Fellow readers sorry for the wait I was on vacation celebrating with my best friends this past week, it is the only time of the year we all get together to treat ourselves. This piece I am writing was inspired by my experience this past week. 

To celebrate is to be festive the action of marking one's pleasure at an important event or occasion by engaging in enjoyable, typically social activity. That is exactly what my friends and I did last week and you why? Because we have to treat ourselves sometimes to the finer things in life and take advantage of the time we have on this earth.

To many days of my life I have woken up early and gone to bed late due to working late shift or over night shifts, studying for exams, preparing for projects, dealing with personal issues, sickness/illness… every now and than you have “treat yourself”

Treating yourself could be going out to dinner, buy a new pair of shoes, a trip to the spa or just a day to yourself. 

We as human beings are happiest when we are balanced; when things in our lives seem unbalanced we become stressed. Part of creating balance and being happy is treating yourself.

Your challenge this week is to go out and treat yourself to something nice you deserve it.

Thank you for reading

This piece was inspired by a conversation I previously had with Akil about taking time to praise ourselves for all of our accomplishments.

I pride myself on being humble and making the best of my situation, I do what I can to live a positive life. Therefore you will not hear me speak much about all my accomplishments, but you will hear me speak about working to be better and wanting to do more with myself. As human beings we are our own worst enemy and nothing we do will ever be good enough. We will always want more and more and more… With that being said lets take time to reflect on our accomplishments and pat ourselves on the back! 

I have beat a lot of statistics and have done many things people told me I would not be able to do but yet I still want more! I know there is more to me than what I have done to this point however I need to pat myself on the back. It is important to look back to see how far you have come and recognize yourself for all your accomplishments whether it be passing an exam, buying a house, owning a business or learning a new language. You have to realize your worth if you don’t praise yourself you cannot expect others to praise you, be happy with the path you have created.

Your challenge this week is to take time out of your day and write down all your accomplishments up to this point in your life, it can be personal or career oriented. The purpose of this activity is to help you identify and visualize all the greats things you have done.

I hope you enjoyed my post and thank you for reading.

My story is about something I have been experiencing for last 9 years or so and did not realize it until a recent conversation I had with a role model of mine. 

Peer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms.   Most of the time when you think of peer pressure you make think of a negative experience however peer pressure can be very positive.  

All my life I have been a competitor no matter what the task sports, education, money, work etc. with that being said I have found my self challenging people in my profession on a respectful and professional level.  Recently I have been going head to head with collogue who is a good friend of mine however, he gets recognized on a national level for his work and it is an honor to work with him, however I do not receive the same recognition for my work, to me that sounds like a challenge! 

Since realizing this I find my self making attempts to be BETTER than him, which in turn creates a unique dynamic of a positive driving force relationship between the two of us because now he does not want to fall off his game to me and I am pushing him to be BETTER which makes me BETTER.  This competition is not known publicly it only exist between me and the person involved and at times the person may not be aware which I have experienced as well.  Seeing as I have been pushing the envelope and attempting to be BETTER I have been recognized on the University level with a recent award, divisional presentation, serving on committees, professional development and currently pursuing the opportunity to present on a Regional/National level.

Being competitive can be looked upon as a negative characteristic to some people.  In this case I am able to take a trait/characteristic, which is viewed, as negative and channel it to be positive I think this is possible with just about any negative trait: argumentative/layer, like to gossip/talk show host, humor/comedian you get the idea… 

My parents never picked out my friends for me and that taught me a great lesson, which I had to learn myself and that was not everyone who enters your life is meant to be in your life…I had to learn this the hard way. I cannot benefit from you being my friend there is no need for the relationship to exist.

In closing if you want to make a difference hang with those who make a difference, you want to make big money hang with people who make big money…its quite simple think about it this way when you want to have a good time, you hang with people who know how to have a good time.  The same goes for what you want in life…who is in your company?

Thanks 

Good Monday folks! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and you are prepared for a productive week ahead.

I started reading a book on emotional intelligence and some of the concepts and research inspired me to share some of my reading with you in hopes you can apply it to your life.

So the chapter I read was about a surfer catching some waves on his surf board when suddenly a great white shark started circling him in the water. Immediately the surfer was scared and believed he was going to die. After a few minutes went by the surfer calmed down, collected his thoughts and decided he was going to live. Once he made the decision to live he used all of his energy to get to the beach where he was swarmed by other surfers and beach members. The purpose of this short story is to show you an example of how powerful the mind is.

Our brains are the central hub for information to be processed. So I say that to say this, the physical pathway for emotional intelligence starts in the brain, at the spinal cord. Our primary senses enter here and must travel to the frontal lobe which is where rationale and logical thinking takes place but the problem is information enters through the spinal cord than passes through the limbic system which is where emotions are produced prior to reach the frontal lobe. So information is entered and felt first and thought about second which is the problem and can lead to many issues in our personal and/or professional lives.

So this is how all this brain talk plays a role in our lives. Let’s say you are thinking about starting your own business, starting a new job, moving to a new area etc. Right away one might be scared, nervous, or anxious. This is because the information is passing through the emotional part of the brain (Limbic system) once the information gets to the frontal lode where you can think logically your emotions will be under control and will not dominate your decision.

I challenge you this week to think logically about a risk or an experience you currently dealing with and work yourself through the process do not let your emotions get the best of you.

Thanks for reading.