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Plug in and plug out method – Why it’s so important to disconnect & detach yourself from your work?

The key factors for productive work are:

  • Being energized by having enough sleep and healthy
  • Being in deep work mode
  • Removing distractions
  • Blocking your calendar for key tasks

What about the time when you work as a Leader, or a Manager and you have some “challenges” which cannot be closed and you may be tempted to think about them in your private time or worse over night?

Then the best option is to implement a method which I called: “plug in and plug out”.

You give 100% at work, and maybe more – that’s fine. But the time after work is yours – so use it for yourself and not for thinking about things which may be depended on other people’s decisions or behaviors.

Imagine yourself “plugged in” to your laptop when you start work (of course take some time for breaks :D) and when you finish work “plug yourself out” from laptop as if you were plugging out the iron from the power socket.

At the beginning it’s difficult, but the more you practice, the better you feel and the healthier you are. If you want to calm yourself, you can ask the following questions:

  • Did I do what could be done to make a progress or to finish it?
  • Did I really spend quality time on this “challenge”?
  • Was I professional during the process?
  • If I could do it from scratch, what would I change?

As Jeff Bezos says (to be honest, I’m not his fan), a role of a CEO is to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Do you think like a CEO of your life? Warren Buffet says that if he makes three good decisions per year, it is a good year. He’s focusing on quality over quantity and chooses to prioritize the impactful decisions which create the path for success. This is a strategy.

Become a person with high agency. You will have more satisfaction from life, work and time which is the most precious asset you have.   

You may already have it. The only thing is to use it every day : )

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Learning through pain or joy and Intangible assets – why it truly matters?

We can ask ourselves what is a true wealth? What comes first to our mind is probably some examples of tangible assets such as money, house, car etc. However, after checking very carefully, we can find out that true wealth comes from intangible assets such as friendships and meaningful relations. 

There is a very known concept of learning through joy – Satori and learning through pain – Kensho. 

Sometimes they are occurring separately, sometimes they are showing up at the same time – just from different directions. It’s possible to experience Kensho and Satori at the same time.

I’m a huge fan of Satori 😀 I like learning through joy, insight and gentle conversation. 

Moments of joy are pleasant and it’s good to experience them. Moments of pain are… let’s be honest painful. So, then it’s good to have your inner circle and strong, supportive people – friends and family around you. When you can count on them, when they have time for you, then you realize what true wealth is, and then you indeed understand what the intangible assets are. 

Sometimes what you hear and experience, may not be pleasant. 

  1. In the first moment, you may need your friends to support you. They can be there for you when you need them in the moments of Kensho.
  2. When you are calm, have a look of the situation and analyse it.
  3. Now is very important moment – What you will do with the information. Will you reject everything what you heard, or will you try to dig deeper like a researcher or a detective or an analyst? 

Try to differentiate unpleasant criticism from the information which may be important for your future self – maybe it will be useful to identify a patter you were not aware of.

If you don’t feel comfortable to do it by yourself, you may talk with someone you trust. Critical thinking may be useful here – both to analyse the situation and/or to find a trustful person who will help you to do so.

It’s important to be good for yourself, support yourself but also to be open for information which comes from Kensho moments.

Why it’s important? because you may find out something which will have impact on your life, and you may do and experience immense progress and have a lot of joyful moments later.  

You may also identify other things such as: 

Blind spots – the things you don’t know but they may be visible to others.

Perception – don’t underestimate the perception which you create – it means you can have good intentions, but it’s not always understood, nor reciprocated.

The moments of auto reflection – they will help you to create the good strategy and more joyful life.  

Wealth comes from different directions – there is famous, Chinese phrase which is worth remembering. 

Be open for various moments in life, pleasant and not pleasant, as they both may bring a lot of success and joy in the future 😀 Good things are coming over and it’s a matter how open we are to see them. You may be wealthier than you think 😉

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The importance of self-trust and the skill of making decisions

Every day we have to make decisions – smaller or bigger. 

