Sarah Tan – Personal Development

Whatever your goals may be, staying motivated is essential in conquering these goals. Whether you are trying to lose weight or start your own business, staying inspired through the process may be a little harder as time goes by. It may not be hard to get motivated when you first begin, it’s carrying this inspiration beyond the first phase of your goal that may be hard. However, if you are dedicated to achieving your goal, read on for more tips on how to stay motivated.

Understand that reaching your goal will require hard work. If you are attempting to lose weight, and have signed on the help of a personal trainer but are feeling discouraged, push through these feelings. Remember that it took you a while to gain the weight in the first place, so it will take time to gradually lose the weight as well.

Keep your goal in mind. What is it that you want to conquer? If you have been trying so hard to achieve something for so long, you may start to lose sight of your ultimate goal. You simply get lost in the process. This is true for whatever your goal may be, if its work related or simply family oriented.

Maybe you thought that pregnancy first would be your priority once you reached your adult life. You’ve dreamt about a family for as long as you can remember, but you’re too busy for another responsibility. What do you do? Stay patient and really think about your priorities.

You may feel a bit discouraged when it seems like you’re not getting anything done right. However, stop this thought process and simply believe in your ability to achieve. If you do not believe in yourself, it will be hard for others to believe in you. After all, you will teach people how to feel and think about you.

When you are feeling like you have not accomplished anything, think about your successes. Track your progress and look at all the good things you have done. This will help you get out of your negative state of mind.

Seek out help when you feel stuck. Humble yourself and know that it is ok to ask for help when you can not finish something on your own. This is applicable to the assembly of sleigh beds or the build up of your own business. When you need help, simply ask. Find someone who is qualified and seek out their help. This will help you avoid getting stuck and keep you moving forward and motivated.

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There are so many tools that show you how to relieve stress and it is no wonder. There is so much stress in the world today. Generally people are so busy they have little time for anything.

We are victims of a world gone mad. Think about it. We chase around hour after hour every day and we end up without any time. Money, success, careers and family are what drives us to keep going day in and day out and as a result we have become ’stressed out’; ticking time bombs ready to blow at any minute.

Disease, chronics illness, hypertension and even heart attacks are just some of the symptoms of stress. Most of us don’t even realize the kind of stress we put ourselves under. We have built in mechanisms in our bodies that help us when we are confronted with stressful situations. We were not however supposed deal with stress all the time.

So, what do you do to relieve stress and the effect it can have on your body? In a moment you will get a chance to read 5 tips to effective stress relief but before you do there are two things that you should be doing on a daily basis to help you deal with stress.

The first thing is to get off adrenaline. One of the best tips on how to relieve stress is to plan better. Life happens and there are always going to be surprises you can’t avoid but it doesn’t have to be like this all of the time. A little planning can be the best thing you can do to keep your stress levels down. Your health and well-being could be at stake.

The second thing is to drink less caffeine and if you are a smoker to cut back, or better yet, quit smoking. Nicotine and caffeine can cause harmful stress to the body. Try to limit your intake where possible.

Ok so let’s take a look at 5 things you can do to help your body and mind better deal with stress.

1. Get regular exercise
It doesn’t really matter what you consider exercise. It could be jogging or taking a long brisk walk or even doing a workout at the gym. Regular exercise is what is important and so is making sure you are relaxed while doing it. There is no point in exercising if you hate every minute while you are doing it.

2. Relaxation and meditation
I know it sounds easy to say just relax or chill out but most people don’t know how to. You don’t have to know the art of meditation in order to just get a little uninterrupted time for yourself on a consistent basis.

3. Go out and spoil yourself
This doesn’t mean you go out and start shopping ladies. It does mean doing something for yourself. What you could do is go to a spa and enjoy a relaxing massage or you could sit down to a good book and a little alone time.

4. Video and board games
Games can be excellent stress relievers. You may want to choose careful the people you play the game with so as to avoid tension because of competitiveness. There are some great free software games you can download off the internet that are great to help relieve stress

5. Get some decent sleep
Make sure you get enough rest. When you interrupt your sleeping patterns you put unnecessary and potentially harmful stress on your body. If you are constantly thinking you are not resting. It may not sound possible but you can turn off thoughts about worry simply by not reacting to them.

You do not need to do all of the above right away but you should start with one, get in the habit of doing it regularly and then start the next one. Relaxing is what is important not what you do. Start today.

