Near the bottom of the article, though, it struck me that the same advice he gives in the article works well for dealing with disappointment:

If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.

This is great advice. Instead of just letting the disappointments and stresses of life kick our butts, we need to use them as motivation to move forward. Yes, it’s incredibly difficult to change the habits that have gotten us entrenched in bad situations, but if we’re able to channel that emotion, that discontent, that extreme discomfort, into something useful, there are tremendous strides to be made in success, satisfaction, and happiness.

I went through a range of emotions as I came to terms with the result of my efforts and as I thought about it, I realized it might be helpful for me to write about. I find a kind of catharsis in writing and also feel that some of you may benefit from my experience as well.

I’m no psychiatrist, but I do believe there are stages that a person goes through in dealing with disappointment just like when grieving. In fact, disappointment could be seen as a loss of opportunity that certainly could trigger the grieving process. With that said, here are the steps that occurred to me:

1. Be hurt. It’s OK. It’s likely that a lost opportunity will leave you with injured pride or injured feelings. Don’t fight this feeling. Just let it happen, but don’t dwell there for long in self pity. Let it go.

2. Allow yourself to be angry. Maybe not everyone will feel this way, but I found myself getting angry after the initial shock passed. This is another emotion that’s useful, but only in the short term in this case. Let it be a motivator to further progressive action, but don’t allow it to fester and consume you. As with hurt, just let it go.

3. Take a little time. Yes, take a breather for a little while and let things sink in. It often helps to give these things a day or two to sink in. With a good night’s rest or two, your perspective on events will begin to change and the other emotions will begin to fade.
Count your blessings.

4. Count your blessings. I’m sure if you consider for a moment you’ll see that there are many good things in your life. Things aren’t as bad as they may seem at times. It may take a bit more than a couple of days, but let yourself enjoy the good things about the life you have.

5. Put a positive spin on events. As you realize that there definitely are good things in your life, spend some time casting the events of your disappointment into a better light. Don’t misunderstand that I’m advising you to lie to yourself. Far from it. What I would like to stress is that there are different ways to view the things that have occurred. You can choose to view them from a positive perspective or you can dwell on the negative. It’s your choice.

6. Get back on the horse. After you’ve taken some time and worked through the earlier stages of this process, it’s time to get back to work. Whatever your disappointment was, don’t allow it to haunt you through life. Remember that there will always be some disappointments and failures in life and that those who overcome the trials are the ones who will be successful. There’s no other path to success.

I truly hope that these steps are of some value to you. Taking the time to write about this topic has been a positive experience for me and I’m ready to get back to work. How about you?

When we go through these experiences, it’s important to remember that there is still a sun behind those clouds. As important as our loved ones, friends, jobs, homes, cars, and other things in life are to us, there is more in our lives than just one person or job or possession. The pain and emptiness of loss can only be dealt with by accepting that we’ve lost someone or something very precious and then realizing that there are other precious things in our lives to cherish.

With this in mind, don’t wait until you’ve lost someone or something important to you before filling your life with good things. Take time to search for those rays of sunlight while there are few clouds in the blue sky. Meet new people, try new foods, and experience life to the fullest every day. Living a full and passionate life won’t save you from the pain of loss, but will help to insulate you from the worst of the pain and quickly put you on the road to recovery.

1. Your skills are not respected. If you feel that your employer doesn’t recognize your value to the company, then it may be time for a change. Do you find that your opinions are taken for granted or that your judgment isn’t taken seriously? If you’re always wrong in the eyes of your employer, then there is definitely a problem.

Take the time to examine yourself, though. Are you really contributing as much as you can? Are you proving your value in your work assignments? If not, it may be worthwhile talking with your supervisor and asking for more challenging or interesting work. If this isn’t an option, then it’s time to start looking.

2. You’re stuck. If you’ve been in the same position, doing the same things, for nearly the same pay, for a long time, it’s time to shake things up. Has your job title been the same for five years? Do you have the same level of responsibility you had three years ago? Is your pay increasing at a snail’s pace with cost of living type raises? Enough is enough.

