Search for happiness and motivation does not have to be complex or expensive as many of us tend to think and/or believe I never stop being amazed by how little small children need to receive a boost of happiness and excitement, especially when we take them to a toy store or to a place filled with inflatable bounce houses. You can purchase a toy that looks very simple, does not have any fancy bells and whistles, but to a kid it’s like the best and most exciting things that they’ve ever seen. Children can play with one toy for hours and sometimes days before letting it go and moving on to something else or jump for hours in the bounce houses with their faces shining with bright smiles and happiness. Then, kids grow up and same simple toys no longer have the same effect on them. They move on to bigger and better things that are more technologically advanced, more expansive, and apparently, more fun. Why is that? Why as we grow older, we need so much more to keep us happy and excited? Why do we have to purchase and own more things, things that are more and more expansive and more luxurious? Why do we constantly have to go to stores to purchase more clothes and shoes, when we have our entire closet that is overflowing with these items, but for some reason, in order to remain happy and boost up our self-esteem we seek more expansive clothes, more high-end electronics, largest tv's we can buy, even if we can't afford them, luxury and prestigious sports cars, etc.? No reason, besides the comments that we often hear from other people telling us that we need more stuff to be happy. So, after hearing it over and over again that we begin thinking that it must be true. We forget that in order to be happy every day, a trip to the store is not necessary. We forget how happy we were when we were small children, and how little we needed to be happy, spending hours every day just playing with some old toys, coloring with crayons, or building tall towers and robots from Lego blocks, creating our imaginary and magical world, and at the same time creating our own happy world. We didn’t care what other people thought of us, we just had fun. So, if we would simply remind ourselves from time to time that happiness is not in how much stuff we have, or in how many cars and houses we own, but in most basic things that already surround us and can be tapped into when desired. Spending just few minutes outside in the nature, whether it’s going to a local park, going to the lake or pond, or to the beach, if we live near the ocean, and just relax enjoying the nature, is often all that we need to get the energy, motivation, and happiness that we so often seek and need. Spending few minutes outside, absorbing the warm and happy energy of the sun, is a great way to get a boost of positive energy any time, of course, while remembering to be safe outdoors and use sun’s energy responsibly – wearing a hat covering our head, and sunscreen protecting our skin. Many of us find peace, happiness and inspiration that we so desire while reading an interesting book in a complete silence or listening to a good song uninterrupted. Regardless the sources of our motivation, inspiration and happiness, what’s important is to remember that it’s often within our reach and can be absolutely free, all we need to do is to remind ourselves of this next time when we look for it. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
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Changing lives of others through genuine care, respect, and understanding Many of us believe that we can be great mentors to others, simply because we have necessary education or set of skills and experience. However, being a great, true mentor requires so much more than base education and experience mentioned earlier. Many of us can receive education base and knowledge in a particular field by attending school or completing specific educational courses on our own, thereby, becoming subject matter experts in that what we choose to study. Then, through regular practice over a period of time we acquire experience which we can, with pride, include on our professional resumes. However, completing all activities mentioned earlier does not necessarily make us a great mentor to others. Because, mentorship is not how we see ourselves, but how people around us see us. Do they view us as a true mentor, whom they deeply respect as a leader and mentor, and seek guidance and support, or do they view us as educated individual with many years of experience, but not someone who they view as a mentor, not someone they look up to and have immense amount of trust and respect in? Many of us fall into a latter definition, but very few of us fall into former definition and view of a true mentor. True mentor genuinely and deeply cares about others, and not just us an individual, but also every member of our immediate family. Their genuine care is reflected not in words, but in actions. Things that they do for us every day to support, motivate, inspire and lift us up when we need it the most without being asked. They help and support others simply because they care, and true mentors never expect anything in return. Our success, happiness, and wellbeing are the biggest reward for a true, great mentor and a leader. Great mentors often orchestrate behind the scenes, helping us to succeed without us even knowing. However, what they do not realize is that we know who they are, and that we are deeply thankful to them for everything that they do for us. Naturally, throughout our lives, we find our true mentors without any promotion or advertisement on their part. We meet them in the place of business, in school we attend, in social events we participate in. Don’t look for shiny, prestigious diplomas mounted on the office walls, or luxurious offices filled with various achievement rewards and trophies when selecting a mentor, instead look inside of them, uncovering who they really are. Ask yourself if you would trust your future and your professional career into the hands of a specific individual leader and a mentor? Does he or she truly care about you, your success, your goals and aspiration and, of course, your family, through their actions, not their words? If the answer is ‘yes’ to all the questions listed earlier, then you may have found your true, great mentor. I wish you the best from the bottom of my heart to find your true mentor, who can help you build a roadmap and plan towards your success as you see it in your mind and replay it over and over in your dreams. I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
