Helpful Insights Online» Personal Development

That New Year’s Resolution

Gil Pizano — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 03:27:37 +0000

A new year has begun and a countless list of New Year’s resolutions have been made by many. A large number of those resolutions won’t last the month! OK, I admit I tend to be optimistic about people (because many will tell me that most New Year’s resolutions don’t last the first week). Resolutions are great decisions that people usually commit to in order to change their life or the life of someone else for the better. So why do so many “forget” or “lose track of” whatever it is they said they were going to do? I’m sure you’ve never been one of those people. J Admit it. We’re all guilty of not committing to the resolutions we’ve supposedly committed to. But why is that? It’s simple…a sincere passion for it is missing. It’s so much easier to commit to a change that can help you follow your passion…whatever that passion may be.

Principle: Follow Your Heart

I’m sure this is not the first time you’re seeing the above phrase. If it is, then I’m glad it’s being introduced to you here. If you have seen it before, I hope you understand what it means. Early in my career, I thought I understood what it meant, but I discovered that I didn’t really. At first I always focused my education on helping me get the job that would make me the most money. When I started along that track, I discovered that even though I was beginning to make some serious bucks, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. If I kept on that track, I knew I would end up in a place I didn’t want to be at in the future. So, I decided to go into another type of field where I felt I made more of a difference. That helped me to feel better about what I was doing. That feeling that one gets when they are following their heart is a personal feeling that only you can know how it feels when you’re on the right path for yourself

How do you know you’ve found your passion? Find something you love to do so much, you can’t wait for the sun to rise to do it all over again. Connecting your New Year’s resolution to something you’re passionate about will help in achieving your goal.

Principle: Do Not Fool Yourself!

By fooling yourself, I’m talking about making yourself believe something in order to avoid something you know you need to do. This principle for helping to stick to the commitments you made to yourself is a short and simple, yet powerful one. It’s a principle that all of us at one point or another have used to rationalize ourselves out of doing something we needed to do (e.g. I can have one more ice cream ‘cause I’ve had a very stressful week).

If you want to succeed in what you’ve committed yourself to do, be honest with yourself. Don’t fool yourself into not following your passion. Earlier in this post I briefly described how I was not on a path in my career where I would be personally fulfilled. I was originally fooling myself into allowing money be the focus of my occupation. Had I not realized that I was fooling myself, I would still be doing something that I didn’t want to do and thus, would still feel as though I was missing something in my life.

Principle: Baby Steps

Ah! Here is the old adage about taking baby steps. If one of your goals is to read more books rather than watching TV or surfing the internet, why not start by reading no more than 15 minutes in the morning or at night before going to bed? There was a time not so long ago when reading for fifteen minutes felt to me like three days…in fifteen minutes. Oh it was brutal for me! I was reading so slow it would take me 15 minutes to read one or two pages of a paperback. No fooling…I was bad! I did manage to overcome this by taking baby steps. First I made it a point to read one page and then stop for a minute and then read the next page. I’d read the second page and then stop for a minute before I continued. This allowed me to not get as bored with reading as I would’ve had I read straight thru at first. Over the next few weeks I began to notice that I was reading faster and not getting as bored reading as I was when I first started. In time I was reading two, then three and four pages a minute. Today, I find reading fun and cannot imagine myself finishing the day without reading.

Do You Know Someone…?

Do you know of anyone who has a passion for something? If you believe you do know someone like that, observe them. Do they appear to have more enthusiasm, energy, and excitement than others? Do you find that they often appear to be creative in what they are passionate about? They appear to come up with really unique and yet simple ideas?

Do you know someone who succeeded at losing the weight they wanted to lose? Ask them how they did it? Did they quit eating everything that was bad for them and going to the gym six to seven days a week or did they take baby steps to reduce or change the types of foods they were eating?

Do you know of someone who succeeded in whatever they chose to commit to last year? Look back on how they did it? Did they use some of the above aspects to succeed at what they chose to commit to?

What are some ways that you believe will help you succeed at achieving your goals for the new year?

Sphere: Related Content

Sleep…Is It Really All that It’s Cracked Up To Be?

Gil Pizano — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:48:42 +0000

Sleep. Now there’s a word that many people working today wish they had more of. If you’re one such person who wishes they had more time to sleep (I’m raising my hand here too), then know that you’re part of a growing group that believes they just have to deal with not getting enough sleep. With the ever increasing complexity of people’s lives over the last few decades, it may appear that we are just doomed to putting up with feeling a little tired all the time. But how true is that? Do we really have to deal with not getting the amount of sleep that we need? Can we really learn to function on less sleep than we may actually need? How much sleep is enough? Is how sleepy we feel a good judge of whether or not we are getting enough sleep?

