Self Mastery Can Improve Your Life

In the words of Leonard da Vinci "One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself".
Self mastery is the ability to recognize, understand and manage the different aspects of your personality, and in so doing, to create a higher quality of life experience. It is the ability to make the most out of your physical, mental and spiritual health and below are some areas of your life which will help you on your path towards developing effective self-mastery.
Vision: All self-mastery starts with you: the roadmap that you will create to take you to where you want to be. You need to be self-disciplined and committed to your vision and to always keep it in the forefront of your mind. Write your aims down, and share them with others, so that you will be accountable to yourself.
Accept people: Once you accept people for who and what they are, you won't waste time and energy being frustrated in trying to change them. Everyone is different and that means that we have to learn the life skill of people management. Not everyone thinks and acts as we would like.
Don't wait for perfection: Appreciate who you are, what you are, and what you have so far accomplished. You may not achieve the same results as your idealised role model but the important factor is to work your way towards getting there whilst not expecting it to happen overnight.
Look after your body: Your body is an incredibly complex machine that needs daily maintenance, so make sure you give it the nutrients and exercise it needs for optimum performance. If it becomes damaged in part, it has the ability to self-heal, provided you recognise the fact that you, yourself, need to help the process.
Self Discipline: People who demonstrate strong self-mastery are not controlled by their emotions. They learn to control their fears, their likes and dislikes, in order to move forward unencumbered by inner doubts but reinforced by facts and the unemotional assessment of risk, gain or loss.
Appreciation: Always be aware of the gift of health, the natural world, your family, your children, your education, your place in the community and in society, and the peace that spirituality can give to you in times of hardship or stress.
Communicate: You have the power to make someone smile just by openly smiling yourself and by making time to talk to others in a way that could make all the difference to their day.
Cognitive Restructuring: This technique involves modifying the automatic negative thoughts that occur in an anxiety-provoking situation, to a positive mindset that enables you to manage the challenge instead of mismanaging it. You need to always remind yourself of your natural talents and experience. If you convince yourself that you can win, then you may well do so. Unfortunately, however, the opposite holds just as true!
Concentrate: Try not to have a 'butterfly mind' that flits from one topic to another. Focus your mind on one thing at a time and gain the fulfillment of achieving a goal and then feeling that sense of satisfaction before moving onto something else.
Emotional Intelligence: Those that have gained self-mastery are usually well aware of other people's needs and emotions and take them into consideration when communicating. Of course, in a negotiating context, that can be the winning factor.
Let go: We are all reluctant to let go of the past and focus on the future. This is often because the past is more comfortable to deal with, as it holds no secrets, whereas the future is bound to hold many unknown challenges. However, letting-go is essential in order to move forward unencumbered with the 'baggage' of previous relationships.
Self-mastery is a life skill that takes times and effort. It's a continuous process that should be integral to one's daily life script for everyday living. Once you have mastered it, you will also be able to help others to achieve the same skill. And that in itself, can be one of the most satisfying and humbling experience of our own lives.
Written by Carole Spiers and reprinted with the kind permission of Gulf News.

Carole Spiers is a world authority on work stress, a BBC Guest-Broadcaster and author of a new book 'Show Stress Who's Boss!'

The Power of 10

I recently tried launching a product and like many entrepreneurs, money is tight and there is no room for any losses or miscalculations. I thought, wrecked my brain, and went through everything that I had learned in school reviewing my textbooks to see what types of marketing mix I could come up with to get this $19.95 product in the field to solve a problem of many highway motorist. The result of my research brought me back to my original issue, not enough capital to fund the launch.

My Story

April 2, 2012, my entire life changed forever and I mean forever. At the age of 56 while at work I had an acute asthma attack. You're probably saying what does this have to do with launching and marketing a product? We'll get to that. A few weeks earlier I visited my family doctor due to breathing problems. The pollen here in Charlotte, NC was seriously bad and the pollen conditions were being reported on the news as much as three and four times daily. My doctor treated me with a breathing treatment, some antibiotics, a portable breathing machine, and released me. The following week I was unable to get out of bed to even walk to the bathroom without seriously being out of breath. I was disciplined at work for calling out. A top performer, written up for the first time in my 47 years of working. That caused stress in my life and I went into work Sunday and Monday the 1st and 2nd of April 2012.

The morning of April 2, 2012 at 12:30 a supervisor passed by and asked if I was wheezing and my reply was "if you can hear me I guess I am" so I got up and took a breathing treatment and came back to my desk(1:00pm) immediately emailing my wife to come pick me up early from work because I thought I might have some difficulties later on; she was out at lunch and never got my message. At 2:30 I was unable to stand, talk, or breathe. I threw a pen across the room to get someones attention and they immediately called my wife and dialed 911. The next 1 hour was the longest hour in my life not being exhale, listening to the radio traffic when I hear my wife has arrived at the gate of my job in front of the ambulance and they veer off and go to the wrong building.

Finally, the emergency team arrives and immediately try to force air in my face and fight begins. Try pushing a needed product in the face of it's intended user. Regardless of the need there is still opposition to the delivery. I was told the EMT worked on me for about 15 minutes in the parking lot prior to the trip to the hospital. The critical part of this journey had just begun; I was resuscitated twice during the night; gone, dead. Hearing the many stories about this incredible battle with life, the miracle, along with a spiritual experience in the brightest light that I've ever seen along with a moving conversation that turned my entire life around which brings me to where we are now..The Power of 10.

