Sarah Tan – Personal Development

Stress in the workplace is an extremely common thing most people have to face. Stress is inevitable for most workplaces, but the key is to learn how to control it. You can manage stress and keep it to a minimum if you recognize the factors that can lead to stress in your workplace and utilize ways to minimize the effect they can have on you.

Common workplace stress triggers include:

Co-workers with bad attitudes

An unprofessional, tactless, or rude co-worker can cause a lot of stress in your working environment. Considering the number of people that we are required to interact with on a daily basis to perform the duties of our jobs it is guaranteed that a clash of personalities will eventually occur. The key is not to let an aggravating co-worker affect your work performance.

There are a few ways to handle this kind of situation. First of all, decide if it’s something that really bothers you or not. Sometimes just ignoring them is all you need to do your job effectively.

If this tactic doesn‘t work, try discussing the problem with them directly. There are times when they may be unaware of the way their attitude comes across to others. An open and honest conversation can be a simple solution that brings down the stress level immediately.

If talking it out doesn’t correct the situation, make an appointment to talk with your supervisor to let him or her know the extent of it and how it’s affecting your job performance. Your boss may choose to take charge and bring correction so that everyone can do their job more effectively.

Poor Management

If unprofessional co-workers are unpleasant to deal with then poor management has to be twice as stressful. The options for dealing with poor managers are more limited, but there is no reason to let poor management style give you stress or anxiety. As will co-workers ignoring the behavior is the first and most preferable option.

|If direct discussion with your supervisor proves ineffective, the next step is to approach the next level of management. Document the inappropriate behavior you have witnessed or personally experienced and report it to someone in human resources or follow the appropriate channels for your company.

Suffering silently with a management problem is not a good idea. It will make you miserable and anxious and eventually flow on to decrease your productivity and effectiveness. Most places of business want to hear about these types of situations and will do what they can to correct them.

Huge Workload

Having more work than you can handle will inevitably result in much more stress for you. Take on only what you can handle at one time. Ask for help from others and be willing to reciprocate and help them when they need it. Teamwork can be a key in reducing stress for everybody.

Discovering, reducing, or eliminating workplace stress where possible is a positive step towards having a fulfilling and productive work experience. Stress in the workplace is inevitable, but correctly managing stress can help prevent job burnout and increase job satisfaction.

Get Josh Murphy’s latest free report ‘Self-Care Boot Camp’ – jam-packed with more great stress relief information at StressReliefTipsWeekly.com. Check out the site for more great info on topis like relieving stress as well as a free weekly newsletter that subscribers are raving about!

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10 Tips To Help You Start Taking Control with Positive Thinking.

At first glance, it would seem that positive thinking and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) have nothing to do with one another. But many of us with ADD develop negative thinking patterns because we become frustrated by our challenges and frequent feelings of being overwhelmed. This negative outlook then makes it even harder for us to manage those challenges and move forward.

Positive thinking will help people with ADD to better concentrate on their accomplishments and strengths, giving them more motivation and joy in life. It will help in better using your time to work on making progress, rather than feeling discouraged and helpless. The following tips provide practical suggestions that you can use to help you shift into more positive thinking patterns :

1. Take Good Care of Yourself

When you take good care of yourself by eating healthy, exercising and getting adequate rest, it is much easier to be positive.

2. Make a List of the Things You are Grateful for in Life

When you take the time to remember some of the things that are good in your life, then stress from the challenges you face are not as difficult. Taking just 60 seconds a day to stop and appreciate the good things will make a huge difference.

3. Don’t give in to ’making assumptions’, but instead discipline your mind to look for proof or actual facts.

A fear of not being liked or accepted sometimes leads us to assume that we know what others are thinking, but our fears are usually not reality. For instance, if you are worried or fearful that someone is in a bad mood because of something you did, or that people are secretly gossiping behind your back about you, then you should ask them if it is true or not. Don’t waste time worrying that you did something wrong unless you have proof that there is something to worry about.

