So many things constantly compete for and demand your focus in life. If you do not make a conscious effort to control your focus and decide in advance exactly where you’re going put your emotions, you will soon find yourself living in reaction to the world’s demands instead of living a life plan you’ve designed for yourself.Focus and plan so that you put YOU first!

YOU first!

All human beings have a need to avoid pain. It’s a survival instinct. When we believe something might lead to pain, we focus on it. The challenge is that if we focus on what we fear, we feel it today and experience it as if it has already happened. Remember, “the coward dies a thousand deaths, the courageous man only once.” Living in fear puts us in reaction mode instead of in our power. It guarantees drama and stress on a daily basis rather than fulfillment.

Area 1 : FEAR

Most people live their lives in such an extreme state of stress that they simply long for relief. So what gets our attention? Little things that make us feel good immediately, like having something to eat or drink or smoke, or maybe doing something we know will give us an immediate sense of accomplishment, like cleaning off our desk rather than working on a report or project.

Area 2: Immediate Pleasure

This is a form of pain, too, because we don’t want to disappoint people. We recognize that in order to maintain relationships with people, we must meet their needs, but this can lead to what’s known as “people pleasing” behaviors that always put your priorities last. Once that becomes a habit, you begin to need other people’s demands to get you to do anything at all.

Area 3: Other People’s Demands

1. What do I really want? What is my outcome? What Result am I committed to achieving?2. Why do I want to do this? Why is it a “must” for me to get this Result? What will it give me? What’s my Purpose?3. What are the specific actions I need to take in order to achieve this result? How can I best achieve it now? What is my Massive Action Plan?

The 3 Questions You Need To Ask Yourself 

We get what we focus on. What we focus on determines how we will feel!

3 Areas That Steal Our Focus

Kierkegaard was one of the first European philosophers to address what has come to be known as “existential anxiety or dread.”

Soren Kierkegaard 

Anxiety is often confused with fear or nervousness.Eg: People might say they are anxious about spiders, or heights, or an upcoming test or race.Kierkegaard, reserved the term “anxiety” to describe a very specific feeling.Imagine you are presented with a large tray of desserts, all of which look equally delicious. You are very hungry, but you can only pick one.Now imagine that the tray is infinitely large and contains a vast array of choices. And the choice that you make will determine your life.ANXIETY = The experience of being faced with infinite choices, and the power to shape our own lives.

Anxiety

For Kierkegaard, freedom is at the core of this kind of anxiety.We often think of freedom as a good thing and it is. It gives us the liberty to vote, and choose our work, our friends, our partners, and how we participate in society.But the freedom that Kierkegaard has in mind the kind that gives us anxiety is a deeper freedom.

Freedom To Choose

Existential freedom is the absolute freedom to decide how we want to exist in the world.Kierkegaard believed we are completely free, but that this freedom gives us anxiety.He argued that many people try to escape their anxiety by adopting societal habits and conventions.Believing that these conventions truly have power over us can be reassuring.It is often convenient or comforting to think that one must act according to plan or simply follow the leaders in one’s life.

Existential Freedom

Bosses, preachers, politicians, and parents all might claim to have absolute power over your life.Of course they don’t, and their subtle or explicit rules can be broken at any time.Kierkegaard suggests the point of life is to be anxious in the right way to experience one’s freedom and face its opportunities as chances for growth.Only when one is willing to face anxiety, which is the freedom and possibility of life, can one become fully responsible.

Chances for growth

Presents a translation of the Danish philosopher's 1844 treatise on anxiety, which he claimed could only be overcome through embracing it.

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin

By considering the answers to twelve questions, an organization can measure where it is on the scale regarding their ability to attract and retain talent. These questions don’t necessarily give a recipe, but what they do is cover the key elements.

