4 harsh truths that will make you a better person

4 harsh truths that will make you a better person4 harsh truths that will make you a better personWhy is it that whenever someone says, face the facts you know youre about to hear something you dont want to hear? Probably because of a second cliche The truth hurts.Nobody recommends denial - but nobody recommends procrastination, either. And were all prone to both. Denial is existential procrastination.But issues arent scary when we know there are solutions. Its much easier to face harsh truths when we know theres a roadmap, and that well come out the other side stronger.So lets look at some difficult realities and learn how we can leverage research to turn what looks like a pit of despair into a trampoline that will bounce us to greater heights. Sound cool? Cool.Lets get to it Guess what? Youre going to dieCheery, right? Youre going to die. We all know it but we aya dont live like we know it. We act like there will always be another day, another year, and then we wonder where the ti me went. Because thinking about death is scary.Looking for an inspiring way to departure your day? Sign up forMorning MotivationIts our friendly Facebook robot that will send you a quick note every weekday morning to help you departure strong. Sign up here by clicking Get StartedBut many great thinkers including the Stoics (and even the samurai) strongly believed we live better lives when we stay aware of death. And science agrees tooThinking about death can actually be a good thing. An awareness of mortality can improve physical health and help us re-prioritize our goals and values, according to a new analysis of recent scientific studies.Face facts (theres that expression again) - how much do you get done without a deadline? Well, we have one. The dates a little fuzzy but, rest askoranversd, there is one. If we didnt have death wed all be procrastinating like, Ill get to that next century.You get about 30,000 days and then youre done. And youve already used up a good portion of t hem. Death puts life into focus.But we ignore death, so we lose track of whats important. Of priorities. Of the big picture. Of whats meaningful. We even lose track of whats fun. Friends dont get seen and vacation days dont get used. We dont acknowledge that theres an end and so we dont prioritize and we waste time - and not even in ways that are truly enjoyable. Well, I think thats scarier than death.When Karl Pillemer of Cornell University studied 1200 people age 70 to 100+, what was the main lesson the older folks wanted to convey to all of us whippersnappers?I would say lesson number one, endorsed by alfruchtwein all of these 1,200 people, and one in which people tended to be rather vehement, is Life is short. They want to pound this awareness into young people, not to depress them, but to encourage them to make better choices. In the field of gerontology, there is a whole theory called socioemotional selectivity theory. What they argue is that the one thing that makes people d ifferent at 70 and beyond, from younger people, developmentally, is a sense of limited time horizon. You become really aware that your days are numbered. Rather than that being so depressing, people abflug to make better choices.When were aware of the quantity, we improve the quality. Now the Stoic philosopher Seneca didnt feel life was short - but he came to a conclusion that totenmucksmuschenstill jibes with what Karl foundIts not that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and its given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when its poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when its employed to no good end, were finally driven to see that it has passed by before we even recognized it passing. And so it is we dont receive a short life, we make it so.So what should we do? Live a month like its your last. Thats what happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky thinks might be the solution. Dont imagine you have terminal cancer - imagine youre going to move far away from your job, your friends, your family, your life as you know it now. When an end is in sight, we appreciate things moraPrevious research hints that this exercise should prompt us to appreciate in a profound way what we are preparing to give up. When we believe that we are seeing (or hearing, doing, or experiencing) things for the last time, we will see (or hear, do, or experience) them as though its the first time.Far from being painful, knowing theres an end makes life richer.