#Anyway I do have valuable skills but I feel like an impostor in all of them so I forget I can put all of those down

[thebrittanator]

today I’m learning: networking while inexperienced and introverted

this is going to be geared toward the entertainment/film industry because that’s where I am right now, but I’m sure some of these things are true across multiple industries. I’ve been to two film festivals now so I know at least a little more than I did when I started:

everyone else wants to meet people also

if you walk into any event that has networking potential, you’re not walking into a stranger’s birthday party with the people they’ve known since childhood. and people there don’t see you the way your impostor syndrome does, they see you as a potential connection. they’re going to be treating you all the same ways Pinterest tells you to treat them - be friendly, be interested, find common ground, make plans to hang out later. it’s amazing how much easier it is to meet new people when the interest is mutual.

you’re not as fake as you think you are

if you’re like me, you may be a little paranoid about projecting only (or at least mostly) the positive things or making people feel like you’re using them. but the fact is, everyone else is doing the same thing. and somehow in the end you still end up expressing genuine opinions and having fun.

the same rule for making potential new friends anywhere else applies here: you don’t owe anyone your entire life story. find simple and honest ways of addressing the things it would be complicated to explain. if you’re brand new to the field and/or out of work, say you’re looking for new job opportunities and you’ll get across both the facts and a good outlook. if there’s a stupid reason why you learned a valuable skill, it doesn’t invalidate the skill, so there’s no need to present a disclaimer (having a funny story with a healthy sense of self-deprecating humor is nice though).

don’t expect people to ask you deep personal questions; they just met you too. and if they do, there’s no need to indulge them. you just met.

make note of the pros and cons of everything that’s presented

politics can get complicated if you’re in a situation where you’re expected to present an opinion on something you didn’t like while one of its creators is with you. at film festivals, this can happen a lot. it’s good to find both positives and negatives about every project that’s being presented so you can contribute to any conversation you might end up in. particularly in the arts, sometimes the things that made it not align with your tastes are completely intentional, and if the writer conveyed exactly the message they intended, it means they’re good at what they do. separate your opinion of a project from how well its creator executed their intent. they are two different things.

don’t say anything you don’t agree with

you want to find people you mesh with, and you don’t want to work with people you don’t. don’t seek out situations you don’t want to be in. yesterday I bonded with a director over the films we both disliked and an actress over a shared love of what I call entry level nerd media. if I had pretended that my tastes were more indie than they were, I would have wasted my time chasing people I wouldn’t enjoy working with and missed out on both of those highly satisfying conversations as well as potential new friends and/or important connections. the actress and I are in Gryffindor and Ravenclaw respectively, by the way.

be intentional about social drinking

common sense stuff. if it doesn’t fit with your beliefs or your lifestyle, you’re not missing out on something necessary, but if it does, it can help. it does not, however, help you to put yourself into a state where you’re not 100% in control of your words. by whatever healthy, moral, and legal means you prefer, find the best balance of confidence and self awareness you can.

you can, if need be, get business cards printed at a FedEx Office store. don’t create that need.

if it’s the day before an event and you just realized you forgot to print cards, it’s not too late! design something on a site like canva and take it to get printed as soon as possible. people hand out business cards like candy because it’s a much faster way to give someone your contact info than entering your number in their phone. it’s worth getting it done.

however. services that specialize in business cards are WAY CHEAPER. and they’re printed on better paper. if there’s time, do that instead.

a good way of offering someone your card without coming across as either too businesslike or too casual is saying you can give them your contact info!

follow up before it gets weird

this is, admittedly, one I’m still working on. it can take me a long time to decide how to word an email or text message to someone I don’t know well, so I have to set aside much more time than I think I should. but either that or just sending something simple is better than not keeping in contact at all.

this may be a quirk of the entertainment industry, but instagram is incredibly helpful as an easy follow up tool. follow people you want to follow, and if you have the time, go to the link in their bio and leave a comment if they posted about the event. we’re all on social media anyway so it puts you both at least next door to your comfort zones.

have fun and go make some friends!

