In today’s fast-paced, get-up-and-go world, crisis situations are bound to happen.

What should you do when a challenging situation arises? More importantly, how can you remain calm in order to deal with the situation to the best of your ability? Knowing the ropes when faced with a crisis will enable you to get your bearings and handle it with a minimal amount of stress.

Breathe. Remember that even in the most stressful situation, breathing deeply and forcing yourself to remain calm will help. If you are perceived as calm, then to others you are calm, and you can influence their response to the situation as well.

Have a plan. The most successful entrepreneurs are those who have a good game plan. Same goes for dealing effectively with a crisis. Develop a crisis management plan that can be put into place in case of emergency. Include ways to handle potential crises from all walks of your busy life. For instance, make a plan for how to deal with a large, unexpected bill. Or, take some time to talk to your family about how to handle a possible natural disaster.

Practice makes perfect. Read Post

Does it take a family or a village to raise a child? This question became the subject of great controversy during the 1996 presidential election with the publication of Hillary Clinton’s well-known book, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us.

But somewhere between the two extremes, there’s a simple truth that when the family AND “village” is dedicated to helping the next generation succeed, everybody wins. As parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, mentors and educators, we all have our part in the process.

Of course, parents have the largest role and the largest stake in raising happy, well-adjusted children. We want our children and teens to make smart choices and avoid trouble. The single most effective way to bring that to pass is to concentrate on helping our kids build a strong foundation.

The nonprofit organization, Search Institute, describes this foundation as being made up of 40 essential building blocks, which they call developmental assets. Read Post

These days, the self-help books and life coaching newsletters are full of people advising you to get in touch with your inner child. And they have a valid point, if their advice is taken correctly. However, too many people confuse connecting with their inner child and living irresponsibility or cultivating a lack of maturity.

The whole point of the “inner child” movement was to free yourself from unnecessary and limiting beliefs, such as only kids can play or that creativity is a trait reserved for children and artists. (http://www.coping.org/growth/little.htm) It was designed to help you release pent-up anger and negativity while embracing all the things that make life worth living - an open of mind, a curious and inquisitive state of being, a safe and nurtured core and a lightness of spirit and energy. It was never a call to abandon mature behavior, responsible action or moral consequences.

Connect with and encouraging the expression of your inner child is a worthwhile pursuit. But to allow that activity to cross into bad behavior and negativity risks not only your own success and quality of life, but also that of those around you. Here are a few distinctions to help you tell the difference: Read Post

When freshmen descend upon college and university campuses late this summer, chances are good that their orientation programs will be filled with maps of the institution, contact information for department heads, extracurricular activities schedules and parameters for maintaining passing grades.

The most important lesson missing from the agenda, however, may be a practical outline about how to adjust to a lifestyle that for many, includes learning how to live away from home for the first time. The scenario has been repeated all too often: kids get to college and they either party themselves to an early exit from school, or they spend so much time studying that they fail to grow socially. This leads to stress and often, mental and physical illness.

Read the rest of College Freshmen Get Schooled in Work-Life Balance 101, Face Monumental Transitions.

Thanks to Are We Balanced Yet for including this article in the Carnival of Work Life Balance.

Most of us realize what a bad habit is. We know that smoking, overeating, skipping meals, biting fingernails, and tapping fingers are annoying bad habits, but do you know that the following are also bad habits?

Procrastination

Procrastination is the root of all unproductive evil. Every time you complain to someone that “you just don’t have enough hours in the day” or you “can’t get anything accomplished,” chances are that procrastination is the real culprit standing between you and your personal success.

“What’s a few more hours of surfing the internet?” “Is one little phone call really going to matter?” If these activities stretch on, from one instance to the next, the answer is YES - “just one more” is the biggest offender, and the sole reason why you never seem to be on top of things at home or on the job.