(To learn mora about the science of a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.)Okay, fellow mortal, were doing the right things because we dont have limitless time. But what harsh truth do we need to face about those things and that time?Anything worthwhile will take mora work than you thinkWeve all heard it a gazillion times it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something. But thats incorrect. Its actually worse It take s 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert. Youve spent 10,000 hours driving and youre not ready for NASCAR. Deliberate practice means you need to spend 10,000 hours focusing on your weaknesses and pushing yourself to your limit to improve them. Thats hard. Really hard.Okay, but maybe you dont want to paint the next Guernica or start the next Google. Doesnt matter. Youre still going to face challenges that take a lot of time and effort. Whats the thing everybody says? Marriage takes work. And kids? As any parent will tell you - whoa, lot of work.When we look at the greats in fruchtwein any field, turns out they faced this harsh truth head on. Most were unapologetic workaholics. Depressing, isnt it? To really excel - in your career, as a partner, as a parent - it seems you gotta be a workaholic. So youre gonna be stressed, miserable and die young Actually, no. At least not if you do it right. Not if youre passionate and engaged. Being passionate about something make s life richer right up to the endElderly individuals who were harmoniously passionate scored higher on various indicators of psychological adjustment, such as life satisfaction, meaning in life, and vitality, while they reported lower levels of negative indicators of psychological adjustment such as anxiety and depression.And if you embrace the challenges, you wont die young either. The Terman Study, an eight decade research project that followed nearly 1500 people from childhood to death, found that people who worked harder, lived longer. Being laid back and not accomplishing much? Oh, thatll kill youThose who were the most successful were the ones least likely to die at any given age. Ambition was not a problem and taking it easy was not healthy. In fact, those men who were carefree, undependable, and unambitious in childhood and very unsuccessful in their careers had a whopping increase in their mortality risk.Admittedly, struggle doesnt lead to a happy life in the short term - but it leads to a meaningful life in the long termConsidering life a struggle was negatively correlated with happiness but approached a significant positive relationship with meaningfulness People with very meaningful lives worry mora and have more stress than people with less meaningful lives. Again, we think this indicates that worrying comes from involvement and engagement with important activities But what if you havent been blessed with divine inspiration and havent found your passion? Well, professor Cal Newport says that whole perspective is bunk. For the vast majority of people, you dont find or follow your passion - you build itIf you study people who end up loving what they do, heres what you find and if you study the research on it, you find the same thing Long-term career satisfaction requires traits like a real sense of autonomy, a real sense of impact on the world, a sense of mastery that youre good at what you do, and a sense of connection in relation to other people . Now, the key point is those traits are not matched to a specific piece of work and they have nothing to do with matching your job to some sort of ingrained, pre-existing passion.You will spend a lot of time and effort on something in life. You can resent it and half-ass it and just get by - or you can commit to it, build it, jump in with both feet and reap great rewards.Dont tolerate your struggles embrace them. Direct them towards a goal and forge meaning from them.(To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)Makes sense, right? But some will say by emphasizing meaning I dodged that happiness issue. We all want to be happy. And right now happiness is mercurial and fleeting, showing up when it wants to. How do we get it to stick around for good? Thats what we all want, right? To reach ultimate happiness and stay there.And that leads us to harsh truth number three You will never be perfectly happyHey, it said harsh truths in the headline and you read anyway. No whining. We worked our way through the others, and well work our way through this one. Stick with me Were always focused on that magic bullet. If I make the money, Ill be perfectly happy forever If I just meet my soulmate If I just get that vorrcken If I just, if I just, if I just. Sorry, nope. Wrong answer. There will always be discomfort and worries. Why?Very simply, your brain is not wired for perpetual happiness. In fact, its wired against it. Heres noted science author Robert WrightNatural selection doesnt want us to be happy, after all it just wants us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive. And the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting.But just because you will never reach ultimate, perpetual bliss doesnt mean life is awful.The Grant Study is another one of those studies that followed people through their entire lives. The subjects who were the most successf ul and happy didnt get that way because they were happy every single day. They were at the top of the heap because of their coping skills - their ability to deal with the inevitable problems life threw at themThe men who exhibited mature defenses, Vaillant reported in 1977, were happier, more satisfied with their careers and marriages, and were far better equipped to work and love than their peers who possessed less mature adaptations. They earned better incomes, engaged in greater public service, had more rewarding friendships, suffered fewer problems in terms of physical and mental health, and were even much more comfortable being aggressive with others, compared to men with less mature coping skills.Insisting life should be nonstop happiness is the surest way to stay unhappy. Work toward the good moments. Accept there will be bad moments. Then go make more good moments.