Train your mind to defeat uncertainty

• Notice how often people around you say no to each other every day. Also watch how others handle these situations.
• When you feel pressured for a yes, ask for time. It will allow you to calm down and evaluate whether you really want to do it ( "I need to check my calendar; I'll get back to you"/ "I've got to think about that; I'll let you know.")
• Saying no comfortably requires you to think what your values are. When you live by clear principles, it's easier to make decisions. People are more likely to respect your responses.
• Keep telling them that you can't help them. Then stay on repeat, even if they bring new angles of reasoning.
• When you want to help but can't commit to the specifics, make a counteroffer. You can offer someone a different resource or the name of someone else who might help.

If one is too busy, the gates of curiosity, wonder and serendipity become forever closed. We have to take time out to do something new, exploring life, and what all it has to offer.

Our desk job followed by our home responsibilities will rob us of a good life if we are too busy to be curious.

Life is about the new, and curiosity keeps life novel. Doing new things, learning new stuff and innovating in your field of interest.

Doing things that you are curious about will make your life full of joy, giving you a long, satisfying life experience.

Psychological resilience is not about fake positivity and takes its power from our negative feelings. It makes our anger, sadness, failure and self-loathing into something useful and productive.

When we become sufficiently resilient, we are unstoppable and limitless.

Our focus on the self has made us fearful and overwhelmed, especially in times of crisis. Part of our anxiety is the constant focus on oneself. Even if we do focus on others, it is only to judge them about how they feel about us, and what they think about us.

If instead of our inner selfishness, we find a greater cause to endure the crisis or risk, some deeper purpose or mission that eclipses our ego, then the crisis is taken care of.

Procrastination is worst when we don't see the point of our jobs. The connection to a larger purpose helps us find meaning and motivation at work.

If your job doesn't make a huge impact, think about how it has helped the people you spend your day with. Each day, write down three ways your work has helped your coworkers.

We don't lack motivation because we don't know how to be motivated, but because we don't know how to act on our own knowledge.

When we feel unmotivated, it's common to seek advice. But research shows that giving advice can be more motivating than receiving advice.

1. Break down your big goals into daily tasks. You can't add "Get in shape" to your daily to-do list, but you can add "spend 30 minutes on my bike."
2. Consider your week as a whole. You likely have multiple goals. Some goals benefit from daily activity, while working towards others a few times a week can create momentum.
3. Add your have-to-do tasks last. We often fill our to-do lists with have-to-do tasks that crowd the whole day. Adding it last forces you to fit your have-to-do tasks around your goal tasks.

Many of us start our mornings with dozens of things we need to get done, but later realize that we haven't crossed any of them off our lists. We did get stuff done, but none of the things we planned.

A balm against hectic days that pass without progress is to choose a single activity to prioritize and protect in your calendar. If you struggle to select your top priority, ask yourself, when you look back on your day, what do you want the highlight to be? That's your priority.

1. Dip in energy levels: It happens when the team is not enthusiastic and is only taking reactive actions and going through the motion, exposing the mental pressure they are in.
2. Work quality is taking a dip: It happens if you see incomplete or sloppy work, along with decreased productivity.
3. Frayed emotions: If workers are terse and curt with their colleagues in their personal interaction and written correspondence.
4. Other unexpected irregularities: There may be some that move inside their mental ‘cave’ and others who become overtly extrovert.

If there are signs of team overwhelm, the manager needs to first see if the work can be shared with others, or if any deadline can be extended, providing some relief to the workers. A replanning of upcoming projects to lessen the intensity of upcoming work can also be worked on.

In many cases it is just a matter of giving the workers a day off to recoup.

Aristotle’s distinction between three aspects of rhetoric:

• Your logos or logic: your reasons, the facts of the matter as you see them.
• Your pathos or emotional appeals to listeners.
• Your ethos, your identity or posture: what kind of person you portray yourself as being, so that listeners would want to adhere to the you see things.

• Make your doubter's case against you, so that they feel heard. Visit the possibility that you’re wrong.
• Show that you get them by giving voice to their doubts.
• Identify an error you’ve made or something you’ve learned from their feedback.
• Admit to miscalculation.
• Honor their right to decide for themselves whether to believe you.

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

When we read scientific studies, it helps to keep in mind the following:

1. Scientists are prone to error just like everyone else.
2. Single source claims are dubious.
3. There is a lot we don’t know.
4. We should not be biased towards a particular outcome.
5. Independent tests of the findings can be done if possible.
6. Proof of something does not mean it is true, and a lack of proof does not mean it is false.

We use "I think: often while at work, but it's a dysfunctional addition to a start of a sentence, that while ok to use occasionally in trivial situations, is to be avoided in meetings or one-on-ones. 

Try replacing it with "I'm confident".

When we use "I need" at the start of a sentence it sounds like pleading rather than empowered. It makes us sound needy.

Swap "I need" with "Please" to sound polite and confident.

There is no such thing as the key to success.

However, being ambitious, lucky and persistent can really work. While nothing guarantees success, finding what you like and trying to become good at it are definitely important steps in that direction.

There is a certain temptation we all feel when it comes to other people's success: check out exactly how they made it u to this level.

Nevertheless, this is not really the appropriate approach, as each individual has its own path in life: so better focus on your goal and how you plan to achieve it.