#today i'm learning #networking #introvert #film #music #film festival #original post #advice from amateurs

[vieuxnoyesrp]

Jaxon Whittemore   ⚜   ???   ⚜   17   ⚜   The Ringleader   ⚜   ESTP

Not everyone has to like you…

He remembers the exact moment when perfection became so preeminently important to him; remembers the echo of the screen door as it slammed shut behind him and the evening air that prickled his cheeks as he let the tears fall. He was thirteen, and it was one of the last times he’d let himself indulge in such a shameful display of self-pity. It wasn’t that he stopped pitying himself - not in the least. It was merely that he understood the choice he was being given, as only an adolescent boy would; You can either get sad or you can get angry.

Anger won out. And with it, a kind of steely determination that drove everything he did. Before that night, he’d been an entirely different person - just a boy, as he liked to think of it. Just Jaxon Whittemore. He didn't know any Millers. No Gordon, no Margaret. Those names meant nothing to him. Until he learned they were his parents. His birth parents. The truth had been kept from him all along; until that fateful night when his adopted parents had finally confirmed what some lady had told him at a walk-in clinic earlier that day. He’ll never forget the guilt in his mother’s eyes - or the explosive argument that followed with his dad. It was a turning point; one that ripped him from the lap of luxury he’d grown up thinking was his birth right. Now, everyone who’d known the secret turned into people who’d been laughing at him behind closed doors all along. Jaxon was sure of it; and the more his own insecurities grew, the more he hated all the people who’d known the truth about him before he did.  

          {Winning isn’t everything... It’s the only thing.}

Life changed for him in highschool. Correction; he changed life in highschool. No one else could take credit for his shrewd rise up the social ranks, for the friends he made - and those he set aside. No one could take credit as he found the two sports in which he excelled; swimming and lacrosse - and became captain of both teams in the time in took most highschoolers to grudgingly pick up a single extracurricular. Athlete of the year three times over, and enough trophies in his room to blind a gold-digger. He’s not half bad on the academic spectrum either; never the top nerd, but juggling enough As and Bs to silence any jealous naysayers who’d love to think that he’s just a dumb jock.

And then in grade twelve, the tables turned again. Because a nobody by the name of Scott McCall - who’d caught more balls with his face than he had with his net - got suddenly better. Not just better; but faster, stronger, sharper. It all seemed to happen overnight. And it wasn’t just Jaxon who noticed; pretty much everyone who was anyone in their school took note. From coaches, to fellow students. Since then, McCall and his merry band of misfit losers have become the perpetual thorn in Jaxon’s side. If this rise to highschool stardom wasn’t insulting enough, McCall’s single-sidekick social life blossomed into an ever-widening group of friends. 

But things like that don’t just happen. Jaxon has poured enough blood and sweat into his medals to know that. This isn’t a feel-good Lifetime movie to give underdogs everywhere delusional dreams of grandeur. And he sure as hell isn’t about to be dethroned by someone who had it so easy. So Jaxon has made it his goal - nay, his obsession - to find out how the hell Scott did it. How he’s still doing it - and before he can take his secrets with him to college. Rumour has it they might be headed to the same one; and although the mere thought infuriates him, Jaxon is resolved that this freakish stroke of good luck won’t continue for McCall. He’ll make sure of that.

                                                             … Not everyone has taste.

Web of Connections

Lydia Martin: Together, they aren’t fire and water - but a lit match and gasoline. To everyone else, they’re an obvious choice; the most popular girl in school and the reigning star athlete. But the truth is a lot more complicated when the cameras aren’t around. There’s a connection stronger than any he’s ever experienced. It’s intense enough that he’s even come close to blurting out the ‘L’-word once or twice in some of their more intimate moments. And it isn’t just the mind-blowing sex; he’s had plenty of that with plenty enough people to know the difference. They understand each other in ways he can’t even explain, and beneath the superficiality that surround them - there’s something real. Despite his self-absorption, Jaxon knows that Lydia’s been having her own struggles lately. And he worries about her, although it doesn’t always manifest in a manner that’s helpful to either of them. As a result, there’s been noticeable strain on their relationship lately, and although he’ll never admit it, it kills him.