(To see the schedule that very successful people follow every day, click here.)Okay, expecting to always feel g ood or that one magic event is going to solve all your problems is unrealistic. At least you can rely on other people to help you through the tough times.Well, kinda People will let you downI said theyre harsh, alright? We discuss the bad then we get to the good. You know the pattern by now. Chill. Jeez.Where was I? Betrayal by those you care for the most. Yeah, thats it. Alrighty Most of the secrets you told your best friend to never ever tell anyone got blabbed to someone else. (Sorry.) And if you really want to make sure they dont keep a secret make sure to say, Keep this between you and me. Because that makes people more likely to spill the beans in one study, 60 percent of people confessed to sharing even their best friends secrets with a third party. Another study found that a quarter of people shared confidential social information entrusted to them with at least three other people. In fact, theres even some data to suggest that simply prefacing your secret sharing with a req uest for confidentiality (such as Please keep this close to your chest or Just between you and me) can actually make your confidante more likely to betray your trust, because youre essentially flagging the coming information as being strategic and gossip-worthy, as high-value social knowledge.So, obviously, the proper response is to trust no one and keep all humans at arms length, never getting close to or relying on anyone Bad. Wrong. Incorrect. Yes, youre gonna get screwed occasionally. Welcome to Earth. But in the long run, we come out ahead when we trust more, not less. And were not talking about little secrets here. Were actually talking about big stuff, like moneyIncome peaks among those who trust people more, not less. In a study titled The Right Amount of Trust, people were asked how much they trusted others on a scale of one to ten. Income was highest among those who responded with the number eight Who suffered the most? Those with the lowest levels of trust had an income 1 4.5 percent lower than eights. That loss is the equivalent of not attending college.So trusting gets you more money. What should you do with the extra loot? Again, the answer is people. Research by Michael Norton at Harvard shows were happier when we spend money on others instead of on ourselves.People will disappoint us. Thats life. Thats real. But, despite that, we still do better in the long run when we trust and forgive others. Relationships are the number one predictor of a happy life. Without trust you cannot be happy. The Grant Study concluded that the capacity to love and be loved was the single strength most clearly associated with subjective well-being at age eighty.So how do we manage? We cant avoid the occasional disappointment. Thats impossible. Leading relationship researcher John Gottman says it all comes down to ratios. For instance, five positive interactions for every negative one is what leads to a happy marriage.Do you expect people to be perfect? Are you perfect ? No. And if anyone does seem perfect we get suspicious. Gottman found that too 13 positives to every negative makes people lose credibility. When anyone is that positive, we think somethings fishy.Perfection, it turns out, isnt perfect and pretty good is good enough.(To learn the secret to never being frustrated again, click here.)Lets round it all up - and learn the biggest good that can come from the biggest pain Sum upThese are four harsh truths that will make you a better personYoure going to die You have a deadline. Literally. So focus on what matters. And make sure to celebrate the good times. Id rather have a shorter awesome life than a long, lousy one.Anything worthwhile takes more work than you think Ever futz around an entire Sunday, not truly having fun and not truly accomplishing anything? And then you say, What the heck did I do all day? Well, you dont want to be saying that about your life. Embrace the challenges and find meaning.You will never be perfectly happy And you dont need to be. Insisting on complete happiness is the surest way to stay unhappy. Be grateful for what you have and gently reach for a little more.People will let you down Youre allowed to insist others be perfect the day you become perfect. Which is never. People will cause you problems - but theyre also the biggest source of happiness. Five-to-one is plenty good.Life is challenging. Living in denial just means youre going to be blindsided more often. You dont have to kid yourself that the world is perfect in order to be pretty happy.We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder. What we