What are the skills that a Product Owner must have

Over my journey as a Product Owner I've been through many challenges, sometimes there were positive outcomes as well as negative, however I've always …

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Celtics’ Grant Williams Reveals What He Considers Key To Success In NBA

Grant Williams has quite a bit of wisdom for an athlete his age. The 21-year-old Celtics rookie has experienced quite a bit of growth since coming to …

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Finding Flow to Escape Stuck-at-Home Captivity!

You're reading Finding Flow to Escape Stuck-at-Home Captivity!, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

"I kind of entered a flow state. I’ve been there before while climbing. You are not thinking ahead. You are just thinking about what is in front of you each second."

Aron Ralston           

Feeling isolated or penned in like most of your fellow humans? While you can’t host a party or travel in this era of social distancing and quarantining, you can escape into your mind. When you find a state of flow, concerns and anxieties evaporate. In this subtle form of transcendence, you can lose yourself in time and not notice that hours have passed. A transcendent experience reboots the mind, reduces stress, helps you lose track of yourself, and stops you from focusing on petty annoyances.Even though you may be confined to close quarters, you can find your own flavor of flow by turning your passions into an activity, such as:

·      Teaching. Share a skill with a family member, inform a friend online, or instruct a student who is struggling to learn virtually.

·      Writing. Jot down ideas in a journal each morning to collect your thoughts and set your goals for the day. Or write your memoirs or a how-to book.

·      Playing music. Dust off your high school clarinet, play the piano or guitar or listen to music and learn about the genre and the artist.

·      Gardening. Weed your garden, feed your plants, dig up leftover seeds and plant some herbs.

·      Create a video. Use a computer or phone and some help from YouTube to create a short video for others or to share in a wider audience.

·      Organize family photos. Put your family photos in order, in a book or by scanning them electronically.

·      Learn. Many people find transcendence when learning something brilliant that lights up the mind. Such simple experiences can melt away isolation, sparking joy and meaning. We find relief and meaning through transcendent states that wash away our sense of self and make us feel more connected to others and the world.

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Judy Holland is the author of HappiNest: Finding Fulfillment When Your Kids Leave Home and host of the HappiNest podcast. Connect with Judy Holland on Twitter @JudyHAuthor, Instagram @judyhollandauthor, Facebook @judyhollandauthor, LinkedIn, YouTube, and visit www.judyhollandauthor.com.

You've read Finding Flow to Escape Stuck-at-Home Captivity!, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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As a CEO I’m often wrong — but that’s okay

Boris is the wise ol’ CEO of TNW who writes a weekly column on everything about being an entrepreneur in tech — from managing stress to embracing awkwardness. You can get his musings straight to your inbox by signing up for his newsletter! Every now and again I’m right about something, and that …

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How This Neuropsychologist Trains 7-Figure Earning Entrepreneurs To Succeed In Uncertain Times

That is what Dr. Shannon Irvine estimates to be the average time between first having an idea and when the subconscious mind becomes triggered to automate it. “In the last two years, we have discovered that thoughts really do create your emotions,” the neuropsychologist tells me. “Thought fires …

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'No One Could Tell Us What To Do': Just How Powerful Were The Spice Girls In The '90s?

'We were successful really quickly... we had a lot of power." With the release of their 1996 debut album, Spice, Spice Girls became the biggest girl …

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This Is What It Feels Like To Be A Fixer When You Need To Fix Yourself

This is what it feels to be a fixer when you really need to fix yourself.

You’re a fixer. You fix everyone else’s problems but your own. You can’t help the people you want to help the most, your family, so you feel the need to help others at all costs. It doesn’t matter that you’re drained or burned out, you’ll STILL do it. It feels great at first, that instant gratification you feel from helping someone else, but it can get exhausting.

You do this for years on end. Fixing, mending, always wondering, “Did I do enough?”, and feeling like you didn’t. Even when people you have helped tell you that you have, you always feel like you could do more because it’s what you do—you’re a fixer. You love fixing, but friends see how stressed you are and often they tell you take some time for yourself. You often don’t, even if you feel in your gut that it’s necessary.

