Have healthy hobbies that energize you. It is healthy to have interests that are different than your profession, but it is also healthy to be interested in your profession. If you don’t like what you do, good luck not burning out working 40+ hours per week for the next 20+ years of your life. But if you are consistently looking forward to doing something for your personal and professional growth, if you have hobbies that you enjoy doing and people you can share that excitement with, you’ll last much longer in whatever field you choose.
Tag: growth
Forget perfect
Perfectionism is the killer of dreams. It kills dreams before they even get started because nothing will ever be perfect. If you wait for everything to be perfect to take action, or if you keep tweaking something and decide not to launch it because it’s not perfect, you’ll never end up doing anything.
Instead of waiting for perfect, just take action! Action is almost always better than inaction. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t overthink. Don’t let outside circumstances dictate what you can do. Just do it. You may stumble and fall along the way, but as long as you keep getting up and trying again, you’ll be ahead of where you would have been if you never tried. And who knows, maybe you’ll stumble over something better than you ever expected…
The weekend
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
No matter what happened yesterday, no matter what you did or didn’t do, today is a new day. Don’t dwell on the past. You can’t change what happened last week, but today you have a new opportunity to do what you need to do.
I agree with Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote above. Each day brings you new opportunities to reset. But there’s something different about the weekend. It feels easier to hit the reset button because you’re able to take a breath and take a step back from work. Now that it is the weekend, try doing things that you don’t have as much time to do on a typical weekday. Weekends don’t mean you should just sit around and do nothing. You get an extra 8 hours per day back (more if you count the drive time) since you’re not going into work! Take advantage of it. Go work out, read a good book, clean the house, meal prep for the week, start on the project that you’ve been meaning to…Sure, you can still catch up on a show or two, but try to improve yourself. Now is when you have the time and the strength (mentally and physically) to follow through with your ideas. Don’t waste it.
Building a buffer for less stress
Build a buffer into your day.
If you schedule everything so strictly, filling every hour of your day, you’re going to feel much more stress. Because if you go over time in one thing, it’s like a domino effect. One thing affects another, which affects another. Next thing you know, the schedule for your entire day is “off” and you feel like you might as well throw your schedule out the window!
You need slack in the line. If everything is so tightly scheduled and rigid, you are setting yourself up for a much more stressful (and probably less successful) day. If you think something is going to take an hour and a half, give yourself two hours to do it. Not everything will be perfect. There will be distractions or things you didn’t anticipate. That is why having that time buffer in place is so crucial.
Don’t stress yourself out. Plan a buffer.
Withholding judgment
Don’t hold other people to your standards. It’s their life, not yours. Be happy for them if they’re happy with the decisions they’ve made.
When you judge others based on their decisions, it is often coming from a place of resentment. Whether you resent them for doing something you wish you could do or whether you disagree with their lifestyle, either way, judging them won’t make them change and only presents downside to you. Judging others never brings you joy. Eliminate judging and complaining for a better day.