Recognize Your Personal Strengths - Know What Strengths You Bring, Then Bring 'Em By Jan Verhoeff

Recognize your strengths - the biggest fallacy in life is that we've gained nothing that we can use, as we grow older.

Women, specifically seem to believe after the kids are grown up and gone, if they weren't involved in a career their skill-set is useless. When Jodi asked me last week about whether or not her skills as a writer, those ones she learned back in high school, were any good at this point in time, I said, "Don't you read now?"

Totally in awe of the fact that people did go to school 'way back when' but they're still LIVING now. How can that happen? Do they just use the skills they acquired in school and never learn anything new?

Most people learn something new every single day. Perhaps what they learn is useful, or perhaps not. But learning is an on-going lifetime process that you do all the time.

This morning, while talking to my daughter, I learned that she had gained incredible skills of research and investigation after our first experience with a tornado. The tornado didn't touch down, but she had been sent to a basement for some crazy reason and she wanted to know why, so she took a dive off the hard wood floors of the library into a book about weather and learned at the tender age of nine that tornadoes appear when changes in temperature take place at high altitudes. Before the tornado can touch down, it has to gain sufficient sucking power to shift the temperature down the funnel which moves the funnel downward.

Independent learning is something most of us do naturally. Every day.

The REALITY - in one way or another - you've overcome every obstacle that ever landed in your path. Every turn of the road, you've found a way to step over, climb, walk around or overcome the obstacles you've faced. What strengths have you gained from those experiences?

Take a moment and write those down. Perhaps you're tenacious, dedicated to survival, or perhaps you've learned to negotiate your way out of paper bags? One particularly brilliant young woman I've known for a lifetime, could literally sell snow to an Eskimo. She's an absolute WHIZ when it comes to sales. What is your strength? Write that down.

Here are a few things that might have motivated you to grow life long strengths:

1) Relocating to a different area.

If you and your family relocated, you most likely had to find new educational resource. Perhaps, during the move you had to find and provide transportation for your family, locate your new home in a new town.

2) Change jobs, or help your spouse or children find a job.

This kind of personal assistance will increase your ability to communicate and interact with others.

3) Negotiate through class work and schedules with your children.

Negotiation skills are top end in most any business. Don't negate those negotiating skills, they are really important.

So what are your personal strengths?

Learning how to be the best of who we are isn't always easy, but do we give ourselves enough credit? Let's discuss this topic more over coffee. Visit me at http://janverhoeff.com and let's chat!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8354685

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Success, Happiness and a More Meaningful Life

Achieving Personal Success

What is an important key to achieving personal success? Before this question can be answered, we must define what we mean by personal success. Many of us equate personal success with power and financial success, and indeed we must have enough self-esteem and enough financial security in our lives to feel confident that we are meeting our necessary responsibilities, but in my definition of personal success we must view our lives in all of its varied aspects. That means attention must be paid not only to our work and our careers, but also to our personal needs--health, recreation, personal relationships and growth. In today's fast paced environment, this takes a special commitment to dedicate ourselves to planning and balance.

Barriers to Success

There are often common barriers that block us from achieving success.Before we can examine these barriers, we must define which type of success we are seeking, because the two separate definitions of success demand different strategies and follow different paths. Financial and career success demand that we learn to work hard, pick ourselves up from our failures and continue to constantly do what is necessary to move forward toward our goals, making success the first priority in our lives and not allowing failure to deter us. If we make this choice then we can be confident that we will eventually succeed. Success in one's personal life has a different path. Our own private needs and our personal relationships must then become part of our decision making process. These more personal decisions may take time and energy away from our drive toward our financial and career success. Each person must make his own decision as how to continue to move forward, but each decision that is made has its consequences. If we choose career success at any cost then the personal side of our lives may suffer. If we choose our personal success path, then we may make less money and feel perhaps a lesser sense of achievement in our careers. Therefore the barrier to achieving success is really our own conflict about these choices, and the difficulty in deciding what our choices should be. Once we make our decisions, we can then move quickly toward our selected goals. Goal Setting Goal setting is an important part of achievement. There are two ways that we set our goals. One is outer driven and one is inner driven. The outer driven goals are the goals that others set for us. They may be set by our friends, our neighbors, the society in which we live or the prevailing values of our time. The second way we discover our goals is inner driven. It is an internal system which show us what we would like to personally achieve. It is this inner voice that whispers to us who we are and how we can achieve our unique potential. Before we can achieve our goals we must know ourselves well enough to know what goals we want to achieve, and be sure they are our own goals and not the goals that others have set for us. When we know what we really want to accomplish, it is then easier to take those steps which help us to achieve those goals. How Can we Live an Extraordinary Life? The extraordinary life is not so much about what a person achieves or what others think of him, but rather how he views his own life and his own achievements in terms of his loving relationships and his competence in adjusting to the difficult demands of living with strength and with dignity, so that he can say when he looks back over the passing years "I have been grateful for the gift of life. I have tried to continue to learn and grow. I have tried to have the courage to follow my internal honesty."This more examined life is an extraordinary life because it leads to more balance, more contentment and to the fulfillment of each individual's personal vision. Leading Happier more Fulfilled Lives Life is a marvelous, continuing journey. Every day is a challenging adventure with opportunities for new insights, growth and change. With thoughtful planning and good decision making skills we are more able to have some control over our days and to achieve that ultimate goal of leading happier, more fulfilled lives.