You don’t do it because that would require you to put your wants and needs before someone else’s, and that is something you don’t like doing. You often think that if you work on yourself, you will start to see all the parts of you that are neglected. The things you felt the need to fix for others but didn’t fix for yourself. You don’t like admitting that we need to stop fixing others to fix ourselves.That’s not something you do either. You need to be vulnerable to close friends and family in order for you, the fixer, to fix yourself and see that you deserve to be cared for and loved the same way you do for others.

When you stop fixing everyone all the time and start working on yourself, you might feel unconformable and out of place at first, because for the first time in a long time, you’re not hiding behind helping someone. But in reality, you’re helping the person that needs it most—yourself.

You’ll always feel the need to help others, as that is what a fixer does, but once you start doing the work, feeling and dealing with what you need to in order to finally fix your broken pieces, you’ll feel better.

You need to start saying no when you really can’t help someone, even when you really want to say yes to people because that’s your go-to. You also really need to practice self-care, whatever that looks like for you. Take time to heal yourself—it will be worth it. You will see that once you start doing these things, this is what it will take to finally really fix yourself with help from those around you. This is what it feels like to be a fixer when you really need to fix yourself.

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Coaches! Look, listen and learn | Soccer Coach Weekly

In this podcast Dave Clarke talks to Rick Meana about his coaching education programme that covers philosophy, methodology and how the youth players …

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Read This If Your Inner Voice Is Kind Of An Asshole

You’re too hard on yourself. I know you are, because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t even be reading this right now. Sometimes in our lives we come across sources of negativity that spew hateful thoughts onto us constantly. That negativity comes in the form of people in our lives who shine a light on our flaws, the media-driven image of perfection, and our own imperfect tendency to talk down to ourselves. We take in all of this and let those thoughts manifest into this jerk inside our heads. This jerk tells us when we aren’t good enough, reminds us of our failures, and likes to kick us when we are down.

What really sucks about the whole thing is that we allowed this jerk to move into our heads—in fact, we created it. We run around and beg for people to see us perfectly, desperately trying to prove ourselves to anyone who will give us the time of day. All the while, there is this voice in our heads telling us everything we don’t need to hear.

The truth is that your inner voice can be a massive liar. It is a reflection of what we allow. If we allow someone close to us to point out our mistakes and bring us down, our inner voice thinks they are right. If we allow ourselves to compare our lives to what we see on TV and social media, our inner voice thinks we are inadequate. We train our inner voice daily based on our actions and what we allow ourselves to dwell on. Taking criticism very personally and believing every negative thought about ourselves just feeds negativity into our inner voice. Before we know it, we can’t see the good in ourselves.

It’s important to cut yourself some slack. We have to consistently try to replace negative self-thinking with positive ideas. For example, your inner voice might say, Hey, remember that time you failed in front of everyone? They probably still think about it all the time. Instead, try to turn that thought into something more like, I’m so glad I finally learned my lesson from that. People have probably moved on from thinking about it, so I should too. It’s definitely easier said than done. However, it’s not some overnight switch that will fix everything right away. It’s a gradual change that takes a lot of work and self-awareness.

We also need to take an honest look at the people around us. When you accomplish something, make note of who is happy for you, and I mean genuinely happy. There are always going to be outside influences that disguise themselves as friends. Really, though, if someone isn’t cheering for your success, they’re not your friend. If you allow people into your life that are waiting for you to fail, your inner voice is going to take their uncertainty and turn it into more hateful self-doubt. You are absolutely not doing yourself any favors by keeping fake people close to you, so cut them loose.

Another way we can help our inner voice is by being totally realistic about the world around us. When we see so-called perfection everywhere, dig deeper and realize that not everything is what it seems. That body you are comparing yourself to is likely highly photoshopped. That “perfect” couple you envy might be really great at taking photos, but they might not be great at making each other happy. Stop trying to make yourself measure up to every influence that you see. If a picture is worth a thousand words, most likely at least one of those words is “bullshit”. You are smart enough and capable enough to see through the facade and realize that you are enough. If necessary, cut out extra exposure to all of the nonsense. Social media can be a trigger, so if it is just that for you, limit your time online. Watch something else besides reality TV. Invest more time into yourself and less time into seeing what everyone else is up to.

