5 Questions to Ask Yourself if You Want to Become a Successful Entrepreneur

Creativity, innovation, and leadership — these are common entrepreneurial traits. Many people believe that entrepreneurial success is the result of …

* This article was originally published here

When You’re Going Through Changes In Your Life, Remember This

Whether it marks the end of an era, a decade, a term or a chapter, coming to the end of something that once was and will no longer be is not just a daunting and strangely new reality, but it’s also something that gives us so much liberation and appreciation for what once was.

We’ve all had our world flipped and changed in one way or another over these past few months, and even though some of it has been bad, we shouldn’t hold the mindset that it will be bad forever.

As we continue down this journey into the unknown of change, we need to learn how to embrace the newness that comes with it. Instead of resenting change, we need to acknowledge that it is happening around us—that our world is changing, and it will keep on changing.

Change doesn’t care whether you want it or not or if you’re ready or comfortable enough to accept it. It happens without your consent. It’s the seasons that change and the birds that fly south; it stays as constant as the sea current and the winds across the deserts.

Some of us change jobs or homes to find new ways to survive and cope with our reality, while others say goodbye to lives lived in cities to greet a new “normal” somewhere else.

The reality is that we’re all closing chapters in our lives, and even though closing them means that what lies ahead is new and uncertain and sometimes a little scary, it doesn’t mean that it has to be all bad. Without the change of wind, the flowers won’t grow; without the change of sea current, sea life won’t survive.

Change is happening and it’s all around us, from the changing of the colors of the leaves to the changing of homes to the changing of lifestyles. It’s a natural part of life and something we sometimes have no control over.

What we do have control over is the way we react to the change around us. How we choose to look at it and how we choose to process it. We always have this choice, and this is where we have power over the situations we find ourselves in.

We can choose to find the positives in the things that change around us, just like we can choose the positives in our everyday lives. For me, just being able to write this is a positive; for others, it’s being able to walk outside or drink a cup of coffee with a friend.

Remember that just because things are changing and shifting to a new normal doesn’t mean that it’s all bad. Embrace the changes, but most importantly, embrace it with acceptance.

* This article was originally published here

Read This If You’re Questioning Your Entire Existence

Yes, everyone lives radically different lives, and to make it even more complex, our brains constantly change with the people we meet, the life experiences we have, the books we read, the movies we watch, the parts of the world we see, so on.

But, I have come to realize that no matter how conspicuous data points, statistics and footage prove to be true, I am pulled in different directions based on the overload of knowledge sharing. I constantly find myself in the space between each side: the gray area. This gray area, however, is where I find my empathy, my compassion, my truth.

I encourage you to truly understand your gray area, your space between, your instrumental bridge, your pause. In this gray piece of real estate, your ego is tampered with, your foundational views about life may seem like a nuance, you might question every ideology you have ever known, your existence could feel like a hoax, but I want you to know — it is okay to feel confusion, it is okay to feel lost.

Don’t ignore this discomfort but instead, welcome it. By ignoring and patching up all the uncertainty, you are ripping parts of you that will actually help clarify your doubts. By choosing to resist yourself from entering a door you’ve never known, just for the sake of your comfort, you slowly replace your body with numbness resulting in a conditional outlook of life. You force yourself to believe this is the truth, all because it feels safe.

Trust me, you would much rather want to feel something real, even if it is pain and sorrow, than a love that is simply conditional, a love that is based on terms of judgement, of rules, of expectations.

If you’re questioning beliefs in your own home, within yourself, within your world, keep on investigating. Keep on exploring, keep on making strides, because knowledge is power, only if you put it to action. But through your journey, remember to maintain your inner peace and compassion, as this energy will translate outwardly — powerfully.

It may all seem like a jumble at the moment, but this cryptic melting pot of dynamic beliefs and emotions that differ amongst all of our brains actually keeps us in harmony with our entire planet. We continue to grow together. We continue to build together. Our insatiable gray area’s encourage us to find and live our truths by giving us the courage to crack open our closed-off minds, allowing us to make edits to our current stories as we become more conscious of ourselves and others.

It’s not a coincidence that from the rivers spilled across the sequoia filled terrains, to the nightingale’s chirping right outside your home, to the Maasai’s keeping their livestock afloat in Masai Mara – we breathe the same oxygen and see the same illuminating rays of sunlight that light up our entire world, reminding us that we are all connected under the same Pale Blue Dot, collectively.