Why Q12

<ul><li>Do I know what is expected of me at work?</li><li>Do I have the right materials and equipment I need to do my work properly?</li><li>At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?</li><li>In the last 7 days have I received recognition or praise for good work?</li><li>Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?</li><li>Is there someone at work who encourages my development?</li></ul>

Question 1-6

<ul><li>At work, do my opinions seem to count?</li><li>Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?</li><li>Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?</li><li>Do I have a best friend at work?</li><li>In the last 6 months, have I talked with someone at work about my progress?</li><li>At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?</li></ul>

Questions 7-12

An ongoing employee survey that measures employee engagement, the Q12 consists of 12 actionable workplace elements that offer proven links to performance outcomes.

An ongoing survey that measures employee engagement, the Gallup Q12 employee surveys consist of 12 actionable items that offer impact performance outcomes.

Gallup Q12 Employee Survey 

“People whose performance peaks in the morning are better positioned for career success because they’re more proactive than people who are at their best in the evening.”

There is a way in which you can simply increase your Wake-Up Motivation Level (WUML) - and it does not take more than 5 minutes.<ul><li>Minute One: Set your intentions before you go to bed. Your first thought in the morning will be the same as your last one in the evening.</li><li>Minute Two: Get out of bed to turn the alarm off.</li><li>Minute Three: Brush your teeth. Do not go back to bed, but go straight to the bathroom.</li><li>Minute Four: Drink a glass of water. You are dehydrated after eight hours of sleep, and therefore tired.</li><li>Minute Five: Either get dressed in your workout clothes or jump in the shower.</li></ul>

Wake-Up Motivation Level

Practicing these every morning will give you clarity and put you into your peak state every single daySilence. Take a step back and enjoy the silence with meditation, prayer, or deep breathing.Affirmations. Start the morning by repeating your goals to yourself, who you want to be and how you are going to achieve thisVisualization. Create a powerful image in your head of your futureExercise. Even a few minutes of exercise have a profound effectReading. Find successful people, read their publications, and learnScribing. Write down the things you are grateful for and document your personal growth

Life S.A.V.E.R.S.

What if the real secret of millionaires isn't about doing more, but becoming more? Millionaires know everything in your present is a result of how you thought, decided, and acted in the past. But your present circumstances can easily change. Right now. Because, with this revolutionary manual to wealth, you'll discover... -The undeniable connection between mornings and wealth. -Why becoming wealthy is never a sedentary pursuit. -The simple five-step wake-up process that'll guarantee you'll rise early...like a millionaire. -Four choices you must make to become wealthy. -The specific actions you must take when you choose to become a millionaire. (They'll surprise you. Definitely.) -A revolutionary twist on affirmations...and how to leverage them in a way that will absolutely produce results. -How Rearview Mirror Syndrome can significantly inhibit your financial growth. -The key to replacing your blind spots with a vision for the future. -A free 30-day Transformation Challenge Fast Start Kit. This, in the end, is the true value of mornings: In that quiet period of stillness, when the world is asleep, and you're in complete control--that's when you nurture the golden goose and discover the incredible potential of each new day. That's where you find your Millionaire Miracle Morning.

Miracle Morning Millionaires

Scientific studies have demonstrated that meditation is not only a great antidote to these stressful times, but is also an all-around helper, reducing both intangible psychological states – such as alienation and disconnection and also very measurable health markers such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Also, it makes people more creative and more empathetic while helping them manage their stress and pain better. This, ultimately, means that people who meditate are not only healthier than those who don’t but also much happier and tend to lead more purposeful and balanced lives.

Why?

Eat lightly and drink even lighter. Big meals make you drowsy, and coffee makes us agitated. Stay away from them as much as you can but especially during the hours before meditation. I am not even going to mention other mind-altering substances: indulging them usually adds to the burden of stress which meditation strives to eliminate from your life.

Food/Drinks Before Meditation

Even though meditating in nature is better than meditating at home, if you are like most people, the former is rarely an option. The good news is that meditation can be as relaxing at home (or even on the train 😎).. if you pick the right spot. It should be neither too dark nor too light, relatively quiet and away from traffic or anything that reminds you of work.