You Can’t Handle the Truth! (Jack Nicolson as Col. Jessup in “A Few Good Men”)

How do we know if we are getting the minimum amount of sleep in order to function? According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM), the following are signs that you are definitely not getting enough sleep:

You have a hard time paying attention during meetings.
You feel tired and lack energy during the day.
You are unmotivated and have trouble “getting going.”
You need to use an alarm clock to wake up on time in the morning.
You are irritable, grumpy or lose your temper easily.
You start to doze off when you are driving a car. (DANGEROUS!!!)

A poll conducted in 2005 by the National Sleep Foundation showed Americans averaged about 6.9 hours of sleep per night. This represents a drop of about two hours per night since the 19th century, one hour per night over the past 50 years, roughly 15 to 25 minutes per night since 2001. In another study done at the University of Pennsylvania, investigators found that subjects who slept four to six hours a night for fourteen consecutive nights showed significant deficits in cognitive performance equivalent to going without sleep for up to three days in a row.

How would you like to go to work (or lead a group, or attend a business and/or social function for that matter) on the equivalent of not having gone to sleep for two or three days!?!

So What Can We Do?

The world we live in is an exciting and wonderful place to be. The means of communication, travel, the sharing of ideas and images has never been as easy and readily available as it is today. Because of this, it’s also a very fast and complex world that demands more and more of our time and energy. In order to function well we all need to rest well.

Sleep hygiene is defined as “the controlling of all behavioral and environmental factors that precede sleep and may interfere with sleep.” It’s the practice of following guidelines in an attempt to ensure more restful, effective sleep which can promote daytime alertness and help treat or avoid certain kinds of sleep disorders. Trouble sleeping and daytime sleepiness can be indications of poor sleep hygiene (Wikipedia).

Below are some excellent tips (provided by AASM) for getting a better night’s rest:

Don’t go to bed unless you are sleepy.
If you are not sleepy at bedtime, then do something else. Read a book, listen to soft music or browse through a magazine. Find something relaxing, but not stimulating, to take your mind off of worries about sleep. This will relax your body and distract your mind.
If you are not asleep after 20 minutes, then get out of the bed.
Find something else to do that will make you feel relaxed. If you can, do this in another room. Your bedroom should be where you go to sleep. It is not a place to go when you are bored. Once you feel sleepy again, go back to bed.
Begin rituals that help you relax each night before bed.
This can include such things as a warm bath, light snack or a few minutes of reading.
Get up at the same time every morning.
Do this even on weekends and holidays.
Get a full night’s sleep on a regular basis.
Get enough sleep so that you feel well-rested nearly every day.
Avoid taking naps if you can.
If you must take a nap, try to keep it short (less than one hour). Never take a nap after 3 p.m.
Keep a regular schedule.
Regular times for meals, medications, chores, and other activities help keep the inner body clock running smoothly.
Don’t read, write, eat, watch TV, talk on the phone, or play cards in bed.
Do not have any caffeine after lunch.
Do not have a beer, a glass of wine, or any other alcohol within six hours of your bedtime.
Do not have a cigarette or any other source of nicotine before bedtime.
Do not go to bed hungry, but don’t eat a big meal near bedtime either.
Avoid any tough exercise within six hours of your bedtime.
You should exercise on a regular basis, but do it earlier in the day. (Talk to your doctor before you begin an exercise program.)
Avoid sleeping pills, or use them cautiously.
Most doctors do not prescribe sleeping pills for periods of more than three weeks. Do not drink alcohol while taking sleeping pills.
Try to get rid of or deal with things that make you worry.
If you are unable to do this, then find a time during the day to get all of your worries out of your system. Your bed is a place to rest, not a place to worry.
Make your bedroom quiet, dark, and a little bit cool.
An easy way to remember this: it should remind you of a cave. While this may not sound romantic, it seems to work for bats. Bats are champion sleepers. They get about 16 hours of sleep each day. Maybe it’s because they sleep in dark, cool caves.

Have you ever gone through a day wishing that you had gotten more sleep?

What are some ways you relax at the end of the day (let’s keep it clean here. This is a family friendly blog )?

What are your thoughts on how much sleep we are or aren’t getting today?

Sphere: Related Content

Don’t Know Where You’re Going? It’s OK. Like it or Not…You’ll Get There Anyway!

