Just Ask D
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Business-and-Life-Management-Coaching/135759710572
http://www.denisedema.com
Take Action and Change Your Life Today!
Life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life's greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret. Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all…..............Start today and book your complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com/
Creating The Best Work-Life Balance
For most people, juggling the demands of career and personal life is an ongoing challenge. With so many demands on your time from work to family obligations, it can be difficult to strike a balance. The goal is to make time for the activities that are the most important to you so you can live a happy life.
Here are some ideas to help you find the balance that's best for you:
Keep a log. Track everything you do for one week. Include work-related and non-work-related activities. Decide what's necessary and what satisfies you the most. Cut or delegate activities you don't enjoy and don't have time for. If you don't have the authority to make certain decisions, talk with your family on a personal level or professionally to your supervisor at work.
Take advantage of your options. Find out if your employer offers flex hours, a compressed workweek, job-sharing or telecommuting for your role. The flexibility may alleviate some of your stress and free up some time. Sometimes the options have been there all along but never explored.
Learn to say no. Whether it's a co-worker asking you to spearhead an extra project or your child's teacher asking you to manage the class play, remember that it's OK to respectfully say no. When you quit doing the things you only do out of guilt or a false sense of obligation, you'll make more room in your life for the activities that are meaningful to you and bring you joy.
Leave work at work. With today's global business mentality and the technology to connect to anyone at any time from virtually anywhere, there's no boundary between work and home unless you create it. Make a conscious decision to separate work time from personal time. When with your family for instance, turn off your cell phone and put away your laptop computer.
Manage your time. Organize household tasks efficiently. Doing one or two loads of laundry every day, rather than saving it all for your day off, and running errands in batches are good places to begin. A weekly family calendar of important dates and a daily list of to-dos will help you avoid deadline panic. If your employer offers a course in time management, sign up for it.
Communicate clearly. Limit time-consuming misunderstandings by communicating clearly and listening carefully. Listening to others is very important in the communication process and will help you to understand each situation better. Take the necessary steps to get your thoughts and feelings shared and respected by others.
Fight the guilt. Remember, having a family and a job is OK for both men and women. Making the right choices with a clear conscious will become critical to your success in both areas. Instead of feeling bad, take action by making your life better and more rewarding.
Nurture yourself. Set aside time each day for an activity that you enjoy, such as walking, working out or listening to music. Unwind after a hectic workday by reading, meditating, practicing yoga or taking a nap. Just spend some time winding down in a peaceful environment.
Set aside one night each week for recreation. Take the phone off the hook, power down the computer and turn off the TV. Discover activities you can do with your partner, family or friends that are fun. Making time for activities you enjoy will rejuvenate you and will bring more joy into your life.
Protect your day off. Try to schedule some of your routine chores on workdays so that your days off are more relaxing. Don’t let everything pile up until that one day. Each day accomplish something small and it will make your chores less stressful.
Get enough sleep. There's nothing as stressful and potentially dangerous as working when you're sleep-deprived. Not only is your productivity affected, but also you can make costly mistakes. Get 8 hours of sleep so you are fully rested and can start your day refreshed. Your family and co workers will benefit as well from your energized self!
Bolster your support system. Make sure you release your energy by talking to a trusted friend or co-worker during times of stress or hardship. Ensure you have trusted friends, neighbors and relatives who can assist you when you need a favor when you have to work overtime or travel for your job. Having a support system alleviates the pressure of having to take care of everything yourself.
Seek professional help. Everyone needs help from time to time. If your life feels too chaotic to manage and you're spinning your wheels worrying about it, talk with a professional coach to give you the support you need to achieve your goals. If you're experiencing high levels of stress because of marital, financial, chemical dependency or legal problems, a professional can provide you with specialized resources to get you help in those areas.
Remember, striking a work-life balance isn't a one-shot deal. Creating balance in your life is a continuous process. Demands on your time change as your family, interests and work life change. Assess your situation every few months to make sure you're keeping on track. Balance doesn't mean doing everything. Examine your priorities and set boundaries. Be firm in what you can and cannot do. Only you can change your situation and restore harmony to your lifestyle.
Give yourself a gift! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. To book a complimentary session, visit my website at http://www.denisedema.com/
Professional Coaching for Success!