Being a “yes” person Read Post

In less than one week, Americans heard how two giants in the television business loved their work and their families even more. NBC Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert, collapsed and died June 13 and just six days prior, sports journalism and fans lost CBS legend and host of “Wide World of Sports,” Jim McKay.

From Amazon.com

While they lived different lifestyles — McKay’s assignments required regular worldwide travel while Russert’s schedule was regularly spent at NBC studios in New York and Washington — they lived with passion for their jobs and families.

Read the rest of Russert and McKay Lived Authentically and as a Result, Respect Followed Them.

Disappointment is a fact of life. It’s going to happen. How you deal with it, however, will greatly determine the effect disappointment has on your life, and the extent to which you can control that effect.

Disappointment is a factor of two things: Your expectations and perceptions of an event, and the actual resolution of that event. One of the key point about disappointment is that it is based on comparative, rather than objective, results. Our disappointment isn’t based on what happened, so much as how what happened compares to what could have happened. For example, winning ten thousand dollars can either be a positive event or a disappointment, depending on what the maximum prize amount was. If the grand prize was ten thousand, we’ll be ecstatic. If it was five million, we might well be somewhat pleased at winning something, but disappointed not to have won more. (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-364X(198501%2F02)33%3A1%3C1%3ADIDMUU%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F)

Therefore, the key to dealing effectively disappointment lies less in controlling the events as it does with managing your expectations. Read Post

What’s your perception of success?

Do you see it as ever-elusive? Is it a work in progress? Or is success more of a final destination for you?

No matter what your thoughts on success, one thing is certain: if you don’t know where you’re headed, you’ll never know when you’ve arrived.

So where are you headed?

Some people see success as the six-figure income, waterfront property, hot car, flashy clothing and all the accoutrements that go along with the high profile career and lifestyle. But they forget that success is a subjective term, and the above definition might sound good on paper but it’s not without its own set of sacrifices. What will you have to give up in order to maintain such a lifestyle? Peace and quiet? Time? Rest? Family time? A healthy, balanced life? An unassuming, everyman existence? Read Post

Van Morrison has released a new album entitled Keep it Simple that happens to be in line with my own values, and with the Slow Down Fast coaching philosophy. I came across a review in Rolling Stone that summed it up powerfully:

“At this point in his career, Van Morrison is less interested in surprises than in further exploring his long-standing obsessions: surviving the shocks of this life and rising gracefully toward the next one. Keep It Simple finds him looking back on his sixty-two years, filled with longing — for home, for deliverance from the world’s demands, for spiritual transcendence.”

While Van Morrison may have his own reasons for wanting to uncomplicate the twilight years of his musical career and life … I think he does a good job of expressing what we all yearn for. A kind of deliverance - not so much in death, as the above quote implies… but a relief or respite that each of us can begin to know while still in the living years. A rescue, and a sort of homecoming from the constant pressure that society imposes.

I believe that generationally, we’ve come a long way… but it took many years of fumbling down the wrong path first - and the transition is far from complete. Many people are still trapped in the image and status mentality: having the most, doing the most, being the best. Read Post

I don’t remember who said “age is only a state of mind,” but I truly believe that. We know getting older is inevitable, but aging doesn’t have to be. Chronologically we age each year, as our physical bodies deteriorate, but mentally how we age is up to us. And even some researchers and others like Deepak Chopra don’t feel our bodies have to age as we expect them to. There is a lot of information being brought to the public on ways we can keep our bodies younger.

To stay young physically, we need to select the best nutrition and exercise. Eating fresh, wholesome foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins is a fairly common recipe among most nutritional experts. Staying away from excesses of alcohol, sugar, and caffeine is also a popular remedy for staying young and healthy. And of course, smoking is out of the question. Regular exercise whether it’s engaging in a sport, working out at the gym, or a daily walk will also keep our bodies in better shape than not doing anything energetic.

But our minds are the seat of our ability to stay young at heart. Because our minds control our attitudes, our thoughts, our words, our feelings, and our actions. Read Post