Word-Of-the-Week #1018: Beauty
February 8, 2024 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #1018: Beauty
Beauty – the qualities that delight the senses and that give pleasure.
Are you fully aware of those things that delight your senses and that give you pleasure?
This week features another article from The Better Newsletter by Sam Horn.
ANECDOTE
“My friend Glenna was married to Jim, a former linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, who loved being out on the lake.
He bought a really big boat for waterskiing that wouldn’t fit in their driveway, so he parked it in their backyard.
And there it sat… For months. For years.
Glenna said that every time she looked in the backyard, there was that darn boat.
Finally, one day she’d had “enough.” She got all worked up and pronounced, “Either that boat goes or I go.”
Her husband looked at her and asked a simple question: “Glenna, what percentage of our relationship, in your opinion, works?”
She thought about it. “Eighty percent.”
“I agree. So, let’s focus on the 80 percent that does work instead of the 20 percent that doesn’t. Sound good?”
She agreed … and then went out and bought a really big rosebush.
Bada boom.
Glenna solved her problem by looking out at beauty (instead of the boat), and she and Jim had many (mostly) happy years together.
ACTION
- How about you? Are you looking at the beauty or the boat in your life?
- Grab your journal and reflect on these questions:
- Is there a way to reframe the situation?
- What resources will I need to remedy the situation?
- Is it my job to “fix” this?
- Does someone need to be held accountable and am I that someone?
- Will time heal this problem?
This week’s focus is about being able to find the beauty. Are you able to create beauty in your life even when things aren’t to your liking?
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Word-Of-the-Week #1017: Mistake
February 1, 2024 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #1017: Mistake
Mistake – the result of defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness.
Have you ever had a lapse in judgment that caused you to lose a promotion, a raise, or your job? Have you ever been accused of “resting on your laurels?” Do you have a tendency to complain about your work situation?
This is the sequel to Travis Bradberry’s article “Career killers – Even small mistakes can be costly in the workplace.” To recap he wrote, “Little things can add up over time and undermine your career just as much as one huge lapse in judgment. Stay aware of these blunders before they creep up and kill your career:
- Having an inflatable ego – Did you ever work with someone who had a string of successes and started thinking that he or she was a star? Success is great. It definitely boosts your career, and it feels really good. The problems start once you let it go to your head. You start thinking that success is going to last forever and that you’re entitled to it.
Never, ever be content with resting on your laurels.
- Losing sight of the big picture – It’s easy to become head-down busy, working so hard on what’s right in front of you that you lose sight of the big picture. But smart people learn how to keep this in check by weighing their daily priorities against a carefully calculated goal.
It’s not that they don’t care about small-scale work; they just have the discipline and perspective to adjust course as necessary.
- Negativity – Sometimes when you’re feeling negative and down, your mood can leak out and affect other people. People who spread negativity through their department and complain about the work or other people complicate things for everyone else.
If people always have to tiptoe around you so as not to risk poking the bear, they are unlikely to be willing to do it for very long.
- Low emotional intelligence – Everyone knows that you can get fired for being unable or unwilling to play nicely with others, but what trips up a lot of people is having a poorly developed poker face. If everyone can tell when you’re bored or irritated or that you think something a colleague says is stupid, this will catch up with you.
Emotional outbursts, belittling others, shutting co-workers down when they speak, low self-awareness and just generally being difficult are other ways that a lack of emotional intelligence will do great harm to your career.
- Playing politics – Working hard to build strong work relationships is very different from instigating conflict, choosing sides, undermining colleagues, spreading rumors and all of the other things that fall under the umbrella of “playing politics.” If you find yourself feeling embarrassed about any of your tactics, you likely are playing politics.
Stick to strategies you’d be proud to discuss in front of your colleagues.
This week’s focus is about not making mistakes. How good are you at weighing your daily priorities against carefully calculated goals? How easy are you to work with? Do you work hard at building strong work relationships?