Again, look at your situation from an outside perspective before making final decisions. It’s true that you’re much more likely these days to make significant gains in salary and benefits by changing jobs than you are by staying at a job for a long time. However, if you’re content with what you’re making and/or the market won’t support paying much more for the work you do, then the scenario may be a little different. You may want to communicate to your supervisor that you’re ready for more responsibilities. It’s also possible that there may be another role in the same organization that can be more satisfying and more lucrative for you.

3. You’re bored! If you simply can’t get into what you’re doing right now, then it may be time to leave. There is some evidence that the human mind needs change in order to defeat boredom and depression. Many of us spend the greater part of our lives, more than 40 hours per week, working. This is a lot of time to be spending performing tasks that aren’t stimulating our brains in the ways that they need in order to thrive.

You have to be careful, though, that you’re focusing on the right parts of your life that need change or improvement. It could be that more outside activities will liven up your life. Perhaps meeting new people is what you need rather than switching jobs. Try expanding your social and activity circle to see if it makes life more interesting and enjoyable for you. If your work situation doesn’t improve after making some changes in your outside activities, then it may be time for you to move on.

Being unhappy in your employment has a profound effect on your life. When your job no longer is satisfying, you often begin thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about yourself. You start thinking that you’re not good at what you do, so maybe you should choose another career. You may think you’re just a bad employee, lazy, sloppy, or unintelligent. These thoughts are self-defeating and self-destructive. Instead of beating yourself up, take some time to make some changes to make your life and work more interesting, challenging, and enjoyable.

No, I’m not turning this blog into poetry. I’m urging you to take a moment today to enjoy what’s around you. If you can take some time to gaze out a window and just be for a long minute or two, it will do wonders for your spirit. No matter how awful the things you’ve just turned away from may seem to be right now, there absolutely is goodness, beauty, and peace in the world. Look for it.

Although, there is plenty of information in this article for beginning bloggers, I think the content is much more useful and immediately applicable for those who have already gotten their feet wet by blogging for a while. Regardless, he provides some thought-provoking ideas on how you as a blogger should think about blogging in order to successfully generate money from it. The most important quote I found was this:

There are lots of people trying to blog for income, but they’re stuck thinking like bloggers instead of entrepreneurs. The activity of blogging is not income-generating; hence a blog is not a business. If you think like a blogger, your blog won’t generate much money. In order to generate income from blogging, you have to learn to think like an entrepreneur.

This seems like a very simple and obvious idea, but I think the concept escapes many of us, even bloggers who have been in the game for some time. He goes on to talk about the idea of marketing. The content alone may be excellent, but writing the content isn’t the activity that generates income. It’s the marketing of that content, getting those great articles in front of as many eyes as possible, that opens up doors and ultimately makes you money.

This is definitely food for thought. If you’re struggling to make money as a blogger, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been doing this for years, take some time to think about how you’re marketing your writing. Are you getting yourself out there and really selling yourself to your readers? The time you spend on marketing will be well worth the effort.

Sometimes when you open your eyes and look around you, all you can see are the mountains that surround you. The many little foothills and gentle ridges that are far closer are beneath the level of your vision and thus, out of your field of view. All you are seeing are those towering, threatening mountains. Every once in a while you get a flash of those sharp, lofty peaks as the clean white teeth in the jaws of life, about to snap shut and devour you completely.

I know I’m not alone in getting these feelings occasionally. People I talk to often admit in private that they feel overwhelmed and paralyzed by all the pressures of life. This paralysis is the most dangerous thing. It allows your fears and doubts to rule your life. It can sap your motivation until your confidence and optimism are on life support, barely breathing.