One of the key elements which help us to develop the skill of decisiveness is self-trust and the feeling of safe within ourselves. No matter of what happens, and the outcome, we believe in ourselves and have trust that we handle the situation. It’s not about making unreasonable or harmful decisions, but to understand that we live in unpredictable world and we need to take into consideration that not everything can be planned ahead.

It’s about being proactive, instead of being reactive. It’s about seeing that everything can be risky and to embrace that uncertainty and change can be treated as the opportunities for growth and development.

Feeling safe within yourself and self-trust will help you feel safe no matter where you are, or with who you are. These are superpowers which help you immensely accelerate your life and self-confidence.

The more you trust yourself, the more you are able to handle different kind of situations, the more self-confident you become.

It will bring you more happiness and inner peace.

This is like an invisible armour which will make you unbreakable. 

Mental change is difficult but it’s a real game changer in life, it will have impact on every aspect on your life and it will bring a lot of positive changes 😉

No matter where you are, it’s all about knowing that new windows of opportunities are opening and it’s all about you to decide if you want to take advantages of them 😉 

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Reading and Listening vs Understanding & Applying

Have you thought about the difference between Reading & Listening vs Understanding & Applying?

How many times do you hear the questions ?

  • How many books do you read?
  • How quicky can you read?
  • What materials do you read?

All these questions are important; however, we may ask ourselves other questions:

  • What do you remember from the material you read or hear?
  • Do you apply the knowledge & advice? 

There are thousands of materials related to personal development, health, lifestyle. Many times, they are pretty much the same (just rephrased). How many times did you hear:

  • Sleep is important, so get enough sleep to regenerate.
  • You can change your life at any given moment.
  • Reduce sugar, to have better health.
  • Focus on the things which you can control, not the things out of your control.
  • You can’t change the past, you can learn from the past, but what you have now is present moment and future.

Now, try to identify your pattern. Do you apply the knowledge you already have? Do you do it CONSISTENTLY?

I decided to write this article, as the result of my experiment: 

I decided to apply CONSISTENTLY the knowledge and advice from my article: Power of Sleep and Thoughts. My quality of sleep has improved. My energy raised and my thoughts are more positive and drive change of my life.

Why it’s important? Whenever you feel anxious or sad, or lonely or lost – ask yourself questions:

What are you thinking about? What did you think about before those feelings? Do you think about doom and gloom, your problems? Do you ruminate about your past? Do you ruminate about mistakes you made?

Learn from the past, be mindful of present moment, focus on the future.

TASK for You: Can you identify the areas of your life, where you know what you should do, but you don’t apply what you have learned?

Although reading and listening quality content is vital, 
what has a key impact on positive change is the ability to understand and apply what we have learned, read, heard. 

Taking CONSISTENT Action, starting Now.

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The Power of SLEEP AND THOUGHTS!

Your thoughts have impact on your emotions, and your emotions have impact on your behaviors and reactions.

Your Thoughts have huge Power which can either help you or disturb you.

Knowing how to shape your thoughts is a powerful skill which will help you in all areas of your life, both personal and professional.

Let’s assume that you already identified your blockers (if you had any, for example: fear and limiting beliefs) and you have some ideas in your mind which are worth implementing.

How to have GREAT ENERGY for whole day?  GET ENOUGH SLEEP ! 🙂

  1. When you fall asleep:
    • This is the time for your regeneration and relax. You will not resolve your life problems ruminating about your past, present or future. You will not regenerate your mind and body, having disturbing thoughts. Think about positive things, places you visited, good experiences. 
  2. When you wake up – Start your day with Powerful Thoughts:
    • I can create the life I want. I just need to put some effort in thinking, planning, choosing the right people, learning, shaping a winning mindset.
    • I can choose where I put my energy and time.
    • I’m not helpless. I have assets: Time, Energy, access to Internet, some life experience etc.
    • I can learn (if I don’t know the answers yet).
    • I can ask for help.
    • I can focus on the things I can control.
    • If I can’t focus, I can learn how to focus.
  3. Get enough sleep
    • I personally need 8-9 hours of sleep to have very good energy. If I waste my night for ruminating, the next day I’m like a zombie 😀 (barely bearable, and I think about sleeping all day long).