Gil Pizano — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:00:39 +0000

How does it happen? You wake up one morning and you discover that you’re in a place you didn’t expect to find yourself. I’m not talking about any of those movie scenes where the character wakes up in a strange bed after a wild bachelor party, even though it’s happened to some in real life. What I’m talking about waking up one morning (or sitting in an office or doing some particular chore or job) and having a minor epiphany of your life. You discover, or rather yet remember that when you were younger you imagined yourself living another kind of lifestyle or doing something completely different than what you’re doing now. What happened? Why did you end up where you are right now and not where you thought you’d be?

Where Did the Time Go?

They say that the older you get, the quicker the day becomes. Everyone I’ve spoken with on the subject concedes about this. Just last week, I was having dinner in Bar Harbor, Maine, with my girlfriend and we had a great time. We spent the afternoon walking around the town, going through the shops, and then looking out over the ocean and seeing the white water of the waves hitting the rocky islands just off the shore. Oh! That wasn’t last week! That was back in March of this year! Wow, how time flies. That felt like yesterday. Has that ever happened to you? The feeling that you did something recently, but in fact it was further back than you thought initially?

So many parts of a person’s life can and do turn out that way. You say that you’ll plan for the future but keep putting it off. Putting off your planning and the next thing you know, its 5 years later or worse 10 to 15 years later! (No joke, I’ve met quite a few people in many areas of life that have said this to me.)

Don’t Put Off What You Want to Plan For

I recently had an old colleague of mine ask me a very interesting question. I wrote about it in another article. He asked me what I did to get to where I was in my career. Without repeating the specifics described in the other post, I mentioned that a large part of it was having some sort of plan. Without that plan, I may have gotten to where I currently was in my career. But that is a strong may!

What would you rather do? Have a goal of where you want to be and create some sort of plan in order to help increase the odds of getting there or not do anything and just see what happens?

Whatever your answer to the above question is, you’ll see the results of it. If you’re a person that chooses to go through life and just seeing what happens in it, then I say “good for you!” I’d also say, “don’t complain about what you permit” if you’re not happy with whatever outcome occurs.

What Can a Person Do to Help Influence What Happens in Their Life?

There are many things that a person can do to help influence what happens in their life. There are so many in fact that I simply can’t list them all here. But I will list some things to help get a person started. Below are some of those. As you’re reading this, think about how you can influence what happens to you in your life or how you may be able to influence the life of someone else:

Write Your Goal or Desire Down — It is really amazing the difference in a person’s mindset when they simple “write down” what they want to do, or what they want to have happen. When a person write’s a goal or desire down, the mind has a funny way of reacting. Once a desire or goal is written down, the human mind starts to think of ways to get to that desire. By writing it down, the mind begins to dwell on it subconsciously. It begins to think about ways to make that goal or desire occur. Many times soon after writing it down, ideas that you never thought of before begin to come to mind. Also, because the mind begins to dwell on it subconsciously, you begin to take notice of things that you didn’t realize before. Things that you notice may lead to a step that helps you get closer to what you want.
Choose to Be a More Optimistic - This one is a tricky one for many people. I say this because the easiest thing to do is complain and focus on the negative. After all, are we all born complaining? The first thing a person always hears from a new born baby is the crying. The new born is telling everyone in earshot that it’s unhappy that it got pulled away from where it was comfortable. As an adult, we have the benefit of (hopefullyJ) knowing more than a new born. We have the ability to choose the way we react to the things that happen to us and not just automatically complain and get upset. Choose to do something constructive if something doesn’t go the way you wanted it to go. You just may be surprised at how an opportunity may appear out of nowhere when you choose to be more optimistic. More often than not.
Stay Away from the “Nay Sayers” - You will find on your journey to the success people who will take comfort in you getting lost on your way. There is a truth to the saying that misery likes company. Some people would rather diminish your chances of reaching your goals and desires, than to do what it take in order for them to reach their goals. The simplest thing to do is just avoid these types of people where you can.
Whatever Your Goal or Desire, Do Your Research on It –If you want to achieve something, be somewhere in your career, or work in a particular field, do your homework on it. Find out what others who do what you want or have what you want have done. Finding this out will help you determine what steps you may need to take in order for you to have the same things.
Create Some Good Habits – They say the secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine and this I believe to be very true. This is probably one of the simplest and most powerful ways to help influence what happens to you. Let’s say you want to be better at a particular subject in school or at work. If that is the case make it a habit to read 15 to 20 minutes each day on that particular subject. If you do that for 30 days, that’s 450 to 600 minutes (7.5 to 10 hours) of reading you would have done on that particular subject. Do you know of any good habits that you’ve been doing for a while? Do you know of any bad habits that you wish you would stop doing? Either way, the habits you do will have a direct effect on what happens in your life. The good thing is that anything that you do repeatedly for 21 days, it will become a habit.

