»revolution without r« by lars worm
sábado, setembro 10, 2016
You Can Be Mentally Stronger If You Do This Small Act Every Day
As humans, we tend to set goals throughout our entire lives and dedicate most of our time trying to achieve them. That gives us purpose and motivation to strive forward. Yet, it can have detrimental consequences to our mental health, activating stress indicators that come as a byproduct of pushing ourselves too hard towards massive goals.
As psychologist Karl Weick suggests in his article “Small Wins,” we should make it an everyday practice to focus our attention towards the positive by counting each small win we make. By taking the Alcoholics Anonymous as an example, he suggests that the principle works due to the change in perspective. Instead of focusing on overwhelming and complex goals, participants are encouraged to choose small, achievable daily actions:
The impossibility of lifetime abstinence is scaled down to the more workable task of not taking a drink for the next 24 hours, drastically reducing the size of a win necessary to maintain sobriety.
By celebrating these small, daily wins, participants feel more confident and motivated to achieve the same satisfactory feeling the next day, and so the behavior gains momentum leading to an almost effortless achievement of the ultimate goal.
The Dangers of Dreaming Big
We are encouraged on a daily basis to “dream big” and set our bars high if we want to achieve great things. This phrase is an inescapable part of every motivational speech by almost every successful person who ever lived. There is nothing wrong in the saying itself, yet it tends to be misinterpreted by us, the regular mortals who are fascinated by fairy tale stories of dreams that come true to those who are brave enough to wish and focus on the ultimate goal.
For every great achievement ever made, there have been a million of small wins and breakthroughs that gradually led there, and this is something many people tend to overlook when working on achieving their goals. If we forget to appreciate the small wins we regularly make, the following negative consequences will appear:
- Our sense of self-worth can be worsened
- We risk feeling bad about ourselves and feeling incompetent when we constantly compare present state to our final goals, which can only lessen our chances of making progress
- We are prone to the feeling of failure and depression when our goals can’t be achieved
- The increased amount of stress we have to cope with when we work on getting it all and now is counterproductive, as it blocks our productivity and weakens our physical health
Once we change the perspective from big to small and break our final goal into smaller, achievable chunks, we take the pressure off and avoid the risks to our health. By focusing on everyday progress, we automatically feel much more motivated, which causes our brain to get hooked on the positive rush and the feeling of accomplishment striving to achieve more. Understanding the importance of small wins and knowing how to apply it to your everyday life will cause tremendous benefits to your goal achieving and your overall health.
Here is the 4-step process you can take to develop the habit of celebrating small wins:
Step 1: Start small
First of all, you need to write down your final goal, and forget about it. It sounds silly, but this will help you focus on the fragments ahead of you, which is the only way to get things done. Instead of wasting energy on planning months ahead, focus on the next day’s challenges only. Be here and now and only think one step ahead in order to move forward. This will give you the constant sense of accomplishment, which will motivate you to move forward and boost your self-esteem.
Step 2: Reflect often
Every once in a while, take some time to reflect on your progress. So often we focus on goals yet to be accomplished and forget about the progress that has already taken place. This means comparing yourself — with yourself. For example, if your goal is to lose certain amount of weight, instead of beating yourself up for not getting there yet, you should compare some older photos of yourself to the new ones. By doing so, you will get the visual proof of your progress which serves as great inspiration for future advances and inspires positive emotions.
Step 3: Reward yourself
From early childhood, we get familiar with the achievement — reward formula which makes us consider it a norm in each such situation. Therefore, if you achieve certain success, no matter how big or small, your mind expects that you provide yourself with an adequate prize. If the reward doesn’t come, your motivational fuel gets drained, making your efforts futile. So, next time when you catch yourself single-mindedly chasing a complex goal without appreciating the small wins, give yourself a break and treat yourself to a movie, favorite sweet, or a short trip with your friends.
Step 4: Enjoy the process
Maybe the most important element to keep in mind in order to maintain mental strength in a competitive and goal-oriented world is to remind yourself to be content with yourself and the goals achieved. Remember to have fun and not take yourself too seriously. Enjoy experimenting and growing. By appreciating the process and the lessons learned, you will be able to avoid the stress and negative emotions, even if you don’t achieve the ultimate goal.
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How You Spend The One Hour After Work Is What Determines Your Success
At the end of the day, you’ve worked long and hard, and you feel like you have completely and utterly depleted all of your daily energy supplies. Today, just like all other days before it, you will make yourself a lazy TV dinner, watch a show for an hour or two – any show, as long as you’re watching something to distract yourself from the frenzy at work.
All sounds awfully grim, doesn’t it? Well, you can rest assured, you are not doomed to repeat such a lazy daily routine: whether you choose to watch TV for two straight hours each day after work, or just go over Facebook or Instagram until you finally fall asleep, you can actually use some of this time to do something productive!
Doing so will improve your career life, as well as your personal time.
The benefits of making good use of your first hour after work
First things first: If you spare a single hour after work on something that you count as productive, no matter if it’s learning a new language or building a car model, you will feel fulfilled, and therefore, happier. This will make a significant difference at your in work productivity. A happy worker is a good worker, and sooner or later, your boss will surely notice the difference.
Secondly, you can’t entirely count on learning something new, or practice a hobby during actual work time. Not only that you will constantly be distracted, and your personal gain from it will diminish significantly, but this can also result in an opposite effect on your work productivity, and it may even look like you’re slacking. During after-work time, you are your own boss, and you can make your own rules and channel your time in whatever way you please. It’s during this time that you should dedicate an hour to achieving your goal.
Thirdly, one hour each day can make a colossal difference in the long run. For example, in the case that you are studying a new language for one hour every day, after a year, all of those hours will have made for significant practice time, and you might even be close to full fluency by the end of the year. That makes one language every single year!
And lastly, you should always consider the fact that companies might hire, or promote you, based on what you practiced during all of those single hours. If you studied Italian, for example, to the point of near fluency, you could write that on your resume, and it may prove beneficial to you when you encounter a company that is looking for that particular language skill.
What are the problems that may arise from staying idle?
Well, therein lies the problem. Staying idle. So what does staying idle mean? Well, a person that has an idle attitude towards life cannot expect their lives to change. This means, no progression, no goals, no brighter future compared to what they have at the present. To some, they may be fine with what they have already. But if you have any goals or aspirations, then you can’t let yourself get sucked into an idle, daily routine.
A second problem that may arise is that building yourself such a strong, steady, lazy kind of routine, may affect you mentally and even push you into depression. While depression is a significant problem by its own, it will also diminish your work productivity and, as a result, deteriorate your working conditions, such as with your boss-employee relations, or your general work status.
The dedication of just one hour after work a day can make all the difference in your world.
Here’s how you can make good use of your time outside of work:
1. Read: Yes, you read it correctly. It can be anything, from fiction to nonfiction, fantasy to biography, and romance to horror. One hour of reading each day can make for one book every week. The more you read, the more you know. Not only that, but reading can be very fulfilling. It will also improve your conversation topics, and may even give you work-related knowledge that can ultimately boost your actual career.
2. Start personal projects: This one is especially beneficial if your workplace did not already provide you with one. Projects, such as building a website, or doing some volunteering work will reward you with refined personal values, such as learning the meaning of teamwork, how to meet deadlines, and how to handle feedback for your work. All are major traits for a successful career.
3. Make connections: It is well known that connections are an undeniable plus when it comes to either career or personal development. All you need to do is just to go out there and meet people! You can even schedule after-work get-togethers with your co-workers.
All of these are just a small sample of what’s in store for you. Think outside the box and follow your passions!
It’s that easy.
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