Joshua Rosza: The first friend he ever made in elementary school. The cheerful boy approached him when he was brooding around the basketball court one day - watching the older kids play, and the rest, as they say - is history. They drifted apart over the years, especially in highschool. Different grades, interests, ambitions, social circles…  He lost track of Josh when the latter graduated from highschool, relying on the odd (though still amicable) run-in around the Quarter. They became increasingly rare however, and now Jaxon hasn’t seen head or tail of him in months. He’s heard the rumours though; That Josh dropped out of college, that he’s living on the streets - that he’s peddling drugs. Jaxon doesn’t know what to believe, but suffice to say, he’s concerned.

Evelyn Jones: Their connection is minimal; which is just how he plans to keep it. Evelyn recognized him one day when his name was called at the walk-in clinic. He’d just gotten the cast removed and was happily on his way out when she approached and dropped the bombshell. Apparently, she’d been close friends with his parents before the car-crash. He still remembers the lurch in his stomach in learning that he was adopted as Evelyn stood there blabbing about a time before he was born; expecting him to… What? Thank her? He hated the sympathy in her voice when she realized he hadn’t known; hated that he felt like an impostor in learning he wasn’t truly Jaxon - son of David Whittemore - as he’d been led to believe all these years. Some research and an explosive confrontation at home confirmed it. Mrs. Jones has tried to engage him a couple of times since then, the overtones of guilt very much apparent, but he’s managed to cut that to the quick with his cold, aloof retreats.

Kol Mikaelson: So he doesn’t know the guy well, but that won’t stop him from getting to knowhim as well as it’ll take in order to get what he wants out of him. Namely, answers. He saw him in a scuffle in an alleyway - outnumbered a good six to one. And yet before Jaxon could even think about whether he wanted to blow the whistle or duck his head and keep walking, every single one of the guy’s assailants were decked. Blinking only confirmed that the sight was real - and the victim turned victor seemed happy to indulge his captive audience. For a few seconds anyway. A wink, a mocking bow - and he was gone. But Jaxon’s seen enough crazy, superpower shit lately that this one’s definitely the straw to break the camel’s back. He wants to know how he did it; Training? Drugs? Something new on the market?… He won’t stop looking for the guy until he gets his answers. No matter the cost.

Mercy Lewis: Merit Lewis was one year older than him in school, but that never stopped them from being friends. They hadn’t met through school anyway. He barely remembers how they met, except that it was during a time when he was very, very young when he’d been suffering from inexplicable vertigo. They’d tried everything; doctors, specialists, prescription pills - nothing had worked until his mom had decided to turn to ‘natural medicine’. For reasons that are still beyond him, Merit’s mom was able to cure him of his vertigo after only a few months’ worth of herbal therapy. Getting rid of the illness was one thing; making a lifelong friend through the course of those events was even better. And if there was one person Jaxon hadn’t forgotten as he climbed the ladder of teenaged success, it was Merit. He kept an eye out for the kid; even defended him against older bullies a couple of times. 

But then Merit died. He learned about it via rumour in school, which was then confirmed with a solemn few minutes of silence on the PA system one day during the morning announcements. And that was it. He sought out Merit’s older sister, Mercy, but the last time they ran into each other she was positively feral; lashing out at him and accusing him of spying and creeping up on her… For whatever purpose is beyond him. It pissed him off, but also made him suspicious. Why was she so jumpy? What really happened to Merit? He wants to approach her again - more gently, if need be - in order to find out.

Plot Teasers:

There are skills far more valuable than being good at sports, and Jaxon will soon learn that athleticism is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to climbing the food chain for survival.

