Can you call yourself an optimistic person?  Are you a positive thinker?  Do you believe that you can shape your own future and command your happiness?  You don’t have to be at the mercies of fate.  Your success in life and your happiness starts with having a positive mindset.  When you think positively, you become the master of your life.  You own your dreams, actions, happiness, and ultimately, your success.  When you are a positive thinker, it doesn’t mean that you deny the existence of misery, failures, or problems.  You just have an optimistic outlook.

Who is a Positive Thinker?

When you are a positive thinker, you believe that you can overcome any crisis that life throws your way.  People who tend to think positively accept their shortcomings but know how to channel their weaknesses to something positive.  They do not let their weaknesses get the best of them.  Instead, they make an effort to focus on their strengths.  They also try to remedy their weaknesses.  This attitude comes with a positive mindset.  A positive thinker knows that if he lets despair and helplessness get the best of them, they will lose.

How to Start Thinking Positively

Once you start thinking positively, you start a habit.  You then equip yourself with the capacity to become successful.  How do you start thinking positively?

a.    Decide to have a positive mindset.  This means committing to a positive attitude, controlling negativity, and deciding to have a control on how you react to challenges and setbacks that life throws your way.

b.    Surround yourself with positive people.  Avoid those who exude negativity.

c.    Focus on your strengths.  How you perceive yourself consciously will affect your subconscious, and this will ultimately reflect in your actions.

d.    Be open-minded.  Do not allow yourself to be put in a box.  If you do this, you limit and restrict possibilities.

e.    Strengthen your knowledge and skills.  When you acquire more and more knowledge, you become more confident.  The more confident you are about your abilities, the more positive you are about your life.

f.    Have long-term goals.  When you have goals, you have direction.  You do not allow yourself to be defeated easily by challenges and setbacks.

g.    Do not limit yourself.  Believe that you are capable of reaching immeasurable heights.  Believe that you have capabilities that you do not even know you possess.

h.    Have faith.  Do not ever lose your faith in yourself.

i.    Constantly motivate yourself.

j.    Keep yourself healthy.

Is the office trying to kill you by boredom?  Do you have nothing to do on a beautiful summer morning?  You want to do something that could augment your income part time?  The management suddenly wants you to operate new software, a new product or implement a new process?  You could learn new skills to increase your productivity or maximize the use of your spare time.

Of course, learning something is not easy for many people like me who tend to settle on things that I could do better.  You need to exert effort and spend time to learn things as it happen.  While learning something can be quite fun, you should not waste part of your time, money, and effort in vain.  You should learn something new the ‘right’ way, i.e., forging what you know to attain what you want to learn.

Learn by using what you know

Learning can be a lot more fun and easier if you will try to learn by using what you already know.  If you’re fond of cooking, why not go up another level and learn to bake some cakes and pastries?  It would be lot more fun if you’re not messing up the entire kitchen.  If you know some techniques with some thread, why not try to learn some pattern making technique, like burlap and crochet?  With some basic knowledge on the things you do, you can forget about the hassles of learning it first and concentrate and doing it best.

Familiarity with gadgets and intricacies that comes with a certain skill would come handy if you want to learn another skill.  This is especially true for technical and scientific skills like carpentry and computer programming.  Save yourself from waste of time and save yourself from unwanted accidents by working on something that you can do without injuring yourself.

Do Not Be Afraid

Ultimately, learning something should give you the results you intended.  If you want to learn some bit of carpentry, you should learn how to make simple carpentry projects and not how sharp the saw would cut your fingers.  When you want to learn how to make cakes, you should learn how to mix a good batter, not how to spoil a good one.  By using a skill you have learned before, you can eliminate these and go straight on what is important.  Its important to make sure that learning process, while maybe difficult, is productive.

You will notice with most successful people that the one thing they have in common is that they are very passionate with what they do.  While the meaning of success is relative, it still does include the fact that people who consider themselves successful, regardless of material wealth, have a strong love for their chosen careers.

They are happy doing what they do, and because they have fun, it’s almost like not going to work at all; hence, work becomes a happy place despite the occasional pressures.  When work becomes a less stressful place, you will also notice that you and everyone you work with become more productive.

Less Becomes More

You’ve probably worked for or been around people who seem to work 24/7 and still end up not accomplishing much or failing at it that they always go back to square one, and the process starts all over again.