There is not a single person on the planet that you will speak to more than yourself, even if it’s not out loud. The way we speak to ourselves has a huge impact on our own happiness and success. So with that in mind, let’s try to be nice to ourselves for a change. Despite all the negativity in the world, we can be our own safe haven that builds up more than it tears us down. Mute out all of the noise and know that you are doing just fine, regardless of what anyone else says, even yourself.

* This article was originally published here

19 activities to keep you busy when you're stuck at home

When you buy through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more. The novel coronavirus is affecting everyone in different …

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The Importance Of Shutting Your Thoughts Out

Growing up with anxiety has its pros and cons. Of course, this is me being optimistic. Anxiety can be a nasty thing to deal with. One of the things I did learn with anxiety is the fact that our brains are never silent—like, ever. Even when we sleep, they continue to dwindle about, and that is what allows us to dream. If you’re an anxious person like me, sometimes dreams can turn to nightmares because our subconscious is trying to cope with what is making us uncomfortable or challenging us in our real life.

Dreams tend to be a bit more exaggerated. You can be slightly upset at someone, and at night time, you’ll find a movie inside your mind of you brutally hitting the person over and over again. You wake up scared and confused and the cycle goes on.

One of the most important lessons I have ever learned is how to silence the mind. We can either be our best friend or our worst enemy, tearing ourselves up from the inside out. Scientifically speaking, we only use 10% of the human brain, and it already has that much power over us. Imagine if we used all 100% of it? Our mind has an incredible way of controlling many things, and it can get away with controlling us as well. Before you know it, you feel like a robot, like there’s a small factory of little humans wiring the way you think, act, and walk without letting you override the system.

Even though this sometimes scares people, I tend to look on the bright side of things. We can override the system and become CEOs of our body and mind, as corny as that sounds. Having control over your mind and thoughts means having more control over the outcome of so many things.

When things began to get too heavy for me, I felt like an existing object just floating through space and time. It was not until I learned to silence my mind and control my thoughts that I began to see an improvement in my mental health.

Meditation has become my best friend, and I honestly can’t stress this enough. If you find yourself overwhelmed with thoughts and voices, you should consider befriending it as well. I have never been a yogi or practiced stretching in the morning while saying “ommm,” so when people suggested meditation, I turned it away. A lot. It got to a point where I felt overwhelmed and saturated, so I decided to give it a go. Now it helps me shut off the roars inside my mind and helps me focus on the now, on controlling what is in my reach and moving forward with a fogless mind.

Meditation is simple, honestly. The key to learning how to do this is to be consistent. I learned by listening to YouTube videos and podcasts, but essentially this is what it ties down to.

Get comfortable. Either sit or lay down—whatever makes you feel more relaxed.

Inhale and exhale. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in, then let it out. The point of doing this is to focus on your breathing so your mind does not wander off or start to think about other things that are not important at the time. This is your moment to disconnect completely from the world and just focus on your breathing.

Focus on one noise. If your mind begins to fantasize or take you somewhere else, just take it back to your breathing. In the beginning, I would inhale and exhale loudly so I could focus on that sound and that sound only. I also tend to turn on my A/C as well and focus on that white noise. You can even listen to white noise or waves crashing on Spotify. Just make sure it’s any noise but the one in your mind.

Do it at your own pace. I’m no Deepak Chopra—I don’t meditate for two hours. Bless his soul for having so much peace within him. I simply began with three minutes, then went to five, and now I’m at 12. Dont butcher yourself if it takes you a couple of tries before you can sit still with a silent mind for three minutes. Once you do conquer this quest, definitely pride yourself in it. This helped me realize how much noise was going on in my mind and how it is crucial to control these.

Relax, you’ll be fine. My suggestion is doing this in the morning before you check your phone or even get out of the bed to go to the restroom. It is so easy to unlock your phone to check the time and instead you find yourself bombarded with an overwhelming amount of news that you really don’t want to deal with before your morning coffee. Before you go out into the world, make sure your universe has stopped trembling so you have a solid ground to walk on for the rest of your day.