The above are just some ways that a person can have an influence on what happens to them in life. There are many other things a person can do as well. The below articles and websites list outline many of them:

How to Reach Your Goals — Experts describe strategies for setting goals and making sure you achieve them.

Reach Your Goals Automatically with Positive Habits – Habit: An acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary.

The Thing About Goals – Seth Godin and his view of goals.

How Rumination Affects Your Life — Here’s how rumination exacerbates your stress levels.

Your Attitude and How it Affects Your Career – by Karl Staib — Superpower Coach

How to Change Your Life in 30 Seconds or Less – from Dumb Little Man Tips for Life

Sometimes It’s The Smallest Decisions That Can Change Your Life Forever

Seven Weird Habits That Will Change Your Life — Some habits will help you live a better life. They’ll help you improve what’s already working or help you fix what’s not working very well.

Change Your Thoughts — Change Your Life — End Negative Thought Patterns

Douglas Adams on Creativity and Inspiration

Your Subconscious and How it Works

Where do you want to go in your life?

Sphere: Related Content

25 Great Articles on How to be Empathetic

Gil Pizano — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:05:28 +0000

Empathy enables a person to establish a connection with others and is necessary for mutual interaction and full comprehension of the experience. It is probably one of the most important aspects of being a leader in every situation. Without it, a person is virtually guaranteed to become out of touch with the environment, he or she is in. Without empathy, a leader cannot lead. Without empathy, a person cannot be in any type of mutually beneficial relationship. Without empathy, a person is basically asking to be completely alone in life.

Have you ever wished to be more empathetic in order to become a better leader? In order to have a better relationship with a friend, loved one or colleague?

There are many great and free resources about empathy available. Here are some great articles, posts and videos that talk about empathy and it’s importance in leadership, parenting and relationships:

5 Tips for Empathetic Listening — Really a quick read from Stepcase Lifehack on the five simple steps one can use to be more empathetic.
Are You Empathetic or Sympathetic? — A brief post by Robbie Miller Kaplan (author of the book “How to Say It When You Don’t Know What to Say”) on how he words sympathy and empathy are often thought to be the same, and yet they are distinct expressions.
Avoiding the Five Pitfalls to Becoming an Empathetic Listener — A very concise article about why more people are not better empathetic listeners.
Being a Good Manager/Mom: Be Empathetic — Quick post from Sarah Rottenberg who describes it well by saying that a recent post got her “thinking about what I think it takes to be a good manager. And I think it’s simple: be empathetic.”
Empathetic Voice Improves Doctor-Patient Communication — Doctors who use an empathetic voice with patients can elicit more information about their health problems and encourage them to stick to their treatment regime, a Monash researcher has found.
Empathetic Understanding and School Leadership Preparation — a paper written by Diane Ketelle and R. Pete Mesa, Mills College. Successful leaders seem to share one thing in common – empathy. The authors posit that empathic understanding is foundational to leadership.
Empathy and Showing Empathy — Interesting article descibing the importance of empathy in leadership positions.
Empathy is in Our Genes — a quick read from the Thaindian News website citing a few research studies on the topic.
Empathetic Customer Service — a short article on how empathy played such an important role in the lasting of one of America’s successful companies of it’s day.
Exercise in Creative Classroom Management — How to Become a More Empathetic Teacher – The title speaks for itself.
Gandhi’s Neurons: The Practice of Empathy – Article by Bruna Martinuzzi on
How to be an Empathetic Listener – article on steps for being a better listener with empathy.
How Empathetic are You? — Interesting article with a link to a test where one can determine their Empathy Quotient.
How to Practice More Empathy in Your Business Management — Sometimes it’s hard to be a business manager, especially when you are in difficult situations with your employees. One of the important things that you need to exercise in these difficult situations is empathy.
How to Teach Your Kids to be Empathetic – A story post from the website “Effective Parenting” that gives a good example of the results of teaching empathy to a child.
Make Empathetic Listening your Super Power — a very good article on being empathetic.
Mirror Neurons – Video of discussing a recently discovered system in the brain that may help explain why we humans can get so worked up watching other people.
Principles of Empathic Communication — From Leadership University, an itemized summary of “Habit 5 — Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood” from Stephen Covey’s “THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE”.
Resilience: Compassion and Empathy — The quality of your relationships, and not the quantity of them, is what matters for you in terms of your emotional resilience. One of the attributes that differentiates people with higher quality relationships from people with lower quality relationships is their ability to be compassionate and empathetic.
The Art of Empathetic Listening — an article by Gian Fiero, an educator, speaker and consultant who specializes in business development, career planning, and personal growth issues.
The Benefits of Empathic Listening – an article with some good guidelines for understanding and being a empathic listener.
The Caring Child: How to Teach Empathy – Good article of giving a child a head start in having the ability to be empathetic.
Three Steps to Empathetic Listening — Oftentimes, people are too busy, they don’t make the effort, or they simply don’t know how to listen empathetically to others. And it is because of this that people have difficulty getting in touch with their feelings and they harbor negative emotions about others.
What’s Empathy Got to Do With It? — a very good article by describing empathy in detail along with ten leadership tips on being more empathetic.
What is Empathy? How to be Empathetic – Very short and concise article by Gwendolyn Cuizon on empathy.