Being happy and honest with yourself and those around you without hiding your true personality inside We can hide our feeling and opinions inside of us or express them openly, his is the choice that we have every day, whether it is at home r in the place of business. However, often we are so afraid of our family our peers at work, or our boss, even when we know that expressing our thoughts and opinions to others would be the right thing to do. Why are we so afraid of being ourselves in front of others, especially in our place of business? Why are we afraid of displaying our genuine feeling and perspectives about a particular topic, and instead of speaking out we hide it inside of us for days, months, o sometimes even years? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to remove that fake ingenuine smile off of our face when we are not happy, and cry when we feel like crying, or smile when we feel like smiling, because, we feel good and are happy, not because somebody expects it from us? Somewhere deep inside of us we, of course, desperately want to answer – “yes,” to all these questions, but something is stopping many of us from doing so when we are surrounded by people with whom we socialize and/or work with. Why? Because, sharing our actual true feeling, thoughts, and opinions, may and usually does differ from opinions and feelings of others, and it would mean that we would be going against the flow, against the popular beliefs and expectations. But who cares? We all have unique personalities, our own unique character that makes us who we are. So, when we pretend to like something when we don’t, just to make someone else feel better, or smile when we don’t feel like doing so, for same reason mentioned earlier, we are in turn lying to ourselves. Is it really worth it? Does it make any sense to make ourselves feel poorly inside while making others happy and to like us more? Personally, I don’t think so. I believe that when we stay true to who we really are, without hiding or suppressing our feeling and opinions inside, we feel better in general, we feel more confident, have strong sense of self-esteem, smile more, and perform better simply because we focus on what’s in from of us vs. focusing our time and energy on everything that’s happing around us, or helping other people to feel better about themselves at our own emotional expense. The only source of motivation and inspiration that we should ever need is already inside of us in our minds and our hearts. Only we know what’s truly motivates us to be better, to feel stronger, to perform our best every day, nobody else does. So, why lie to ourselves and others seeking external motivation and approval, when everything we need to keep moving forward in life, be happy, and be best at everything we do? No reason. It’s much easier to go about our daily lives when we don’t have to worry about saying something or act in a way that others may find to be different from their own thoughts and actions. And, by being ourselves every day, we don’t have to pretend to be somebody who we are not and know that everything that we say and do represents the truth, represents us and our unique character, without any sugarcoating. Do you agree? My hope is that by reading this short article, it will help many of us to speak more confidently in meetings, in front of others, regardless the size of the audience, look and act confidently during an interview process, while at the same time feel at ease and happy inside, knowing that we are being true to ourselves every time, everywhere, every day. Be happy, be confident, be yourself! I hope you enjoyed reading this module as much as I enjoyed writing it, and hope that you found it to be very useful for you or someone else that you may know. Please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did
Experiencing the world around us through the lenses of our own eyes With everything moving at extremely high pace around us – technology changes, economic changes around the globe, business, time, we no longer take time to appreciate our present, where we live today. Instead, our minds are focused and hungry to know what will be happening to us in the future – where we are going to live, where we are going to work and how much money we are going to make. IN the meantime, life is happening around us, in the present, only we are too busy to notice everything and everyone around us. But, why? How do we do not understand that we would never return into our present to relive it again? We are so focused on capturing world and people around us on film or digital media, just to review or not review images captured at a later time. However, we miss an opportunity to appreciate the same magical moments at a particular point in time when these moments actually take place. For example, nothing can replace smelling the ocean, hearing its powerful waves hitting the shore, feeling the breeze and salt-infused water drops landing on your face warmed by sun on a beautiful summer day as you are sitting with your toes buried in a warm white sand at the beach. You cannot capture the feeling that you feel inside in the example shared earlier on the digital image or movie. Yes, the picture would certainly look nice, but that unique feeling of actually being there cannot be replicated and relived again. Why? Because, it’s in the past, and instead of us being in the moment, appreciating our present when it was taking place, we were busy focusing on the future – capturing nice looking images to review at a later time. It’s like capturing fireworks on camera. The experience of actually being there in person and seeing and hearing fireworks with your own eyes and ears will not replace or can capture