Here are a few brief tips that help me and I think will help you to get back that spark that’s been so dim lately:

• Take a time out. A little breather away from the pressures of work and life can help you to restore some sense of balance. Take a mental health day from work and make a concerted effort to not even think about work or other pressing concerns. Don’t take too long, though, as things will pile up in your absence.
• Organize. Clear out some of the clutter in your life. Yes, I mean the physical crap that piles up around you. While you’re taking your mental health day, clean up your house or apartment. Just pick up a few things or do the dishes or throw out those old magazines and newspapers you’ll never read. When you get back to work, start clearing the papers off your desk.
• Deal with one thing at a time. If you have trouble with it already, you’ll have to learn to just say no. For your sanity’s sake, focus on one thing at a time. Ignore the phone and email until you’ve completed at least one task. You’ll feel better that you’ve accomplished something. You may want to break down larger projects into microtasks.
• Change. Make some changes in your daily routine for starters. Even small changes will inject some much-needed variety into your life. Small changes can lead to big changes after they become habits.
• Develop a personal mission statement. This step is important. I posted recently about the importance of having a personal mission statement and my own work on developing one for myself. Take your time with this one, though. You’ll want to really think about what’s important to you and how you want to live your life.

I hope you’ll find these ideas useful. That lack of motivation you’re feeling isn’t a good feeling, is it? Remember that your discomfort is a call to action. There’s no better time than right now to start building a better future.

What’s that sound? That’s me trying to get out of bed this morning to work out. It’s been a while since I’ve been exercising each day. Once upon a time, I used to get up early and run several miles each morning. After some knee problems, I started lifting weights and doing other exercises to keep in shape. Over time, though, life got in the way, and I stopped working out entirely.

Does this sound familiar to you? I’ll bet this happens to a lot of people reading this. Why is it so much easier to drop out of good habits than bad habits? First you skip a day, then another, then another, and soon the habit is only a memory.

The topic of maintaining those good habits indefinitely is one for another post. For now, I’d like to talk about getting back into good habits or starting new ones. I’ve found that the key that works for me is to start small.

Many times I’ve heard of people starting a new diet or exercise regimen and quitting after the first day because it was too hard. Sometimes, it’s necessary and effective to affect a total lifestyle change overnight, but most of the time it’s just too much of a shock. That’s why starting small is such a great technique to begin a new habit.

Here’s an example from my own life. I’ve been through many cycles of regular exercise programs that have been interrupted and then gone by the wayside as my priorities shifted. After a long time of beating my head against a wall while trying to pick up where I left off, I discovered that it was much easier to start with a very small step.

When I first started running regularly, I hadn’t been running for years. In fact, I hated running with a passion. It was my least favorite exercise activity. Running was something that I continued for a short while after getting out of military training and then gave up because it was difficult to fit in between work, school, and social life. Also, I was just plain lazy!

I tried to get back into it years later because I could feel how out of shape I was getting. I was alarmed by how winded I would get by climbing the stairs at work. I was a young guy, slim and in decent shape even though I wasn’t working out, right? Actually, being still young and slim doesn’t mean you’re in good shape! So, I tried to jump right in and do the things that I had been doing a few years before. Bad idea!

Going from huffing and puffing up a few flights of stairs to running a couple miles each morning was too much for me. After a couple of abortive attempts, I gave up. It was just too hard.

Fast forward a few more years. This time, I was fully cognizant of how I would react to biting off more than I could chew. I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain the motivation if I got my butt kicked right off the bat. I had to start small. Baby steps.

To begin with, I started stretching every day for a week. This was something that provided some immediate positive benefits. I didn’t feel as stiff each morning and it helped to get my muscles and tendons warmed up and flexible again. After a week of this I started something a little more aggressive. I began to run again.

The running could hardly be called that. I was going from no exercise at all into a pretty strenuous activity, so I started with just a short jog at a pathetically slow pace. I think I ran much less than a mile for the first week or two. I was able to increase this incrementally every couple of weeks, though, until it was four or five miles each day.

The difference in how I felt before beginning the exercise program and after doing it for a while was night and day. It’s impossible for me to overstate the benefits of a regular exercise routine on your physical, mental, and spiritual health. If you’ve been through this before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Getting started is the worst part, though.

The important thing is to pace yourself. I found that in this particular activity, I needed to give myself two weeks at each level before pushing myself harder. This meant that I didn’t have to worry about doing any better at all each day. I could just get used to a slightly more intense or longer workout for two whole weaks before having to think about upping my running pace or lengthening the time spent running.