How to help yourself with falling asleep?

Know your cycle, be regular (for example I fall asleep before 23), don’t drink coffee or tea before sleep, don’t eat heavy meals after 8 PM.

Why is it so important?

Having enough sleep will bring you more peace, energy, and joy for whole day. You will have more patience and better attitude towards challenges of the day 🙂

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Fear and limiting beliefs are a self-imprisonment.

Quality of our lives depends on the decisions we make. 

Although we may try to make the best decisions we can, we are not able to control the outcome as the things can go not as we planned or wanted due to outside circumstances.

What we can do is to prepare ourselves to various outcomes and manage risks or try to learn to manage risks.

There are many factors which may influence the decisions we make in our lives. I would like to focus on two which are now on my mind:

  • fear and 
  • limiting beliefs. 

Fear has both positive and negative aspects in life. The positive side can save us from doing unreasonable or unsafe things. In this aspect it’s a mechanism related to alerting and protecting. 

On the other hand – fear can also limit our life. Both fear and limiting beliefs may become a self-imprisonment which block our full potential. 

Do you have a life you want and/or deserve? If not, ask yourself, how many times:

  1. You don’t take “managed risk” out of fear?
  2. You stay in your comfort zone.
  3. You do the jobs below your competencies, knowledge, and skills?
  4. You don’t take an action out of fear of rejection, judgement, criticism, or fear of failure?
  5. You don’t take an action out of fear of losing money?
  6. You don’t take an action out of fear “what others will say if I do not succeed?”

The best you can do is to learn to manage risks and ask the questions what’s behind of the fear and limiting beliefs. If you are stuck in certain areas of your life, what are the payoffs which keeps you there? If you identify them, it will be much easier to make the decisions. 

The fear will never go away, until you are growing. It’s not about suppressing it. It’s about accepting it and doing anyway the things which have to be done.

There’s a famous quote: 

You didn’t fail because you didn’t succeed, you succeed because your tried.

If you are interested in the subject, I recommend a book “Fear the fear and do it anyway” by Susan Sanders. There are plenty of in-depth questions and tips which help you to step into the journey you really want to participate. A journey of a quality and fulfilled life.  

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Figure out what do you want from life.

It’s a tough task but needed to to be done to succeed. It’s never easy to know the exact answer, however some questions may help you to figure it out :

  • What brings you joy and satisfaction ?
  • What do you like doing ?
  • What is good for you ?
  • What do you do with ease ?
  • What are your natural talents ?
  • What are you good at ?

Write down activities you do and how do you feel while doing them and after them. It can be something to think of as the body gives you signals and its reaction can be a great indicator.

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How you can start ?

  • Look around your room & apartment. Is it clean ?
    • If not, clean and declutter your space. You will see how much “mental space” you will acquire
  • Write down what’s in your mind
    • ask yourself : Is it related to my goal/ goals ?
    • how important it’s now for my health / career / relationship ?
  • What are your needs ?
    • It will help you to focus on the things which matter to you

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I didn’t post for a month ! Should I regret ? No! Why ? Let’s find out below

Being consistent is vital, it’s crutial in nearly every aspect of life. However, sometimes, we feel that we need to make a break, find distance, think, and relax.

During this period – 1 month – I was thinking about this blog, about strategy for future, what decisions should I make now to have the best results in the future. I was on holidays in Spain, where I was swimming, sunbathing, having a lot of fun and dancing.

I think that it’s very important to give your body and your brain time for relax 🙂

In this sense, I don’t regret that I was not posting ;P