It seems that no matter how much hard work they put in, targets are not met, deadlines are not delivered, and they end up with more losses than profits.  However, people who are less stressed at work know how to designate.

Even if you’re boss or a regular staff member, designating or delegating certain tasks makes everything simpler and easier.  You not only end up doing less and avoiding overworking yourself, but you also have more time to do recreational activities.  After all, all work and no play is bad for your health.

Good Working Environment

One other thing that contributes greatly to people’s accomplishing more at work, or simply put, being more productive is a good working environment – literally, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.

If your place of work is messy, hot, and such, and it makes you uncomfortable staying there for at least eight hours per day, chances are, you’re going because you need the money and nothing more, or you’re about to quit.

However, a clean and aesthetically pleasing work place is not enough.  A good working environment is more importantly dependent on the kind of people you work with and their characters.

A high-paying job isn’t worth much if you end up hating your boss at the end of the day, or you dread getting up each morning to go to work.  This will not only result in making you an unhappy employee, but there’s also a very big chance that you will not be as productive and creative as you should be.

In the end, to accomplish more without exerting yourself to your limits, your work and the work place should be something that you love.

Do you feel that you are fulfilling your potential?  Are you satisfied with your job and feels like that is what you deserve?  Or do you think that you deserve better?  What you believe about yourself and your capabilities plays a huge role in your success.  If you limit yourself, then you will not try to venture out of the box that you have placed yourself into.  If you think that you can accomplish more, then you would be geared towards accomplishing what you believe you can still achieve.  Most of the time, people who believe that they have more to offer would end up proving the same thing to the world.

Factors to Consider When Determining Your Potential

You cannot sell yourself short.  However, you cannot be too confident.  A fish cannot fly, no matter how much it believes it can.  It can find ways definitely, and perhaps it can do the impossible and succeed, but it takes time.  So, you should be honest with yourself when you are analyzing your potentials.  The first factor that you have to consider is your options.  What are your options?  What is available to you?  Can you create these options?  The second thing that you have to consider is your strengths and weaknesses.  Be honest as much as possible when you analyze your capabilities and limitations.  Finally, the last factor that you have to consider is the resources available to you.  Do you have the things that you might need in order to pursue your potentials?

Tips on How to Fulfill Your Potential

After you have carefully analyzed the factors that would affect your potentials, you can then proceed to making the necessary changes in your life in order to allow room for growth and maximization of your full potential.  Here are some tips on how to fulfill these potentials:

a.               Start with wherever you are.  Do not waste time lamenting on what you think you need or what should be different. Instead, focus on what you have and grow from there.

b.                Focus on your strengths rather than on weaknesses, your success rather than your failure, what you’ve accomplished rather than what you wished you could have done.

c.                 Always make a conscious and wise choice.  Do not shirk from mistakes.  Learn from them.

d.            Have an open mind.  Do not limit yourself to what you believe things should be. Admit to mistakes and open your mind to possibilities.

e.                  Learn to improvise.

Do you feel tired all the time?  Are you not getting enough fuel to go about all your activities for the day?  Well, you might be losing your energy and not utilizing it properly.  If you are the type of person who wants to sit on the couch all day and do nothing, you might be in the brink of doing the same things again and again.

Sleep Well 

If you want to boost your energy and want to feel alive and vibrant, then don’t be lazy and get that sleeping body to the test.

In order to get more energy for your body, you must do everything the right way.  What are the things you can do to boost your energy?  Getting enough sleep is important to store more energy to be utilized for the next day.  A normal adult should sleep at least six to eight hours a day.  Lack of sleep will make you unfocused and irritable.

Eat Well 

You should also eat right as it will give you more energy.  By eating foods with more calories and more fats, it will weigh you down, and you will feel heavy and tired like you don’t want to get out of your bed.  Eat a healthy diet of carbohydrates, proteins, vegetables, and fruits.  You should always have a full breakfast to get you started for the day and never eat junk foods.  Don’t forget to hydrate yourself.  Water will help cleanse your body and get rid of toxins that make your body weak.

Exercise Well

But eating right is not enough to get more energy.  You also need to burn those fats by exercising regularly.  Exercise will improve your circulation, stretch your muscles, and make you feel like a million bucks. 

Relax with Music and Meditation

Music will have a great effect in the physical and psychological aspect of your body.  Listening to music will stimulate your senses as well as your brain to function well.  You can use music while working to give you more focus.  Don’t listen to music that is too loud as it can cause you to lose your concentration. 