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Word-Of-the-Week #1016: Complacent
January 25, 2024 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #1016: Complacent
Complacent – satisfied with the current situation and unconcerned with changing it, often to the point of smugness.
Are you currently working in the job of your dreams? How long has it been since you proactively learned a new skill? How easily are you able to adapt to changes?
Travis Bradberry is the co-author of “Emotional Intelligence 2.0” and co-founder of TalentSmart, a San Diego provider of emotional intelligence tests and training. “Career killers – Even small mistakes can be costly in the workplace” is this week’s focus. Travis writes,
“There are many things that can kill people’s careers, and even small mistakes often carry serious consequences down the road. We usually only hear about the most egregious examples, but most people don’t go down in a blaze of glory; they kill their careers in subtle, decidedly undramatic ways. A recent survey by VitalSmarts found that 83 percent of respondents had seen someone make a blunder that had catastrophic results for their career, reputation or business, and 69 percent acknowledged they had done something that damaged their careers. Of those:
31 percent said it cost them a promotion, a raise or a job.
27 percent said it damaged a working relationship.
11 percent said it destroyed their reputation.
Little things can add up over time and undermine your career just as much as one huge lapse in judgment. Stay aware of these blunders before they creep up and kill your career:
- Over-promising and under-delivering – It’s tempting to promise the moon to your colleagues and your clients, especially when you’re hardworking and believe that you can do it. The problem is that there’s no point in creating additional pressure that can make you look bad. If you promise to do something ridiculously fast and you miss the deadline by a little bit, you’ll likely think that you did a good job because you still delivered quickly. But the moment you promise something to someone, they expect exactly that.
You end up looking terrible when you fall short, which is a shame, because you could have done the same quality work in the same amount of time with great results if you’d just set up realistic expectations from the beginning.
- Complacency – How long has it been since you proactively learned a new skill, reached out to your networking contacts or even polished your resume? If you can’t remember, you might have become a bit complacent, and complacency is a real career killer.
If you’re always too busy to learn something new or to expand your network, you’ve got your priorities mixed up. However, if you make continuous growth and development a priority, you’ll be ready for whatever comes your way.
- Fear of change – Fear of change is complacency’s evil twin. It actively works to keep things the same. I’m sure you’ve seen this one first hand at work when someone uttered the dreaded words, “But we’ve always done it this way.”
Things are changing too fast these days to latch on tightly to the status quo, and the costs of doing so can be huge. Surveys show that managers find that the most successful employees are the ones who can adapt to the changing workplace.”
This week’s focus is to not be complacent. How often do you reach out to your networking contacts? When was the last time you polished your resume? Are you ready to tackle whatever comes your way each day?
Stay tuned – next week will feature 5 more Career Killers!
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Word-Of-the-Week #1015: Portmanteau
January 18, 2024 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #1015: Portmanteau
Portmanteau – a new word formed by joining two others and combining their meanings.
Do you love going out for brunch, staying at motels, or playing Pokémon? Have you ever wondered how they came up with the word Bollywood?
This week I thought I’d keep it light and share this word that I have only seen when I play the New York Times crossword puzzle. Excerpts are taken from the Reader’s Digest website.
“The new word draws meaning from the words it comes from, creating a word that’s clever and often slang-y—but not always!
Wouldn’t you know it, portmanteau is an autological word—a word that describes itself. That is, portmanteau is a portmanteau! It comes from the French words porter and manteau, meaning “to carry” and “cloak”/”coat,” respectively. Yes, neither of those have anything to do with words, but the primary, more literal definition of portmanteau is “a large trunk or suitcase.”
Biopic (biography + picture) – A biographical film (long ago we called movies “pictures”)
Bollywood (Bombay + Hollywood) – The Hindi film industry based in Mumbai.
Botox – This common cosmetic surgery’s name has an almost branded feel to it, but it’s just a portmanteau of botulinum toxin.
Brunch – Brunches have become such a big deal in our culture that it’s easy to forget what a simple, quintessential portmanteau word this is, born from breakfast and lunch.