Some individuals are facing important decisions about their career paths, businesses or personal lives that they feel ill-prepared to make without some help or guidance.
Unstable economic conditions, career uncertainties, business losses, health crises, and relationship tensions are but a few of the issues in everyday life that can contribute to that uncomfortable feeling of indecision, maximum overload, frustrating lack of control, or even quiet desperation.
Business and personal life coaching can provide the very assistance you need to eliminate barriers, reduce anxiety, set and achieve goals, and increase your level of success.Whatever areas of your life you may want to address – from business strategies to career decisions to getting your life/relationships in balance – a professional coach can make the difference between moving farther away from success or confidently achieving it.
Great coaches have one thing in common: the sincere desire to help others with their knowledge, experience, skills and training. They are objective, passionate professionals whose single purpose is to help you succeed in attaining your goals.
Explore working with a seasoned Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering individuals, entrepreneurs and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Visit http://www.denisedema.com/ to learn more and book a free consultation to get started.
The Wheel of Life
The Wheel of Life is a great tool to help you improve your life balance. It helps you quickly and graphically identify the areas you need to devote more energy to, and helps you understand where you might want to cut back. It is used in preparation for coaching sessions and setting short and long term goals. The challenge now is to transform this knowledge and desire for a more balanced life into a positive program of action!
Start by giving yourself a score of 1 to 10 depending on how satisfied you currently are in relation to each area on the wheel. 1 is pretty much as unhappy as you can be whereas 10 is the perfect score. As you score each area it is vital to be honest so that you can identify the areas for change and set goals to improve the key areas of your life. When you have scored all areas, join together all the points on each section to create a wheel. This will show you how balanced overall your life is and the areas you really need to focus on to set goals for improvement. After you have completed the wheel put a date on it and then review it every 3 months. Hopefully you will have gained self awareness, created healthy habits and made significant improvements in your key areas throughout time. You may then find that another area now requires your focus instead.
The Wheel is meant to change as your life improves and is a very simple yet powerful tool to help you identify the areas of your life that you have neglected and need to prioritize more in future. To learn more about how life coaching can help you attain balance in your life, book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com/
Being a Good Friend is a Virtue
Do you ever wonder why some people have lifelong friends and others don’t? How do people sustain good friendships no matter how many years pass or much distance is between them? The answers are simple if you live by the rules of honoring your friends the same way you would honor yourself.
To have a friend you have to be a friend. You must remember to do your part by initiating calls and spending time being part of their life. Asking how the other person is feeling or asking how their day went when you see them or talk on the phone is important. This shows that you care about them and are interested in what’s going on in their life. If you are always talking about yourself without showing interest in the other person then you can’t expect the relationship to be a lasting one. The friendship will become unbalanced and an uneasiness or distance is likely to arise.
Be Reliable and Considerate. If you and your friend agree to meet somewhere, don't be late, and never stand them up. If you're not going to make it on time or make it at all, call them as soon as you realize it. Apologize and ask to reschedule. Don't make them wait without reason because it's rude, and it is certainly not a good way to develop a friendship. When you commit and say you'll do something, just do it. Don’t wait to cancel plans because something better came up. That is being selfish and inconsiderate of your friend’s time and company. Be someone that people know that they can count on.
Be a Good Listener. Many people think that in order to be seen as "friend material" they have to appear very interesting. Far more important than this is the ability to show that you're interested in others. Listen carefully to what people say, remember important details about them, ask questions about their interests, and just take the time to learn more about them. You don't want to be the person that always has a better story than anyone else or that changes the subject abruptly instead of continuing the flow of conversation. These people appear too wrapped up in themselves to be good friends.
Be Trustworthy. One of the best things about having a friend is that you have someone to whom you can talk to about anything, even secrets that you hide from the rest of the world. The key to being a good confidante is the ability to respect their information so you shouldn't disclose things that were told to you in confidence. Before people even feel comfortable opening up to you, however, you need to build trust. Be honest about yourself and your beliefs and you will gain your friends trust.