Don’t forget to fill your spiritual needs.  Take time to meditate.  You can release all the stresses in your body through meditation.

The ability to give your body more energy will depend on you.  You should have the discipline to do all these things in order for you to become stronger and feel better each day.  Don’t go to a battle unprepared!  Life is full of obstacles, so you should prepare yourself by energizing your body.

Whether you’re a student starting out or a practiced professional, the message that you probably get from the rest of the world sounds something like “Achieve everything.”  Day in and day out, you are bombarded with images of men and women from all over the globe, people who seem to have everything: prestige, position, and of course, money.  And it’s almost certain that, at one point or another, you wanted deep down to be like them.  But believe it or not, your hurried and harried lifestyle in today’s tech-connected and frenetic world might not lead you to the comfortable lifestyle of your dreams. 

Priorities, Priorities

Have you ever wished that you could be in two places at once?

People today want to do too much.  You have to be at a meeting by this time, but only after a family engagement two hours prior, and you have to leave by a certain time to make it to a social gathering afterwards.  All too often, the different aspects of your life – your career, your family, and your social life – have time demands that overlap each other.  At those times, you probably try to be in as many events as possible – to make the most of the time, supposedly – and, thus, feel worn and tired by the end of the day.

Instead of gathering all your appointments and then rushing through as many of them as possible in the course of a day, prioritize.  Set which ones precedence over another.  For example, you could set family reunions ahead of business functions, which could then be set over social gatherings.  Sure, you might not be able to get to as many events as with the other paradigm, but you get to do more and enjoy more at each event because you’re not so pressured with time.

A Change of Pace

The statement that 24 hours is insufficient in a day is a common complaint all over the world.  You’re not the only person who wants to do more, and so you’re not the only person rushing from one meeting to the next, reading papers and writing reports frantically in between.  You probably also bring some work home so you could supposedly do more for the day.  However, a very thin line exists between ‘hardworking’ and ‘overworked.’

Make sure that you take some time to slow down in each day.  Set a certain period, such as the hour immediately after you arrive home from work, to be your time for rest and quality time with the family.  Don’t let your days become just a single continuous blur of work just so you could earn more income because that sort of lifestyle could actually end up endangering your life with stress-related conditions.  Many studies have also proven that you’re sharper and more efficient at work when you take half an hour to an hour’s rest a couple of times throughout the day.  And you can bring that all the way to the boss.

One of the problems that working from home has, is that it is very difficult to differentiate between your personal life and work. It is very easy to get distracted by other members of the family. People at home, look at you as if you are off from work or as if you are not busy. They will ask for a lift or maybe to help them out in cooking, doing the washing or do an errand for them.

On the other hand, working from home might mean that you go to the other extreme and work from early in the morning till very late. When working from home, your office is the room next to your bedroom. There are no opening and closing hours, no colleague to distract you… just working from very early till very late from Monday till Sunday. It’s not easy to strike a balance between the two extremes. The following are some points that might help you benefit from the advantages that working from home has to offer whilst making sure that you don’t over do it.

Define your workspace

This can be easily done, by setting up your office in a separate room. You can maybe stick up a note saying “Office” and maybe the opening and closing hours (joking apart). Such seperation helps you to make the difference between your personal life and your working life. It will help other members of the family to differentiate when you are working and when you are not.

Set schedule

As I have stated above, set the opening and closing hours. Don’t wake up late because there will be no grumbling from your boss. Make sure you stick to the opening hours of your office. This applies to the closing hours. Don’t over do it. Ok fine, if it is a hard day, you need to put some extra effort to help trash more stuff. But don’t do it everyday. You have got a life to live!

Have a comfortable environment

Having a comfortable environment will help you work better and be more productive. It will also make you want to spend time in the working environment. If you have an uncomfortable chair and desk, you will be very tempted to go and work in the next room where the comfortable sofas are waiting for you.

Listen to music

Since you are most of the time alone in a room you will feel like sleeping. Music can help you keep the vibe. I don’t personally listen to music all the time. When I need to concentrate I turn it off. But when I am doing stuff that doesn’t need 100% concentration, I switch on music to help me stay awake, especially in the mornings.