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My husband told me about a book ‘Eat That Frog!’ and I was wondering what kind of weird book it was. Apparently, someone in his course mentioned this book about combating procrastination. I absolutely need it. I had already managed to psyche myself about work, so I’m quite happy for the past six weeks. However, I have not done that for one critical part of my work, and I’m simply procrastinating. It’s Sunday and I brought my work home, but I had been doing other things.

So what does ‘Eat That Frog’ try to say? Well, there are always things we dislike doing everyday. Think of the frog as that thing we dislike. So, we should start our day by eating that frog. Get to the dirty task right in the beginning of the day. You need to know what is vital and at the same time it may be tedious. So once you get it out of the way, the rest of your day is lovely.

Although, I think the title isn’t really apt for Chinese, because frogs are delicious! I think I might have eaten frog legs before, and they are soft, and a little chewy. However, if I see the frogs that are still alive, I think I’ll avoid eating them. I don’t need to see how my food used to look like.

I guess I’m going to get to work since I have another 4 or 5 hours to go before the start of tomorrow, and more work that is going to pour in.

Check out the first few pages of the book by clicking the link below. That’s what I love about Amazon.com.

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My mother had always been a superstitious person. She always thought that whenever she made fun of something, it would happen to us. For example, when she was younger, she laughed at a person who was pimply-faced. My brother and I grew up with bad acne, and we were on medication for years. She felt it was her fault and kept blaming herself.

There was another occasion, when pop rings were introduced. One of her students licked a lollipop that was placed on a plastic ring, and she was quite irritated with her. When she came home that very day, she saw my brother and I doing the same thing. She was always puzzled why such things would happen even though she really hated them. Well, she might be on to something. That was the Law of Attraction.

When you have either positive thoughts or negative thoughts, the brain waves will transmit them to the other party. When there are enough of them, they will influence the other parties. If you are extremely close to someone, you can know what they are thinking. That’s because they will be sending out some kind of signals, and your brain waves are in sync with each other.

I have mentioned this before, about how I dealt with the difficult clients. I was in the middle of my work when the clerk came running to me, saying one client had come unannounced and he was being very insistent that he had to see me. He claimed that he had been working a few days without much sleep and he had no other time to meet me. This was the same person I spoke to the other time over the phone, and it was not a pleasant experience. So, I decided to use what I preach, and tried to think positive thoughts, that the meeting would go on smoothly. I would get the other party to see my point. I also decided to smile and block out other thoughts that could make the meeting unsuccessful.

To my expectations, the client was not as bad as I thought. I had heard horror stories of how he had lost his temper badly before, but he was alright. We talked, and he was able to open up. In fact, he asked whether I would continue to be on his case next year. I felt bad at saying something that might change, since I was considering a career change, but since nothing was confirmed, I told him that I would continue to be if there were no other changes. It was not a real answer, but he was satisfied. When he left, he even said that I was caring and helpful. Coming from someone who had felt the organisation was against him, the words carried weight.

Unfortunately, when I met with two other clients later, tears became the norm. We were sitting outside at the reception area. I met with the first group of clients there. One of them broke down and cried. She was sitting at this particular seat that was facing the greenery. After the longest time, the two left.

I had two other groups of clients waiting, and they could see what was going on. I made a mistake of getting the next client to sit at the same place, and all the negativity was still in the air. Everything went on smoothly, when suddenly, the lady sitting in the same seat as the former client opened up to me about her personal situation, and started crying. Within half an hour, I had at least two people crying.

I decided that the negativity was enough for the day, and I had to make some switches. The last party who had seen everything was sitting beside us, so I switched over when the lady left, and I changed position. The stuff we had to talk about was similar, as they had their emotional baggage and pain, but at least I tried to inject more positive thinking.

My mother knows something about how thinking affects situations, but she pinned it down to superstition. It is actually more of the Law of Attraction.
 

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I put in 14 hours for two days running at work, and I was really tired out by the end of it. We had to meet people and relay the performances of their charges to them. Some of them were quite friendly, while others were quite demanding, by saying the fault lay with us when they should be the ones who take responsibilities.

On yesterday’s afternoon, I had to make calls to a few people to check whether they were turning up for the session at night. One of them was rather antagonistic and I started to feel all the negative vibes. I forced myself to keep smiling so that the person would calm down. Towards the end, it ended on an ok note, though he did not turn up at night.