Be There. You've probably heard of fair-weather friends. They're the ones who are happy to be around you when things are going well, but are nowhere to be found when you really need them. Part of being a friend is being prepared to make sacrifices of your time and energy in order to help out your friends. If a friend needs help with an unpleasant chore, or if he or she just needs a shoulder to cry on, or someone to vent to just by being there for them will mean a lot. This works both ways and you should surround yourself with friends who are there for you as well.
Make new friends but choose them wisely. As you befriend more people, you may find that some are easier to get along with than others. While you always give people the benefit of the doubt, sometimes you realize that certain friendships are unhealthy, such as if a person is constantly negative or introducing questionable behaviors into your life. If this is the case, ease your way out of the friendship as gracefully as possible. Preoccupy yourself with other things that you enjoy. Cherish those friends who are a positive influence in your life and do your best to be a positive influence in theirs. Never leave old good-friends because you may like someone new more. This is a big mistake. It's great to have different groups of friends, but if you abandon one group for another, you may soon find yourself without any friends at all.
Be Yourself. Don't be untrue to your convictions and beliefs, and if this causes you to lose some friends, you're better off without them. You'll also find that your integrity may help you win better friends, and if you just "be yourself" you'll make friends who like you for who you are. That is what friendship is all about. In Good times and bad, a real friend accepts you for who you are.
We cannot tell the precise moment when a true friendship is formed but when you have one it will bring forth unconditional support, honesty, trust and respect into the relationship. The most beautiful discovery that true friends can make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. The vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences, not simply in the enjoyment of similarities. Look at how many really good friends you have? Develop the characteristics needed to sustain solid friendships and enhance your life. Being a good friend is how lifelong friendships start!
“A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” ~Lois Wyse
Give yourself a gift! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. To book a complimentary session visit http://www.denisedema.com/
To have a friend you have to be a friend. You must remember to do your part by initiating calls and spending time being part of their life. Asking how the other person is feeling or asking how their day went when you see them or talk on the phone is important. This shows that you care about them and are interested in what’s going on in their life. If you are always talking about yourself without showing interest in the other person then you can’t expect the relationship to be a lasting one. The friendship will become unbalanced and an uneasiness or distance is likely to arise.
Be Reliable and Considerate. If you and your friend agree to meet somewhere, don't be late, and never stand them up. If you're not going to make it on time or make it at all, call them as soon as you realize it. Apologize and ask to reschedule. Don't make them wait without reason because it's rude, and it is certainly not a good way to develop a friendship. When you commit and say you'll do something, just do it. Don’t wait to cancel plans because something better came up. That is being selfish and inconsiderate of your friend’s time and company. Be someone that people know that they can count on.
Be a Good Listener. Many people think that in order to be seen as "friend material" they have to appear very interesting. Far more important than this is the ability to show that you're interested in others. Listen carefully to what people say, remember important details about them, ask questions about their interests, and just take the time to learn more about them. You don't want to be the person that always has a better story than anyone else or that changes the subject abruptly instead of continuing the flow of conversation. These people appear too wrapped up in themselves to be good friends.
Be Trustworthy. One of the best things about having a friend is that you have someone to whom you can talk to about anything, even secrets that you hide from the rest of the world. The key to being a good confidante is the ability to respect their information so you shouldn't disclose things that were told to you in confidence. Before people even feel comfortable opening up to you, however, you need to build trust. Be honest about yourself and your beliefs and you will gain your friends trust.
Be There. You've probably heard of fair-weather friends. They're the ones who are happy to be around you when things are going well, but are nowhere to be found when you really need them. Part of being a friend is being prepared to make sacrifices of your time and energy in order to help out your friends. If a friend needs help with an unpleasant chore, or if he or she just needs a shoulder to cry on, or someone to vent to just by being there for them will mean a lot. This works both ways and you should surround yourself with friends who are there for you as well.
Make new friends but choose them wisely. As you befriend more people, you may find that some are easier to get along with than others. While you always give people the benefit of the doubt, sometimes you realize that certain friendships are unhealthy, such as if a person is constantly negative or introducing questionable behaviors into your life. If this is the case, ease your way out of the friendship as gracefully as possible. Preoccupy yourself with other things that you enjoy. Cherish those friends who are a positive influence in your life and do your best to be a positive influence in theirs. Never leave old good-friends because you may like someone new more. This is a big mistake. It's great to have different groups of friends, but if you abandon one group for another, you may soon find yourself without any friends at all.
