Growth mindset

Soft Skills – Note to Self: Shut Up and Take Action

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It is New Year’s Eve day.  I am supposed to be happy and excited.  Instead I wake up very agitated.  My mind is teeming with negative thoughts.  I have been sick for two weeks.  I feel behind.  I feel unaccomplished. I feel tired even though I just got a full night’s sleep.

Then I catch myself.  I realize that, because I have not done much for my soft skills blog lately, the voice in my head is scolding me.  Negative thoughts fill my mind.  I feel deflated.  These feelings had been building up for a few days already. I knew I had to do something to break this pattern.  Instead of letting my negative thoughts control me, I decided to go for a run and de-stress a little. ...  read more

How to Find More Time and Live a “Why Not” Life

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Do you ever find yourself wishing that you had more time to do the things you love?  I work almost full time, have 2 kids, a household to manage, and I write this blog and newsletter in my “spare time.” Since I juggle all of this, I ask myself this question often, wishing I had 30 hours a day instead of 24 hours.  If you can identify at all with this question, I highly recommend watching this 11 min video by Kevin Smith, who answers this exact question with humor and passion. ...  read more

M.A.P. to Career Success

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map

As I look back on my career, I have noticed a pattern to my success — every time I achieved something, three components were in play: Mindset, Action, and erseverance – more easily remembered as a M.A.P..

In this article, I’m going to explain what each part involves, along with some examples of each. I hope this framework and my stories below can support you in your career success journey. ...  read more

How to Make a Change in Yourself at Work

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We have been talking a lot about the different soft skills we need to accelerate our career success, including self-management skills, which are needed to build inner excellence (like patience, persistence, confidence), and people skills (like communication skills, managing people skills, etc.).  Well, one thing is common between all of these topics: in order to master any of these skills, we need to make changes in our behaviors at work. ...  read more

3 Rules of Work by Albert Einstein

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albert einstein

Albert Einstein once said,

“Three rules of work:

  1. Out of clutter find simplicity;
  2. From discord find harmony; 
  3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”   

My husband shared this quote with me this morning.  While it seems so simple, there is so much wisdom in it.  Here is what each rule means to me:

Rule #1: Out of clutter find simplicity
This quote reminds me of my volunteer experience with Dr. Pete at his Zone Healing Center.  I have volunteered there for 4 years now as his office manager, working only 1-2 hour per week. ...  read more

How to Deal with Other’s Incompetence – 5 Tips

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work incompetence

I work on multiple initiatives simultaneously at my current job.  Some of them are long term, big projects, and some of them are smaller projects under one big program.  Two of these smaller projects have given me serious headaches and stress in the past few days.

Why?  Because the key people I work with on these two projects: ...  read more