Create A Sacred Space

Meditation is not a fashion show, so don’t spend too much time thinking when it comes to your clothes. The only thing you need to remember is to keep your clothing loose and roomy and avoid constricting your breathing or your circulation in any way.

Choose comfort over passion.

<ol><li>arrange your legs</li><li>lengthen and straighten your spine</li><li>rock your body from side to side like a pendulum</li><li>rock your body from front to back</li><li>tilt your pelvis slightly forward and soften your belly</li><li>tuck your chin gently</li><li>rest your tongue on the roof of your mouth and breathe through your nose, if possible</li><li>rest your hands on your thighs or in your lap</li><li>relax your body from head to toe, letting go as much as possible of any tension or discomfort</li><li>begin your meditation.</li></ol>

Prepare For Take-off In 10 Steps 

Name your “tunes”. Identify the things that replay in your awareness while you’re trying to meditate or do something else.Expand your awareness. These things may be just the tip of the iceberg: look deeper.Feel your feelings. Think of the ghost-analogy: the persisting feelings endure because you’ve never allowed them to pass through you and leave. Notice resistance and attachment. What you resist, persists….so don’t!

Check-In And Look Deeper Part 1

Find the wisdom. These habitual patterns have been with you for a long time: they certainly have something to teach you. See what it is.Get to the heart of the matter. Stick your head into the demon’s mouth. If it’s too traumatic, don’t do it by yourself and ask for some help.Infuse the stuck place with being. Find meaning in your negative habitual patterns by framing them within the wholeness and completeness of the existence.

Check-In And Look Deeper Part 2

The more you practice all the above, the more skilled you will become in detecting negative patterns before you get stuck. Thus, you will grow to become freer and less reactive .So…Whatever you’re doing, stop doing it right now. Close your eyes, relax a bit, and start breathing slowly while counting your breaths. There. For a moment, you experienced the present in all its majesty. That is why…YOU MATTER❤️

You Matter ❤️

The simple practice of sitting down and turning your attention inward can do wonders for your body and your mind. ❤️

Meditation Masterclass

Can you predict whether a relationship will last?Relationship psychologist John Gottman can. Across six studies, Gottman has predicted whether couples will stay together or divorce with up to 94% accuracy.His predictions aren’t based on couples’ sexuality, income, or family structure.Rather, he looks at how partners act and react to each other, noting things like body language, tone of voice, and even physiological factors such as heart rate.Here are a few telltale signs he uses to separate the “masters” from the “disasters” of marriage.

Gottmans predictions

Couples who show signs of being in “fight or flight mode”, racing heart (>100 bpm), fast blood flow, high adrenaline… are more likely to split up.These couples are preparing to attack and be attacked, even when they appear calm and talk about mundane things.

Fight Or Flight

Gottman also uses verbal cues to assess relationship health: do couples criticize rather than complain?Do they speak to each other with contempt or stonewall the other person (ignoring them completely)?These are all signs of a relationship in distress.By observing markers of relationship distress, Jon Gottman can predict with 94% accuracy whether a relationship will fail

Complaint Vs Criticism

what can we do to prevent breakups, and even strengthenour relationships?In relationships, we often make seemingly mundane comments.For example, a husband may remark to his wife about a pretty bird outside the window.Your partner may share a dream or a memory from your last vacation. These are called “bids” for attention.And how we react to these bids, Gottman says, powerfully predicts relationship success.

The Key? “Bids”

In a 1990 study, Gottman studied how 130 married couples responded to each others’ bids.Six years later, he compared the behaviors of those still together and the couples that had since divorced.Couples who stayed together had responded to their partners’ bids an average of 86% of the time.The couples who divorced only responded to their partner an average of 33% of the time.

Research About Bids 

Gottman gives an example from his own marriage. One night, his wife, Julie, was unloading the dryer and grumbling to herself.Considering that this might be a “bid” for connection, Gottman asked her what was wrong. He turned toward her bid.Julie answered that she hated folding laundry. Gottman then offered to fold the laundry for her instead.In doing so, Gottman signaled that he cared about what she was thinking and created an opportunity to connect.Gottman turned on jazz music, reminding his wife that they had not been to a jazz club in a while. They then spontaneously decided to date.