This provides an important mental advantage. By doing something easy at first, it helps to convince your subconscious that it’s no big deal. You know right away that you can do it without too much trouble.

It’s crucial to remember not to judge your own progress by anyone else’s standard, though. Each person is different. It may only take three days at a particular level before you feel you can move on to the next or it may take three months. Set a schedule that you’re comfortable with and then forget it. Don’t worry about things. Making your new habit something stressful can kill it before it even gets started.

The idea of starting small can be applied to any number of activities in your life. If you’re looking at making a change, consider beginning with baby steps. Oftentimes even the smallest of changes can provide great benefits. Relax. It’s OK to start tomorrow. But, DO start!

These are some great questions. This isn’t just about time management. This is about how you live your life. This is about your own personal values and your own sense of self. It’s important to realize that the things we do every day are a direct reflection of our real values and priorities. As I wrote about in my last post, our true priorities in life are reflected in the time and energy spent on various activities. It’s what we actually do that is most important to us.

With that in mind, how are you spending your day? At the end of my last post, I mentioned that I would be reflecting on my own life. I’ve been doing that and I have to tell you that I’m not pleased with the results. In some respects, I’m doing well, but in others I feel like I’ve fallen flat. When examining your life through the prism of actual prioritization, you may find like I did that you waste a lot of time and energy on activities that aren’t benefiting you in any way.

Here’s an example. A long time ago, I wrote a post titled, Don’t Read The News! In this post, I talked about how much time I wasted reading the news and also what a negative influence it had on my outlook on life. There is so much negativity being reported. I asked myself what positive contribution did this information make in my life and the answer was a big nada.

The problem is that I realized that I was still doing it! I have still been reading the news sites at lunch time every day to see what’s going on in the world. Is this really so important to me? Sure, this may seem like I’m overreacting, but what else could I be doing with that 20 or 30 minutes each day that would be a positive addition to my day?

The reason for wasting time like reading news sites is to blow off steam or to let your mind relax. Is it having the desired effect? Maybe it would be better to spend this time doing something else that allows me to relax while at the same time moving me closer to the realization of my goals in life. Remember my post where I said your behaviors should be in line with your goals? It was great advice then and still is now.

The moral of this story is that our lives need constant maintenance. We must be vigilant in keeping ourselves on track with our own values as well as our own goals. You have to change the oil on that car every three months or so to keep it in good shape, right? The tires must be filled and the alignment periodically checked, too. There are lots of factors involved in maintaining a car and our lives are similar. Today is a great day to make sure your tires are properly inflated and your alignment is dead on.

The article details the different costs that we should take into account when making financial decisions. In fact, as Dong points out, any decisions we make should take into account these factors, or not, as the case may be.

Basically, the article defines opportunity cost and sunk cost and what each means in the context of making decisions. Very briefly, opportunity cost is the cost of not being able to do one thing because you’ve chosen to do another. Sunk cost is the cost of whatever you’ve already spent, whether it was money, time, or effort. Read Dong’s article for a much more in-depth definition of both terms and some good examples.

I find it particularly interesting that we often consider what we’ve already spent when deciding to continue an activity. In a real economic sense, this doesn’t make sense. Dong mentions that it’s “throwing good money after bad” and this is true in a lot of cases. We tend to continue on in a bad job, bad relationship, bad investment, etc, just because of how much we’ve invested already.

Sometimes, this is the right thing to do when considering the opportunity cost. If there are no other jobs to be had, then the opportunity cost of quitting your job is clearly too high (unless you have another lucrative way of making money and/or trimming expenses). The opportunity cost of leaving a bad relationship may be that children will go without a parent or stable family environment. The opportunity cost of leaving a bad investment could be higher taxes in the short term or possibly some other penalties.

It’s not always a clear cut decision to make. However, the article offers some valuable insights into some important costs that we should consider in making decisions in our lives. If people spent a little more time thinking about the opportunity cost and less about the sunk cost, they might make better decisions. Check out Dong’s article and let him know what you think.