Personal Growth & Transformation Archives - Page 29 of 54

How to Deal With Difficult Transitions

By Anne - Sophie Reinhardt / 32 Comments

Transitions: we all face them. Bigger ones and smaller ones, they’re always there. Whether it’s the end of your time in kindergarten, starting a new job, going away to college or simply realizing that your favorite brand of chocolate is not available anymore, life never stands still.

Divorce has been my latest mountain to conquer and it’s been by far the most difficult one to date. Nothing, not even a 14-year long battle with anorexia, can prepare you for the shock and the pain of admitting that your marriage is dead.

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Help Others Help Themselves: A Quick Guide to Mentorship

By Deborah Fike / 29 Comments

I have been a teacher on and off during my career. I’m currently “on” again, teaching an entrepreneurship course for undergraduates at a local university. Business courses tend to focus on team project work because that’s how businesses are run: a group of people working together to achieve a common goal.

Inevitably, whenever I teach a course that involves teamwork, at least one student hits me up mid-semester with a complaint about a teammate. Usually it is an expectation issue where one student hasn’t contributed as much to the project as other students would like. Generally, the students turn to me to resolve the issue, which wouldn’t be such a huge deal except every time this happens, no one has actually talked to the alleged “underachieving” student and tried to fix the issue themselves.

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You Can’t Be Anything If You Put Your Mind To It

By David Masters / 56 Comments

I feel a little stupid, because it’s taken me nearly thirty years to realize a simple truth. I’ll never be a Major League Baseball player, a Premier League footballer, or an Olympic swimmer. Call me glum, sour, or bitter, but those are the facts.

No matter how much I put my mind to it, no matter how much I conceive and believe, no matter if I had the stubborn will power of a donkey, no matter if I put in my 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, it’s not happening. To believe otherwise wouldn’t make me a go-getter. It would make me delusional. Not all seven billion of the earth’s inhabitants can be elected President of the USA. Not all of the world’s hundreds of millions of blogs can be in the Technorati top 100. Not all of the USA’s 315 million citizens will join the ranks of its 424 billionaires (unless the dollar becomes severely devalued). That’s not doom-saying. It’s simple math.

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Be Do Have

By Mike Martens / 21 Comments

My journey of change ran head first into a brick wall in 2012. I have never been one to follow the conventional route, so it certainly wasn’t the first obstacle I’ve met. This was different, it didn’t just stop me in my tracks, it floored me. I lost my health. Always a pillar in my life, my health and fitness were a constant that I relied on. In July, a headache started that never went away. It became debilitating before a bleed was discovered on my brain.

Fast forward to April 2013. I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. My energy is returning, I no longer have to nap every couple hours. I am going to be all right. The condensed version always sounds better, doesn’t it? In the context of personal pain or hardship, shortening the story somehow makes it more manageable. It isn’t so and we shouldn’t do it.

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Why “Having it All” isn’t the Best Goal

By Deborah Fike / 21 Comments

Being a freelance consultant and full-time mom, I’m always interested in how parents (men and women) juggle their professional and personal lives. Not surprisingly, I’ve been following Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and her recent book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. More fascinating than the book itself is the reaction it has garnered in the media: from very positive reviews praising her stance on balancing work and life issues to very negative reviews that bash millionaire Sandberg for not understanding a more modest woman’s struggles.

All the arguments seem to boil down to one simple question for working parents: Can they “have it all” – the rewarding challenge of a full-time career and the joy of raising a child in such a way that you can be there for all the “little moments?” And therein lies the problem. By framing the question “Can you have it all?” I believe a person is setting themselves up for disappointment. Here’s why:

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Why Gratitude Will Save Your Life (& 7 Ways to Increase It Starting Today)

By Izzy / 30 Comments

I took a moment. I could feel my chest. My heart was racing. What’s wrong with me? It didn’t make sense. I was 27 years old, healthy, had a good job, loving parents, great friends, involved in the community, and the list keeps going.

Yet, as I lay on my bed at 2am, overwhelmed by my life, I knew something was wrong. It was as if, the world had been handed to me, and I had no soul. From a logical standpoint my life was great, but my heart showed otherwise. Why can’t I appreciate? Why do I feel this? Why do I hate my life?

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Looking For Answers? I’m As Clueless As You Are

By David Masters / 29 Comments

I didn’t know what I was doing when, as a child, I begged my parents for a dog. Yet I found myself, 12 years old, with a puppy. I had to get up every morning at a time I’d never before heard of to clean up its mess. I had to go out in the wind and rain and winter-chill to take it for a walk, day after day after day.

Today, I own another dog, and I still don’t exactly know what I’m doing. Sometimes she sits when I ask her to. Sometimes she gives me a look, “so you think you can tell me what to do, huh?” and wanders off to sniff the flowers.

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How to Escape Despair and Bring Meaning to Your Life

By Akshay Nanavati / 45 Comments

I have lost a lot of friends in my life. Each time I came face to face with the pain of loss, I was presented with a choice. In looking back at my life, I have come to realize that the choice was always the same.

At the age of 16, for one and a half years I squandered away my existence, lost in a world of drugs. Two friends who shared this life with me are no longer alive today due to the degree to which we immersed ourselves in despair and self-destruction. As cliche as this may sound, the truth is, almost overnight, my life changed forever.

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How to Change When You Feel Like the Only One Who Hasn’t

By Emily Holland / 40 Comments

It seems like a lot of people who write about how to change are the ones who successfully made it happen for themselves. Logically, it makes sense. Who else better to write about how to accomplish something than people who have done it?

I love reading articles about how to successfully improve your life and truly appreciate the writers behind them for generously sharing their wisdom. However, it can be discouraging. Before reading an article, I sometimes skip down to the writer’s bio in hopes that they are perhaps in a similar position as myself: just starting out and very green as to how to go about accomplishing their dreams.

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How to Live a Meaningful Life

By Izzy / 33 Comments

It was a hard thing to admit – that I’d done everything I was told to do… and felt empty. Western culture tells us “Get a degree, get a job, get a home, make a lot of money, and happiness is yours.” I’ve tested the theory… It doesn’t work.

I used to be a teacher in the inner city. Every morning I would wake up at 530 am to go teach in the poverty stricken neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California. On some level it felt good. On paper, it looked great. Here I was – in my mid 20’s giving my heart and soul to educate america’s underserved youth. But if I’m honest, with you, with myself – I did it for the wrong reasons.

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How to Find Energy to Achieve Your Goals

By Deborah Fike / 35 Comments

The saying goes, “Every journey begins with a single step.” For me, at least, the problem isn’t that first step. I can delve into projects with great enthusiasm, no problem. It’s usually step number 352 that gets me down. Then, through lack of energy or simple frustration, I simply get off the road.

Achieving a goal often feels more like a bell curve to me. The beginning is great, and when I reach the end, all is well. It’s that pesky middle area, when the bump in the road appears and I feel like I’m running uphill for miles, that’s the hardest to overcome. I keep looking for the end to be in sight, and when I can’t see it, I can get discouraged and give up.

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