Jaxon will eventually get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Scott’s rapid rise to success; but will he have a choice in taking it for himself - or will greater forces make that choice for him?...

On the soundtrack of his life: Fallout Boy - I Don’t Care  (x)

FC: Colton Haynes, non-negotiable.

Fortunately for us, Jaxon is  T A K E N!! | Follow

#teen wolf rp #colton haynes #colton haynes fc #jackson whittemore #jackson whittemore rp #jaxon whittemore #s: tw #t: human #cast #taken #takenm

[maximelebled]

2016

Wo-ho-ho-ho there, it's time for my yearly blogpost again.

We all know how bad this year has looked; 2016 is a terrible year, 2016 was the worst year, 2016 this, 2016 that. And really, who could blame anyone for thinking that? But I feel like I'd be doing myself a disservice by focusing too much on the negatives; with our cognitive bias and all that, we tend to forget that the world keeps on getting progressively better and that despite appearances, overall, things are looking... up? Not that we should let our guard down; in fact, more than ever, we need to be aware of each other and look out for each other. The two greatest values you can have, and that you can transmit to other people, going into 2017, are empathy and curiosity.

But anyway, I'm not a skilled writer and other folks will have already said more or less the same thing already, so now it's time to talk about myself again!

Before I do that, though, I would like to give my most heartfelt thanks to the people who have supported me through this year, whether from close circles or from further. I know, it's cliché, but at the same time I feel like people don't realize how much their support means to me, and the true, hidden impact it has had on my life. You know who you are! ♥

I still find writing this blog post to be as oddly awkward as last year, but it's good to let things out, have it all laid out in front of yourself; especially when things keep becoming more of a blur over time. I can't really distinctly remember specific periods from this year as well as 2015, but then again I'm also writing this while coming down from a nasty flu. I've read that things become more of a blur over time the more you age, because you have more of a frame of a reference to go through. That prospect makes me uneasy, but at the same time, I don’t dread it as much as I used to.

2015 was arguably a worse rollercoaster as far as I was concerned, with higher highs but also much lower lows. 2016, smoother ride? Less exciting. Even though from an outside eye it may look more impressive, which feels like a weird contradiction.

In February, I got taken onboard at Nightdive Studios to work on a really cool project: a remake of System Shock. It started out as a 1:1 project (almost like a Doom source port, if you see what I mean?) but eventually the ambitions grew into actually doing a full-fledged reboot. We ended up releasing a "pre-alpha" demo for a Kickstarter that grossed $1.35 million, and people seem to be quite excited, which I'm happy about. I wasn't very happy with my animation work in the demo but since then, I got time to iterate on it and I'm more at peace with it right now. Of course, I wish I could talk more about the project, but I obviously am not in the position to! ;)

It's funky, going from nearly two years of Dota & "cartoonish" animation right into something more AAA-realist, with less stylization, and the transition is a bit hard, but of course, it's a very valuable process to learn how to dial your own style back. I’ve felt that animating kind of goes like this:

At first, you have zero idea what you're doing and everything is super stiff and robotic. Then you learn about follow-through and inertia and you start doing that everywhere because it makes things smooth... too smooth. So then you dial it back... back... oh wait, things are too stiff again! And ultimately, after 15 years of repeating that process, back and forth, you'll probably be an amazing godlike Pixar-worthy animator... when you reach the point of being able to animate stiffness that looks smooth.

Of course, all that is a (relatively humorous) generalization but it's a pattern I've observed in other animators, mostly in the SFM community; their growth in skill over time seemed to have this sort of trend.  I think I'm about halfway there... hopefully!

Right now, we’re in the middle of our vertical slice phase. My favourite part of the project is— well, I have quite a few of them, but I wanna say my coworkers are an absolute delight and our lead programmer is a freaking angel. I feel really lucky to be able to work with these people. And that’s gonna sound dumb, but it makes me feel weird that they LIKE ME BACK. But you know, impostor’s syndrome, etc. though that’s gotten better recently. Still, it’s hard to get used to the thought of things like “dude, there are animators from Blizzard who follow you on Twitter, stop doubting yourself for a second”.

