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. 

I have been blessed with opportunity to have a career, which I have a great passion for. I am in a great place mentally, professionally, physically and spiritually however, my personal life has not been as successful since my transition 3 years ago. This leads me to share my story about finding your niche.

I remember past experiences when I went through struggles such as working a job I strongly disliked, being enrolled in a college class that I did not want to be in or having to obey my parent’s rules which went against my personal preference haha!  In all of the situations I listed I have 2 options, I could complain and become rebellious or I can find my “niche” and make the best out of the situation at hand.

A niche is a place or position suitable or appropriate for a person.  As I stated before I am excelling mentally, professionally, physically and spiritually however I am struggling in my personal life.  Balance is key in order to create harmony and peace within, therefore I am not balanced because my personal life is lacking.  This has really impacted my life over the last 3 years, at times I have become angered, frustrated and sadden by my inability to create the perfect balance in my life.  Finally, I learned getting upset will not help but will enforce the feeling even more causing a wave of negative energy.  Instead I have found my niche, which has helped me become successful in my personal life.  I enjoy being in relationships and creating relationships, therefore being a mentor and providing a service for students/community members one must be engaged in multiple relationships with people of all walks of life.   These relationships have temporarily filled the void that once was vacant.

There is a little bit of good in everything and always something positive in every negative.  With that said despite your condition find your “niche” the place where you fit in or is appropriate for you.  Once this is accomplished one will find joy and/or positive energy in whatever it is you do no matter the current status.

Since I have applied this theory to my life I have been able to cope with my personal life and am currently in a more peaceful place than I had been in the past 3 years.

Find what makes you happy and “get in where you fit in”

Thanks 

In this piece I will use the human anatomy as my analogy to get my point across to why the CORE is vital to success.

About a year ago I hurt my back really bad and needed to seek medical attention.  As I was going through the physical therapy treatment I realized if I had a strong CORE I would not be in this situation.

The CORE is the balanced development of the deep and superficial muscles that stabilize, align, and move the trunk of the body, especially the abdominals and muscles of the back. CORE strength goes beyond the surface muscles and asks us to utilize our deep internal muscles to maintain stability in motion.  The CORE is the most important group of muscles in the body and if neglected can cause injury which in turn is a setback.

With that being said it was the fact I had weak CORE surrounding the larger muscles that lead to my injury.  I hope you follow me on this…

In life you have one world in which you live in.  Since I can only speak from my personal experiences my world has been planted with a great supporting cast of people such as family, friends, coworkers, teachers, mentors, coaches and more.  These groups I just mentioned are my CORE.  I have strong supporting people in my world, which allows for me to venture out and try new things without fear of failure because I have the supporting cast around me.  Failure is a part of success without failure success does not exist.

“The CORE” is not only the people who support you but they are similar minded individuals like yourselves who share a lot in common and are supportive of your goals and ambitions. I owe my all my successes and accomplishments to the CORE because without this group of I would not be where I am today! 

Remember “you are the company you keep”

Thank you

I read a book titled “Attitude 101” by John C Maxwell and I came across this passage and I want to share it with you.

Success is…
Knowing your purpose,
Growing to reach you maximum potential, and
Sowing seeds that benefit others.

Success is a journey and once you realize it no matter how long you live or what you decide to do in life you will never exhaust your capacity to grow or run out of opportunities to help others.  When you see success as a journey, you will never have the problem of trying to arrive at an exclusive final destination.  Nor will you find yourself in a position where you have accomplished some final goal, only to discover you are still unfulfilled and searching for something else to do.

John Maxwell “Attitude 101”

As children we learn immediately once entering the world, every experience is a lesson that has the potential to be embedded in our brain forever.  As we age we obtain more knowledge from school, work, relationships, hardships, accomplishments etc.  With that being said our brains have a capacity, which only can store a certain amount of knowledge/information. 

I have a lot of different experiences and knowledge however some of the information I retained over the years has escaped me due to my limited brain capacity. Everyday there is information flowing in and out of our brain/mind and it sometimes can be over whelming for people.

I say that to say this “everything is not for everybody”.  We need to be aware of what we allow to enter and exit our minds.  Not all information is good information, for example, say growing up you were told things like “you will never make it”, “you are a low life”, “you are a failure”.  At some point you may start to believe those things, not because you think they are true but because you let those ideas occupy space in your mind and you retain that information, negative ideas need to be removed for your mind set. 

On the flip side we need to make sure we hold on to positive information that has entered our minds.  Remember our minds can only hold so much information so make sure the information stored will build you up and not tear you down.  Ideas like “I am beautiful”, “I am a winner”, “I am successful”, and “I have victory” is the information we need to fill our minds with.  There is too much negativity in this world but there is also a lot of positivity as well, it depends on what information you are storing. 

Here is an analogy, your cell phone holds 100 contacts and you just met a great person and you received their contact but the only way you can save that information is to delete one contact to create space.  It’s the same thing with ideas, information, experiences etc.

I challenge you to critically evaluate what you expose yourself to on a regular basis TV, radio, Internet, people, attitudes etc.  The purpose is to get you to start thinking about the information you are allowing to enter and exit your mind. 

The image you have of yourself in your mind is your physical image to the world, when you change the way you think about yourself you will change the way you look to the world and how the world looks to you.

The 3 P’s are the foundation to all successes one will achieve in life.

Persistence is the continued existence or occurrence. It is the continuance of an effect after its’ cause is removed. Persistence is important because it is very rare that we will get what we want the first time we try however we may finally get it after the 10th attempt. If we received everything we ever wanted on the first attempt we would have no appreciation for hard work and dedication. Find your passion set your target/goal and you work and you work and you work if you fail you fail forward and you keep working. Eventually what you want you will get.

Patience is the ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay. The famous saying patience is a virtue is absolutely true. Since you have been persistent at working/studying your craft you must be patient and understand anything great is worth the wait. At some point in life we will all be faced with a delay of some sort, but once we learn to stay strong mentally, physically, spiritually and willing to live restless nights than one will understand patience.

Prayer to offer devout petition, praise, thanks, etc., to God or an object of worship. I am not going to preach the gospel but I will say whoever or whatever you worship ask for a blessing, guidance, strength, health etc. Put all that you have been working on or studying into the atmosphere and if all goes well you will acquire the benefits.

I challenge you to do some self-reflecting and check to see if you are laying down a foundation to success.

Thank you for reading.
P.S. Hey guys, Akil here, if you want to learn a little more about Devon personally, check out the interview Devon recently did for the Life Work Balances website.  http://lifeworkbalances.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/episode-12-devon-rembert/ 

Good Monday folks!

Today’s piece will be short and sweet. One of my best friends shared this with acronym with me and it is something I will always remember now I would like to share it with you.

H.O.P.E= Have Only Positive Expectations

H.O.P.E is what has contributed to my accomplishments in my career as well as in my personal development. H.O.P.E is all about your mentality if you only have positive expectations the outcome can only be positive. Every situation we face in life can be looked at one of two ways, negative or positive. One must make the conscious decision about his/her attitude, we have the luxury of choosing how feel (which is really powerful when you think about it).

Your challenge this week will be to keep H.O.P.E alive.

Thanks