Be Yourself. Don't be untrue to your convictions and beliefs, and if this causes you to lose some friends, you're better off without them. You'll also find that your integrity may help you win better friends, and if you just "be yourself" you'll make friends who like you for who you are. That is what friendship is all about. In Good times and bad, a real friend accepts you for who you are.
We cannot tell the precise moment when a true friendship is formed but when you have one it will bring forth unconditional support, honesty, trust and respect into the relationship. The most beautiful discovery that true friends can make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. The vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences, not simply in the enjoyment of similarities. Look at how many really good friends you have? Develop the characteristics needed to sustain solid friendships and enhance your life. Being a good friend is how lifelong friendships start!
“A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” ~Lois Wyse
Give yourself a gift! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. To book a complimentary session visit http://www.denisedema.com/
Embrace the Moment and Learn To Be Happy
Simply by learning to embrace and live in the moment you can achieve the happiness that seems to elude most people. Simple living is a concept that most people can’t imagine because the world is so complicated. Actually your world is what you have made of it and its pace has been created by you. Think for a minute of a typical day in your life. Is it rushed from the time you wake up? Are you stressed about everything along the way or is it calm and peaceful throughout the day? The way you are living is what you have chosen, not what has been given to you. Your life is the blueprint of the choices you have made, and will only change when you change the plan. Being happy is all relative to what it is that makes you happy. Everyone can learn to embrace the moment and be free of the patterns they have created. Think about if you are living your life expecting someone else to make you happy, or are you taking responsibility for your own happiness? Do you you rely on money, family and friends to make your world happy even though those are outside forces that were created by your own decisions? Why can’t you live in the moment if it brings you joy instead of expecting something more from others?
A good place to start is with your own internal dialogue and what is in your head. If you tell yourself each morning that you are able to handle things calmly and honestly, and then remind yourself throughout the day that you are what you think, and then you will start to become aware of your actions. Look at the things that take place throughout your day without judgment so there is less stress in your life. Treat others with respect and respect will be given to you in return. Happiness comes from within, but how you have chosen to live in the external world that you have created, will determine how often you feel peace, joy, and respect. To be able to live with an attitude of gratitude and to be thankful for the simple things that cross your path every day will bring you more joy. Allowing that joy to enter your heart will bring peace to your soul. Internal peace is always found through self awareness and growth.
Make a list of the things that make you happy and look at how much, or how often those things are in your life now. Each day you should surround yourself with what actually brings you joy. First, knowing what those things are, and then creating the space for them will be the start of making joy prevalent in your life. You must also start to create boundaries and eliminate the things and people that are not serving you as well. Stop giving your energy each day to things that drain you. Start becoming aware of how you spend your time and what moments you are missing along the way. Appreciating simple pleasures each day will slow your mind down and bring you back to the basics of feeling joyful. Being aware of what’s right in front of you will force you into the moment. Embracing the many little moments that take place in a day can bring a lifetime of happiness and joy to your life.
Find a minute of peace in your day or evening to just close your eyes and give thanks with a happy heart for all your blessings. Call people you love more often and spend less time with those who are always angry. Create an outside activity each day even if it’s for 15 minutes and connect with the world. Commit yourself to organize something in your home or at work to get your surroundings in line with your values. Make a commitment to change just one thing today and embrace the moment, even if the moment is reading this article. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Once you are relaxed, open your eyes and think about what you just read and how you can apply something to your present circumstance.
It’s really up to you to make the simple changes that will help you embrace moments that can bring you happiness. If your world is so complicated that you can’t stop and feel some joy throughout your day, then enjoyment of the moment is lost. Stress and judgment will not bring you the happiness you deserve. You always have the power to bring joy into your life because your life is your own, and happiness is a choice. Uncomplicate the day and release the negative thoughts in your mind. The simple things that make you truly happy will become more prevalent and those moments you embrace will define your happiness.
“When we are capable of living in the moment free from the tyranny of “shoulds,” free from the nagging sensation that this moment isn’t right, we will have peaceful hearts. “ -- Joan Borysenko
Denise Dema is a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering individuals, entrepreneurs and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. To learn more about the author and her practice please visit www.denisedema.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