fireworks taking place real-time. We now live in the world where we experience life through the lenses of our smartphones vs. our own eyes. People often fight for the best spot in a room, just so they can capture better pictures and be closer to the action with less people blocking their view. Then, we try to capture everything we can on video, while missing on the experience of actually being there and living through the moment at that point in time. Now, it’s important to note that I am not suggesting that we should stop taking pictures or capturing videos of special and beautiful moments as we go through life. I think that it’s important to capture your memories and review them later in life. However, I think there’s a difference between taking 1-2 pictures or capture few seconds or minutes of a particular event on video, and then living through and experiencing life’s events while being fully present, while being in a moment, versus creating a requirement in your mind to capture everything from beginning to the end on camera, and live in a digital world with real-life passing right by us. Additionally, we can capture our memories and our experiences stored in our mind on paper at any time. Whereby, reading what we’ve captured will recreate an experience that we’ve lived through at a specific point in time, with our mind generating a visual of that experience. This way not only we are able to capture how we felt at a particular moment, but also recreate an exact visual picture that we have experienced through the lenses of our own eyes. Give it a try, live in the present, and appreciate every minute in a real-time. Finding job and career of your dreams and overcome the 'no experience' obstacle and many of us face How many times have you hears a recruiter telling you or someone that you know that you were not selected for a job or that your resume did not meet minimum job requirements, in other words that you did not have necessary experience that potential employer was seeking? I know I have heard that statement or something very similar a few times myself. However, the question that I kept on asking was – “How do I obtain required experience for a career in question if all I keep on hearing is “you do not have necessary experience in this line of work?” And, nobody was willing to help me by pointing me in the right direction and help me to understand what I can do in order to gain such experience and where.
So, the only way I know to start in something new, something I’ve never done before is to start somewhere, position myself somewhere where I can begin learning and in-turn building the experience that was so necessary before I could be considered as a strong candidate for the job and line of work I was seeking. That start was far away from where I ultimately wanted to be professionally, however, that’s what I saw as a solution to the “no experience” roadblock I continued to face for some time. Therefore, starting my journey towards the career I wished for was at the very beginning – getting an entry level job in a filed that I felt was the closest to where I wanted to ultimately get to. I was never afraid of doing a lot of work and putting in 100% of effort I everything that I was assigned or asked to do, on top of my standard job requirements. Any projects? Sign me up. Have I done the things that I had to do in each project I volunteered myself for? Absolutely not, but what I knew was that I can begin to work on a project and learn about specifics and things that I didn’t know in the process from books, online materials and, of course, from people around me – my peers and leadership team. What happened was that I’ve learned a lot in the process, I’ve learned to do things that I’ve never done before, all by starting somewhere and doing my 100% in everything I was doing, while volunteering for any available opportunity where I could, learn a new skill or enhance an existing one. With time I began moving along the experience acquisition journey, getting closer to where I wanted to end up as for my career goals, while learning a log in the process. During my professional journey, I’ve worked in many different lines of work, in many different industries, learning a new skill or skills from each experience, and adding more and more experience checkmarks to my professional resume. After few years, yes, years, I could say with strong degree of confidence and with my professional experience backing up me up, that I not only had received necessary job experience for the job(s) and career I was seeking, I had also acquired few additional professional skills that did and will continue to help me to stand out among tough competition. So, the moral of this story is – it’s possible to reach your career goal in the industry that you wish to work in by starting somewhere, starting at the very beginning in the entry level role/position within the industry you hope to work in one day, and begin investing into your personal and professional growth and development, working hard in everything you do, asking for extra projects to work on and learning new skills in the process. Help is there, all you need to do is ask. Ask your peers, ask your boss, or member of the training and leadership groups. Be hungry for knowledge and information, and don’t hesitate to ask questions when you find yourself stuck. Problem-solving often can be the best teacher when learning something new. Most importantly, do not get discouraged if it takes you a long time or longer than you had expected to find and receive your dream job. It may take few days, few months, or even few years before you get there. Keep working hard, keep seeking opportunities to learn new skills and strengthen your existing set of skills that you may already have. You may not see a clear and obvious path to your goal(s), that’s ok, keep going and have unwavering confidence that you can and will get there by believing in yourself and what you can do, and eventually that path towards your dream job and career will begin to align to your expectations with clear path visible in front of you. |
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