Why responding to bids is so important in romantic relationships

Small moments like these add up to perform an essential function in a relationship: funding a couple’s “emotional bank” or stockpile of goodwill.Even healthy, happy couples disagree and experience times of stress.But each time an individual chooses to “turn toward” their partner, they create trust and intimacy.And this emotional bank carries them through times of conflict and hardship.

Stockpile Of Love 

The infographic below highlights some of Dr. John Gottman’s most notable research findings on marriage and couple relationships.

Principles for Relationship Success

<ul><li>When am I at my happiest? When was the last time that I was truly full of pure joy? What sparked that? What can I do to let it happen more often?</li><li>What has been troubling me the most lately?</li><li>Am I currently trying to push down some feelings? What might they be telling me?</li><li>What feels unresolved in my life? Am I holding on to someone or something I need to let go of?</li><li>Is there any person or situation I can’t get out of my head because I never got closure?</li><li>What usually makes me anxious? How do I try to eliminate these triggers? Am I my own best friend during hard times?</li></ul>

Mental Health & Well being : Self-Reflection Questions

1. Make a list of 30 things that make you smile. It can be absolutely anything.2. Write a letter to the person or situation that feels unresolved, saying everything you didn’t have a chance to express. Get it off your chest!3. What things can you start doing to improve your mental health? Be as detailed as possible and make a plan with action items.4. If my body could talk, it would tell me . . . Write a letter and let it all out.

Mental Health & Well being : Mental Excercises

<ul><li>What do I value the most in relationships?</li><li>What am I looking out for in a relationship?</li><li>How can I express my love to close ones better?</li><li>What can I thank my family for?</li><li>Do I miss someone right now? Do they miss me, too?</li><li>How often do I think about someone who’s no longer a part of my life?</li><li>What was my most painful lesson about love?</li><li>Have I accepted someone’s apology without ever truly forgiving them? What held me back?</li><li>Is my relationship with myself a healthy one?</li><li>What is the best thing about dating me?</li><li>Who in my life can I be the most myself around?</li></ul>

Relationship : Self-Reflection Questions

Make a list of the people in your life who genuinely support you and whom you can trust. Which of them do you turn to in difficult moments? Make time to hang out with them!

Relationship :  Mental Excercise

<ul><li>What worries me most about the future?</li><li>What matters most in my life? What am I doing about those things?</li><li>What things do I consider my greatest accomplishments in life?</li><li>What do I think of first when I wake up in the morning?</li><li>What do I consider to be my purpose in life?</li><li>What is my main goal for next year?</li><li>What new skills should I acquire to reach my goals?</li><li>Would I change my workplace if I was offered a bigger salary elsewhere?</li><li>Is money a solution to all my current problems?</li><li>What would I do if I didn’t have to worry about money?</li><li>Does my job stress me out more than it fulfills me?</li></ul>

Career & Motivation : Self-Reflection Questions

1. Rank 10 life values that are important to you in descending order. Do you act according to them?2. Write about a time when your work felt real, necessary, and satisfying to you, whether it was paid or unpaid, professional or domestic, physical or mental.3. Make a list of 15 things that inspire you, and think about how you can try to do them more often.4. List 7 new things you would like to try in the near time.

Career & Motivation : Mental Excercises

<ul><li>What serendipity has transformed my life the most?</li><li>How would I name the current chapter of my life?</li><li>Is there something I regret not having done? How would I like to change it? What failure am I most grateful for?</li><li>Am I my greatest fan or my biggest critic?</li><li>What insecurity of mine is my biggest hurdle?</li><li>Do I consider myself beautiful when I wake up in the morning?</li><li>Is it more important for me to be liked by everyone or to be myself? Why so? Do I like the person I am now? Would I change something about myself? What is my biggest fear? How am I working on it?</li></ul>

Gratitude : Self-Reflection Questions

1. Write 10 sentences about yourself you would tell a stranger for them to understand you better.2. Make a list of 8 things you’d like to eliminate from your life.3. List 8 things you have been putting off. How about making time in your schedule for them?4. Name 3 things you are thankful to yourself for doing today.5. Name your 5 biggest strengths.