The Service Industry and for as much any business can very well be a ministry if you are truly in the business to serve and help people. Notice I didn't say in the business for profit. Profits will come if you flow with your heart; your passion. How do you flow with your passion? Make sure you are doing something that you really are good at and you enjoy. Really simple. Why would you do something because there is " a lot of money in it" and you're stressed out daily because you are spending more time trying to get the education about the business while you are trying to make a profit? You are wasting time on something that doesn't express your heart, your passion.

I'm not trying to convert or sway you spiritually or cause conflict between you and your religious beliefs, but we are all created with one thing that makes us unique, DNA. This means that you have something that is especially made for you and only you can produce it. So going after a business because there is a lot of money to be made may not be for you if there is no heart or passion and is out of your character.

Try this, ask your friends, family members, and co-workers for their candid opinion. Let them know that you want to know the truth and you are not looking for compliments. You are searching for your natural and spiritual gifts and abilities. Yes this may mean that you have to step back and punt again, but I think you would feel a lot better doing something that you are passionate about.

Power of 10

The parable of the ten minas teaches that we are expected to use the gifts we've received from God to do good. We're to "invest" them so that they'll earn a return even greater than the original gift. This brings me to heart, service, and going back to basic teaching of giving. I was in Virginia Beach, Va for a family emergency sitting on my parents front porch when the words "Give it away" just exploded in my head. Who am I to argue with the Voice?

Here I was sitting on my parent's front porch in Virginia Beach, Va looking at my targeted market drive by one car after another. I introduced myself to a young man driving an older Nissan SUV that had been given to him with over 200,000 miles on it. I began talking to him about his vehicle and a product that I was going to give to him because I wanted to help him with the maintenance of his vehicle. What had I just done? I just established a relationship and a new friend.

My wife arrived about five hours later from Charlotte, NC and I immediately went over to my trunk, had him start his engine to let it warm up, and I applied the product to his engine and told him to just drive and tell me about it. When he came back after being gone for a few hours, he had cleaned the vehicle inside and out and began telling me how well the vehicle was running compared to several hours ago. He went to his pastor to tell about this man who had given him a gift that would allow him to keep his vehicle a little while longer while he was getting on his feet. He brought back his pastor and nine other men who needed the product for their older model, high mileage vehicles. A seed had been sown and my return was ten new clients. I did this again to another gentleman who was driving a Chevy Conversion Van, yes there are still some on the road, and the return was again ten plus some of his lodge members indicated they were purchasing also from the site.

Resume Tips for the IT Professional

According to U.S. News & World Report's article on "The 50 Best Careers of 2011," many technology positions made it into the top 50 list of careers providing overall satisfaction. They include computer software engineers, computer support specialists, computer systems analysts, and network architects.
So how are you making yourself stand out from the crowd of other resumes that employers are reviewing?
Finding a job in today's market is particularly difficult. However, there are resume tips to help IT professionals get noticed.

1. Add "Technical Expertise and Certifications" at the top of your resume.
   Regardless of whether you have one year or 10 years of experience in the field, it is especially critical to effectively demonstrate technical knowledge and skills. What matters to most employers hiring an IT professional is not the years of experience you have to offer, but how current you are with today's latest technology, applications, and if you have the technical certifications to do the job. Highlighting your "Technical Expertise and Certifications" up front on your resume will immediately inform the employer that you have what it takes to do the job.


2. Include a section on "Technical Skills."This is a section that allows you to outline all the specific technical language those in the field will be familiar with to demonstrate your familiarity with subject matter expertise and the type of technology-related working environments you have been exposed to. It's an effective and quick way to help employers see that you are relevant for the job. It also supports keyword searches for specific tools and technologies.


3. Demonstrate achievements, accomplishments and results in "Professional Experience."
   This is where most IT Professionals go wrong in that they merely list their roles responsibilities and tasks. The problem is that hundreds of people in similar job functions can say the same thing so this does not differentiate you.
   
   If you are on the infrastructure side, detail the environment in terms of users, servers and locations. Then describe your performance. How do you rank against your peers in terms of productivity? Are you the 'go-to' person for any particular issues? Are you known for resolving issues on the first attempt?
   
   If you are on the applications or project management side, do not detail every project you did as they will not have the same kinds of projects. Instead, indicate the total number of initiatives you were involved in and only highlight the ones that you are most proud of. Also highlight whether you managed the full lifecycle, what tools, best practices and methodologies you used, and how good you are at working with disparate stakeholders to gather their requirements, drive consensus and ensure that what you are delivering is what they want.
   
   If you are new to the field, then you need to highlight the courses you took and projects you completed as part of your education. Include the number of hours of training and the technologies that you grasped.


4. Apply relevant keywords to all parts of your resume.
   A majority of employers use scanning technology to help pull out the most relevant resumes to review, so the more keyword relevance you can offer in your resume, the greater the chance of your resume getting noticed. Carefully review the job posting on specific technical skills desired or required. Also look at other job descriptions for the same position on job boards to get a better sense of which technical skills are particularly desired. Apply those keywords in context at different sections of your resume. You want the regular HR person to understand what you have to offer as well.

The market for IT professionals is much stronger than others today and is very competitive. Use these tips to make sure your IT resume stands out.