Breathe. Remind yourself that you are healthy, happy, loved, and have the ability to take control of your life

Given the current circumstances our world is facing, I believe in making our mental health a priority. We must learn to calm ourselves in the face of adversity and the best way to spread positivity is for us to feel energized first. Understand what is going on inside your mind, take control of your thoughts, and learn to lift the weight off your shoulders, one deep breath at a time.

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4 subtle mistakes that are hurting your career

Whether you feel on track with your goals or a little bit stuck, you could be making subtle mistakes that are slowing down your career progress. And …

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Don’t Push Away What God Is Trying To Bless You With

Do you ever find yourself being so comfortable with something that you actually start to become accepting of it, even though it’s not healthy for you at all? You find yourself holding onto it and not wanting to let go because you think what you have is the only good thing you’ll ever receive. You think it’s the best you can get, but that is absolutely false. I must say I find myself doing this sometimes.

Do you ever just find yourself questioning that one really good person in your life? About how God blessed you with someone so pure and kind-hearted. Sometimes you think it’s too much for you or you think you’re not worthy of them and you push them away because you’re comparing it to your previous interactions, friendships, and relationships. You think it will never work out or go as planned because everyone else in the past let you down, but that is the mindset of the enemy, because God gives you exactly what you can handle and he’s trying to give you exactly what you need. Just know that it may start off uncomfortable. It may feel uncommon from your regular routine and past relationships.

It’s something new.

We feel awkward when something new suddenly starts to happen within our lives. We don’t like the feeling of transitioning and transforming. We want new things, new opportunities, and new people in our lives, but how can we do that if we can’t embrace the uncomfortable changes in our lives for something better and new?

Being comfortable is our safe place. It’s home. It’s where we can run to in a place of need or vulnerability. We don’t have to achieve much in this area. We are simply just comfortable and fine where we are.

Being uncomfortable is a threat to us. We become so afraid that we think it’s wrong. We think we don’t deserve it. We think it’s out of our league, when really God is shifting our perspective to receive new things and embrace it in every way possible. Our mind shifts from old to new.

Stepping out of your comfort zone can be fearful at first, but staying in your comfort zone forever will destroy you and keep you boxed into a mentality you were supposed to outgrow 20 years ago.

Holding onto what’s comfortable feels safe—sometimes too safe. It’s harming you more than it’s keeping you safe. It’s keeping your mindset stagnant and settled into what feels right but is actually wrong and bad for you.

Free yourself from it. Whatever it is, let it go and release yourself from it. You’ll feel so much more alive.

Sometimes holding onto what feels uncomfortable eventually gets released because it feels weird and unusual. It feels rare. It confuses you and makes you feel like you deserve less when God wants to give you more. It feels wrong, but it’s so right, and you’ll slowly start to see that if you just hold on.

Don’t push away what God is trying to bless you with, and don’t welcome in what God is trying to keep you from.

Be that risk taker that takes new heights and tries new things. You don’t have to jump off a skyscraper or a building to be a true risk taker. You just have to be okay with experiencing new things and embracing uncomfortable changes throughout the different seasons of your life.

You have to be willing to accept it and not deny it. You have to be willing to endure the truth and carry that truth in your heart knowing that you deserve more and that you are capable of receiving new things.

I believe in you. Spread love and be great.

* This article was originally published here

5 uplifting self-development books to work on your mindset while you're stuck at home

If you asked us a few months ago, we would have been thrilled to hear that in a few weeks we’d all be working from home until the spring, but along …

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Council Post: Luck Has Nothing To Do With Success

We often get jealous of other people's luck and tend to compare ourselves to them only to confirm our inferiority. But what do luck or fate have to do with our life? Are they considered a significant component of happiness? I am sorry to break the news to you, but they're not! What comes into our …

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Council Post: The Key To Success: Strategy

It can be said that success is easy. When you do the things you know you need to do, success is the outcome. It sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? Yet, so many professionals struggle with attaining (and also keeping) success. Here are some tools to help you not just achieve success, but also create a …