Gratitude : Mental Excercises

Questions & exercises for your self-growth 🌱🙏✨

Growth Questions & Exercises 

We are socialized into a world where white is the “default race.” It’s not only that most leaders, authors and celebrities are white – it’s also that most leaders, authors and celebrities have been white. In 2017, when singer Rhianna introduced a makeup line for women of all skin colors, many women of color tweeted their gratitude in exclamatory phrases such as “Finally!” No white woman has ever needed to say that.

Belonging

White people don’t carry “the psychic weight of race.” That is, they don’t have to worry about how others feel about their race. Simply put, racism just isn’t their problem: their race will rarely – if ever – be held against them.

Freedom from the burden of race

White people are free to move in “virtually any space seen as normal, neutral, or valuable.” On paper, black people can as well. However, in reality, they can never be as relaxed in numerous spaces and situations.

Freedom of movement

Even if only subconsciously, the white race is held up as the norm of humanity. Case in point: it is never even named in most situations. White people are just “people,” and their views are just “views.” Somehow, white authors such as Dostoevsky and Dickens represent the universal human experience, while writers such as Maya Angelou, Amy Tan or Sandra Cisneros represent only the experience of blacks, Asians, or Chicanos. White people are just human; people of color are racialized humans.

Just people

White solidarity is “the unspoken agreement among white people to protect white advantage and not cause another white person to feel racial discomfort by confronting them when they say or do something racially problematic.” Put simply, white people are rewarded for not “interrupting” racism among other whites, and punished for the opposite. If a white person is silent when another makes a racist remark, they are subconsciously branded good sports and team players. If they say something to interrupt racism, they are “humorless” or “just too politically correct.”

White solidarity

Though seemingly innocuous, the concept of “the good old days” can only be understood and perpetuated by white people. “Claiming that the past was socially better than the present is also a hallmark of white supremacy,” remarks DiAngelo. “The past was great for white people because their positions went largely unchallenged.” There were no “good old days” for black people, ever. They were either slaves or explicitly segregated up until a generation or two ago. And yet, Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election by triggering the “good old days” nostalgia in people. Make America great again

The good old days

Even if not explicitly, white people tend to associate black people and Latinos with criminality. It has been well documented that blacks and Latinos are “stopped by police more often than whites are for the same activities and that they receive harsher sentences than whites do for the same crimes.” Moreover, research shows that for white people, the safety of a neighborhood directly correlates to the number of people of color living there.

White racial innocence

Segregation is not a thing of the past. Implicitly, it still directs the decisions of many white people. Most of them say they select the schools for their children on the basis of test scores, but a ‘09 study revealed that the racial makeup of a school plays a much larger role in the decision. More strikingly and this phenomenon has been studied thoroughly that it even has a name: ‘white flight’ when a formerly white neighborhood reaches a 7% black threshold, white people start migrating. Similarly, in neighborhoods with more than a few black families, white housing demand tends to decline

Segregated lives

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

White Fragility

You need to convince your managers, coworkers, and clients to answer “Yes!” to three questions:1) Can you do the job well? (Are you competent?)2) Are you excited to be here? (Are you committed?)3) Do you get along with us? (Are you compatible?)Mastering the Three Cs requires balance: it’s important that you show enough of each quality without showing too much.

The 3 Cs Of Career Success

Proving competence means doing your job fully, accurately, and promptly without needing to be micromanaged. If you undershoot, others may perceive you as clueless. But there’s danger in overshooting, too. (Overbearing)Another major challenge to proving competence is that true competence can be difficult to measure.In these cases, perceived competence for instance, how confidently you speak in meetings can matter just as much as true competence.If you can hit that sweet spot however (and not overshoot or undershoot!), people will want to offer you more important responsibilities.