Cosplay – A specific type of dress-up where people take on the persona of a fictional character, often for a big event like Comic-Con, cosplay comes from costume and role-play.
Electrocute – In an example of a word whose meaning has been diluted over time, electrocute comes from electricity and, yes, execute. It specifically denotes death by electric shock. While it’s come to be accepted as meaning just “injure,” too, going by the original intent of the word, if you experience a strong electric shock and you’re still alive afterward, you technically haven’t been electrocuted.
Motel – You might think that hotel and motel are just words for overnight lodging with arbitrary first letters. While hotel comes from the French hôtel, motel is a 20th-century portmanteau combining the existing hotel with motor. This was in response to the rise in cross-country highways and the need to accommodate roadside travelers.
Newscast – Nope, newscast is not a stand-alone word! It comes from news and broadcast, and first popped up around the late 1920s.
Pokémon – This massively successful video game franchise has a name that’s become ubiquitous, but its origin is delightfully quaint. It’s a combination of pocket and monster, hence how the Pokémon trainers are able to summon the creatures from pocket-sized Poké Balls.
Sitcom – situational comedy
Smog – Ooh, a one-syllable portmanteau! Smog refers to a thick, often pollutant-ridden smoky fog. Yup, smog is a combo of smoke and fog!
These are just a few but there are lots more portmanteaus to be discovered!!
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Word-Of-the-Week #1014: Learning
January 11, 2024 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #1014: Learning
Learning – the act of gaining knowledge.
Do you ever feel overwhelmed about the never-ending stream of information you are exposed to? Have you ever actively questioned information you have received?
This WOW by Steven Handel, “Be Careful of What You Let Enter Your Mind” was originally sent in January 2020 and I found it to be a great re-read since the last four years have been filled with lots of information we never knew about. Some true and some false.
“In today’s world, we are constantly being exposed to new information in the media, news, articles, blogs, books, TV, movies, or conversations we have with others.
In many ways, this abundance of information allows us to reach a new level of education that wasn’t before possible. However, it can also lead to a lot of misinformation which can distort our views and beliefs.
One recent study shows that exposure to misinformation can be very “sticky” in our minds. Even if we are told afterwards that something we learned isn’t true, that misinformation still influences our future choices.
This is especially true if the misinformation we consume conforms to our pre-existing beliefs or if it’s something we have very little outside knowledge about.
For these reasons and many more, it’s important that you are careful of what you let enter your mind.
One of my favorite quotes is: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler
Due to a never-ending stream of new information and misinformation, we need to always be open to learning new things and adjusting our views in the face of this new evidence.
It’s really easy to find evidence for something that you agree with. It’s a lot harder to willingly seek information that could possibly prove you wrong. But this is often a necessary part of critical thinking.
In another study, it was found that the negative effects of misinformation can be diminished if we are critical of what we consume while we are consuming it.
It’s important that you don’t just absorb information passively, but that you actively question everything you let enter your mind.
Whenever you find yourself learning something new, ask yourself:
- How true is this?
- What is the source of these claims?
- What evidence do they have to support these views?
- What evidence might go against supporting these views?
- Do these views seem logical and rational?
- What are other possible views that may be a better alternative?
- Where can I do more research?
In a healthy and functioning mind, beliefs need to be flexible and open to change. We rarely have all the facts and evidence, so when we learn new things we have to be able to adapt.
Everything you let enter your mind can shape your consciousness and beliefs in some way, often times without us even realizing it. By taking a little more caution in what you let enter your mind, you can take greater control of how your consciousness is shaped.
Of course, you can’t monitor everything that enters your mind 24/7 – that would be impractical and a bit paranoid. At the same time, it may do you some good to cut certain things out of your life to minimize their negative influence on you.
At the end of the day, just pay a little more attention to what you let enter your mind and how it may be influencing you.”
This week’s focus is about learning. Are you open to receiving new information? Have you ever gotten misinformation? Are you open to learning new things and adjusting your views if they aren’t the same as your pre-existing beliefs?
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