* This article was originally published here

6 Ways To Live A More Positive Life

In a world where a great deal of people believe that negative thinking is a more realistic approach to life than positive thinking, it’s no wonder that our lives have become so negative.

Try to tell somebody that is facing a major challenge they should reassess their values and that no matter what happens, it’s going to benefit their life and see how they react. 

It’s very unlikely that they’ll just agree and comply.

Yet, adversity is not only good because it adds uncertainty and surprise to our lives, which is the ingredient that makes life interesting, but it is also the best way for us to grow as human beings - challenges make us stronger persons.

Unfortunately, most people are completely unfamiliar with the concept of positivity and belittle it. It simply isn’t realistic for them. They have been conditioned their whole lives to believe in ‘negativity’.

The fact of the matter is that reality is whatever you want it to be: it can be a beautiful, enriching dream.. or a dreadful, sinister nightmare.

Let’s talk about 6 ways that can make your life more positive:

1 - Feed Your Mind With Positivity

Depending on your past experiences and current environment, you might have been fed a lot of unwarranted negativity throughout your life: putdowns, threats, cursing, mocking.. which has significantly shaped your view of the world.

In order to change the way your now perceive the world, it’s now time to do the opposite: feed your mind with positivity, all day long! Anything will do, as long as it empowers you.

I’m particularly fond of these kind of quotes: read as many as you can!

2 - Cut Negative People Out Of Your Life

Needless to say, the biggest resistance you will ever meet in your journey of living a more positive life will be all the people around you that are going to try to drag you down.

It can be difficult to cut ties with some people who may hold a very important position in your life - such as friends or family members, but in order to make a big difference in your life, you need to make big changes! Be merciless and do not tolerate any type of toxic negativity in your life. 

3- Stop Watching The News

When I tell this to people, I always hear the same answer: ‘’But I got to stay informed!’’

Do you necessarily have to know everything that happens on this planet to ‘stay informed’? Of course, closing your ears and withdrawing from every negative situation isn’t the way to go either. There must be a balance.

For instance, you might view your finances as ‘negative’ and in that case, I would strongly recommend that you do pay attention to it. All negativity isn’t toxic. It can be a good indicator that something is going on that you need to work out, as demonstrated in the example above.

However, do you really need to know that this 23 year-old girl got beaten up, raped and killed in this third world country? Of course not. These are the kind of information that contaminate your mind and fill it with negativity.

4- Focus On The Right Things

No wonder so many people feel stressed out of their mind and negative when they spend so much time focusing on negative events that happened in their lives or in the world.

Once again, it doesn’t mean that you should ignore challenges and negative events in your life. Negativity is not necessarily bad depending on how you use it.

Sometimes, what appears to be a negative event might just be a blessing in disguise that has the potential to change your entire life.

If you can control your focus, your whole perception and beliefs about life will change.

5 -Find The Good In Everything

If some people lost the usage of their legs, sight and even body and yet still managed to find a way to create a positive meaning around these events, why couldn’t you?

The truth is that we all have the power to find the good in any situation, but few of us really make that choice.

When facing adversity, the number one question I always ask myself is: ‘’What’s great about this?’’ No matter what happens, there is always two ways to look at a situation: either in a positive way, or in a negative way.

6 - Change Your Beliefs

Our beliefs shape our reality. If you believe that life is a gift and that everything that happens to you has been strategically placed by your creator so that you can learn something valuable, can you see how you’ll react completely differently than someone who believes that life is a struggle?

The best way to change a belief is to question that belief over and over again. Is this belief really true? Are there people out there who are living proof that this belief is not true?

Add as many references as you can to reinforce your belief that this belief isn’t true.

In Conclusion

There are many ways to make your life more positive. However, knowledge alone is not power. True power is the ability to implement what you’ve learned. Are you ready to make a change in your life?

The post 6 Ways To Live A More Positive Life appeared first on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement.

* This article was originally published here

This Is The Life Lesson You Deserve To Learn During Each Year Of Your 20s

Everything is going to pass in a hazy blur at 20; you will be treated as a fragile, uncoordinated kid one moment, then allowed to do things on your own the next. Welcome to young adulthood, where a free trial is not an option. But don’t worry, it gets better.

At 21, you’ll get a shot to freedom and feel a different kind of scary as you consider moving out of your town and into a new city to find your place, to find yourself. It’s daunting, but no one ever made it in this life by playing safe. But if you continue reading, you’ll know you will get through this; it’s just a phase after all.

