How to Have a positive attitude at work

How to Have a positive attitude at work by Amber Rolfe Think it’s time to for an attitude adjustment? A positive attitude is not only essential to your own happiness, it could also do wonders for your career progression â€" not to mention the wellbeing of those around you. But how can you maintain it, and what’s the best way to combat negativity?To help you live your best life (and be the best version of you), here’s how to have a positive attitude at work:Make friends Being friendly with your colleagues is a great way to make work more fun, inviting, and in general, somewhere you actually want to be â€" especially if you’re lucky enough to find a work BFF.Whether it’s that you regularly catch up in the kitchen, go for work drinks, or attend team lunches, every little thing you do to stay involved will help you to feel more at home at work.Building positive relationships with colleagues is not only a great way to improve your work environment, it could also mean you feel more supported in your job â€" esp ecially if it involves a high level of teamwork.How to speak confidently at workActually take a break OK, it might seem like an obvious way to boost your mood â€" but that doesn’t mean we actually do it.In fact, many of us have a tendency to overwork (from staying late to working through lunch), resulting in a drop in morale, productivity, and ultimately, positivity.It’s also a good idea to actually leave your workspace. Whilst it might seem tempting to eat a-la-desk, it’ll only tempt you to pick up work tasks simultaneously.And it’s not just about allowing yourself to have a lunch break. Taking small breaks throughout the day will also help to keep yourself refreshed, whether it’s for a quick coffee or a walk around the office. Because exercise = happiness.Six things productive people do every daySix signs you’re working too hardSurround yourself with positivity Your work environment plays a big part in your wellbeing and overall happiness.This means that if the people around you are prone to negativity (whether it’s through constant complaining, laziness, or a disrespect of others), it’s likely to rub off on you too. On the flip side, spending time with positive, hardworking colleagues will likely influence your own mindset in a good way.Of course, you can’t choose who you work with. But you can choose who you zone out. Limit the time you spend with negative people by keeping necessary work-based interactions short, and placing an extra focus on your work.If your employer allows you to listen to music, this is also a great way to tune out â€" and stay positive in the process*.11 of the worst people you can work withTop 5 irritating office habits (and how to deal with them)Declutter your workspace People aren’t the only factor involved when it comes to your mood.It’s also important to consider your surroundings. A messy desk complete with stacks of paper, miscellaneous pens, and excess post-it notes is unlikely to ensue positivity â€" es pecially if it takes you hours to find anything.So give your workspace regular clear outs; and be ruthless. If you haven’t looked at that ‘important’ note from last year since you know, last year…it’s probably OK to throw it out.And it’s not just cleaning that’ll help you maintain a positive attitude. Decorating with everything from plants and vases to photo frames and smart storage solutions is a great to make you feel more at home.10 office organisation ideas that will transform your cluttered workspaceFive ways to brighten up your workplace  Put the pros above the cons Sometimes it can be all too easy to focus on the negatives.But even if there are times where you feel like you can’t stand your job, there’ll always be a way to look at things in a more positive light.Struggling to find the pros over the cons? Take some time each day to remind yourself what you love about your job.Whether it’s having supportive colleagues, a great benefits scheme, or an open and innovative environment, there are bound to be a number of things to be grateful for. You just need to look for them.Also, something about making the best out of a bad situation.Five reasons you’re unhappy at workPay attention to your wellbeing Your wellbeing and general health is a big factor when it comes to your attitude at work.And, living off a diet of biscuits and coffee probably isn’t going to make you feel great (see also: you are what you eat).Not only should you ensure you’re staying hydrated, sleeping well, and eating healthily, you should also make an effort to stay active.This doesn’t mean you have to break into a round of jumping jacks every five minutes, but there are a number of ways to keep moving (from walking meetings to desk exercises) â€" no matter how stationary your job is.Six tips to improve your workplace wellbeingTop 5 ways to keep fit at workChallenge yourselfNobody likes stagnation.And if you’ve ever been stuck in a rut when it comes to your pro fessional (and personal) development, you’ll know that it doesn’t do a lot for your happiness. In fact, it just makes you more complacent than ever.So to ensure you stay motivated at work, try your best to keep learning â€" whether it’s by regularly updating yourself on industry news, taking a course, or taking part in training and development schemes at your workplace.Putting yourself forward to head up new projects, networking, and attending conferences are also all great ways to keep your career moving and mix up your routine.How to make a career planPersonal development planning: What you need to knowHonourable mentions: Give yourself goals (and rewards), pay attention to your work-life balance, deal with problems professionally, do something nice.*N.B. Playlist dependent. For best results, we recommend keeping all Justin Bieber songs to a minimum. Still searching for your perfect position? View all available jobs now  Find a job What Where Search JobsSign up for more C areer AdviceSign up for moreCareer Advice Please enter a valid email addressmessage hereBy clicking Submit you agree to the terms and conditions applicable to our service and acknowledge that your personal data will be used in accordance with our privacy policy and you will receive emails and communications about jobs and career related topics. Life At Work Workplace culture