July rolls around, and I decided to participate, again, to The International 2016′s Short Film Contest. This time around, I teamed up with EDJE (Erick Wright) and @zandraart — and I won again. First place! I was legitimately expecting to get third, at best, even though there were people like SirActionSlacks telling me “dude you won already stop worrying”. Unfortunately, my brain was louder than their voices; I remember the night before the results were announced, I couldn’t sleep despite having taken two sleeping pills...

As self-centered as a statement like that may sound, winning three animation contests and having worked on four games eventually ends up drilling in your head that there is no reason to let shitty people influence your brain. I guess it’s a self-esteem thing 😃

This sort of feeling that I was not being myself, forcing myself to not be me, well, it’s gone! And for the first time I’m starting to feel like I got my shit together, even if only just a bit, so that’s relieving.

We did the movie in two weeks again, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m not as happy with it as I was with Enigma’s Exasperation. The execution might be a little stronger but the idea is weaker for the one minute format. But a good thing to remember: it’s fine to not always outdo yourself even if you meant to.

That said, for next year’s contest, I hope I’ll be able to dedicate more time to making the film. I’m hoping they extend the maximum time to 90 seconds and make the prize pool less top-heavy again... but, unfortunately, knowing Valve, I wouldn’t count on it.

Here’s a list of my favourite music albums that I listened to this year:

The Timura Trilogy series of albums by Bjørn Lynne (Wizard of the Winds, Wolves of the Gods, The Gods Awaken)

Fortress by James Hunter USA (bandcamp)

Everything from Nelward

Orange Express (1981) by Sadao Watanabe

Memories in Beach House (1983) from the CBS/Sony Sound Image Series

The Dark Crystal movie soundtrack by Trevor Jones (if you’ve never watched the movie, you should, it is absolutely incredible)

Now onto health... I believe I've mentioned this subject a couple times before. Being a nerd who works from home, I'm subject to many of the sins that come with having a commute consisting of merely walking down the stairs from one's bedroom. The two biggest being 1) a terrible sleep schedule and 2) lack of physical activity.

I use the Sleep as Android app; upon telling it that I'm in bed, it starts using my Pebble smartwatch to track my motions and determine the quality of my sleep, the phases, the cycles, and whatnot. But the most insightful data doesn't even come from that algorithmic tracking; the times for "when I went to bed" and "when I got up" are more telling. Here's a chart of my sleeping times since the beginning of 2015. Each vertical bar represents the sleep of one day.

I've taken the liberty to highlight the time range between 22:00 and 9:00 in the morning, sleeping times that would make you say "yeah, this person is a reasonable adult". As you can see, my sleeping times often didn't fall into that range, and the whole graph has a stripey appearance because my sleeping times keep shifting a little every day, almost like I'm living 25, 26 hour days.

What I love about this graph is that you can definitely see the times when I had to get it together; The International 2015 is very noticeable, with no "stripe" pattern where there would have been three previously.

Here's a zoom on only 2016:

There’s actually a bit of improvement here; the length of the "stripes" keeps growing, and in the middle of some of the stripes, I hang to regular times for longer and longer before slipping away into indecency again. I’m trying my best to keep that progress on the right track. (a track that goes right to my bed)

Now, as for the lack of physical activity. It's very tempting to stock my fridge and then live like a hermit for 3 days, but I've tried to make sure this wouldn't happen. The goal is to not have a single day where I don't move at least a minimum amount of time, unless I have a very good reason to (like illness).

I use the S Health app to passively track my steps; it offers a few fun statistics, and also counts steps onto an additional counter if you've walked fast enough for a certain amount of time, that is to say, at a pace that is considered physical activity. If I were to walk for 1 hour, and during 15 of those minutes, I was at a pace that was above 100 steps a minute (I believe that’s the threshold), it would amount to about 6000 steps, 1500 of which would then be qualifying as "healthy steps".