If you know of other good articles on the subject of empathy that you believe someone else needs to read or know about, share it with us in the comments below!

Sphere: Related Content

Sometimes It Comes Down to a Choice

Gil Pizano — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:14:34 +0000

Last week I was fortunate enough to be a participant in a two day leadership retreat. I was one of among thirty or so regional leaders chosen for a year long training program where participants will be involved in the development of a community based project. The two day leadership retreat was the first time everyone involved in the year long training program would be getting together. When I found out that I was going to be one of the people chosen to go through the course, I was really happy and looking forward to being part of the group. That was back in November of last year.

As the time for the retreat come closer, I began to think about how the retreat would be handled by the staff organizing it. After all it was suppose to be the first in a series of learning workshops for the coming year and the tone of the first program in the process would most likely be the tone to expect in future trainings. For me, not knowing what to really expect caused a little bit of anxiety for me but at the same time I still was greatly looking forward to it.

The location of the two day retreat was just over an hour from where I live. People in the group had the option of going to the retreat center on a private coach rented by the organization holding the retreat, or to go by car. Since the organizers hinted that the retreat would actually be starting on the bus on the way over I chose to take the bus ride. I will say it was a fun bus ride, I got to learn about some of the people who were going on the retreat with me. Coincidentally, one person I got to know was actually someone I was communicating with via the social media world. Thomas Clifford is more known to many in the northeast as “Director Tom”. For those of you who don’t know him, check out his blog!

Once we all got to where we would be spending the next two days, we got to work on various team building, leadership development and personal self-awareness exercises. There was also plenty of instruction given on the various areas of leadership to complement the exercises. For me, some of the facilitation seemed to almost cross the line of sounding as though they were facilitating to grammar school children. Author’s personal note: I’m not the type of personality that takes very well to a learning environment where instructors sound as though they are speaking to grammar school children. But given the number of people that were there (two to three facilitators for thirty to forty participants) each with a distinct personality, it would be difficult for anyone’s teaching style to please or be taken well by everyone.

I Needed to Make a Choice

Being that I was chosen to participate in the group, and the year long leadership training that went along with it, I chose to keep one very important aspect…an open mind. That said, the next two days turned out to be very eye-opening to me. Why? Because I was able to get a much better understanding about others as well as myself. Not saying that it was some sort of religious experience necessarily, but I did learn a great deal more than I expected. Looking back now in retrospect, I would not have been able to get as much out of those two days or learn as much as I did if I didn’t choose to keep an open mind and listen to what others had to say. That alone taught me the most because how many things would I have missed or have go over my head if a decided to keep a closed mind (remember I mentioned earlier that I was interpreting the teaching style of some of the facilitators as “grammar school teaching style” like).

Do you remember a time when you decided to keep your mind closed when someone was telling you something you didn’t agree with or believe? Was it possible that you missed an important lesson in the process? Do you remember a time when you chose to keep an open mind when someone was telling you something you didn’t believe or agree with? I guess it can be more comforting to think YOUR way is the only right way…they say ignorance is bliss. But at what cost?

Sphere: Related Content

Helpful Insights Online» Personal Development

That New Year’s Resolution

Related Posts

Sleep…Is It Really All that It’s Cracked Up To Be?

Related Posts

Don’t Know Where You’re Going? It’s OK. Like it or Not…You’ll Get There Anyway!

Related Posts

25 Great Articles on How to be Empathetic

Related Posts

Sometimes It Comes Down to a Choice

Related Posts