What do you lose if you stay home with kids

What do you lose if you stay home with kids If you do not stay home with kids, youll be annoyed to hear all the benefits of watching kids, because people dont really care about what benefits could be gained. We care about what we could lose. This is true for everyone: Consumers, liars, straight-A students. Working moms. This is why people love to talk about what they could lose by staying home with kids. The discussion often gets extremeâ€"death by boredom!â€"but most people will say they lose interestingness, self-actualization, and respect from other people. But I dont think we gain any of these things from work. And pretending that work provides those benefits makes finding a good job impossible, and it makes staying home with children feel impossible as well. Interestingness People do not get paid to solve interesting problems and learn new things all the time. Thats a perfect, heavenly job, so why would you need to be paid? You get paid to work on teams you didnt choose, and toe the line for an executive board you dont agree with, and make products that have no intrinsic meaning. Interesting people are interested, no matter what they do all day. If you are interested in ideas youll think about them. If youre interested in people youll connect with them. You dont need work to do thatâ€"and it probably would just get in the way. Self-actualization Living up to your potential is a terrible goal. People who grow up thinking they are gifted feel pressure to perform in a way that leads to having the most unhappy adult lives. Free yourself from the idea that people are in a horse race and everyone has a scouting report. The truth is that the only people who have a ton of potential in the workplace are people who will give up everything else for work. Thats about 5% of people. Everyone else sees their career start to flatline at age 30 or 35 and then tank. But our level of self-actualization goes up as we age. And our sense of well-being peaks at the time of life we are least likely to be focused on career. So self-actualization and career are not particularly related. Self-actualization is much higher on the Maslow hierarchy than winning a gold star or getting a big raise. Respect from other people OK. This is where you are really lying to yourself. You do not want respect from people with terrible careers. You want respect from people who have great careers. And people with great careers avoid the mid-life plateau by making work a higher priority than family. If you were able to do that you would have read the headline of this post and clicked delete. By the time everyone is 35, we can see who is going to be at the top and who isnt. You will have made a mark. You will have been working very, very hard. You will be ruthlessly climbing to the top of your field. If you have not done that from age 0-35 then you are not giving up the opportunity to do that from 35 on. Because you are not that kind of person who does that. Adults do not get respect because they have a high IQ or high ambition. At some point, it only matters what youve done and who youve loved. Respect is hard to come by unless you give it to yourself. And, in fact, you provide your own interestingness and your own self-actualization as well. Its hard, for sure, but you dont need a job or permission from other people. Its way easier to punt on interestingness/self-actualization/respect and say you couldnt get them because you stayed home with kids. Dont do that. To be our best selves involves being free of self-criticism, envy, and regret. I dont know anyone who has achieved that. Because its very distracting to have to take care of kids. Or go to work.