4. Refrain from Using Absolutes

Have you ever told a partner “You’re ALWAYS late” or complained to a friend “You NEVER call me”. Thinking and speaking in absolutes like “always” and “never”, makes the situation seem worse than it is, and programs your brain into believing that certain people are incapable of delivering.

5. Get Rid of ALL Negative Thoughts that cause Anxiety

Our thoughts determine the way we live and therefore you need to discern them and discipline yourself to overcome negative thinking. If you notice yourself having a negative thought, detach from it, recognize it for what it really is and don’t follow it.

6. Squash the “ANTs”

In his book “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life,” Dr. Daniel Amen talks about “ANTs” – Automatic Negative Thoughts.

These are the bad thoughts that are usually reactionary, like “Those people are laughing, they must be talking about me” or “The boss wants to see me, it must be bad”! When you notice these thoughts, realize that they are nothing more than ANTs and squash them!

7. Begin to show your family and friends positive physical contact with a hug, smile, pat on the back or welcoming handshake.

You don’t have to be an expert to know the benefits of a good hug. Showing positive physical contact with your family and friends and even your pets, is a great ’feel good’ interaction, one that we all need in life. One research study on this subject had a waitress touch some of her customers on the arm as she handed them their checks. Her tips were noticeably higher from the ones she touched, then from the customers she did not touch!

8. Increase Your Social Activity

Loneliness feeds on negative thinking and one way to combat it, is by increasing social activity in your life. Find people you can be with that are happy and positive in their outlook on life, then you will notice how very contagious that sort of thinking can be.

9. Be Involved with Helping Other People or Volunteer in an Organization

Once you help other people that are hurting, you will also help yourself, because you will feel good inside knowing you helped to make a positive difference in someone’s life. You can volunteer your time, your money, or your resources. You may have heard it said, ’Give and it shall be given’, this is a true saying and the more positive energy you put in the world, the more you will get back.

10. Have a New Thought Pattern to Fight Against Depressing Thoughts.

A great way to stop thinking unconstructive thoughts is to interrupt the pattern by forcing yourself to begin thinking and doing something completely different. Begin to change your old thinking patterns of focusing on the negative. That way of thinking is never productive, but only leads to stress and unnecessary anxiety. Try changing your physical environment – go for a walk or sit outside. Or, you could call a friend, turn on some music or look at a magazine.

Find sayings, scripture verses or quotes that will help motivate you to remain positive in your thinking, the following are some of my favorites: Oprah Winfrey – “Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.” “Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours” – A Swedish Proverb

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When faced with an unpleasant or daunting task, either in personal or professional activities, many people can be tempted to procrastinate. Some procrastination takes the form of dismissing the unpleasant task as something to be done later and then putting it out of mind. At other times, procrastination occurs by wasting one’s time with meaningless pursuits, games and amusements. To complicate matters, not every form of procrastination can be easily dismissed as purely wasted time. For business people and office workers who handle a variety of related tasks every day, certain types of work can actually function as a tool for procrastination. In some cases, tasks that are smaller, simpler, or that might easily be delegated to an intern are used as a diversion from important, complicated, intimidating tasks.

Implications For Time-Management and Prioritizing Skills

In order to work effectively, people need the ability to budget their time. In the typical professional environment, people are given more work than they can realistically handle within normal working hours. Even people with a reasonable workload could improve their business prospects by taking on additional tasks or taking time to make aspects of their work more efficient. For all of these reasons, it is extremely important to be able to manage one’s time successfully. Efficient time management involves the power to weigh the amount of time available versus the tasks that need to be carried out and to choose on a schedule for completing the tasks. Unfortunately, procrastination interferes with the ability to budget time by inflating the amount of time needed to reach a certain milestone or level of completion. For this reason, repeated procrastination can be seen as a sign that an individual lacks the ability to set his or her own time management goals or lacks the discipline to adhere to those goals.

