Balance

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Productivity & Planning

We are always rushing to start our day, aren’t we? It’s difficult to find the time to get everything off of our checklist, especially in the morning. Everything that we do in our morning routine sets us up to be confident throughout the day. A cup of coffee to keep us sharp, a hearty breakfast to give us energy, and a polished look to give us a boost of confidence helps us tremendously.

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Celebrate Success & Failure

It’s easy to acknowledge success because, unlike failure, they don’t wound the ego. In the space of entrepreneurship and career independence, there is a lot of personal investment into the general success of a business. Meeting goals, accomplishing milestones, and running past the finish line are the things that let us know when we are on the right track. Failure lets us know what we were unable to achieve. It may be easy to acknowledge a win and acknowledge the lessons from a failure, but it isn’t a natural human tendency to celebrate the times we fall.

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Moving The Goalpost

Setting goals are important to establishing a pathway in life and business, but everyone struggles with maintaining the consistency of those goals. A system that is too rigid doesn’t allow for necessary changes to take place when circumstances change, but a relaxed system can make deadlines and goals too flexible. Maintaining a balance between the two seems difficult. While moving the goalpost can be seen as a negative because it allows for complacency, it also marks an ability to reevaluate priorities.

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Your Business Succeeds When You Do

Invest in your personal growth and your business will too. Not coaching that makes you think you feel good, but coaching and programs that help you get things done. Track your resources and know where to allocate them. Personal growth is a phrase that has been championed throughout the current pandemic. We are advised to use our spare time to invest in ourselves so we can become better, improve our skills, sharpen our minds, and develop ourselves.

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Micromanaging Time

Freelancers are plagued without enough problems when it comes to working as a solopreneur, but one question constantly arises: how does one work with clients who micromanage? The truth is… you don’t. At that point, it isn’t a professional environment because freelancers have constant invasion by a pestering client. Across the board, from the experienced to the inexperienced, freelancers could all benefit from better client management systems. The most important thing a client needs to have in place is a contract.

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Confidence Brings Clarity

Entrepreneurship is something that is constantly testing your confidence. Are you confident in your choices and your skills? There is no way you can accurately predict your future. There is no certainty with anything you do in life, but building a business is especially harrowing because it is tied to our financial security. The prospect of not being able to provide for yourself or your family is frightening which is why the perception of security from a steady job is so alluring.

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Time Crunch - Managing Your Time

Do you hear that? The sirens are going off because you have too much to do and too little time. Does that sound familiar? It happens to everyone and we usually think it’s because we have a hard time sticking to boundaries and procrastination, but chronic time-wasting actually has deeper roots. It stems from the need for businesses to embark on an ongoing journey of busyness. It’s not enough that we have goals, but there is an incessant need to do it all and to do it quickly.

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Procrastination & Productivity

Why do we wait until the last minute? Nothing hampers your productivity like not doing what you intend to do. As it turns out, procrastination is rooted in the same things that make up productive. We stop doing something when it becomes stressful, challenging or if there is tension around it. We try to avoid it as much as possible because it makes us uncomfortable. Productivity is driven by overcoming these challenges.

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Stop Focusing On Your Competitors

Is business really a competition? If so, what do you get from participating and how exactly do you win. You need to ask yourself if you are putting too much energy into your competitors. This takes time away from getting real work done. Pondering on the what-ifs that hound you after you embark on the slippery slope of campaign yourself to others. Don’t be fooled. Measuring yourself against your competitors will allow you to see where you are in your industry, but this can hold you back from your own progression.

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Humans Under Construction

Personal development is always a priority for anyone who wants to improve their lives, but perhaps the practical nature of it has become muddied, It’s difficult between skill-building, self-care, spirituality and personal development. Are they all aspects of personal development or are they something all together? More importantly, how does this affect your business? The definition depends on how you believe you can improve yourself and what you need to do to achieve your personal goals.

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Building Confidence After A Breakdown

When your current career isn’t in the best shape, then you are going to take a hit financially and mentally. Combatting this starts with building your confidence. Anyone’s sense of self is shattered and can be called into question after knowing your chosen path has undesirable circumstances. When you’re surrounded by negativity, it eventually starts to make its way to you. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been fired, forced or removed from a project: the feeling isn’t a good one.

