Archive for the ‘Careers’ Category

 

“Where your talents and the needs of the world meet, that’s where your life’s path is to be found.”

Aristotle

  

 

 

Our careers help to define us. When we first meet someone we often ask: what do we do? Our job gives us a sense of status, which is why it can have a devastating effect if we are made redundant.

However, it can be a positive time, offering the option to review where we are and more importantly where we want to go. It could be:

• the chance to spend more time with our family
• a great time to consider choices
• the ideal time to start up your own business

Taking time out.
Why not take the opportunity to enjoy life a little. Spend more time with your family and friends, take a long holiday and explore places you’ve always wanted to visit, or learn a new skill – there are a lot of training incentives around right now.

New beginnings.
You could take the time to reflect upon what you really want to do. We often drift into a career because it was our best subject at school, or because our parents guided us into a particular direction or maybe it was because this job seemed interesting at the time and you just stuck with it. As we go through life our priorities, passions and values change and so might the ideal job!

Entrepreneurial spirit.
Always wanted to work for yourself? With the demise of the “job for life” and security that used to come from working for an organisation, more of us are seeking ways to start up our own businesses. Many of the current successful businesses started out in the previous recession. So yes it may be difficult times right now but with the right product or service it could be a great time to flourish.

As Napoleon Hill stated “Opportunity often shows up as misfortune or temporary defeat”.

So stay positive, look at all of your options rather than just continuing with what you have always done and see if the time is right to change direction.

Here we look at the third level of the pyramid to understand how we can enhance our performance by managing our energy levels.

Mental Performance

Mental performance includes clarity of thought, critical thinking, focus, effective decision making and problem solving abilities. It involves using both our logical left brain and our creative right brain and being able to harness the power of both.

Moving up the performance pyramid we can see that if we are not in good shape physically and are feeling tired through lack of adequate rest and relaxation then our mental capacity will reduce. Also, if we are experiencing emotional imbalance then we are likely to spend more time and energy thinking about our emotions.

When this happens we are unable to focus completely on the current task. Our mind wanders to the past, replaying out events; or it turns to the future, imagining what might happen or what the consequences would be in a certain situation. We know that thoughts trigger emotions so allowing our mind to wander reduces our focus and it creates inner turbulence.

The elite athlete will avoid distractions at the start of a race by listening to music or by focusing on certain rituals or routines for preparation.

In modern day society with so much information being available 24 hours a day it is difficult for us to focus the mind for long periods of concentration, yet it is being able to stay in the present and focus that will get tasks done and allow us to make effective decisions. We need to retrain the brain to be able to concentrate, just like at school when we prepared for an exam. We know that we have to perform to our best ability in an allotted 3 hours.

Concentration takes up mental energy and so it is important to alternate this with periods of relaxation or at least less intense levels of thinking. Alternating shorter periods of high focus with tasks which can be done on “autopilot” or do not need intense concentration will improve mental capacity.

Just like physical interval training, alternating steady state performance with high bursts of intense physical workout to increase physical capability– the brain’s mental capacity can also be increased.

Allocate 2 or 3 one hour slots throughout the day to focus on the most important tasks at hand and see your productivity levels increase.

Related Posts

Peak Performance

Peak Performance – Physical

Peak Performance – Emotional

Peak Performance – Spiritual

In business and in life successful people want to achieve more. They constantly put themselves under pressure to take more on because the sense of achievement makes them feel successful. Additionally, in a world of rapid change we find ourselves dealing with new challenges every day. This constant pressure, if not controlled, can affect our performance so that over time we need to put in more effort to achieve the same level of success.

So how do we achieve constant, sustained high performance?

Well let us take a look at some top athletes – a 100m runner for example, and how they perform to be the best at what they do. Firstly, they recognise that they need to train regularly to keep themselves fit, and they know that they do not train at the same intensity all year round. They will build up to a major event and then they allow time for their bodies to recover in between high levels of performance. They also recognise that it is not only being in top physical condition that will help them achieve their goal of success, they need to be mentally prepared and emotionally in the right state.

A good representation of this is the Peak Performance Pyramid.

This pyramid shows how athletes build upon their physical capacity to improve their performance. They push themselves physically but alternate this with adequate rest and recovery. Their internal emotional climate needs to be right in order to drive what is called the ideal performance state. They need to be mentally focused, often visualising every step of the race they will run, and the spiritual element is their source of self belief, determination and motivation to succeed.

Taking this into the business and corporate world, today’s managers, professionals, executives and entrepreneurs are also striving to and indeed are expected to perform consistently at high levels. In this environment the focus has often been purely on mental performance, however just as the elite athlete needs to look after other aspects of their wellbeing so does today’s busy professional and executive. To perform consistently over the longer term and avoid stress and burnout the “business athlete” has to harness the power of mind, body and spirit to perform at their best.

In the next few posts we will look at each level of the pyramid to understand how we can enhance our performance by managing our energy levels.

Related Posts

Peak Performance – Physical

Peak Performance – Emotional

Peak Performance – Mental

Peak Performance – Spiritual

 

The Art of Successful Living is to include all the elements or pillars of success as a foundation for your ideal life, and to find the right blend or mix of each element to determine your own personal level of success.  Here we look at Pillar 5.

 

 

Pillar 5 – Fulfilling work and contribution 

Finding work that uses our strengths and talents to their best use will help us to be effortlessly successful in what we do. Success is easier when you find yourself “in the flow” rather than trying to swim upstream. Aligning this with our core values will bring us the fulfilment we desire. When we work within our own value system we can avoid the stress of being in conflict internally. Furthermore, by doing meaningful work that can give something back to our communities helps us derive a sense of purpose and contribution. Therefore aligning what we do with who we are gives us purpose, passion and a sense of meaning.

 

 

Related Posts

The Art of Successful Living – Pillar 1

The Art of Successful Living – Pillar 2

The Art of Successful Living – Pillar 3

The Art of Successful Living – Pillar 4

The Art of Successful Living – Pillar 6