I took all the average monthly values and put them in this chart:

It's really easy to see on here when my motivation just plummeted post-TI5, after all that terrible stuff I've mentioned before. It took quite a while to shake the depression off. I would consider 3000 steps per day to be the baseline goal, as it amounts roughly to 30 minutes of walking per day. In the latter half of 2016, I managed to reach that goal!

The last thing I wanna talk about, health-wise, is understanding, in my opinion, the two big hidden plagues on ourselves: the first one is sugar, the second one is stress. I saw a very eye-opening documentary on Arte that talked about how cholesterol was made to take the fall for heart disease and whatnot, and sugar is in fact the true culprit — combine that with recent studies showing how it’s, in fact, “similar to drugs”, and it’s easy to see how we’ve come to think it’s harmless but it’s not, much like how we thought cigarettes were good in the 50s. This makes me glad I stopped drinking sodas and eating candy as much as I did four years ago; I’ve largely replaced the drinks by either carbonated water or the stuff that’s light on sugar (both in terms of sugar AND taste).

The second plague is stress. This ties into mental health. I deeply believe that learning how to stay sane and relaxed, as weird as that may sound, is one of the fundamental keys to living well; don’t worry about stuff you can’t control. Of course, that doesn’t mean “be apathetic to the world”. Our cognitive bias makes us focus so much on the negatives that it’s become so hard to perceive the positive side of things. This is gonna sound stupid but I hope you see what I’m trying to get at here: for example, there are really shitty people being all like “I’m gonna run over Black Lives Matter protestors”, stuff like that, and we get outraged at it, and rightly so; but in the process, we forget that it’s a really good positive thing that BLM exists in the first place. You know what I mean? I don’t know how to phrase it. Like I said before, I’m not a skilled writer!

And it’s frustrating, really, to have all these ideas, vague concepts floating around your head; you know what you mean to yourself, but you don’t know how to communicate that to other people. Language, writing, and communication are skills far more important than most people realize!

Anyway, to reiterate what I’ve already said like three times now, it comes down to not worrying about things you can’t control. It’s hard to internalize and it took me years to understand it, but it’s a valuable life lesson.

There are a ton of other little life lessons that I don’t actively think about but which have been super valuable on a day-to-day basis; these are also, for the most part, hard to phrase into coherent words, but the best one would be that it’s okay to be wrong and to make mistakes, but it’s also (even more) okay to admit that you were wrong and that it’s not a personal failing, as in, a failure of you, as a person, to have made a mistake or whatever. I think it’s something that is extremely important to teach people, because it’s part of the entire “be open-minded” package, if that makes sense? It was hard for me to change myself until I realized that admitting that I made mistakes. It’s kind of like the five stages of grief; the first one is acceptance, and you’re not going to make any progress until you go past that...? When you say to someone, “you did something wrong”, or “you made a mistake”, whether it’s moral, personal, professional, whatever, if you don’t have that mindset, that person would perceive it as a personal attack. But to err is human, and errors are not reflections of your moral standing as a person. I guess it comes down to having this distance between... yourself... and what you do? See, here, words fail me again. That said, I hope you see what I’m getting at.

Anyway, that’s it for looking back on this year... here’s a sneak peek at my next big personal project, hopefully to be released in the first trimester of 2017!

#year in review

[729renegades]

THE GAP

The importance of remaining positive in times of adversity is without doubt one of the most valuable skills we can develop.

It’s the foundation for most of the key decision-making processes we use, and vital for our physical and mental health.

It can also be one of the most difficult mindsets to absorb into our daily habitual behaviour.

Why do we naturally beat ourselves up because we think things are not going our way?

Why do we use language and negative self-talk to constantly berate ourselves when we feel we are not achieving?

Societal conditioning plays a part in this mindset, the default reaction used by many of us is often downbeat and negative. “I’ll never be rich anyway, what’s the point in trying”, or “I’m just not talented enough to be successful”.