Competence

Commitment, means you are fully present and excited to help the team meet its goals. Prove your commitment, and people will want to invest in you.The challenge of showing commitment is, again, avoiding the extremes: appearing either apathetic or overly-eager.

Commitment

If you can demonstrate compatibility, people will want to work with you.Proving compatibility is more than being dependable and polite.To make people eager to be around you, you have to make them comfortable and get along with them in an authentic and natural way.The major challenge with this compatibility is that it depends on whom you’re with and what expectations and implicit biases they may hold.Remember: People tend to like, hire, and give opportunities to those who look like, talk like, and have similar interests and backgrounds as they do.

Compatibility

What will separate you from the rest early in your career? The ability to take ownership, manage expectations, navigate people dynamics, and communicate professionally—skills that school doesn't teach. Most career guides assume that you already know how the working world works. But if you're starting your very first job or taking a job in a new company, you might not know all the unspoken rules that determine who gets ahead and who doesn't. In The Unspoken Rules, you'll learn the basic workplace skills necessary for success. From the author: "Why didn't anyone ever tell me this?! I've lost count of the number of times I've asked myself this question. As the son of a single mother who dropped out of school at the age of twelve to work in a sewing-machine factory, I missed the lesson on the unspoken rules of the professional workplace. Instead, I learned my lesson the hard way—through trial and error. Now I'm on a mission to discover and decode the unspoken rules of work and share them with others. Over the last four years, I've interviewed over five hundred interns, early career professionals, managers, and executives, from HR to finance, law firms to tech companies, across the globe. My conversations revolved around three key topics: What are the most common mistakes early-career professionals make at work? What would you do differently if you could relive your first years on the job? What do you think separates top performers from mediocre ones? After testing the advice I gathered from these hundreds of interviews, I started coaching other early-career professionals. Now I'm distilling everything I've learned into a step-by-step guide called The Unspoken Rules. We all have what it takes to be a top performer. It begins with mastering the unspoken rules."

The Unspoken Rules

During The COVID-19 pandemic, You might find yourself exercising more, sleeping better, cooking more, or keeping in touch with friends and family.Perhaps you’ve formed some new positive habits, and you want to keep them even after lockdown ends.The bad news is that it’s not necessarily going to be easy to maintain new habits when lockdown ends and life returns to “normal” again.“When you are put back in the same context, even if it’s been a while, your old habits will be activated,” said Dr. Wendy Wood, a professor at the University of Southern California.

Keeping Up With The habits

New York University psychologist Gabriele Oettingen recommends a four-step strategy she calls “WOOP”: <ul><li>wish, </li><li>outcome, </li><li>obstacle, </li><li>plan.</li></ul>Start with your wish for your post-lockdown life.And consider how it’ll improve your life (the outcome).Then, try to anticipate the potential obstacles that might prevent you from keeping the habit going. (Obstacle)Finally, plan. Use the previous steps to create a realistic plan that you’re likely to follow through on.Using WOOP, you’ll mentally equip yourself with a specific plan to maintain these habits, and hopefully, feel energized to execute it.

WOOP FRAMEWORK

Moving forward, try to make it as easy as possible to maintain good habits. For example, send yourself calendar invites for activities you want to make time for.To streamline your morning run, prepare your running clothes before you go to sleep.Or, if you’re making time to bake in the morning, you can lay out your ingredients the night before.You can also incorporate lockdown habits into your “normal” routine by “stacking” the new habits onto older ones.

Incoperate Habits 

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming 🐠

You’ll technically have to ‘relearn’ to cook each meal, or to exercise regularly or to read a book a week. But there are some shortcuts.

3 Areas That Steal Our Focus

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin

Gallup Q12 Employee Survey

Miracle Morning Millionaires

Meditation Masterclass

Emin Kececi