dont hear about as often is post-traumatic growth. Yes, some people (very few people, actually) experience pain that follows them for a very long time. But more often, Nietzsche was right. As University of Pennsylvania happiness expert Martin Seligman found, what does not kill you does make you strongerA substantial number of people also show intense depression and anxiety after extrem e adversity, often to the level of PTSD, but then they grow. In the long run, they arrive at a higher level of psychological functioning than before In a month, 1,700 people reported at least one of these awful events, and they took our well-being tests as well. To our surprise, individuals whod experienced one awful event had more intense strengths (and therefore higher well-being) than individuals who had none. Individuals whod been through two awful events were stronger than individuals who had one, and individuals who had three - raped, tortured, and held captive for example - were stronger than those who had two.Avoidance perpetuates pain. We cannot fix the harshness we do not face. But when we address issues, we grow and live better lives.Maya Angelou put it best My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.This article first appeared on Barking up the Wrong Tree.4 harsh truths that will make you a better personWhy is it that whenever someone says, face the facts you know youre about to hear something you dont want to hear? Probably because of a second cliche The truth hurts.Nobody recommends denial - but nobody recommends procrastination, either. And were all prone to both. Denial is existential procrastination.But issues arent scary when we know there are solutions. Its much easier to face harsh truths when we know theres a roadmap, and that well come out the other side stronger.So lets look at some difficult realities and learn how we can leverage research to turn what looks like a pit of despair into a trampoline that will bounce us to greater heights. Sound cool? Cool.Lets get to it Guess what? Youre going to dieCheery, right? Youre going to die. We all know it but we sure dont live like we know it. We act like there will always be another day, another year, and then we wonder where the time went. Because thinking about death is scary.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreBut many great thinkers including the Stoics (and even the samurai) strongly believed we live better lives when we stay aware of death. And science agrees tooThinking about death can actually be a good thing. An awareness of mortality can improve physical health and help us re-prioritize our goals and values, according to a new analysis of recent scientific studies.Face facts (theres that expression again) - how much do you get done without a deadline? Well, we have one. The dates a little fuzzy but, rest assured, there is one. If we didnt have death wed all be procrastinating like, Ill get to that next century.You get about 30,000 days and then youre done. And youve already used up a good portion of them. Death puts life into focus.But we ignore death, so we lose track of whats important. Of prioriti es. Of the big picture. Of whats meaningful. We even lose track of whats fun. Friends dont get seen and vacation days dont get used. We dont acknowledge that theres an end and so we dont prioritize and we waste time - and not even in ways that are truly enjoyable. Well, I think thats scarier than death.When Karl Pillemer of Cornell University studied 1200 people age 70 to 100+, what was the main lesson the older folks wanted to convey to all of us whippersnappers?I would say lesson number one, endorsed by almost all of these 1,200 people, and one in which people tended to be rather vehement, is Life is short. They want to pound this awareness into young people, not to depress them, but to encourage them to make better choices. In the field of gerontology, there is a whole theory called socioemotional selectivity theory. What they argue is that the one thing that makes people different at 70 and beyond, from younger people, developmentally, is a sense of limited time horizon. You be come really aware that your days are numbered. Rather than that being so depressing, people start to make better choices.When were aware of the quantity, we improve the quality. Now the Stoic philosopher Seneca didnt feel life was short - but he came to a conclusion that still jibes with what Karl foundIts not that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and its given in sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when its poured down the drain of luxury and neglect, when its employed to no good end, were finally driven to see that it has passed by before we even recognized it passing. And so it is we dont receive a short life, we make it so.So what should we do? Live a month like its your last. Thats what happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky thinks might be the solution. Dont imagine you have terminal cancer - imagine youre going to move far away from your job, your friends, your family, your life as you know it now. When an end is in sight, we appreciate things morePrevious research hints that this exercise should prompt us to appreciate in a profound way what we are preparing to give up. When we believe that we are seeing (or hearing, doing, or experiencing) things for the last time, we will see (or hear, do, or experience) them as though its the first time.Far from being painful, knowing theres an end makes life richer.