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Filmmaking Lessons You'll Wish You Learned Early On

You're going to make mistakes as a new filmmaker, but these ones are some real doozies. In the world of filmmaking, only one thing is assured—mistakes …

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Council Post: Five Rules For Helping To Achieve Sustainable Growth

I've never wanted to lead a "big dumb" company plagued by bureaucracy and slow decision-making. So when I joined founder Steve Francis to build our business back in 2011, we agreed the company would always be one that is in touch with its customers and whose employees look forward to coming to work. …

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City of San Antonio and Luminaria Foundation to Offer Grants to Artists During Coronavirus Shutdown

San Antonio’s Department of Arts & Culture and the Luminaria Artist Foundation launched a program Wednesday to provide grants to local artists to help …

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Herstory: Karen Mendoza

EQUIPPED with decades of industry experience and an ever-burning drive to excel, these exemplary women have rightfully earned their stripes. They …

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This Is a Great Time to Get Really Into Crystals

In times of crisis, even skeptics can find comfort in magical thinking It’s a quirk of the human psyche that when things get stressful, we’re more …

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Experience Is The Best Teacher: How To Make Successes Out Of Your Failures

Failing is nothing to be ashamed of. The more you fail, the better you'll get. The faster you stumble, the sooner you'll learn to get up. You're reading Entrepreneur Middle East, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. “What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Iterate. …

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Why you’re more likely to fail in business if you don’t continually learn

Failure is something that we all experience. Regardless of career, everyone faces times when they make mistakes and don’t achieve planned …

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Four Ways That Entrepreneurship Is Like Hitting a Major League Fastball

Major league baseball and entrepreneurship: Two things you don’t usually think of as being comparable. However, working with many first- or …

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One of the greatest lessons Warren Buffett taught his son: 'Wealth ethic' isn't the same as 'work ethic'

What makes Warren Buffett so different from most others? That's the billion-dollar question. According to his son Peter Buffett, it's that he truly …

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How to start a good conversation with anyone

Have you mastered the art of starting an interesting conversation with anyone, anywhere, anytime? It’s one of the best life skills to have, as it can …

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Read This When You’ve Lost All Hope

It’s hard to see the light and the joy when you’ve lost all hope.

Life happens—the world isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. You feel like you have been torn down yet again.

It becomes tiring and draining to constantly pick yourself back up again and again. It’s hard to understand what you’ve done to deserve the pain you’re going through, the agony that’s breaking your heart, and the thoughts that are now in your mind.

You feel worthless; you feel lost. You feel insignificant, and you feel like there is nothing to bring you out of this dark place, that no one understands what you’re going through.

It becomes exhausting trying so hard and to see a way out of the pain. You feel like your family and friends are fed up with you and wish you’d put a smile on your face and get over the issue that you’re dealing with. They want to help; they’ve tried, but you can’t feel or understand what they’re saying. You’re too occupied by your feelings of hurt. The prospect of more years of feeling like this feels painful.

Why should you keep going?

Because, as I said at the start, life happens, and life moves on, and time is the greatest healer. It sounds cliché, but you have all the time in the world. There is no deadline on feeling better or becoming the person you want to become.

You just have to trust that the place you’re in right now is teaching you a lesson. You have to believe that your pain has made you a stronger better version of yourself to take on the world.

You can’t give up. You are not lost. You are here and exactly where you are supposed to be.

It’s easy to believe that giving up is the right and the easy option, but you have so many people that love you and want you happy. The family and friends you think are fed up with you are just worried; they want to see that smile because they miss that smile. They miss their ray of sunshine.

Be present.

Please don’t think of the past, because you can’t change it. Don’t think of the future—it’s not yet happened. Enjoy this moment you are in right now and make that change:

Go do that workout, go text that boy, go hug your parents, go tell your friends you’re thankful and you love them.

Appreciate all the small things!

The bed you lie in, the food you eat, the eyes you see through, the hair you brush. Just look around you and be thankful for your life and the things that you have right this minute.

In this moment, you will realize how lucky you truly are. Always remember: You’ve got this.

* This article was originally published here