In situations where multitasking is required, procrastination could also be a sign of failure to properly organize priorities. Allowing trivial tasks to take time and energy away from more important goals indicates either an inability to recognize the most important tasks or a lack of concern about whether the most important goals are accomplished in a timely fashion. However, a failure to prioritize might not be entirely the procrastinator’s fault. An employee who does not have enough information to form an overall picture of his or her employer’s goals might not have the perspective to prioritize effectively and might therefore end up wasting time on trivial goals believing that they are important.

It should be remembered that, while occasional procrastination might signal some sort of underlying problem, it is not necessarily a sign of a character flaw or skill deficit. For example, a lack of motivation due to a real or perceived shortcoming in the reward for good time management could be at the root of procrastination.  One example of this might be a work environment in which an employee receives the same compensation regardless of whether his or her deadlines are met. This could result from a poor performer realizing that procrastination is routinely tolerated, but it could also result from a high performer perceiving that outstanding time management is never rewarded. In a work environment, instances of procrastination can reveal overall communication and employee relations issues as well as the underlying issues of individual employees.

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At work and at home, people form relationships in which they depend on one another. Family life can be rocky or smooth depending on the ability of spouses and family members to divide the necessary home duties and follow through on their individual responsibilities. Relationships between co-workers also involve a level of trust that each member of the business team will contribute an adequate amount of work to a given assignment. In both of these circumstances, one person’s failure to do a fair share of the work can be devastating to the effectiveness of the family or work group and can also hinder people from trusting one another. Therefore, when procrastination becomes a significant influence in a person’s habits, both the practical and the emotional sides of the person’s family and work relationships will suffer.

In family relationships, there is always a large amount of work that needs to be accomplished in order for the home to run smoothly. Periodic tasks might include maintenance on a home or on appliances, work in the yard, laundry, cleaning, washing dishes, cooking, keeping a vehicle or vehicles in working order, and child care. If any of these chores are left out for a significant amount of time, the household will be unable to operate effectively. In cases where one family member gets behind in chores, especially due to a reasonable situation like an illness or the need to work extra hours at a job, other family members will probably be happy to work around the slowdown and even pick up the excess chores temporarily. However, once a family member habitually procrastinates for extended periods of time and leaves his or her part of house work unfinished, other family members might begin to resent the chores being left unfinished and being loaded down with the additional work. The situation can be especially tense if the procrastinator uses entertainment or games as a procrastination device, watching television or playing computer games while the other members of the household struggle with more than their share of chores. Regardless of whether the procrastinator is a spouse, parent, child, sibling or in-law, only an end to the procrastination and a responsible amount of work will remedy the strain that procrastinating can cause in a family.

In a business environment, procrastination can be similarly destructive. People who work full-time spend a majority of their time during the day with their co-workers, and the relationships between business team members are an important part of the social lives of professionals. When one member of a business team is a chronic procrastinator, the other team members often need to shoulder the procrastinator’s share of work to meet deadlines. And when members of the team each have a specific field of work, one person’s procrastination may leave the others unable to get the information they need to complete their own assignments. Resentments, distrust and hostility may result, particularly in cases where the entire team misses out on a bonus or other reward due to one member’s procrastination habits. And as in the event of procrastination at home, the only dependable method to better the situation is for the procrastinator to adopt whatever organizational and time management steps are requisite to accomplish a sensible amount of work.

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The difficulty of certain projects often provokes a desire to delay or otherwise waste time before getting down to business. This urge to procrastinate can affect people’s lives as an occasional temptation or as a nearly irresistible habit, hinging upon the temperament of the individual.

In three particular fields of activity, namely college, business and home life, procrastination can cause an especially detrimental effect. A closer look at the underlying factors for procrastination in each of these settings can help illuminate some of the influences in the decision to procrastinate.