When results are not going our way in our careers, the reaction most of us act out is usually one of despair, we tend to see the absolute worst scenario that could play out, empty wallets, overdrawn bank accounts, eviction, repossessions. The mind paints a picture of failure.

When was the last time you ever had that as part of your reality?

The chances are, it’s a very unlikely prospect, yet a lot of us fear that reality.

Worry is the one of the biggest causes of stress, but what do we actually achieve by worrying?

Why do we as entrepreneurs worry so much about our achievements?

This can be attributed to the goals we set ourselves, which are quite often way out of reach.

Is it healthy to set ourselves up for disappointment?

No news is ever as good or bad as it first seems

That’s what we do as entrepreneurs, setting ourselves challenges that are based on dreams and desires that seem beyond our capabilities at the time of the challenge. And often we succeed. We head towards our destination, as we get closer, the dream or goal becomes more achievable… It’s within reach. It doesn’t seem dreamlike any more.

In the meantime, subconsciously our minds have been telling us, if we can achieve this, we could go even further.

We set higher goals that we would never have imagined we could reach, even by the standards of the first goal that we set.

But that first milestone has been forgotten.

“Did I really believe that was a goal? I’ve nearly achieved it. It wasn’t that far out of reach in the first place.”

So, what actually happens is, we pass the first goal without recognition.

No acknowledgement that we have succeeded, because we are so focused on the next level of achievement that is out on the horizon, also out of reach and a mere fantasy in the moment of now.

Welcome to the gap.

The gap is the place where you feel that you’re never actually getting anywhere because you keep resetting your sights.

Treat yourself to a little recognition, some self-praise and just a little satisfaction with your performance to acknowledge your results.

So how do we put this into practice? Here are a few methods you could consider.

Measuring

Keep a journal.

Describe your goals, describe the reason you want to achieve them, how will it make you feel, what difference will it make to your life and results? Describe your feelings.

Have regular reviews. Re-read your journal.

Remind yourself and thank yourself once you’ve reached it.

Be Positive

If you want to be more positive, the first thing to do is to be more positive.

That may sound daft, but everything we do, or feel is a choice.

Choose to feel positive.

Review

Regularly review your week, your month, your quarter and your year.

Reflection and evaluation may seem like non-productive work and quite often we push it down the priority list.

Don’t Overload

Be careful not to put too much on your workload. This is the easiest way to make yourself feel inadequate.

Don’t expect this to be an instant solution. Old habits are hard to change.

So how does all this actually help us practically?

When the chips are down, you lose a sale, you can’t pay the bills, your car breaks down, your employee doesn’t show up for work again, a job goes wrong, and you have to fix it for free, what is our usual ‘re-action’?

Instantly, your mind accepts that you are going to have to do what it takes to straighten things out. We all know we are not going to walk away from it.

But then, we start complaining about it, beating ourselves up, “it’s never going to work”, “I can’t face this anymore”, “when is my life ever going to start going right” etc. etc. etc.

Then once we’re over all that, we get on with whatever it is we need to do to sort the problem out and get on with the rest of our day.

What was the point in putting ourselves through all that?

Napoleon Hill said: “Every adversity bears the seed of an equivalent or greater opportunity”.

The advantage of having a positive mindset is that instead of wasting time reacting, we begin to look for the opportunities.

So, look for the lesson. How can I prevent it happening again, how have I caused this problem to happen?

There’s a great poem by Rudyard Kipling, “If”, kindly shared with me by Dave Dean when I was going through a ‘dip’ a few years ago, one passage stands out and helped me put my worries into perspective.

“If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

Another great quote, which always helps when receiving bad news:

“No news is ever as good or bad as it first seems”.

It’s important to remember that this improvement to our mindset will always be work in progress too. To suggest that you’ll never experience negative self-talk or adversity ever again would be unrealistic.

The most important work you may ever do is to observe yourself and choose how you would like to respond – not react.

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