Archive for the Motivation Category
How do You Know if You’ve Contacted Adultitis?
Every now and again, I like to bring you short interviews to give you a new perspective on work happiness. During my study of work happiness I have found that there are many paths to the same goal. Some people believe that loving what you do is a must, while other people believe that relationships are vital to enjoying the work that we do. Interviews are a great way to get out of your own perspective and see what other people are doing to be happy at work.
There are so many amazing people in the blogging world, but one of my more recent finds is Jason of Escape Adulthood. He and Kim (his wife) have created a business out of bringing the fun back into life.
The first impression of Jason was a video that I watched of a water balloon fight between Jason and Kim. They were sitting in chairs and throwing water balloons over their garage to see who had the better aim. It was right then that I was hooked. Having fun in life is a big part of being happy, so I’m glad to bring you an interview with Jason.
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Energize Your Workday with a Spiritual Meditation
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Susan C.
I’m a big believer in relaxing with our work. I’m not talking about laziness. I’m talking about finding your rhythm that allows for optimum levels of performance. Knowing when you need a break and knowing when to keep working because you are in the zone. Today we talk about: Using meditation to expand mindfulness.
This mindfulness meditation has its roots in an earth-based (pagan) spiritual path and was inspired by a short morning ritual in Yasmine Galenorn’s book Embracing the Moon. Ideally, it’s great to be able to do this outside, but it works just as well indoors, in which case, looking out a window can help to initially bring our focus to the natural world. One could do this mindfulness meditation at any point in the day, but it’s a nice way to start the day.
Let’s get started
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Freedom – Rehumanize Business Part 3
When a business stops trying to control their employees, the employees begin to feel free at work. This freedom will allow them to feel more comfortable and happy.
Let’s say you have 50 employees who each have 100 Facebook and 100 Twitter friends. That’s 10,000 people that your employees are interacting with. They are talking about you to their friends.
What are they really saying?
Employee Outreach
You should be encouraging your employees to talk about their company, but never force them to use social media. Your employees will share the company’s story with their friends when you treat your employees like the superstars that they are.
This is where freedom comes in. If your people feel that they are free to do what is best for them and the company, they will use this freedom to make both themselves and the company happy.
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Unleash Employees’ Inner Creative Marketing Talents – Rehumanize Business Part 2
You may have read that title and thought, “What does my company’s marketing have to do with work happiness?”
A lot.
70% of business is transacted because your friend told you about a product or service. You probably own an iPod because your friends wouldn’t stop raving about their iPod. You trust your friends to recommend good stuff.
Zappos let’s their employees Twitter on the job. They trust their people to connect with the customer.
I love Zappos, not because they have every kind of shoe on the planet, but because they ship for free, have a 360 day return policy and pay for shipping back to the company if you want to return a purchase. Now that’s worth spreading.
People want to share stuff that makes them happy. It’s up to companies to encourage their people to share their story.
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Rehumanize Business – Part 1
Too many businesses are worried about playing it safe. They don’t want to uncover the bad stuff that is happening in their business, so they look the other way instead. Human Resources is there to protect the company. Upper management only wants to know about positive sales figures.
Who can most employees turn to?
They don’t turn to anyone; they just leave.
I want to rehumanize (I borrowed the word from Chris Brogan) business so that people feel free to speak up. The only way business is going to become faster, more enjoyable and more profitable is if you have every person in your company and even your customers become a part of your marketing department. That means they tell their friends, family and their internet buddies that your products/services are awesome.
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The One Thing More Important Than Your Career
Every now and again, I like to bring you short interviews to give you a new perspective on work happiness. During my study of work happiness I have found that there are many paths to the same goal. Some people believe that loving what you do is a must, while other people believe that relationships are vital to enjoying the work that we do. Interviews are a great way to get out of your own perspective and see what other people are doing to be happy at work.
On this blog I try to push myself outside of my comfort zone to a place where I’m a little afraid. I have to admit that I was a little afraid of interviewing Penelope Trunk. Not because her blog is űber popular or because she was the CEO of Brazeen Careerist a popular career networking site.
I was afraid because of how honest she is. She wouldn’t be afraid to call me out.
She wasn’t afraid to tell me that career happiness really is a crock of shit. Her words. She actually said it a few times. She explains how we overcomplicate life in the audio interview that I posted below. You’ll just have to listen to the audio to find out why she believes so strongly in her ideals.
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How to Use Your Skills and Passion to Create Success
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Sara Lopez
You never quite realize how much your job affects your happiness until you have had a truly terrible job, or a truly phenomenal job. Just think about it, you spend 2/3 of your awake time at a place, surrounded by certain people, working for a specific cause– this is called your career.
My name is Sara Lopez and I am the Brand Ambassador and Social Media Strategist for 8th Continent Soymilk. I quite possibly have the best job in the world, however it was not always this way.
At one point I worked for a consulting firm in San Francisco that was so unappreciative I would trudge home considering where I went wrong on my career path and how I would ever fix it. I dreaded going in to work in the morning because I knew my skills were not utilized, nor did my employer notice them.
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4 Techniques to Help You Deal With a Difficult Boss
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Adrienne Carlson.
If life could be split into two general parts, work would take up one compartment and personal life the other. While we tend to put our personal relationships on a higher rung, work too is significant in the larger scheme of things because it puts food on our table and provides us with the money we need to lead a comfortable life.
So when your work life is not satisfactory, your personal life suffers too, because as much as we may try to keep the two like parallel lines that never meet, the fact is that they are like train tracks that tend to cross over and merge once in a while. So if you have the misfortune of working with a boss who is difficult, your work tensions may spill over into and ruin your personal life, which is why you must know how to deal with superiors who make your work life a heavy cross to bear.
A few ways to deal with a difficult boss are to:
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Work Happiness Tip – Tag Your Co-Worker
I posted on Twitter about the importance of rewarding your co-workers. I love Twitter, by the way. The ability to connect with fun, smart and quirky people is brilliant.
A friend on Twitter told me that she likes to create tags for her co-workers.
I asked her what she meant and she explained that she likes to give out random acts of kindness to the people she works with. She draws beautiful pictures on pricing tags. She sent me these photos so I could share them with you.
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The 100-100 Divide
In a perfect work environment we give 100% and our company gives 100%. Of course this never happens because we make choices based on how well we think we are treated. If your company didn’t give you a promotion, that you thought you deserved, would you still work as hard the next day?
No?
Wow, big shock.
When your manager/boss sees that you just don’t have the pep that you once had, they also pull back their desire to help you. This creates a divide that leaves everyone searching for answers
You may pull back and only give 75% of your energy, maybe taking slightly longer breaks or surfing Amazon for a new book. Your company wants you to work harder, but they’ve seen this reaction 700 times before and they don’t try to open a conversation to improve the disconnect.
Now that you’ve pulled back to 75% and no one cares, you realize that you can pull back to 50%.
You’re now working at 50% of your capacity because you can. You avoid work on some days and accomplish a lot on others, but on average you are giving 50% of your energy.
Your employer is troubled, but thinks it’s probably just a phase and before they do anything about it they realize that they’ve just created your expectations about what kind of work you need to do to get by.
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