1. Keep in mind that, when holding grudges, the only person that really suffers is the person doing it. It’s also an unfair way to deal with people-nobody is perfect, and it is difficult if not impossible to deal with someone who is always bringing up imperfections, mistakes, or other things that happened previously. Deal with things as they happen, and move on.
2. Get fierce about your time management. This means:
   1. Scheduling priorities at the beginning of the week. This entails actually putting them down on your calendar.
   2. Eliminating as many time wasters (internet, TV, conversations with coworkers that love being paid by the hour, etc) as possible
   3. Building flexibility into your week. Do things when you have the energy to do them-even if it means working at midnight and napping at 11 am on a Tuesday.
   4. Blocking out chunks of time to do things that have nothing to do with career or your profession. This allows you to recharge your battery on a consistent basis.

3. Practice being more responsive. Return emails and calls more quickly, listen better for longer periods of time, and start offering those around you more reasons to hang out with you. You’ll surprise most people, and stand out in the crowd.

Back to top

Some more words that I’ve added to my own vocabulary recently that may benefit yours as well:

• Mellifluous: sweet or musical, pleasant to hear
• Verboten: forbidden, especially by authority
• Laconic: concise, terse, succinct, brief
• Turgid: swollen and distended, congested
• Conflate: to combine two or more ideas into one
• Sybaritic: fond of sensuous luxury; self-indulgent

Back to top

I recently had a consultation in my office with a woman who had found me on the internet. She was familiar with some of my work with some sports teams, and was impressed enough to pursue a consult for 1-1 work.

From the moment we sat down together, however, I knew that there was no way I could work with this woman. She wanted help, but had to explain every situation and obstacle she was facing in excruciating detail, to the point that I couldn’t even respond. None of her problems were of her own doing. Not her divorce twenty-one years ago. Not her failure to leave her church after feeling criticized by her pastor, nor her failure to keep a job longer than two months, and certainly not her inability to maintain a relationship with anyone for longer than a couple of months.

After fifty minutes of listening to her explain how her predicament was not of her own doing, I suggested that we would not be a good fit for working together, given my penchant for pushing my clients a bit further than they are used to being pushed. It then took her ten more minutes to leave my office, even after I explained to her that I had another client waiting! She didn’t care that she made me late to see this client, and she didn’t care to hear a thing I had said during our hour together.

Lesson here: Nobody controls your life but you. Some situations and events are outside our sphere of influence, certainly, but in the end, it is you that controls how you react to things around you. You are directly responsible for the quality of your daily life, and for the quality of your relationships. So, before you begin complaining about your lot in life, stop for a second and figure out what it is that you have done to bring about these consequences. You may not have had a choice in being fired, or divorced, or any other unfortunate event, but you certainly had a choice in how you responded to that event and portrayed it to others.

Work to eliminate excuses. You’ll find out that you actually have much more influence over your life than you previously thought. You’ll also be a much more productive and well-adjusted individual. Now, if you’ll excuse me…

Back to top