You’re going to live all the fantasies in your mind. You’re going to go to every party you get invited to, drink a little too much, break the things you love so much, and wake up with a hangover. But it’s alright. The world will not judge you. After all, you’re just feeling 22.

At 23, you’ll think you have things figured out. But things are just going to start to change—your body, your state of mind, even your perceptions in life. You’re going to lose your mind, tell yourself it’s not your fault, say things you did not mean, take them all back, then realize it’s all just you blowing things out of proportion like you always do.

At 24, you’re going to break rules. And you are going to break a lot! More than the number you broke in high school and college. Because life will somehow force you to make a litany of rules, which you are going to break one way or another anyway. And this comes as a result of humans inherently not wanting to be simplified or generalized. There’s just no way for us to strictly adhere to rules. So do not sweat yourself, but choose which rules to break every once in a while.

At 25, Grey’s Anatomy will make you cry. And it’s going to make you cry a lot! When you reach adolescence, you’ll find that you already have gone through so many challenges. You even won at some of them, and you deserve a pat on the back for coming out stronger and wiser. But one thing you will never be immune to is the emotional traces those battles have left you with. Watching shows like Grey’s Anatomy will remind you of those, as if Meredith Grey took pages from your book. And those words will hit you to the core and will make you cry just a little bit too much. Just know crying is not an indication of weakness; it’s a reminder of how strong and mature you have been for so long.

At 26, you either stay or sashay away. The thing about RuPaul’s Drag Race is you will be reminded to be strong because life is full of shady people with schemes lurking in the bushes, ready to strike when the time has come. You will be reminded to pick your messy self up, face the mirror, put on your own kind of drag, and get back up there! No one is going to root for you but yourself. RuPaul always says, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to love somebody else?” And it’s true. Point being, life is never fair and never too just. But you will have your tribe to depend on and rely upon when things go wrong; people who will cheer you up when things take a positive turn.

At 27, you’ll learn that you win some, you lose some. Notice how you loved to read books and how you can’t seem to put one down. At 8 o’clock, you said that chapter 10 was the last for the day. But when the clock ticked to midnight, you were at chapter God-knows-what. Or remember when you used to binge-watch a TV series and would say, “Last episode”? You used to love to sing, dance, and explore the great outdoors, but all of a sudden you don’t. Doing those things do not make sense anymore in the same way everything else does. Let me tell you this: It’s practically normal. Nothing is wrong with you. This is just part of the process called change. You are changing and you have to embrace life from a different perspective. See this as an opportunity to learn different skill sets.

At 28, you should learn quality is better than quantity. Sound cliché? It should. But it remains to be true. You’ll question yourself and your entire belief system once you start losing some people in your life, but change should be embraced. The emotional toll can be all-consuming, but it’s also something that you will get over and be thankful for. It’s tough to lose people, and you should learn to value and treasure those who chose to stay.

At 29, late afternoons will make you cry. You’re going to cry for making a wrong decision. And that’s okay. You’re going to call your mom and try to sound happy while holding back tears that are threatening to spill. And that’s okay. You’re going to call your friends and tell them how you got your heart broken again, explaining while trying to steady your voice. And that’s okay. You’re going to feel alone and empty after a day at work and cry because you were scolded by your boss; you are no longer sure why you still do what you do. And that’s okay. Cry if you must. Cry if you should—it helps ease the pain.

Your 20s will not define the rest of your life. It’s the perfect time to make mistakes, be rebellious, make soft and hard choices, get your heart broken, champion your fears, succeed, fail, learn from failures, step into the daylight, and cry. No, your 20s will not define your future, but they will serve as the foundation of your next decade. How well or bad you do, that’s up to you. After all, your 20s is just a crazy roller coaster ride.

* This article was originally published here

Council Post: 10 Critical Soft Skills For Communicators

Success isn't just due to how well you use your innate skills. A much-overlooked facet of success is the use of soft skills. As soft skills are an essential part of dealing with other employees within the workplace, communicators need to harness these skills and fine-tune them if they want to …

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Achieving Career Goals Is More Art than Science

The business world fixates on goal setting. Performance reviews revolve around setting and meeting annual goals. Salespeople and managers continually strive to hit goals and meet margins, and every organization sets goals that it tries to achieve to prove its viability.

As individuals, we similarly set goals for our professional lives. We aspire to climb the ranks within our organizations or industry, and hope to progressively attain loftier titles and larger paychecks. But is the same formulaic, figures-driven strategy of goal setting and attainment used by employers actually working to advance our own careers and what we hope to achieve in life? And how often do we achieve what we set out to accomplish?