For many students, procrastination emerges as a significant problem during the first years of college. The college procrastinator is frequently an individual who, for one of several possible reasons, did not learn effective time management strategies during high school. Often accustomed to high school assignments that are purely short term or that have been broken down into a series of littler assignments by the high school teachers, the college procrastinator is at a loss to correct to college’s long term assignments. In some examples, the college procrastinator underestimates the difficulty of a term report or end-of-semester project because the professor does not perpetually remind the class about the forthcoming deadline.

For this reason, the difficulties faced by the college procrastinator can be seen as a failure to adjust from a structured, regulated learning environment into an environment where independent time management skills are necessary. Once the need for discipline and organization has been recognized, a few elementary tools, such as a day planner, can help the college procrastinator organize a self-structured series of goals and deadlines for long-term assignments.

Whereas the college procrastinator might evade a difficult assignment by playing computer games or socializing, the business procrastinator is oft more subtle in his or her strategy. Rather than engaging in meaningless amusements, which might be punished if discovered, the business procrastinator often wastes time on activities that are in fact part or his or her job description but that are not the most important tasks at the moment.

In some cases, a lack of confidence in the ability to successfully complete difficult assignments compels the business procrastinator to pursue easy, straightforward minor tasks. In other situations, an inability to recognise high- and low-priority assignments causes the business procrastinator to perceive that the simple jobs are just as crucial as the complicated ones, leaving the business procrastinator no cause to pursue the more Herculean tasks.

To remedy this circumstance, the business procrastinator first must learn to recognize which tasks have the most potential to impact the success of the business itself and to affect the course of business in the long term. Once this has been achieved, the business procrastinator can analyze long-term, complicated tasks into a series of manageable deadlines so that it's not quite so intense.

Instead of being unable to face a deadline, the home-life procrastinator is often ill at ease with the never-ending nature of daily home-related chores. Yard work, home repairs, cleaning and meal preparation can all assume the uninspiring role of routine inconveniences in a person’s life. As incomplete chores accumulate over time, the home-life postponer begins to feel the pressure of house work invading the joys of routine life.

To counter this situation, a specific time should be set aside each week to schedule a reasonable number of weekly chores. By naming which tasks should be accomplished on which day, the home-life procrastinator can gain control over the amount of work. And by fixing certain tasks to certain days, the procrastinator could stop feeling blameworthy about any unfinished chores provided that he or she has attained the chores earmark for the present day.

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Many donkey years ago, George Lam, a famous moustached singer, appeared in an advertisement for Guinness Stout. He said, ‘Some people tell you to change yourself to suit the environment’, then followed by, ‘Why not change the environment to suit yourself’ and he went on to turn the picture upside down to display a glass of stout.

I never gave much thought about that. Many people feel upset with their job and they keep on complaining, but they do not take any action to make things better. While we cannot expect to keep our bad habits and still survive in the working environment, sometimes it may be just easier to change the environment. There is only so much you can change about yourself within a short period of time. It’s just like being a square peg in a round hole. It is really hard to fit in.

Before changing to a new company, I was rather miserable in my previous workplace last year, and I became very negative and demoralised. I thought I was in the wrong vocation totally. However, after making a change to a new workplace, not exactly by choice, I realised that I had been the square peg for the longest time. Despite having to put in longer hours, not that the hours were short at my previous company, I had a greater sense of achievement.

True, it may be too early to tell, but at least I’m happier. That was the same I felt when I went to my previous workplace for the first time. I was utterly miserable at my first workplace, and I had even thought of breaking my bond. It turned out that the environments had simply been not suitable for me.

I made this realisation when I realised that the people in my company were more artistic and cultured. Every time I went for lunch at the cafeteria, there were always people playing the piano. Some were young, but they played the piano extremely well. That’s the type of environment I want to be in. With the Law of Attraction, I’m able to find people who are more like me, and I also start to focus more on the positive side. I do not like to be in a place where basic discipline in the people was lacking.

