Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

20 Ways to Improve Your Mood and Enjoy Your Life

We’ve all had those days when we “woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” and we just couldn’t help but be miserable. Sometimes, this mood will last days, or even weeks, and it begins to take over our lives. With so many potential causes of stress (i.e. job, family, finances, etc.) it can be difficult to look beyond the stress and see the good in life, but it is
important that you try. A happier mood can start a positive cycle in your life, and a better outlook can, in turn, make you feel better.  When you are happy, others want to be around you. A happy mood can improve your health and help you get better sleep. Work can seem easier, more fun, and your day may appear to go by faster. This change in mood doesn’t have to be difficult. There are many small things you can do to improve your mood each day.

Focus: Lessons from the Operating Room

“It is better to do one thing 100%, than it is to do a hundred things 1%.” – Mr. Gilrein (My 7^th grade health teacher)

I was an operating room technician for six years, and when watching a surgeon conduct surgery, there’s no doubt what’s on his mind: Surgery.  Too often it seems that people have a million things going, and instead of doing one thing, they almost do a thousand things.  But to accomplish anything in life, a person needs to be focused.

Veteran Wellness and The War Within – Guest Post – Part 1

Your tour of duty is over.  You march off the airplane after the long trip home, conscious of the different looks your uniform receives.  Most are ones of appreciation.  Simple nods or even out right thanks given by strangers who try to stand a bit straighter when addressing you.  Others are thinly veiled looks of disgust, and you’re not sure if it’s you or your uniform they cannot stand.  But at least it’s some sort of acknowledgement—a sign that the past eighteen months were real.  The worst are the people who don’t even seem to see you.  Rushing past you on errands, they bark orders on cell phones while drinking mocha lattes from Starbucks.  Some sit at restaurants gorging themselves in front of the flat screens which hang on the walls.  CNN is the station.  But the diners only put their forks down when the stats from last night’s game are read by the announcer.  And as you take those first steps back into your hometown, the haughty ignorance of your sacrifices makes you hotter than the Iraqi sun.

Leadership Sanity – Guest Post

“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” These challenging words were spoken by Winston Churchill in a BBC radio broadcast on February 9th, 1941. As one of the great leaders of modern western civilization, Churchill reminded us that leadership is comprised of a set of tools. Although the direction a leader will take people today is different than it was during World War II, the principles used to get there remain constant.

How to Be a Stand up Comedian

It starts with an awkward silence.  All eyes are glued to you as you walk to the stage; the littlest misstep and you’ll never live it down.  The second that your foot hits the stage, you take a deep breath, sweat drips down your brow and your palms freeze.  Stepping up the microphone you exhale and tell yourself that you’ve been here before, that you’ve only got five minutes and you can handle it.  You look out over the audience; finally its time to ease the tension, theirs and yours.

Top Five Mistakes Made on Resumes: How to Correct Them

Today we have a special guest post from Human Resources Manager and former Marine: Chandler Ruehrwein.

Top Five Mistakes Made on Resumes: How to Correct Them

As a Human Resources professional I see hundreds of resumes for each position that opens up.   I then weed those resumes down to just a few which I will invite in for an interview.  How I narrow it down to those few interview worthy resumes is an excellent question.  The answer is between a combination of the recruiting department and the hiring manager.  I could see a stellar looking resume and send it over to the hiring manager with a little extra note; “looks really interesting.”  Or if the resume is not perfect I could simply send it over.  Below are some common resume mistakes.

How to Build Your Self Discipline

Self Discipline: Self Discipline is a person’s ability to get done, what they say they’ll get done.  If a person says that they’re going to wake up at 7:00am, then they get up at 7:00am—not 7:01, 7:02 or 7:03.

What the Military Teaches About Self Discipline

When a person joins the military, his first taste of discipline is external. His drill sergeants assume that he has no self discipline and thus seek to install it;  left to his own devices, the soldier, sailor, or airman would be slovenly and too self absorbed to succeed.

Had the new recruit chosen another life, college or a civilian job, his time away from the classroom or the shop would have been his own. He could have decided on his own when to get up, when to study and what to do after hours. No one would have spoken to him about the shine on his shoes and the length of his hair.

I Will Never Accept Defeat. I Will Never Quit: Love and War

Thinking of the Army code, “I will never accept defeat.  I will never quit.” brings to mind the famous story of the Battle of the Bulge, fought in World War Two.  American forces were defending the town of Bastogne, Belgium, and found themselves suddenly surrounded by a vastly superior force of Germans. The Americans were cut off from food, ammunition and replacements.

For many days, they held off the onslaught of the German hordes, until on December 22, 1944, a German party, under a flag of truce, delivered a long letter to the American commander, General Anthony McAuliffe. The letter boasted of the strength of the German Forces that trapped him in the city.

Target VS Mission: Smaller Goals VS Larger Goals

In the military we’re trained to accomplish missions, and in order to accomplish mission—large scale ones—often, the military will set up smaller targets to accomplish that will eventually lead to the accomplishment of the primary mission.

This can be useful as a way of looking at goals.  If a person has a larger goal, in order to reach that goal, they have a lot of little goals that they, most likely, have to accomplish first.  This is the same as the military strategy of mission and targets.  To accomplish a larger goal, a person needs to know exactly what it is.   What’s the mission?  What is trying to be accomplished?  A new job? More money?  Better health?  You need to know what the mission is.  A soldier always knows what his mission is—and if he doesn’t know, someone screwed up along the chain of command.