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Hope Is Essential To Success

Hopefulness and business exist in the same space. The current ecosystem in a state where most small and medium-sized organisations are struggling to stay open. This trickles down to the small teams and individuals who depend on that to survive. The choice to embark on a journey of entrepreneurship is a risky one. It always was and always will be. This journey is wrought with uncertain times, fluctuations in revenue and crippling doubt.

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Learning Through Observation

Social learning is a concept spearheaded by Albert Bandura. He believed that learning is can be experienced through mere observation. It does not necessarily affect behavior but it allows humans to know what to do. At the center of the theory, he posited that the internal mental state of persons must be taken into consideration. If we were to learn solely from our own actions, that would detrimental because our learning process would be long and tedious.

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Time After Time

When you are hyper-focused on your business or your career, it is easy to get wrapped up in a never-ending to-do list. How can you keep up with the demands of your work? Well, it all comes down to managing your time properly. There are many simple things you can do to make the most of your precious time. KNOW HOW YOU ARE SPENDING YOUR TIME. Before you even make cuts on your activities, look at how you are spending your time.

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How To Recover From Rejection

It’s never easy to lose a job or your only way of financing yourself and your family. We were preconditioned at a young age to attain an education and after gaining that, the system would provide for us an opportunity to exchange these services for a stipend or currency. That’s the only way we were taught on how to provide for ourselves and our families and it’s the tale we have continued to speak to our children and their generations.

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Essentialist Living For A Better Life

Essentialism is not to be confused with minimalism. Rather than removing the luxuries of life, essentialism removes the unnecessary elements in life. While it is like minimalism, essentialism can be a much easier practice to transition into intentional living. This applies not only to material possessions. Rather than just try to limit the number of physical things owned, looking at simplifying processes can be an aid to rescue the mind from clutter.

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Am I Too Professional?

When you walk into a room do you intimidate others or do you welcome them? Intimidation doesn’t always come from being rude, it can come from the subtle things that you do. When you strike up a conversation, does it somehow turn into a summary of your curriculum vitae or does it flow naturally? You can speak about your accomplishments without being a show-off. Are you just too professional? Is that even possible

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Handling A Hostile Interview

A hostile interviewer has an agenda. The pretext for the interview might already give that away, but always keep that in mind. Their goal is not to make you look good in the eyes of the audience. To be in a situation like that, you need to understand that you can’t take the situation personally. Removing your ego from this will help you navigate the rough process successfully. There are some cases where you might not know the circumstances until you are being interrogated.

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The Best Of Everything

You can have everything you want, but not at the same time. What does it mean to have a functioning balancing act? How would you start to meet your accomplishments? What do you want out of life? When posed with a question like this you might either give a vague answer or an incredibly detailed one. For some, it might be as simple as “happiness”. For others, it might be a house, family, stable career, and all the traditional fixing of a society-driven norm of success.

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New Goals

Most of us have accumulated issues or scenarios that lead us to think and behave the way we do. You won’t be able to identify it because of your proximity but if you take a journal and you record your life’s most heart-wrenching experiences, then you are off to a good start. It’s a step in the process that helps you re-enter your past and uncover the answers that define who and what your problems are and also the why behind it.

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Nurturing Your Professional Pursuits

If something — anything — is to flourish, it must be fed with all the things that able its growth. A garden will never become fruitful without nourishment from the soil. Roots are firmly placed where they can absorb what the plant needs to survive. The same can be said for all aspects of life, but it is especially true for our professional pursuits. There is no merit or point to say that the world is without its biases, however, to dwell upon them is to hamper yourself eternally.

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Renovating Your Mind

When you hear the terminology “internal improvement” one would swear that you require surgery of some sort to fix what’s going on inside of you. However, I don’t believe too much in popular medicine’s quick physical diagnosis of why we as humans are uncomfortable with ourselves. You can’t improve something without knowing what’s wrong. The same goes for your outlook towards life and the situations you’re placed in. Often, you look towards your physical space as something to be fixed.

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Building Blocks

In Japan, honne and tatamae are principles that can explain your behaviors and thoughts. Honne would be your true thoughts and sense of self, while tatamae are the social facades that put up for a social group. You can say that we have many faces: one that we show to ourselves, one to our family and friends, and another to the wider world. If that is true, then it makes sense that our lives are segmented.