Whilst a lot is said about how to reduce your sleeping to a minimum not a lot is said about the effects of lack of sleeping. People often ask questions like, “How can I reduce my sleeping time so that I can be more productive?” or “How can I reduce sleeping to achieve more?”. Beware that there is a threshold that should not be ignored. This threshold is built into our nature. Ignoring such thresholds will have the following effects on you.

Less sleeping is harmful for your health

It is scientifically proven that sleeping less than 7-8 hours a day is harmful for health. This is because as has been discussed in [Sleeping cycles], while you are sleeping your body repairs itself: physically and mentally.

Increases stress

Losing sleep makes you feel stressed. Due to lack of sleeping, you will lose your patience. Such stress will affect your life and the lives of the people who live with you like your husband/wife, children and colleagues. Stress is a major health hazard and has a significant list of bad side effects, such as heart problems, and obesity through nervous over eating.

You are not efficient

The idea of sleeping less is to have more time where you can work. Don’t get shocked. The fact that you sleep less means that you will be tired during most parts of the day. This will severely affect your productivity rendering you less efficient. This will lead to more work piling up which leads you to reduce sleep time further. Sleeping less is not a solution. Better time management and fighting procrastination are sure fire ways to deal with your workload.

Other effects of Missed Sleeping

Missed sleep is cumulative; if you lose sleep one day, you feel its effects the next. If you miss a lot of sleeping several days in a row, you build up a ‘sleep deficit’, which impairs the following:

Your reaction time will decrease resulting in higher probability of car accidents.
  Poor eye sight vision
  Slow information processing
  Short-term memory loss
  Lack of motivation

I wise man by the name of Benjamin Franklin once said: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Every now and then several articles pop up in the blogosphere about how to reduce sleeping to a minimum. At first glance this makes sense, since reducing sleeping time will leave you with more time. But not much is said about the benefits of sleeping and why you should allow yourself to sleep the recommended number of hours, which is somewhere between 7-8 hours per night.

Whilst a lot of people look at sleeping as a complete waste of time, scientists deny that. They remind us that sleeping is one of the most important parts of the day for your body and brain. While you are resting in your bed, unconscious, you experience three different cycles, all of which have different purposes.

Light sleep is the first phase that you experience as soon as you fall asleep. After approximately 30 minutes of light sleeping, you enter the deep sleeping phase. During the deep sleeping phase, your body will get repaired. It is in this phase that your muscles relax and get healed from injuries. Once the deep sleeping phase ends, the dreaming phase called REM starts. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. This is the most intense phase where your brain gets repaired. Your brain will process information that you have acquired during the day. It will then prune off useless information and classify new information in context with the other information already stored in your brain from past experiences. This process is extremely important for turning raw data into information and knowledge.

So although while sleeping you are not aware of what is going on, just like right now while reading this you are not aware of your heartbeat, it does not mean that your body is also on standby. While you are sleeping your body performs essential functions that keep you healthy and ready to live another busy day.

So make sure you allocate proper time for your body to perform its housekeeping chores. The next day you will wake up refreshed and energetic, and will surely make up for the time spent sleeping.

Stress has devastating effects on you but if you apply the following tips in your day to day life, you will see a lot of improvement in your life. The first reaction when you will read the following suggested tips is “No… I don’t have time for this!!” but I still suggest you at least give them a shot.

Eliminate Stress method #1 - Express your feelingsThere is nothing wrong with expressing your feelings. Find someone that you trust and express your feelings, being it anger, worries, anxiety etc. There is nothing worst than bottling your feelings. This will make you feel lonely and tends to build up stress in you. It’s like trying to block a volcano… eventually enough pressure gets built up that will smash all the obstacles that it finds in its way.

Eliminate Stress method #2 - Accept things that you cannot change

There are some things that trouble you but there is nothing that you can do about. There is no point in worrying about such things since it will stress you. Just accept them as they are and try to live happy. Easier said than done but just remember that everybody has something (or a lot of things) that he or she wish to change. This might help you accept yours
Eliminate Stress method #3 - Forgive others. Our instinct tells us to not forgive but to take revenge

If you are hurt about something someone did to you, just spend sometime alone and find a way how you can forgive him or her. You will realise that after you forgive, you will find peace in your heart, making you feel much better. Thinking about how to take revenge will stress you out… definitely not worth it.

People who used to suffer from stress and applied the above techniques saw improvements in their life and helped them mitigate the effects of stress described in Dealing with Stress - Part 3 - Effects of stress on us.