La crise, quelle crise ?

Auteur/autrice : marc

  • It’s hard to start, gorgeous to finish

    https://unsplash.com/sortino
    https://unsplash.com/sortino

    Day 557. Some days, you do not feel going to exercise. You may be tired, do not have time, or are just lazy (sometimes it’s good to be lazy, but that’s another story). Therefore, starting is a matter of sheer will. You need to rationalize and tell yourself it’s good for you. Not only for your body of course, but also for your mind. This is what happened to me on Friday morning. I had all good reasons to not exercise: went to bed late the day before, had a plane to catch, and told myself I could skip a day. And I just did the opposite: went to the gym for 30 minutes.

    It was hard to start. I did not want to go and my body was reluctant to produce any effort at the beginning. Then the biological of the body kicks in. Our body is a wonderful machine that requires exercise. Tons of medical studies has proven this point, backed up by hundred thousands of years of evolution. So our body generates hormones to help our mind feeling good. Dopamine among others neurotransmitters will make you feel good: it’s also called the reward hormone. You know that feeling when you tick a done thing on your to-do list? It’s dopamine. So when dopamine starts to flow in your body, you feel you did the right thing. And this is what happens. A few minutes after starting sweating, you are feeling good.

    But the beauty of these 30 minutes does not stop at the end of those 30 minutes. The effect continues all day. You feel better, you are better, and others feel it too. So even when it’s hard to start, remember it’s gorgeous to finish, so go exercise, even if it’s 20 or 30 minutes. Just do it!

  • How to raise, and achieve, your own expectations by following those 4 rules of thumb

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    https://unsplash.com/jonathanbean

    Day 556. Running a successful life is a matter of expectations. Like Forrest Gump used to say: « Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. » If this sounds cliché, you can actually bend this truism by setting what you wanna get, and work towards it. This is what setting expectations is all about. However, like Tony Robbins likes to say « we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a year and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade ».

    The whole question remains: how to correctly set expectations that we can hold ourselves accountable to? Over the years, I came with 4 rules that work in most cases and that help me setting them, raising them, and achieving them.

    1. If you feel the expectations are too low or just right, raise them by a fraction that will make you uncomfortable. If you feel the expectations are too high, they’re probably so for your current comfort zone, with the current resources you have. This is actually a great news and a great reason for growth. Have a positive look at them! In all cases, ensure you are uncomfortable with the expectations if you want to grow and challenge you!
    2. Enlist others to share these expectations and gather their ideas on how to achieve them. Push the borders of the thought process, move outside of the comfort zone in unchartered territories, and accept all ideas including the crazy ones.
    3. Prioritize, cut, and choose. You will never ever be able to execute all the ideas. This is the only step where reason and focus kick in. If you are spread too thin, you’ll do too many things, and will remain too shallow. Remember the old Pareto law: 20% of your resources will help you to achieve 80% of the goals. Focus on where you’re going to spend 80% of your efforts.
    4. Share the plan, the resources, and start the execution, with one very important set of activities: milestones! You need to stop regularly and measure where you are on your path. This will allow you to check you’re running at the right pace, need to enlist more resources, or raise the expectations again.

    I will leave you with this famous quote from Michelangelo: « The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark. »

  • The art of public speaking in 3 easy hacks

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    https://pixabay.com/en/users/bohed-86046/

    Day 555. Public speaking is said to said to be feared more than death. It’s so feared that it has its own word: glossophobia. If public speaking scares you, the best advice I can give is to join an organization as Toastmasters international or take courses to overcome this anxiety and help you deliver confidently speeches. However, over the years, with training and experience (nothing replaces experience in that matter), I came with three easy and simple hacks to overcome fear of public speaking. They do not require a PhD to understand or to apply. It’s jolly effective though! Here they are:

    • Write and rehearse. At the exception of impromptu speeches, all prepared speeches need to be written in extenso. From the first to the last word. Not that you will be reading your speech, but writing is the first killer of anxiety. The second killer is to rehearse, rehearse, and when you are over, rehearse again. For a national contest, I repeat a minimum fifty times (yes fifty, five zero) my speech. I will know it by heart, but will rarely deliver the same words. It just anchors the flow and the ideas. Even the best actors rehearse, so should you!
    • Breathe. Breathing is essential to speaking. Because while speaking you exhale, you need to inhale. Focus on your breathing. I actually do a dozens of deep breathing before stepping on stage. Not only it will calm you down, it will add extra oxygen in your blood that can get you a little bit dizzy, this will contribute to getting relaxed.
    • Speak slowly. Let me tell you that everybody speaks too fast! If you think you are going too slow, record and listen. There is a big chance you will find you still speak too fast. You need to slow down from the beginning to allow you to breathe, to articulate, and to pause. If you speak slowly, you can accelerate to emphasize some dramatic pieces. There is a difference between pace and tone. You can have a joyful tone while going slowly. Do not fall in the trap of becoming monotonous, but allow yourself to slow down.

    Of course, this addresses only the delivery of any public speech and not its content. The content will require another post, but you will find in this article from inc.com, 20 great advices, as well as 20 TED and TEDx videos to see different styles and effectiveness. I want to live you with one simple thought: stage fright is normal. Everybody has it! The day it disappears is the day you are becoming complacent and do not grow anymore. Do not be scared by stage fright, welcome it! It’s the signal that what you’re about to do matters to you! Just go and plunge!

  • 5 meditation myths debunked

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    https://unsplash.com/robinbenad

    Day 554. Meditation is making a comeback these days. Nothing surprising in a world described and lived as stressful. Of course, for some, meditation seems to be something for people who have time, for people who are not strong-willed, and for people who are quiet and laidback. Nothing is farther from the truth. Not only everybody can benefit from a 10-minute meditation, but medical studies have proven the positive effects of meditation.

    Now, it’s true that meditation can be seen as challenging by many: My mind wanders and won’t keep quiet, I do not feel comfortable my leg crossed sitting on the floor, I feel stupid meditating, are common feedback from people who tried and stopped. However, as Light Watkins explains in this video, effects are visible, may be not by you but by your peers. In his TEDx talk, he debunks simply five common myths about meditation:

    Myth 1: I’m a bad meditator if I cannot quiet my mind.

    Myth 2: There’s no correct way to meditate.

    Myth 3: I don’t have time to meditate.

    Myth 4: Meditation will solve all my problems.

    Myth 5: Success in meditation is based on stillness on my mind.

    Go and watch this TEDx talk, inserted above for convenience, and start meditating daily for 10 minutes. Ask for help to a meditation practitioner if you do not succeed in your first meditations. As Light says, meditation will give your time back on top of other many benefits, one of which is increased productivity, one of my obsession. No negative effects, only positive, still hesitating?

  • It’s not the height that matters, it’s to be there, now, executing!

    Photograph by https://unsplash.com/danielacuevas
    Photograph by https://unsplash.com/danielacuevas