(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.)Okay, fellow mortal, were doing the right things because we dont have limitless time. But what harsh truth do we need to face about those things and that time?Anything worthwhile will take more work than you thinkWeve all heard it a gazillion times it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something. But thats incorrect. Its actually worse It takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert. Youve spent 10,000 hours driving and youre not ready for NASCAR. D eliberate practice means you need to spend 10,000 hours focusing on your weaknesses and pushing yourself to your limit to improve them. Thats hard. Really hard.Okay, but maybe you dont want to paint the next Guernica or start the next Google. Doesnt matter. Youre still going to face challenges that take a lot of time and effort. Whats the thing everybody says? Marriage takes work. And kids? As any parent will tell you - whoa, lot of work.When we look at the greats in most any field, turns out they faced this harsh truth head on. Most were unapologetic workaholics. Depressing, isnt it? To really excel - in your career, as a partner, as a parent - it seems you gotta be a workaholic. So youre gonna be stressed, miserable and die young Actually, no. At least not if you do it right. Not if youre passionate and engaged. Being passionate about something makes life richer right up to the endElderly individuals who were harmoniously passionate scored higher on various indicators of psycho logical adjustment, such as life satisfaction, meaning in life, and vitality, while they reported lower levels of negative indicators of psychological adjustment such as anxiety and depression.And if you embrace the challenges, you wont die young either. The Terman Study, an eight decade research project that followed nearly 1500 people from childhood to death, found that people who worked harder, lived longer. Being laid back and not accomplishing much? Oh, thatll kill youThose who were the most successful were the ones least likely to die at any given age. Ambition was not a problem and taking it easy was not healthy. In fact, those men who were carefree, undependable, and unambitious in childhood and very unsuccessful in their careers had a whopping increase in their mortality risk.Admittedly, struggle doesnt lead to a happy life in the short term - but it leads to a meaningful life in the long termConsidering life a struggle was negatively correlated with happiness but approach ed a significant positive relationship with meaningfulness People with very meaningful lives worry more and have more stress than people with less meaningful lives. Again, we think this indicates that worrying comes from involvement and engagement with important activities But what if you havent been blessed with divine inspiration and havent found your passion? Well, professor Cal Newport says that whole perspective is bunk. For the vast majority of people, you dont find or follow your passion - you build itIf you study people who end up loving what they do, heres what you find and if you study the research on it, you find the same thing Long-term career satisfaction requires traits like a real sense of autonomy, a real sense of impact on the world, a sense of mastery that youre good at what you do, and a sense of connection in relation to other people. Now, the key point is those traits are not matched to a specific piece of work and they have nothing to do with matching your job to some sort of ingrained, pre-existing passion.You will spend a lot of time and effort on something in life. You can resent it and half-ass it and just get by - or you can commit to it, build it, jump in with both feet and reap great rewards.Dont tolerate your struggles embrace them. Direct them towards a goal and forge meaning from them.(To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)Makes sense, right? But some will say by emphasizing meaning I dodged that happiness issue. We all want to be happy. And right now happiness is mercurial and fleeting, showing up when it wants to. How do we get it to stick around for good? Thats what we all want, right? To reach ultimate happiness and stay there.And that leads us to harsh truth number three You will never be perfectly happyHey, it said harsh truths in the headline and you read anyway. No whining. We worked our way through the others, and well work our way through this one. Stick with me Were alwa ys focused on that magic bullet. If I make the money, Ill be perfectly happy forever If I just meet my soulmate If I just get that versetzung If I just, if I just, if I just. Sorry, nope. Wrong answer. There will always be discomfort and worries. Why?Very simply, your brain is not wired for perpetual happiness. In