to our own path forward, a role nobody else is entitled to and nobody else can fill in our place. Getting there starts with a handful of deliberate steps.

Entertain the possibility

You do not need a deep, unshakeable conviction that your life can change. All it takes to begin is a willingness to consider that change might be possible, paired with genuine curiosity about a path you cannot yet fully see. Something as simple as telling yourself that you are open to changing the course of your life can open that door.

Listen to yourself

We need to pay closer attention to ourselves, starting with the small sparks of excitement that pass through us and that we too often postpone. Perhaps it is an urge to dance more, or to try something you keep telling yourself does not really matter. It matters more than it seems, because part of you needs it, and acting on it can ripple through your whole life, opening doors you never imagined. Those small sparks and quiet urges are destiny speaking, daring you to accept the invitation.

Connect more openly

Taking charge of your destiny also means opening your heart, little by little, and taking the risk of being more vulnerable with the people around you. This deepens your connection to yourself as much as to others. All of life is a shared creation, and the path your life takes is shaped the same way.

Never give up on yourself

Choosing to change your life invites resistance, often from a part of yourself that instantly tries to pull you back toward what feels familiar and safe. Old voices and old doubts can grow louder, and the approval of others can start to feel more important than the quiet call for something more within you. Expect to have to push through that resistance.

Aim high

Dream big, think beyond the obvious, and be willing to let go of who you currently are in order to grow into who you want to become. Once you commit to what you truly love, failure may still visit you along the way, but keep your attention on the happiness waiting for you once you arrive. The idea is captured well in a thought often traced to an early twentieth century American political figure, that destiny is shaped by deliberate choice rather than left to chance, and that it needs to be built through action rather than simply awaited.

As a job seeker, it helps enormously to see yourself through the interviewer’s eyes, because that shift in perspective is often what helps you unlock the interview and land the offer. Interviewers begin sizing up a candidate from the very first moment, and your attitude and enthusiasm are read through how you behave in that room. Here are five things worth preparing for.

Punctuality

The time you arrive shapes the first impression before you have said a word. Look carefully at the interview details, work out the distance and the time it will take to get there, and aim to arrive ten to fifteen minutes early. This shows how seriously you are taking the opportunity, and it also gives you a few minutes to settle into the surroundings.

Attire

Think about what the role actually calls for, whether that is business casual or something more specific to the field. Avoid overly bright colours and clothes that are too short. Beyond the clothes themselves, how you groom yourself also matters, and all of it signals how seriously you are taking the meeting.

A positive attitude

A disinterested or vague response to the interviewer can end your chances before you even realise where things went wrong. Try to keep the conversation on the bright side, and be careful never to speak poorly of a previous employer or colleague. If the interviewer offers feedback, however blunt, take it with a smile and assure them you will work on it.

Body language

Interviewers also read your attentiveness and professionalism through body language. A nonchalant or overly casual manner works against you. Small things count for a great deal, knocking before you enter, not fidgeting, holding eye contact through the conversation, and not leaning back in your chair.

Greetings

The confidence you show while greeting the interviewer is another key part of the first impression, so make that moment count.

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.