After receiving so much negative vibes, I continued to make another call. This was a mistake I made. By bringing all the negative feelings from the other caller, I had inadvertently caused the next caller to pick up all the negative vibes and it simply triggered off from her an outpouring of frustrations and complaints on our side. She only had a few points to talk about, and each point she repeated at least 10 times using the same phrases. The accusations were mainly directed at other staff, but she still heaped all those things on me. I should have learnt better managing skills in such as telling her that it was not right make such accusations on everyone, or learning the 80/20 rule where the worst customers should be dropped.

What I did was to continue to let her pour out her grievances, and just show her that I was listening. However, I decided I had to take charge of the conversation. I decided to change my negative vibes and try to think positive thoughts that the conversation will end well. I also remembered my friend and ex-colleague telling me that when people complain, they want something to be done. So as the person in authority, we should come up with a plan to help them resolve their issues. I also came up with a strategy for better monitoring and she accepted it.

Finally, after 40 minutes of her mainly making 4 points, I could put the phone down. It was much later my colleague came to me and told me that the same lady had bombarded her for one and half hours on the same issues and she even revealed something more shocking. I totally agree with Jeanette of Good Vibe Blog, that when we persist, they resist. It’s really the Law Of Attraction.

When I checked the list of people I wanted to see, one of my supervisors came to tell me that one particular lady would talk for extremely long and could be quite difficult to handle as she wanted step-by-step explanations on every single thing. Immediately, I channelled the negative thoughts again, and when I asked my colleague who used to handle her, he told me the same thing and how careful I had to be.

I was a little affected by the two negative calls, and what my colleagues told me but I decided not to concentrate on such negativity. I decided to think how easy and quickly the meeting with her and others will go. I started thinking about how smooth the process will be, and how on time we will finish the discussions.

Hence, I used my secret weapon and just smiled and smiled. I also kept those waiting to see us happy by showing pictures of their charges and other activities. The difficult person did not turn up, and the lady I thought would take extremely long was actually quite reasonable and we finished on a good note. I had also brought up something good about her charge and she was so happy about it. So I guess focussing on positive things worked.

My supervisor who said something about “We will Survive” instead of “We will Excel”, our usual slogan, and she really channelled the negative vibes was still talking to clients when I left. The other colleague who told me how to handle that “difficult” client ended up spending more time there than anticipated. And I was actually the first one to leave. When I looked at the other meeting rooms, there were still many clients inside there milling around, and when I finally left my workroom, these people were not back yet. Positive thinking really works!

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I had the opportunity to observe an examination and since I had plenty of time to kill while waiting for the rain to stop, I thought of some lessons learnt.

1. Stop Being Trapped In Similar Situations
The ones who broke something while doing the examination did not learn from their mistakes. They broke the same thing again, within a short space of time. They are trapped in a vicious cycle where they continuously repeat the same mistakes. Telling people to learn from mistakes do not work.

They have to do the right steps the first time round, because habits are formed from learned behaviour. It is just like playing the piano. Once you make a mistake at a particular part, you would have forgotten how the right tune should sound. Your fingers would have developed the muscle memory of playing the wrong note each time round.

When you have to concentrate on avoiding that mistake, since it is already learnt, you take time away from other parts which you have already done well. That is because there is only so much we can concentrate at a given time. Things that are repeated will become a habit.

2. See Things From A Different Angle
In the same task, people approach it differently. Some squat down to look at it at the same level, while others bend down to look from top down. Do they get the same results? Perhaps. However, there are occasions when results are really different due to parallax errors. When is the last time you approach a problem from a different angle?

It also means that when you work in a team, people see things differently. They view the same issue from different angles, and you can check whether you are on the right track.  

3. Be Well-prepared
During an examination, some of them forgot to bring certain stationery. Just like a swordsman should have his sword during a duel, a person having an examination should have his or her complete set of stationery. If not, such people are just short-changing themselves. While an artist can simply use what’s available on hand, there are still certain things that are absolutely vital.

Did they make a checklist of the necessary equipment beforehand? Did they carry out a check before going for the examination? In business, if you have a presentation to make to a client, you jolly well have to make sure you have everything with you. If you tell them something is forgotten, or another thing is spoilt, they will have very bad impression of you. They can just give the deal to another party, since they are afraid you will be ill-prepared for their work.

I wonder what is stopping them from being well-prepared. Is it disinterest? Poor attitude?

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