fact, its wired against it. Heres noted science author Robert WrightNatural selection doesnt want us to be happy, after all it just wants us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive. And the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting.But just because you will never reach ultimate, perpetual bliss doesnt mean life is awful.The Grant Study is another one of those studies that followed people through their entire lives. The subjects who were the most successful and happy didnt get that way because they were happy every single day. They were at the top of the heap because of their copin g skills - their ability to deal with the inevitable problems life threw at themThe men who exhibited mature defenses, Vaillant reported in 1977, were happier, more satisfied with their careers and marriages, and were far better equipped to work and love than their peers who possessed less mature adaptations. They earned better incomes, engaged in greater public service, had more rewarding friendships, suffered fewer problems in terms of physical and mental health, and were even much more comfortable being aggressive with others, compared to men with less mature coping skills.Insisting life should be nonstop happiness is the surest way to stay unhappy. Work toward the good moments. Accept there will be bad moments. Then go make more good moments.(To see the schedule that very successful people follow every day, click here.)Okay, expecting to always feel good or that one magic event is going to solve all your problems is unrealistic. At least you can rely on other people to help you through the tough times.Well, kinda People will let you downI said theyre harsh, alright? We discuss the bad then we get to the good. You know the pattern by now. Chill. Jeez.Where was I? Betrayal by those you care for the most. Yeah, thats it. Alrighty Most of the secrets you told your best friend to never ever tell anyone got blabbed to someone else. (Sorry.) And if you really want to make sure they dont keep a secret make sure to say, Keep this between you and me. Because that makes people more likely to spill the beans in one study, 60 percent of people confessed to sharing even their best friends secrets with a third party. Another study found that a quarter of people shared confidential social information entrusted to them with at least three other people. In fact, theres even some data to suggest that simply prefacing your secret sharing with a request for confidentiality (such as Please keep this close to your chest or Just between you and me) can actually make your confida nte more likely to betray your trust, because youre essentially flagging the coming information as being strategic and gossip-worthy, as high-value social knowledge.So, obviously, the proper response is to trust no one and keep all humans at arms length, never getting close to or relying on anyone Bad. Wrong. Incorrect. Yes, youre gonna get screwed occasionally. Welcome to Earth. But in the long run, we come out ahead when we trust more, not less. And were not talking about little secrets here. Were actually talking about big stuff, like moneyIncome peaks among those who trust people more, not less. In a study titled The Right Amount of Trust, people were asked how much they trusted others on a scale of one to ten. Income was highest among those who responded with the number eight Who suffered the most? Those with the lowest levels of trust had an income 14.5 percent lower than eights. That loss is the equivalent of not attending college.So trusting gets you more money. What should you do with the extra loot? Again, the answer is people. Research by Michael Norton at Harvard shows were happier when we spend money on others instead of on ourselves.People will disappoint us. Thats life. Thats real. But, despite that, we still do better in the long run when we trust and forgive others. Relationships are the number one predictor of a happy life. Without trust you cannot be happy. The Grant Study concluded that the capacity to love and be loved was the single strength most clearly associated with subjective well-being at age eighty.So how do we manage? We cant avoid the occasional disappointment. Thats impossible. Leading relationship researcher John Gottman says it all comes down to ratios. For instance, five positive interactions for every negative one is what leads to a happy marriage.Do you expect people to be perfect? Are you perfect? No. And if anyone does seem perfect we get suspicious. Gottman found that too 13 positives to every negative makes people lose credibility. When anyone is that positive, we think somethings fishy.Perfection, it turns out, isnt perfect and pretty good is good enough.