Success, Happiness and a More Meaningful Life

June Stepansky is a writer and poet who writes books and articles about happiness, self-improvement and social and political issues. Article Source: http://www.articlebiz.com/article/1051650166-1-success-happiness-and-a-more-meaningful-life/

Out Of Your Head And Into Your Soul

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.” –Jon Kabat-Zinn

. . .

Do you fear that you’re missing out on life?

Are you waiting for something? To be loved? To be successful? To be happy?

Do you often feel like life is simply carrying you along, as something beyond your control?

In ancient Greek mythology, Narcissus was a beautiful youth who caught sight of his reflection in a pond one day and became completely enamored with it. It is said that he lay down by the water to gaze at his face, growing obsessed with his own image. Since he was unable to obtain the object of his desire, he died where he lay, overcome by grief. Sounds pathetic, but in many instances it’s a frighteningly accurate metaphor. The term “narcissist” is derived from this myth, and it tellingly refers to a person who is self-enamored and self-preoccupied, often to an obsessive and dangerous degree.

In his novella The Beast in the Jungle, author Henry James introduces us to exactly such a character: John Marcher, an extremely self-centered young man who is convinced that he has been selected by fate for a special event that will occur in his lifetime. He encounters a sensitive and intelligent young woman, May Bartram, who listens to John’s theory concerning his personal foreboding and conviction that he’s destined for greatness. May offers her friendship and agrees to watch and wait with John until this special fate comes to fruition. For many years, John sits idly and refuses to let May get close to him, ignoring the love of a good woman and killing time as he waits for his “spectacular fate”.

The story unravels to become a tale of lost life and lost love; it is only after May dies that John realizes that he’s missed most of his life—and the opportunity for true love—while waiting for a rare, strange, and self-concocted “event” that never happens. By living in his head and focusing on a fantasy, he missed the true meaning of life. He missed out on friendship, love, purpose, adventure, discovery, and self-growth. Gambling for nothing, he lost everything.

Narcissists typically do not empathize nor can they appreciate the beauty of the life that surrounds them. They exist at the opposite end of the spectrum as opposed to mindfulness. John “woke up” when May died; this was the emotional event that triggered his realization—too late—that life extended beyond himself.

Mindfulness is about exactly that: waking up to the world and connecting with life.

. . .

“By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness.” –Mathieu Ricard

. . .

As a teacher of mindfulness meditation and the founder of the University of Massachusetts’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, Jon Kabat-Zinn says:

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non Out Of Your Head And Into Your Souljudgmentally.”

By cultivating conscious awareness of the present moment, we extract ourselves from our own toxic thought patterns. By learning to sense and see and appreciate life, we need not regret an unfulfilled existence. Mindfulness is a practice that can immediately ground us back into the world, helping us delve within ourselves while simultaneously shifting us beyond ourselves.

As mindfulness is all about “living in the now”, the idea suitably circles back to the NOW philosophy:

• Notice.

Look around you and experience the life and love that surrounds you. It is right beside you! If you haven’t seen it, open your eyes and your mind. It’s easy to remove those mental blinders and barriers, as long as you truly want to.

• Opportunities.

Seek out and you shall find opportunities to grow and connect with life without judging yourself. By staying in the moment with those who are nearest and dearest to us, we can cultivate compassion, love, kindness, and morality within us—and then extend this compassionate attitude towards others.

• Within.

By becoming more mindful, you will achieve a stronger inner peace. It is foremost beneficial to you, and then—from you—it explodes tenfold out into the world around you. You can be deeply affected by the people around you, and can gain insight from and power over their thoughts; never forget that this is mutual—so work to make a positive impact.

. . .

“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” –James Baraz

. . .

Not sure where to start? Dr. Kabat-Zinn lists the following simple exercises as key components to mastering mindfulness:

• Pay attention to your breathing in the present moment.
• Notice what you’re sensing right now—use all of your senses. What can you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste? Increase your awareness of your body’s physical sensations to better ground yourself in the moment.
• Understand that your thoughts and emotions are like clouds. They will come and go and will always pass through; they need not define you.
• Keep a look-out for negative thought patterns so that you recognize them and then can make changes.

Get out of your head and get into your soul. Don’t waste life—live it. And begin living it now. If you do it now, you will always have time.

. . .

“In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility.” –Victoria Moran