Your guide and helper who help you to find the right path.

Wield the Politician inside You Everyone has to learn how to "play ball" in the office; whether it's breaking bad news to your boss or handling a temperamental coworker. But it takes a certain grace to manage and please workers from every department—something project managers do on an ongoing basis. Winston Churchill once said, "A good politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen." Heather Henricks, a freelance senior digital project manager who leads Ecology Action's marketing efforts, may well agree with him. "At the end of the day, most highly-motivated project managers can perfect hard skills like technical acumen with systems, networks and platforms—it's the soft skills that really separate mediocre project managers from the masters," she says. Henricks spent her first seven years in pro...

Avoid rumination. You may find yourself thinking about something negative, even when you really don't want to. There are a number of tricks you can use to control your mind and stop ruminating Think about the worst case scenario. Although this seems counter-intuitive and like it would just lead to even more ruminating, when you think about the worst case scenario, and then think about whether you would be able to handle it; you'll likely find that you can imagine yourself handling the situation and this can help decrease your worry. Schedule time for yourself to worry. By setting aside time to think about your problem, you can rest assured that it will get the attention it (maybe) needs; this can help you stop thinking excessively about your problem when you don't want to. Go for a walk. Getting out and about can get your mind off of your worries, either simply because of the exercise itself or because you will be taking in new information (s...

Bill Glazer’s “3” Ways to MAXIMIZE Peak Performance PUTTING ALL THE PIECES TOGETHER It should be obvious to you by now that each of “The 3 Ways I Know to Maximize Peak Performance” really works best when they all work together rather than separately. In fact, I believe it is really impossible not to have them working at the same time. #1: WORK HARD-SMART! The first thing that I do to get so much done is I work hard-smart! What does it mean to work hard-smart? Let me explain. I’m not ashamed to admit it; I actually work very hard and put many hours into my businesses. In fact, I find it quite interesting when people brag to me how little they work. These are the same people who are either not successful, will never reach a higher level of success, or are just plain lucky. While I will admit that I attribute some of my success to luck, I have never counted on it and I certainly would never wait for it to happen. Instead, I put in the time and e ff ort necessary ...

“Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin Here’s what I discovered. Failure is a step toward your ultimate success.  It’s a lesson.  A challenge. A chance The enemy of success is fear of failure. It's not failure itself that's so dangerous--it's the fear of failure that keeps us doing nothing. Like all fears, you conquer it by facing it down. And when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it wrong, that is when your true work begins. It's far better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly . The only true failure is doing nothing--inaction puts everything at risk. When we do nothing, it means we are not moving anywhere. And that is a surefire way to stay in failure. All that is required for failure to triumph is for us to do nothing. Reframe. Try to look at the situation...

1. If you can’t avoid a stressful situation, try to alter it. Often, this involves changing the way you communicate and operate in your daily life. Express your feelings instead of bottling them up. Be willing to compromise but be more assertive. Manage your time better. 2. If you can’t change the stressor, change yourself. Reframe problems. Try to view stressful situations from a more positive perspective. Look at the big picture. Take perspective of the stressful situation. Focus on the positive; this simple strategy can help you keep things in perspective. (Helpguide.org) 3. Take a break from a stressor. Even 20 minutes of self-care is helpful. It may seem difficult to get away from a big work project, a crying baby, or a growing credit card bill, but when you give yourself permission to step away from it you can gain a new perspective and feel less overwhelmed. It’s important to not avoid your stress (those bills have to be paid sometime), but ev...

1. Ask yourself, ‘How am I showing up today?’ I used to teach toddler gymnastics. One day, in the span of 10 minutes, one child got bit, and another pooped his pants. It sucked. Part of me knew there was no amount of screaming on my part that was going to un-bite Kid One or magically clean up Kid Two’s mess, but every part of me wanted to yell and bolt out the door. Instead I smiled (through clenched teeth), found some help, and got to work. That day I learned an important lesson: You control how you show up every day. The attitude you choose to bring to a messy situation will affect you and the people around you, so make it count. There’s no attitude that will magically make cleaning up poop a fun job, but it can make a world of difference in the lessons you take away from a situation. Asking yourself how you’re showing up is fairly easy, but doing something productive with the answer can be tricky. One of the most important lessons we learned as a team in August...

Maintaining a consistent tone Just as in music, if your tone is off, the whole piece falls flat. For example, “Anything else?” and “What else can I help you with?” ask the same question, but they are wildly different in terms of tone. As you define your support team’s collective voice, develop a set of standards for personal and human conversations. This allows each member to maintain their unique voice without sounding like they’re talking from a script. 1. Think of tone on a spectrum Take the examples above: “Anything else?” and “What else can I help you with?” Spectrum of tone One is clearly sliding into bitter-sounding territory, while the other feels friendly but still professional. That’s where you’ll want to be for the large majority of customer interactions. 2 . Use positive language Positive language keeps the conversation moving forward and prevents accidental conflicts due to miscommunication. Words like can’t, won’t, and didn’t and ph...