(To learn the secret to never being frustrated again, click here.)Lets round it all up - and learn the biggest good that can come from the biggest pain Sum upThese are four harsh truths that will make you a better personYoure going to die You have a deadline. Literally. So focus on what matters. And make sure to celebrate the good times. Id rather have a shorter awesome life than a long, lousy one.Anything worthwhile takes more work than you think Ever futz around an entire Sunday, not truly having fun and not truly accomplishing anything? And then you say, What the heck did I do all day? Well, you dont want to be saying that about your life. Embrace the challenges and find meaning.You will never be perfectly happy And you dont need to be. Insisting on complete happiness is the surest way to stay unhappy. Be grateful for what you have and gently reach for a little more.People will let you down Youre allowed to insist others be perfect the day you become perfect. Which is never. People will cause you problems - but theyre also the biggest source of happiness. Five-to-one is plenty good.Life is challenging. Living in denial just means youre going to be blindsided more often. You dont have to kid yourself that the world is perfect in order to be pretty happy.We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder. What we dont hear about as often is post-traumatic growth. Yes, some people (very few people, actually) experience pain that follows them for a very long time. But more often, Nietzsche was right. As University of Pennsylvania happiness expert Martin Seligman found, what does not kill you does make you strongerA substantial number of people also show intense depression and anxiety after extreme adversity, often to the level of PTSD, but then they grow. In the long run, they arrive at a higher level of psychological func tioning than before In a month, 1,700 people reported at least one of these awful events, and they took our well-being tests as well. To our surprise, individuals whod experienced one awful event had more intense strengths (and therefore higher well-being) than individuals who had none. Individuals whod been through two awful events were stronger than individuals who had one, and individuals who had three - raped, tortured, and held captive for example - were stronger than those who had two.Avoidance perpetuates pain. We cannot fix the harshness we do not face. But when we address issues, we grow and live better lives.Maya Angelou put it best My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.This article first appeared on Barking up the Wrong Tree.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStran gers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from jngste im bunde Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

The 15-minute daily ritual that drastically improved my confidence

The 15-minute daily ritual that drastically improved my confidenceThe 15-minute daily ritual that drastically improved my confidenceSo much is lost in the rush of dailylife. At the end of a busy work day, Ive often closed out my tabs feeling exhausted, but also somewhat confounded.What did I even do today? Am I actually becoming thewriterI want to be?Lots of questions, zero answers. And as my questions piled up, so did the self-doubt and second-guessing.So I decided to make a change. I started platzdeckchenting aside time every day to recognize what Id done and thereby keep tabs on my progress toward short- and long-term goals.Ive always been a fan of working smarter and setting up systems that work with my natural tendencies rather than against them. I setgoalsfor everything from my career and finances, to physical andmental health, to personal growth andrelationships.Im also the type of person who believes that a solid spreadsheet or a well-crafted document can do way more than mos t people give them credit for. So when I moved into freelance writing almost a year ago, I created almost a dozen documents in an attempt to make sure I accomplished everything I wanted to do.I quickly realized that wasnt going to cut it, though, since it took up way more time than I expected. And, to be honest, I was more addicted to the goal-setting than I was inspired by the thought of actually living up to them. Recognizing that, I opted to go cold-turkey and just do the work and see where that got me.Unsurprisingly, that didnt work either. Im the kind of person who needs a balance of structure and free-flowingcreativity. But I didnt know what that kind of work-style looked like on a daily basis. Id never seen anything like it in all my time researching productivity hacks and expert advice from otherfreelance writerswho had years of experience under their collective belts.I grew tired of seeing weeks pass with seemingly little to show for it and feeling less-than-confident in my abilities. So I decided to make time every single day to force myself to recognize all the little things Id accomplished that day. Its a 10-minute daily exercise that forces me to focus on the reality of my progress. Its just short enough that I cant justify skipping it, but long enough that I can find some meaningful insight. It also lets me adjust my goals from lofty to realistic and attainable.But I didnt arrive at my system without a crucial piece of introspection and self-acceptance I realized the fact that I am, much to my chagrin, a people pleaser. Dont get me wrong I love setting goals for myself, and I especially love filling out spreadsheets and worksheets and ticking off boxes on my to-do list. But I tend to do better when I have some sort of external source of motivation spurring me on.That was always missing from my goal-setting exercises. I would write down all of these things I wanted to do - start running regularly, pitch one of my dream publications, have a super -productive morning routine - but they were all solely dependent on willpower.Ive always heard thatwillpoweris like a muscle It gets easier to use the more you exercise it. I dont know if thats true. If it is, getting over the initial difficulty of flexing that particular muscle is enough to make me want to give up before Ive started. But, as Ive come to realize, having someone to spot you along the way in no way diminishes your progress.Thats why I set aside one of my daily review time slots to focus on my weekly progress by way of a check-in phone call or video chat with my best friend. We take 15 to 20 minutes to discuss our progress on everything from getting a difficult assignment done to finally scheduling that appointment thats been put off for way too long. And since we live 3,000 miles away from each other, it helps keep us up-to-date on whats going on in each others lives.Even though I almost never accomplish all of my goals (a fact which the perfectionist in me still cri nges at), I can see the progress Im making with every little step forward. I never had that kind of validation before and it has, for the most part, kept me from sliding back into the self-defeating mindset thats plagued me since college.Im able to recognize the fact that I have to give myself time to reach those ultimate goals Ive set for myself. And, even more importantly, I now measure myself against the person I was yesterday, rather than the idealized version of myself I can never quite reach. That makes it easier to appreciate my hard work, instead of getting hung up on all the things Im not doing right. And thats had a huge impact on my self-confidence.This article was originally published on Business Insider.

What I Think When Co-workers Dont Respond Fast - The Muse

What I Think When Co-workers Dont Respond Fast - The MuseWhat I Think When Co-workers Dont Respond Fast I overthink everything.Its just my thing. And even though I know I do it, I still get caught up in my head. Lets take communication at work as an example. Whenever a co-worker takes too long to get back to me- and too long can really range depending on the situation- my mind abflugs racing and I assume the worst.If this sounds like you, read on to see if we share the saatkorn irrational thoughts, and if so, what you can do to make yourself feel better (and saner). 1. Uh Oh, Did I Offend You?And are you currently talking to HR?I like talking, and as a result, I often send long, unwieldy thoughts that sometimes take me mora than a few messages to articulate. And sometimes, I worry that somewhere in all that text, Ive said something that offended you deeply. Cue the panic. But InsteadI could avoid this panic moment altogether by taking a deep breath before I send the initial message a nd collecting my thoughts. The more concise I am, the more I stay on point. And the more I stay on point, the harder it is for me to slip in something unintentionally offensive.How to Cut All of Your Emails in Half (So People Actually Read Them)2. Do You Even Like Me?Were at work. I know that most of the time, we should be working and not rapid responding to our messages. But when I dont hear from you right away, I abflug assuming that you dont like me. And because you dont like me, youre not going to get me that report I need (at least not right away), and my project will be delayed, and the downward spiral of my career will commence. But InsteadI should focus on the facts. And the facts are that we dont always share the same priorities- even if were BFFs. So when I request something in the future, I should also ask when the person thinks theyll be able to get it back to me. That allows for the recipient to send a quick response, which in turn, helps me not to go through this.12 Wa ys to Become a More Likable Person at Work- Starting Right Now3. Am I About to Get Fired?Run a Google search for signs that you might get fired, and youll probably find one thing comes up more than anything else You start getting shut out of important meetings (or communication altogether), So the most extreme (and I know, irrational) reaction I have when you go silent is that you know Im about to get kicked to the curb and somehow you know.But InsteadIts important for me to, yet again, take a step back and ask myself why I think my job could possibly be on the line. Unless I have a solid reason to think that, the best thing I can do is send up a follow-up email (assuming its been more than, lets say, five minutes) and ask when I can expect a response.The Most Effective Way to Follow Up When You Need a Response ASAPTheres one common thread throughout this entire article I need to stop jumping to conclusions and instead start communicating more clearly. The more clearly I communicate , the less wiggle room I have in my brain to panic. And the less I panic, the happier and more productive I am.