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Getting Back To Work

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to get back up when you take a break? Do you wonder why? It’s similar to how a car works when the engine is engaged and then it can run for miles, but leave it to rest for a long time and you will probably have to call the mechanic. You can’t call a mechanic to kick start your mind’s engines, however, you have to be able to jumpstart yourself.

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Hitting Targets

Everyone is goal-oriented. Even though some repeat it on their CV to boost their profile, it is an inherent trait for those who want to see growth. In fact, we can all agree that scratching things off of our to-do list gives us a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. The problem with being addicted to box-checking is that we find ourselves creating tasks that are unnecessary but easy to accomplish to boost our sense of productivity.

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Accountability & Your Success

When you’ve done something wrong, how often do you come to terms with it, apologize to those who were wronged, and learn from it? More importantly, how many times have you blamed someone else or some other external factor that you have no control over? Sometimes, things happen that are completely out of our control, but how many times do will pick the “safe” route and hold someone or something else accountable.

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Rethinking Yourself

When you find yourself stuck in a mental space, then it is time to take some time to look at yourself. You can’t really change who you are. Your core, which is the truest form of yourself, is something that should be nurtured. This is the raw essence of who you are. Before you can tap into that you have to identify it. When you are stuck, it is because you aren’t sure about your abilities.

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Stress Tolerance

Everyone finds that they have a different level of tolerance for the outside world. We can find that we a sensitive to the environment, people or even objects. These signs of life show us that we can all become irritable with the many stimuli around us. Putting it all together, it is safe to say that we are all sensitive. Distractions are all around us. The most common one seems to be the devices we use so often.

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Changing Your Career Path

Changing your career isn’t easy. It takes a lot of analysis and decisiveness to pursue your passions. STEP 1: AM I HAPPY IN MY CURRENT STATE? Assess your situation and determine if where you are is where you want to remain for the next 2-3 years. Determine if you are financially able to leave your position and support yourself before things get going for your new “Self-Project.” STEP 2: GET YOUR LOVED ONES INVOLVED.

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Adaptability Is Key To Success

No matter what, change seems to be the only constant in life. Adaptability is a quality that can never go out of style. It’s one of the most sought-after traits in employees. Being open to challenges isn’t easy as it constantly tests your boundaries. Are you truly ready to take on anything or are you just lying to yourself? Mostly, it is common to think you are open-minded until you are given a task that pushes you further out of your comfort zone.

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Personal Growth

They say life is about fulfillments and as each individual with their own mindset thinks, “What is my purpose for being here?” We’ve all had situations to deal with during our upbringings that defines and molds us into either better or worse individuals. But where are you now in your life? What has changed or hasn’t? Do you find yourself stuck in one place and the world seems to carry on without you?

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Emotional Control

Emotions are volatile things. They affect us in ways that we can’t truly describe. All we know is that we can all experience them and sometimes they seem more harmful than helpful. When it comes to your professional life, these feelings can get in the way. It takes some skill and maturity of mind to channel it constructively. Now that you found fuel to add to your fire, you should try to understand how to use it.

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Understanding Your Purpose

When we were born, we came into this world with no ability to make choices or decisions for ourselves. Our environment was solely tied to our places of birth, and we were unable to change those contributing factors until we became of age. Our school systems were designed in such a way to produce mass soldiers, the education system gave you just what they needed for you to survive and continue to live and work for them.

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Work Harder, Not Smarter

The mantra of new entrepreneurs, “Work smarter, not harder,” has been repeated without care. Sometimes you have to wonder if those utterances have a valid point. It implies that those who work hard don’t work smart. It is highly unlikely that hard work comes without intelligently doing so. What does it really mean to work smart? Does it mean to work less in order to yield the same results? It is easy to look at such a phrase with skepticism.

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Escaping Reality

Escapism is running away from the realities that are presented to you. Often it is described as the avoidance of horrific or banal elements of life. Escapism is seen as a way to free the mind. We all need to take a break. We all partake in such activity when we listen to music, read a book, or watch a movie. Life without any form of escapism is much too harsh.

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Curb Your Ambition

We are encouraged throughout our academic lives to strive to be the best; don’t settle for average. When looking at your career options, either when you are starting out or advancing to the next stage, assess your situation. Look at your skills, your interests, and the reality of your situation. Having great debate skills and an aptitude for science does not warrant that you are capable of being both a doctor and a lawyer.