1. Meditation. Focusing on the present moment eases mental stress and this has been proven studies after studies of brain scans of people undergoing meditation and mindfulness practices. With as little as ten minutes of mindfulness and meditation each day, you can re-center your focus, reduce cortisol levels and improve your overall mood.
2. Optimism. I am referring to the “healthy” kind of optimism, and not the toxic one. Yes, there is toxic optimism and that happens when we do not see facts and valid risks. Healthy optimism sees the good in every challenge but also does not dispel real risks and address them in a timely manner.
3. Intuition. In the book, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, he discussed how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in the blink of an eye – that actually aren’t as simple as they seem. The book dug deeper into the science of how our brains actually work and explained that intuition has had a bad rap because we have been conditioned to have a bias over rational and “methodic” thinking, and the millions of years of evolution of the human brain has not been leveraged to our advantage.
4. Carpe Diem. Seize the day. This popular saying was the tagline for the film: Dead Poets Society. John Keating, an English teacher in that story, used unorthodox teaching methods and encouraged his students to make their lives extraordinary, a sentiment he summarizes with the Latin expression carpe diem, meaning “seize the day.” I view this saying with a slightly different interpretation, in that, to seize the day is also to live one day at a time. To seize the day is to live each day fully, knowing that tomorrow is not promised. To seize the day is to be fully present, to learn from the past and prepare for the future, but more importantly, to make every day really count.
5. Treat yourself as your biggest client. Either you are an employee or a business owner, you will always have clients. Clients are people who receive and pay for your products or services. We try to please clients as much as we could. If you think about it, we must be our biggest clients. Why? Because without YOU, your clients also wouldn’t have a product or service. Don’t forget your own well-being. If you are tired, rest. If you feel unhappy, take time to improve your situation. Take care of yourself as much as you take care of your clients!
Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash
