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All posts for the month December, 2015

Coping with change can be difficult, no matter your age. A particular challenge for individuals over 50 is notably the sheer number of transitions that start occurring. Such include children moving away, losing friends, parents, and other loved ones, changes to your career, having a declining health, and loss of independence.

Finding Freedom in Your Second Fifty

 

Ultimately, it’s natural to feel such losses. However, when that sense of loss gets balanced with positive ingredients, you’ll have a formula for leading a healthy life as you age. By healthy aging, we imply continually reinventing yourself as you get to 60, 70, and beyond. It implies finding the new things you could possibly enjoy, adapting to change, staying socially and physically active, and maintaining connections to your loved ones and community.

As you grow older, you’ll realize the crucial importance of leading an active lifestyle. Regular exercise will help greatly in boosting your energy, maintaining your independence, and managing any symptoms of pain or illness. Exercise plays a considerable role in reversing most aging symptoms.

Not only is exercise good for one’s body, but also for the mind, memory, and mood. Whether you’re generally healthy, or managing an illness, there’re lots of way through which you can be more active, boost your fitness, and improve confidence.

Exercise is Key to Healthy Aging

Starting or even maintaining regular exercise routines in your second fifty may seem challenging. You could feel somehow discouraged by ongoing health problems, injuries, or falls. Also, you may not know where you’ll start from if you’ve never exercised before. Perhaps, you may think you’re too frail or old. Exercising could seem boring or just not for you.

Such could seem as good reasons to take it easy, especially if you’re in your fifties, or older. On the contrary, they are even worthwhile reasons to get moving. Exercise is able to relieve stress, energize your mood, help in managing symptoms of illness and pain, and improve your overall well-being. Exercise is, in fact, the key to staying energetic, strong, and healthy as one gets older. It can even be fun too if you’re able to find like-minded people who you’ll be exercising with.

Proven Fact: A Sedentary Lifestyle is Not Healthy for Adults Aged above 50

Research has proven that inactivity causes old people to lose the ability of doing things on their own. It can even lead to doctor visits, hospitalizations, and use of medications for illnesses.

 

Physical and Mental Benefits of Being Active in Your Fifties

  1. It helps one to maintain or lose weight. Being active will increase metabolism, help in burning more calories, and build muscle mass. Once your body reaches a healthy weight, you can be assured of an overall wellness.
  1. It reduces the impact of illnesses. Exercising proves much beneficial in improving one’s immune function, better blood pressure and heart health, better digestive functioning, and better bone density.
  1. It enhances flexibility, balance, and mobility. It improves your posture and strength, which will in turn enhance balance and coordination.
  1. It boosts one’s mood and self-confidence. You’ll realize exercise to be a huge stress reliever as you age. Endorphins produced will help reduce depression, sadness, or anxiety feelings. Being active helps you with self-confidence.
  1. it’s amazingly good for your brain. Ensure to keep your brain active. It will benefit brain functions such as multitasking and creativity. Also, it may help prevent cognitive decline, memory loss, and dementia.

 

It’s said that an old dog is not supposed to be taught new tricks. That’s one of the most damaging myths of aging; that after a certain age, you’ll be unable to try new things. The opposite is very true.

Older adults are quite as capable of thriving in new environments and learning new things. Still yet, older adults have that wisdom which comes with life experience. By believing and having confidence in yourself, you’ll be setting up an enhanced environment for change.

As one ages beyond 50, there’ll be periods of joy, and also stress. Building your resilience and finding ways to cope with challenges is thus important. It’s this ability that will enable you make the most of good times, and maintain your perspective during tough times.

 

Tips at a Glance

  1. Find activities that you enjoy, and engage yourself in them
  1. Stay healthy through laughter, humor, and play
  1. Maintain and improve on your financial security
  1. Take daily action in dealing with life’s challenges
  1. Acknowledge and express your feelings
  1. Focus on things you’re grateful
  1. Make effort to make friends
  1. Develop bedtime rituals
  1. Volunteer in diverse areas
  1. Eat well as you age

You can make your second fifty awesome. Challenge your beliefs about your second fifty experiences. Get moving! Movement is essential in fully expressing your second fifty. Take action, give back, and stay healthy and active. That’s all it takes to find freedom in your second fifty.

Destined for Something Greater

Imagine holding a coin right in front of your eyes. Assume that coin is your obstacle to success and everything else is your success story in waiting. Now, slowly move the coin further and further away from your face. What do you see? Your success stories come to life. All you need out do is reach out and grab them.
You are destined for success. Your future is great. But the obstacle you are focusing too much on is blinding you from the amazing opportunities you should be pursuing. What you see instead is a dark world with nothing but your failures and the huge obstacle that you think you cannot overcome.
Another way to see this is imagining that you are a traveler who has come upon a tall steep hill on his path. You cannot go over it and you do not see a way around it. Now, imagine walking some distance away from the hill. Suddenly, you can see several paths to get you past the obstacle before you.
Are you focusing too much on the obstacles or problems in your life that you fail to see the opportunities all around you? As long as you dwell on the things blocking the path to your goal – be it weight loss, wealth, career success or a happy relationship – you will never a find a way out. You will keep trying to reach your goal but every time the obstacle blinds you to the many other paths you could take to reach where you want to be.
Here are four ways that many people focus on their obstacles, problems or inadequacies and in the process, stagnate in the same place for years.

Destined for Something Greater

1. Self-pity

This is one of the most useless, damaging and addictive of human emotions. When you are in a lonely pity party, you tend to focus on your failures and perceived inadequacies. You keep on focusing on that obstacle that made you fail before, instead of taking a step back and looking for the opportunities lying in wait all around.

2. Regrets

There is nothing that impedes progress more than the past. We all make mistakes, some small others really big. It is a defining characteristic of being human. While those mistakes may have had grave consequences and even hurt other people, you cannot go back in time to change things, no matter how hard you wish for it. Regrets keeps your focus on past failures, stifling any progress you might make towards your goals.

3. Fear

Are you afraid that you are not creative enough for that job? Not good enough to date him or her? Not smart enough to get rich? All these perceptions of our inadequacies are obstacles, which if you focus on them, you will never realize that they are all lies.
Do you want to discover your strengths? Then, stop letting fear take your attention away from your goals and on the tiny obstacles that should not even bother you.

4. Low self esteem

This one is closely tied to fear and self-pity. Low self-esteem is borne out of fear and constant self-pity. It goes from just being negative thoughts to a powerful negative mindset. You now believe that you will never achieve your goals because your mind has tricked you into focusing all your attention on the looming obstacle blocking your path. That obstacle could be your background, your physical looks or your past failures.

Shifting Focus

It is a natural reflex to focus on our obstacles. Shifting your focus will therefore take deliberate effort. You have to decide that instead of always looking down at the rocks, thorns and ditches that block your way, you are going to look straight ahead at the finish line.
Something amazing happens when you shift focus from your problems and onto your goals. Though your obstacles do not magically disappear, they turn into challenges. You also discover a great power within you to tackle these challenges.
Those obstacles that kept you from success now become milestones that build you and with each one, you get stronger. Do not think about how hard the journey will be or how long it will take; effort and time are two other obstacles you should not be focusing on.
All your attention and passion should be on what you want to achieve. You will not even realize it when the finish line suddenly comes upon you. Even better, you will be excited and ready to achieve many other goals. Always remember you are Destined for Something Greater

Good leadership is one of the key factors that will make an organization prosper. A combination of connection and authority is what makes a good leader. It is therefore important that organizational leaders develop and improve their connection skills.

There are several cases where managers have failed to become good leaders. This is mainly due to poor connection skills. They therefore need some help in developing the necessary leadership skills that will help them improve their connection with people.a

Below are the 10 ways to improve your connection skills.

Appreciate varying connection needs

This is the first thing in the 10 ways to improve your connection skills. It is important to acknowledge the fact that people have varying inclinations in terms of feeling connected or not. An action will also make people to react in different ways whether they feel connected or not. You are therefore required to learn about, and understand the people that you lead and then gear your behavior in order to connect in response to different individuals and what you have learned about them.

Avoid dwelling much on negatives and emphasize more on positives

Good connection where there is affirmation and recognition. People like to feel recognized, so find a way of affirming and serving others. Do not just affirm them, but identify their strengths in both tasks and character. These strengths are exhibited by a person’s excellence in work and the way they go about their daily work respectively.

Pay attention while conversing

For any good relationship, there need to be complete attention from both parties. You need to be present in conversations by paying full attention to what is being said.

Make the person feel your presents by asking questions. Go further to asking follow up questions to seek some clarification. Pay attention to body language and facial expression. Avoid things like looking around, switching your mind to other things or checking your phone. This is because they serve to break the connection.

Control your voice tone

The way your message will be delivered has more effect than the message itself. People react more on how the message is delivered even before they hear the content of the message. A harsh, rough or a rasping voice will make a person to react negatively. This may serve to put up a wall between you and them as they will feel threatened. A polite tone would serve better.

Have empathy; develop that ability to empathize

People around us will always have emotions. People will feel connected to you when you have empathy towards them when they need it. They will feel connected when you feel their emotions. Feeling their positive emotion will enhance the positive emotion that they are feeling. When you share in their pain, the pain will diminish. It is natural for anyone to feel an emotion when someone else expresses it.

When negotiating, have a mindset of solving a problem, not winning

Exhibiting and maintaining the right mindset with the people while you are negotiating will help build good connections. Do not take the people you are negotiating with as your rivals. This is because it will lead to mistrust and suspicion, hence bringing about disconnection. You need to try to find a means of finding a win-win solution. This will require some patience, perseverance, probing and understanding of others’ perceptions and objectives

Admit your mistake.

No one is perfect, we all make mistakes but what makes the difference is when we apologize. It is hard for many people to say sorry. A mistake destroys a connection but once we apologize, the connection will be rebuilt.

Give the people you are leading autonomy in performing tasks

It is good to monitor the progress of those reporting to you, but give them some autonomy. Do not be too inclined to rules and conditions. Be there when they need some clarifications. This will enhance personal growth and serve to meet the human need for independence and autonomy.

Keep in mind and apply the 5 languages of appreciation

These languages include; gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation and quality time.

Ask your juniors about the times they have been recognized at workplace. Learn their primary and secondary appreciation languages.

Learn the difference between social and relationship skills and develop them

Having social skills is an excellent way that one can develop good connections. It is also important to have relationship skills as they will help to create strong connections with people. Things like regularly spend time with friends, sharing in their joy and pain and being there for them when they need you will lead to deeper and stronger connections with people.

It is important to note that good connections will lead to greater productivity, healthy and happiness.

Use the above 10 ways to improve your connection skills, Start connecting today and then see what will happen. Be ready for a great positive impact in your life.

5 tips for Overcoming a Failure

Napoleon Hill once said that “Failure seems to be nature’s plan for preparing us for great responsibilities.” Have you ever seen a child learning how to ride a bike? They will stumble and fall a couple of times of times before they get it right. When you make a mistake, you should take it as a learning opportunity but not a failure. It takes a failure after a failure to create success. This is how you know the difference between successful people and those who are not. Successful people are fighters, they struggle to the last stroke and they still do not quit. When it comes to business, having goals and creating plans to achieve those goals is part of achieving success. However, there are times those goals do not come to fruition. During such instances, there are two decisions to choose from. The first one is fold your cards and get heartbroken and never return to that venture again or pick yourselves up take heart and continue with your mission this time with a lesson and more energy. This is what is called success, walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. The following 5 tips for Overcoming a Failure are something I often use to keep me going even after a massive failure.

5 tips for Overcoming a Failure

  1. Acceptance

First and foremost, you need to understand that there are some things that are beyond our control. You are not your mistakes and the quicker you accept this fact the faster you are likely to move on. The fact you have not found a successful way to do something does not mean you are failure. Personalizing failure is likely to wreck havoc and kill your confidence and self esteem. Therefore, the faster you accept, the quicker you are likely to leave these debilitating monopolizing thoughts behind and try again this time better.

  1. Talk to someone

You are not the first person to ever fail. There are so many people out there who have probably gone through a similar situation or even worse and still ended up being successful. Talk to someone you are comfortable with about how you feel. Remember, just by talking about your problem, you achieve a half solution to it. You will come to realize that by doing this the person you talked to will try to make you feel better by encouraging or giving you a better solution and even if they do not, at least you will have gotten the chance to take off what you have been holding in your chest.

  1. Think positive

Look at your failure positively suspending feelings of anger, blame, frustrations and regret. If you do not like the outcome of something, you have the liberty of changing it and if you cannot change it, change the way you think about. This applies to failure. According to Winston Churchill, “Success is moving from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” The mind has to accept first that it can do something even before it can achieve it. Negative thoughts always end up with negative results while positive thinking always ends up with positive results. Things always turn the best for people who always think well about themselves.

  1. Ignore Negative People

Most a times, our fear of failure is often rooted in the fear of being judged. In the process, we easily get influenced by others opinion of us. Take note this is about you and not them and if you easily get influenced by the opinion of others, then you will never progress. Do not give too much energy to what they say about you and instead, focus on what you really want and learn to improve it and ignore all the negative people.

  1. Life Goes on

Mistakes are a bad experience when they happen but years later, a collection of the same mistakes also called experience lead to success. When the outcome of your expectation comes out bad, it is going to be tagged an experience. Your mind is the mindset of your success and you have to learn to forgive yourself and others and learn from the mistakes. Remember when you stall and somber over your mistake, life still goes on. Therefore, the earlier you realize this, the better.

It is wise to accept failure. Failure is a teaching tool and it will get you much closer to your success.

I hope this short post 5 tips for Overcoming a Failure will help you succeed in life. Always rememeber you aredestined to have achieve something bigger.