Thriving

Most of us tell ourselves a story about how the world works. We can call that our narrative. Our brain takes in more information from our senses than we can process and remain sane. We start filtering out most of it when we are young and psychologists say we have formed our personality by the…

How you see things is probably a limited view of reality, but it is your reality. It is formed from a lifetime of experiences that has informed you what is true and what you can and cannot do. Chances are it is all wrong. What you see as truth is your perception, but considering that…

Thriving is about lifestyle. Getting rich is about making money. Can someone get rich and have a thriving lifestyle at the same time? This has been a plague for the modern era when people started thinking work/life balance should be a goal. Up until now, balance and happiness were secondary considerations. For thriving people, lifestyle…

Right now, I see adversity all around us. Financial markets certainly are afraid and even Warren Buffet is making defensive moves. Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan-Chase and darling of Wall Street says his disaster team that meets once a week might start meeting every day in face of possible U.S. Debt default. All this…

If there is single problem organizations seem to focus on it is worker engagement. One reason is that jobs are often taken for the money, not necessarily that the work is part of a building career. It has been said that student’s coming out of college don’t spend the time looking for their dream job,…

Thriving is a newer concept in our society and in the minds of organizations. Microsoft said it is the new North Star. What is it about thriving that would make a large organization think it would improve their performance if all its workers were thriving? Thriving might be the new self-actualization that is on top…

There is so much emphasis on setting goals. I love goals and have had hundreds in my lifetime. I don’t even remember how many I achieved. Organizations want us to set goals and measure us by whether we reach them. When we were kids, we had goals of what we wanted to do when we…

There is one thing the brain lives for more than anything. Challenge. It is how we have evolved from Cave man to Mars Explorer. Think of every advancement man has made that has changed lives over the millennia and challenge has been the starter seed. We are naturally prone to think about where we are…

Everyone is competitive by nature. We love to win. We love to do better than others. We feel pride if we are better than we were yesterday. We feel pride if we can look back and see how far we have come. Yes, progress builds self-esteem and confidence and is mood uplifting. Being better today…

There are so many negatives we are exposed to on a daily basis. We face news on so many fronts. There is the economy, politics, war, inflation, the stock market, weather, our own health, the operational difficulties of our employer, our industry’s welfare, the fear of new technologies replacing us, getting downsized, the difficulty of…

Deciding what to do each day should not be just about tending to our obligations but how to move our life forward. In fact, how to move our life forward should be our first priority because at the end of the day, this is what makes us say “that was a good day.” I have…

Having a Unique Selling Proposition is a valuable tool for a product or service. It differentiates you from competitors. Some products have a slogan like “Its the Pepsi Generation” meaning to me that you better drink Pepsi or you are not part of the community. Does your life have a theme that distinguishes you from…

Emotions are a weapon and not a hindrance as was thought in past business scenarios. It was thought men made better leaders than women because they were not emotional. Research showed that male leaders analyzed facts but then used their intuition to decide with their emotional gut feeling. Women have come into leadership because it…

Humans have a built-in instinct to detect danger and to feel trust. These instincts are based in the Lizard brain which is our survival tool and in its most primitive sense may say attack or may say run. Think of all the new people you see and meet and you will remember you have a…

It is so easy to develop negative thoughts when there is so much turmoil in the environment. We have had a crazy year of weather and then banks are going through a scare and the biggest tech companies are laying people off. Consumer spending is retracting partly because people are worried. There is constant saber…

We are attracted to people who know what they want and are diligently expressing their talents to reach their goals. Isn’t this the job of the CEO? He has a vision for his organization and he mobilizes his talent, those of his workforce and all resources available to achieve his vision. Thriving is achievement of…

The most successful people are passionate people. What is passion but a drive to engage in something you love. Passion is love. When this indescribable word “love” is applied to our desire to move forward, magic things happen. It is hard to hold a passionate person down because failure is not a concern. They are…

The best way to begin the trek between your current reality and your dreams is to create sustaining goals that last a lifetime. When many people are asked about their dreams, they might say the lottery would be a good start. That is because they envision a freedom money would bring. They could pay off…

If you are a parent, a mate, a friend, a manager, a coach, an influencer, or a co-worker, supporting others may be your life’s work. Have you ever taken the perspective that your support adds value to the world we live in and maybe it is a very noble calling? Some of the emotions that…

We want love, we want to be loved, we want to give love, we want to be in love. Does any of this determine who we become? I didn’t say what we become but who we become. Does who we want to be determine what we become? In college, I started with a few different…

If you ask yourself who you are that might be a painful question. We are often stuck thinking we are between who we are and who we want to be. Do you describe yourself in nouns, adjectives or verbs or all three? Are you finished or becoming? Ask most people and they start with something…

Developing a thriving life can be created with the right habits. Habits are behaviors and behaviors stimulate the right hormones and neurotransmitters that make us happy. Happiness and thriving are close cousins. Happiness and thriving result in our feeling fulfilled and purposeful. What makes us feel purposeful? When we are improving ourselves or making the…

Physical activity can deliver one of the highest states of bliss. The state of flow is sought by all extreme athletes. Other activities that might deliver this state are gaming, sex, meditation, and love. Could you have all these in one day? That would be fun. Man was evolved to run. He could run for…

Learning is powerful medicine. Our DNA is hard wired to sustain and reward us through happiness hormones and neurotransmitters when we learn something that is challenging. Most animals are born with the necessary instincts to survive with little need for intellectual stimulation. They automatically eat the food necessary for survival and exercise all day. Mammals…

You never fail if you don’t quit. Successful people don’t look at failure the same as others. To them there is no real thing as failure. Tony Robbins, self-help guru, says if you don’t like the results, change the strategy. Startup businesses say they want to fail fast to learn quicker. “Sometimes, things may not…

Anyone seeking the state of thriving will want to become intimate with the state of flow. Thriving is the feeling life is delivering one’s expectations and more. Flow is a state of bliss experienced while engaging in a challenging activity. Someone may not experience thriving until they have developed the right habits and time manage…