Whiners at Work

Whiners at Work photo courtesy simhilarity.com Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.    Lily Tomlin Every office has at least one: the worker who spends most of her working hours whining about how bad things are.   And not just about work (at least the whining would be relevant.) She whines about her family, her kids, her commute, the cashier at the grocery store last night… the list seems endless.   If she just spent as much time doing her work as she does complaining about it, she’d have been promoted to director by now. According to Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner, authors of Dealing with People You Can’t Stand, there are three kinds of complainers in the workplace: helpful, therapeutic, and obnoxious.   Helpful complainers bring you problems, but they also have ideas on how to fix the issue. They bring up problems because they care about getting things right, and they assume that you do, too. Therapeutic complainers need to get something off their chest, and we can all relate to that. A little whining every once in a while can prevent a major blowup later. It’s the obnoxious complainers that really get under our skin; the people who interrupt productive workers to talk about problems they have no intention of solving. Drs. Rick and Rick have a list of behaviors that absolutely won’t work when faced with a chronic complainer. Don’t agree with them, they write; you’ll only validate their complaint and perpetuate the cycle. Don’t disagree with them, either â€" they will simply repeat the story (with more embellishments) until you agree that they are justified in their complaint. Many of us fall into the third trap: trying to solve the problem for the complainer.   That never works, because a solution is not the answer. Whiners tend to feel powerless in the face of a problem.   I love the psychological term for people who stay focused on the negative: rumination. In a cow, rumination is the process of bring up previously chewed grass for a second time to get all of the nutritional value from it. Psychologists use the same term for people who obsess over negative events, staying focused for long periods on what went wrong and why. They often take a specific incident (“the boss interrupted me in the meeting”) and generalize it (“the boss doesn’t ever listen to what I have to say.”) When trying to help a whiner at work, you’ll need to form when Drs. Rick and Rick refer to as a Problem-Solving Alliance.   Whiners feel that they can’t solve problems, and your only hope of helping them is to help them see possible solutions.   That, unfortunately, means actually tuning in to their complaints, instead of tuning out as you’d prefer to do. Once you seem to have a handle on the main points of the problem, you must firmly but gently interrupt the woeful monologue. Ask about specific incidents, even though it may take a while to get the whiner out of his generalizing mode. Have patience. Your dialogue may go something like this: “Who doesn’t give you the respect you deserve?” “Everybody.” “Who, specifically?” “Well, the project managers.” “Who, among the project managers?” “Well, mostly Pete.   He’s the one who said that my last report was unreadable.” Aha. Pete said that your report wasn’t up to par.   (The authors say that you may find it helpful to think of this process like an archeological dig; dust off layer after layer until you find treasure.) Next, you can ask a question that will be revolutionary to the whiner:   What is it that you want? Seriously, the whiner may have never thought in these terms before. It simply may not occur to him that he can change the way things are. In the case of Pete the mean project manager, you may learn that the whiner simply wants to be acknowledged for his effort on a difficult job. You can suggest that he speak to Pete about his feedback and ask for his help on making the reports more accessible and useful.  Paint a picture of the future: Pete giving him pointers about how to make his reports better, and actually asking to work with him on future projects. Action-based solutions may not work right away, but you now have a basis for turning away the whiner. “I value our working relationship, but your negative attitude is hurting the team. You don’t have to take action to fix this (as we discussed) of course, but I don’t want to hear about this anymore unless you’ve at least tried to fix it.” This gentle but firm approach will work for both your direct reports and for peers. Eventually, if you hold firm with your refusal to listen, your whiner will either go off and try the solution, or move on to someone more sympathetic. Either way, you win some peace and quiet for a while.