According to the Statistic Brain Research Institute, 92 percent of people never reach their goals. Lack of motivation, fear, self-doubt and setting unattainable goals are among the hurdles that keep most of us from realizing our dreams.

But there’s another, more empowering way to go about setting and achieving our goals. For most, we want financial success. Yet achieving financial success, or any other kind of success, should not require stress and struggle. We shouldn’t have to sacrifice job satisfaction, health and happiness in pursuit of our goal. This approach actually blocks success. Struggle can actually stop solutions, opportunities and possibilities from coming our way.

We set goals and develop dreams because we believe that achieving them will bring us some level of fulfillment. But we actually have the order backwards. The cornerstone of achieving our goals and, consequently, a successful life is based on our level of feeling joy in our careers now, not the other way around. Instead, we need to tap into our intuition to discern what is best to pursue in our lives and what existing positive qualities we can enhance to help bring our dreams to fruition.

Use these promising strategies to go after, and actually achieve, your goals:

1. Set goals that you can believe in. Give yourself time for introspection and determining what you really want in your career and life. Yes, it can be grandiose, such as “I want to be a millionaire.” But if you don’t believe that it’s possible, and the thought of pursuing it feels daunting, try stepping up the rungs of the ladder toward achievement slowly with thoughts that feel more comfortable. For example, you can encourage yourself by thinking, “I have the potential to do great work,” or “I know people who were in the same place I am who became millionaires. I’m on the right track and eager to do more.” 

2. Understand the “why” behind your goals. Instead of thinking about how you’re going to achieve your goals, think about and write down why you want to achieve them. This is one of the most important parts that nobody takes time to examine. Keep peeling back the layers and boil your answers all the way down to the feeling place. When you identify the feeling that you’re after, think about how you will feel when the goal is achieved. Imagine and get the feeling as if you’ve already achieved it. Inspirational author Esther Hicks said, “When you talk about what you want and why you want it, there’s usually less resistance within you than when you talk about what you want and how you’re going to get it.” 

3. Pursue goals that energize you. Sit with the idea of your goal. Ask yourself, does the goal make you feel expansive in your energy, or do you feel constricted? When you feel expansive, then you’re open to allowing wonderful possibilities and opportunities to come to you. When you desire to be different or better than you are, you create in your mind the ideal of what you’d like to be and then live with the thoughts and feelings as if they’re already your reality. When this becomes your dominant feeling, positive results are inevitable.

4. Imagine the life you want as already a reality. Stating your goals in the “now” will trigger thoughts and feelings in your mind and body that better prepare you for having those actually be your current reality. For example, instead of saying, “I want to quit smoking,” you say, “I’m a nonsmoker.” Explore what that feels like. By getting the exhilarating feeling as if your goal has already been achieved, you change your energy and attract what you want into your life. 

5. Remain flexible in pursuing your goals. Formulate action steps that you can take toward achieving your goals, and plan to take action each day. Still, don’t rigidly stick to how to achieve the goal. Be open to any ideas for positive, forward-moving action that may even lead you toward other, even better, ideas. 

6. Roll with the setbacks. You may have heard stories about how Oprah was told by her earlier employer that she wasn’t fit for TV, or how Steve Jobs was fired from Apple only to later have his company NexT be acquired by Apple and later going on to create the iPod, iPhone and iPad technology. Their setbacks actually made them stronger. All of our challenges, struggles and failures are actually gifts to teach us how to become wiser and better version of ourselves. Learn to trust the big picture of your life and to flow through upsets and challenges with more ease and grace and less stress and struggle. 

Strive to find joy in the pursuit of your goals. Allow experiences to unfold and delight you, and avoid hanging on to a narrow path or point of view. With this approach, your reality may turn out even better than you’ve dreamed.

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Janet McKee is a speaker, bestselling author, wellness expert and CEO of SanaView. She is one of only 200 elite Certified High Performance Coaches(TM) in the world and inducted as a member of the National Association of Experts, Writers and Speakers. She is author of the new book, Stressless Success: The Surprising Secrets to a Life of Passion, Purpose and Prosperity (Laurel Mountain Publishing, Feb. 1, 2020). Janet created the acclaimed Accelerated High Performance Program and the emPower3 Leadership + Lifestyle Retreats to empower others to break negative patterns and achieve greater success. Learn more at www.janetmckee.com.

The post Achieving Career Goals Is More Art than Science appeared first on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement.

* This article was originally published here