How Workers Can Begin the Process to Thriving

The world today is more complex than ever in the past and workers often find that surviving often leads to burn out instead of a great life experience. Workers have found that to accelerate their careers and realize their life expectations, they need to learn how to thrive.

There are four great terms I want to introduce that lead to thriving before discussing the formation of thriving habits. Those terms are passion, challenge, risk and flow. If you have these four qualities in your life, you are thriving. The challenge has to be the appropriate level and not overwhelm.

The Thriving Lifestyle

The thriving lifestyle is one of balance and growth. Balance creates a nervous system that is functional instead of always being anxious and growth stimulates happiness brain chemicals which make one gratified to be engaging in activities instead of frustrated or bored.

How do you bring in the appropriate amount of challenge and risk into your life that will include almost by definition, personal and career growth? We want to set goals for our personal life and careers. They should move hand in hand to be mutually supported. It is like involving the left and right brain in accomplishing a task. Using both sides of the brain means our subconscious and creative talents are optimized.

Laird Hamilton, a true water man, engages in several water sports including surfing, sail boarding, stand up paddle boarding and distance paddling. He was the first of the modern era to ride the monster wave on the Teahapoo break in Tahiti. His ride landed him on the front page of Surfer Magazine. The headline was Oh My God. Other surfers said he showed surfers what was possible.

His was a combination of achievements that result from learning, challenge, risk, and flow. He has spent his life learning techniques of surfing, reading the ocean, risking brutal crashes, and learning how to engage in flow by letting go and trusting all he has learned once he drops in.

A great speaker in front of an audience has prepared, learned his material, and then drops into flow to create a peak performance where his prefrontal cortex is shut down so he is not worrying about judgement from the audience. This allows him total freedom to express himself in a way that he is enjoying.

Dialing In the Daily Schedule for Thriving

This is how we want to live our lives. We want to learn about all phases of our life and work to improve our personal lives and our contribution in our careers. We want to be seeking optimum and peak performances every day. At the end of the day we want to say that was a good day and I plan to have another one tomorrow.

Our daily lives want to include learning, creativity, contribution, caring, and health. We want to find out who we are by continually pushing our envelope. These all stimulate happiness brain chemicals of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. The benefit of these hormones and neurotransmitters is they sustain our engagement for longer periods of time and give us the pleasure that induces us to engage over and over.

Like Laird Hamilton, think of other extreme athletes. They risk their lives to experience the feelings while engaged. Some call them adrenaline junkies. What they are seeking is finding out who they are. They push their limits to see how far they can go. This becomes their purpose in life. Jeremy Jones, an extreme snowboarder, says the wheels fall off his bus when he is not in the mountains.

Your Days Embrace Your Life Purpose

Take any achiever in business, sports, entertainment, academics, leadership and you will find their identity is aligned with their life purpose. Taylor Swift is a song writer and her life revolves around being in the right state of mind to create. She is always open to epiphanies which often occur in the middle of the night because her subconscious is in alignment with her dreams.

What are your dreams? Health, contribution, relationships, adventures, and gratitude are all great targets and the results of the right habits. Discipline is a key tool that is developed and honed from dedication and commitment to a goal. It can be pointed at any endeavor. It is persistence, consistency, and resilience.

Selecting the end game is a good way to work backward and select the starting points. If I want health I am going to focus on diet, exercise, and rest. If I want career growth, I am going to focus on learning and creativity. If I want athletic prowess, I am going to focus on strength, stamina, techniques, and perfect practice,

Taking the First Steps

We start with the first steps. A sedentary person that wants to get in shape can begin walking ten minutes a day then a half hour and finally an hour. A friend who wanted to climb to the base camp of Mt Everest but was not in great shape began with walking four miles and built it to twenty five miles. He made it at 70 years old to 17,500 feet with an 8 day trek.

We set the dreams. We set the first steps. We engage daily. We start eliminating the distractions and time wasting activities in our lives that slow our progress. We become more adept which always leads to passion. We start becoming excited with our progress. We become more resilient and overcome all obstacles. We visualize our success. Each summit becomes the base for the next summit.

Our daily lives can flow when we have set time blocks for working on each of the steps necessary for progress. I have creativity blocks, exercise blocks, nutritious meal preparation blocks, solitude blocks, and relaxation blocks. Each day moves me forward toward my dreams and each day is my dream. I can always say at the end, that was a good day.

***

As a Thriving Worker Consultant, I can engage in conversations with employers on how to begin the process of helping workers thrive and reach peak performance. It begins with a conversation to see how far an organization is willing to go with the advantages and disadvantages of not getting engaged.

Great practices for daily living can be learned with the Markap Series of Books. If your organization would like live presentations or Zoom meetings, they can be arranged for small to large groups.

The Markap Books:

Self-Leadership, Gratitude, Happiness, and Start Now

See Books on the Home Page

Contact me at Mark@markap1.com

Call for a Free 20 minute Consultation 442-288-3364