3 Strategies Moving Storm to Rainbow of Opportunity - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

3 Strategies Moving Storm to Rainbow of Opportunity - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career We continually hear of maintaining work-life balance and there is much merit to that. But another type of balance to be maintained is that of facing disaster with calm. Rather than stressing out to the point of challenging one’s health, there is a strong need to maintain level-headedness through the difficulties in order to keep sanity in check. Most people in their lifetime will face a hardship or two. Recent conversations with other entrepreneurs revealed horrific stories. As these were recounted, pain could be heard in their voices. Stories included those of discovering employees stealing money, blatantly destroyed marriages, and that of senseless bad reviews posted online ruining business. Every single one of these incidents was extremely stressful, but those sharing their stories possess similar unique traits that enabled them to rise above. While the pain was heard as each story was revealed, at the conclusion, joy could be heard in not just coping but also creating a wonderful new story. A brand new perspective, with integrity in tact, is keeping balance in their lives as well as providing momentum for a new beginning and a bolder than ever business model and they share similar philosophy. Know your identity These women each have a strong sense of self. They know their value system, what’s right and wrong, and are strong enough to move away from the wrong. Each woman recognizes where they derive the most joy in their work. Rather than focusing on the negative, they choose instead to focus on the positive found in their businesses. The commonality here is they each have a strong identity for their personal brand. Become a spokesperson Stepping out of the zone of embarrassment for what happened, each woman chose to instead go public in order to confide and share with others where they previously erred, and how to avoid similar situations in the future. Books are being written, classes and speaking engagements are developing, and new windows of opportunity are in the works. The willingness to face disaster, and become a spokesperson to help others, put these women in leadership positions. People are beginning to seek out their wisdom. The winds of change are propelling them forward. Embrace the larger picture Rather than focusing on and feeling sorry for themselves, the women are looking at the bigger picture as to how they may leave the world in better place. Taking their own lessons learned, they are teaching younger women how to strengthen their resolve and build a unique business themselves. But doing it alone doesn’t make nearly as much of an impact as it does when multiples join together. This is exactly what these women recognized. Joining together, these women are developing a brand new business plan for helping others around the globe. Looking back, while the pain endured wasn’t fun for anyone, had it never happened, the larger picture would never have been captured. Knowing who they each are, and recognizing their specific areas of joy, has led each to take a significant role in a newly forming corporation. A feeling of gratitude is almost felt for the pain endured as it put before them a rainbow of opportunity and a seemingly Smooth Sale!

How to Write a Good CV

How to Write a Good CVIf you're anything like me, there are probably a million and one things to be considered when writing your CV but surprisingly not many things that should be considered when you're wondering how to write a good CV. After doing some research I came across some tips which might help you with this job and if you haven't got any personal experience with this then don't worry as you will get it soon enough!I also found it surprising that the biggest thing that should be considered when you're writing your CV is to write your CV properly. By writing your CV correctly I mean filling in all the information and keeping it to a maximum of 3 pages.If you're looking for a job you have to apply for it so make sure that you do this. Also, I would like to stress the importance of sending in your CV as soon as possible after you're done with your work as this can boost your chances of getting a job. So if you're looking for a job now try to send your CV in as soon as possible.A nother tip when you're trying to find how to write a good CV is to write your CV the way you normally speak to people. People like to read letters they've never heard before so this is one of the best ways to convey to them what you mean by your CV.Last but not least remember to keep your CV short and easy to read so that it captures people's attention and captures their interest so that you can prove that you're qualified for the job and get the job. That is the most important part.Your CV should be engaging, eye catching and captivating without being boring and repetitive. When you're attempting to find how to write a good CV, remember to keep it simple and only send it in when you're available and ready to talk to someone.If you're trying to find how to write a good CV you're probably under the impression that it has to be long and detailed but actually it doesn't. If you follow these tips on how to write a good CV, you will be able to write your CV quickly and effectively.So, if you're looking for how to write a good CV then use the tips that I mentioned above. I know that you will find some tips that I didn't but that's because there is always something new coming out and if you're looking for how to write a good CV then don't worry because I've done it and I know what you're going through.

