Why 2015 Failed to get me surrendered?

There could be many ups and downs in ones life, a year, month or even a day. You can get good news in the morning that can completely be dominated by relatively bad news by evening.  Year 2015 started with many wonderful ideas in mind and in pipeline for me. I had been following a quite promising project since October 2014 and by January 2015 things seem quite on track. Whole team was quite happy but unexpectedly problems started to emerge leading to complete cancellation of the project.

This was not the only bad news the first month of year brought; I had to quit my long time associated company on 31 January 2015. I needed to realign my whole career strategy now; I did not have the crucial support of company when a break comes during free lancing work. Therefore after working for almost 13 years mainly as a free-lancer consultant I decided to go ahead with idea of a Job. A wonderful opportunity appeared in Qatar and after ups and down finally by August I came to know that I could not avail it! Coming back to end of January, I also applied for a Job with local company and got the job but it needed approval from some ministry also. It was expected that I’d start working by 01 March 2015 that finally realized only by 2nd week of May 2015.

Those were really hard times but thanks to my close friends’ network I managed to survive both financially and morally. Job was good but it had not been enough to build the day, it only helped to save the day and that also sometimes only partially.

However when ever I have downs in my career life I always started developing new skills and polishing the existing ones. It was hard time and I had limited budgets for such activities but I remained consistent. By end of July I had completed my Specialization in Entrepreneurship from Maryland University and another 6 courses related to disaster management and health care issues. All of this learning increased level of my internal happiness regardless of the situation around me. Then in July I also got my Master’s Thesis published as a book. 

Life started to follow a certain defined trend that was quite different. Previously I was going for international assignments thrice or more times a year, was getting money as per free lance international expert at much higher rates but now I had very limited options to increase my earnings. At this time I got the most severe blow due to death of my beloved mother. I know well that there is no compensation to this loss whatever we do.

After August while concentrating on my job’s work I started reading books more than I used to read previously. I tried to further develop my analytical skills and knowledge about ancient ways of life. I became interested in observation and assessment of the stress as a result of our current technology and living styles. At this stage using my notes I managed to compile a brief e-book entitled, ‘13 Ancient Ways to Overcome Technological Stress’. 

The book provides ancient and some not so ancient ways to keep us happy in spite of all the problems and technological stress. A Danish study done after I published my e-book clearly supported the idea I put in my e-book. I am sure that readers of this e-book would find the described ways useful and become happier in future by following them.

I did not surrender to year 2015 in spite of all hardships and who knows might turn it to be one of best years, we still have 47 days to 2016!

Dealing with Mental Stress in Professional Life

Any stress or anxiety can be grouped under two broad categories. The first one is mental stress and other is physical stress. They are interlinked in both directions. It is said that peaceful mind leads to healthy body. However equally and might be more important is fact that only stress free physical condition can help brain to function. Physical stress should not however be confused with fatigue. In case body goes under physical stress like exercise or in broader terms we say ‘physical exertion’, the mind works much more efficiently. In fact physical exertion has been considered as a way to get rid of your thoughts (stressed problematic thoughts) for a long time.

While analyzing the living pattern of people 50 years ago one can see a lot of physical movement. This actually kept their brains in better shape with depression and anxiety at low levels in spite of harsh living conditions. 

Mental stress in a professional life is due to three main reasons, lack of ability, lack of passion and procrastination. The first two have been defined in previous blogs also i.e. lack of ability or lack of passion for the work you do. In both cases you’ll be under mental stress. The way out could be to increase your ability or develop the passion for work you do. 

Ability increase would need time and financial resources. You will need to invest time and money to improve your ability. You can start with small steps like learning from someone doing the very same work better than you, studying and learning to improve and later may go for some professional courses to improve your ability.

Increasing the passion for work is much more difficult, and there is only one tool for that. It is to do very same things in a different way, the way which is interesting and enjoyable for you. Again the process should be slow and gradual. No short cut or immediate fix is possible. Passion can also be increased for work you do by adding your favorite chunks to it. 

The third important reason for mental stress is procrastination. In simple words it is lack of ability to start working on a certain task. Procrastination is sometimes taken as equivalent to day dreaming. However day dreaming till a certain limit can be considered healthy while procrastination is never an healthy approach. 

What leads to procrastination? It is either lack of interest in a certain job (lack of passion?), fear that one is not able to do it (inability?) or simply postponing it for later stages. The first two reasons are same as explained earlier in this blog. The last reason i.e. postponing to a later stage has again a very simple solution. When you have a task, divide it in to smaller chunks and   start finishing them... never start doing them... start finishing them.You’ll see that when each small chunk is finished your mental stress level will drop down.

In next blogs I may share simple formula to get rid of physical fatigue which is also very crucial for professional success.