Because of the new environment, I found myself returning to the piano. I had spent twenty years on the piano, but unfortunately, I have little achievement to boast of. Those talented people simply played extremely demanding pieces on the piano by heart. I dug out my old music books, and started playing over the weekend.

That simply reminded me of my days in my secondary school, where I could play on one of the many pianos that were available for students to play. I liked this type of environment, and I strongly feel that with culture, the world will be a better place.

So, why not change your environment instead of constantly complaining about the current place? Sometimes, it’s not the vocation that’s wrong; it’s simply the environment. It’s also no wonder why Menscius’ mother moved his house three times just to let her son grow up in the best environment.

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Hypnotherapy to Improve Confidence by Gemma Bailey

Confidence can be hard to pin down at times! Most people have had the experience of observing someone they know at a party or in a work situation, communicating with ease and naturally, without a hint of self-consciousness and have thought, “Why cant that be me?”

People look to hypnotherapy training, Herts for all types of confidence problems. It may be that you lack confidence within specific relationships or situations, you may want to be more assertive or to become a better public speaker. Perhaps you want to be able to share some of the knowledge and ideas that you hold back because of lack of confidence, or you find it difficult to speak up in front of groups of people. Some people feel they lack confidence in all areas of their lives. All these experiences are common and can be helped by hypnotherapy, Herts.

Of course, in life there will always be natural differences among people. Some people just seem to be more introverted, whilst others seem to enjoy the limelight and draw others towards them with ease. Whether confidence is a problem is self-defined by the individual. If it impacts on your life in subtle or more obvious ways and you feel frustrated or held back by lack of confidence, then hypnotherapy courses may benefit you.

Hypnotherapists use hypnosis to bring about positive therapeutic changes in order to help people solve problems, such as lack of confidence. Hypnosis is an experience characterised by deep relaxation, a concentrated focus and increased sensory alertness. This state of mind occurs spontaneously and people slip in and out of this state, known as ‘trance’, all the time, in everyday life. Examples of trance states include fantasising about someone you are attracted to, becoming deeply immersed in a book, being anxious about an event causing you to re-live what could go wrong over and over in your head and daydreaming. As you may see from the examples given, trance states can be positive or negative, depending on what is being focused on.

Hypnotherapists induce deeply relaxing trance states because when a person is deeply relaxed, access to the unconscious mind is enabled. The hypnotic process is wonderfully pleasant and relaxing, which in itself is beneficial for people who lack confidence and experience stress and worry on a regular basis. Being free of stress and worry, during the hypnotic process, allows the therapists to pack your unconscious mind with positive suggestions of confidence. Whilst in this state you also get to practice situations in which you will act with confidence and conviction, through a process known as visualisation.

Hypnotherapy can also be effective in removing negative associations that you have developed between situations and feeling unconfident and it can also be used to remove and free you from negative emotions from the past. Sometimes self-esteem can be related to childhood experiences and these can be dealt with through at Hypnotherapy, Herts.

During your hypnotherapy treatment, the hypnotherapist will also work with you to achieve confidence through a technique called anchoring, which involves learning to develop an association between an external trigger, and a emotional response. Anchors develop all the time in everyday life as the human mind attempts to understand your environment by looking for patterns between things. Not all anchors are positive. People learn to make negative associations between things, such as feeling anxious or worried when they are required to give a presentation to colleagues. Your hypnotherapist can work with you to remove negative anchors.

If you are fed up with being held back or not being able to do what you dream of doing because of lack of confidence, book your appointment with a hypnotherapist now!

Welcome to People Building, a self development company dedicated to inspiring growth, progression and better results in your life. It is our privilege to present to you authentic NLP and Hypnosis training at NLP Practitioner Level, NLP Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapy Diploma, for those in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and London. We will never cease to evolve, and it gives me great pleasure, to invite you with us on this epic adventure.

http://www.peoplebuilding.co.uk

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