TietoEnator buys Enterprise Systems - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

TietoEnator buys Enterprise Systems - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Its official, Enterprise Systems has been sold to TietoEnator. Its a little ironic that this deal is finalized almost exactly 5 years after we started the company. Its also a little sad, but I truly believe that this is the best option for Enterprise to develop. TE can give the company resources and strategic direction that we could never have found on our own. I can look back on a great time, building a great company. We (meaning not only the founders but every single ES employee) created a company where people had fun, were committed, learned and developed as people all the while making lots of money. I already left the company a few months back, so I will not be a part of ES future in TE. I wish the guys (and the one gal) the best of luck, I know theyll all do great. Theyre the smartest, nicest, cleverest, most sympathetic people Ive ever had the pleasure of working with, and Im sure that exciting stuff is waiting for them! Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related

When to use SER and ESTAR GCSE Spanish Revision

When to use SER and ESTAR GCSE Spanish Revision As we only have one verb that means ‘to be’ in English, being presented with two (that are both irregular) when we start learning Spanish is initially confusing, not least  because  they are applied in different ways with different meanings. So, knowing when to use SER and ESTAR, and the differences between them, is vital for your Spanish study no matter how advanced a level you are at. This is due to the fact that for non-native speakers, it is not always obvious which of the verbs is appropriate in everyday scenarios, despite the commonness with which they appear.Of course, solid knowledge of when to use SER and ESTAR is extremely important for GSCE Spanish students, as the reading, writing and speaking exams will frequently  require you to demonstrate  your ability in dealing with them correctly in an array of tenses. Therefore, a major key in Spanish study is to learn the general rules of thumb surrounding the uses of these verbs, and to practice regularly in order to become as comfortable as possible in this regard.Having these basic rules as second nature will provide an excellent core for your revision, and will give you an ideal point of reference when exploring these verbs more deeply. So, see below for a breakdown of the recognisable situations that will show you when to use SER and ESTAR, as demonstrated by simple sentences in the indicative present tense.SER and ESTAR:  the key to successVerb TablesSERYosoyI amTúeresyou are (sing.)El/Ellaeshe/she/it isNosotrossomoswe areVosotrossoisyou are (pl.)Ellos/Ellassonthey areESTARYoestoyI amTúestásyou are (sing.)El/Ellaestáhe/she/it isNosotrosestamoswe areVosotrosestáisyou are (pl.)Ellos/Ellasestánthey areWhen to use SER and ESTARSERThe most common use of ser is in basic sentences is simply to connect and equate nouns and pronouns.For example:He wants to be a Police OfficerQuiere ser un policíaorThe pizza is homemadeLa pizza es caseraYou will know to use ser instead of estar if you are descibing c haracteristics or qualities that can be identified as being inherent, permanent or essential, such as nationality, age, physpical descriptors, personality descriptors, colours and materials, and shape and size.For example:The block of flats is very tallEl bloque residencial es muy altoorWe are from ArgentinaSomos de ArgentinaSer is used when talking about possession.For example:It’s my computerEs mi ordenadororYou are his daughterEres su hijaIf you are discussing when or where an event takes place, you can use ser. Ser is also used when telling the time.For example:The award ceremony is in two hoursEl asignación de premios es en dos horasorIt’s eleven o’clockSon las onceIf you are talking about how much something costs using ‘to be’, you use ser.For example:It’s six pounds, sirSon seis libras, señorPractice makes perfectESTARThe most common use of estar is when describing states and conditions, including moods and feelings. In simplified terms, if ser can be said to de scribe permanent things, estar can be said to describe temporary things.For example:My colleague is ill todayMi compañero está enfermo hoyorExcuse me, but my food is coldDisculpe, pero mi comida está fríaAnother very common instance that requires estar is when talking about location. This can be confusing, because describing where events ‘are’, in the sense of taking place, can be done with ser â€" e.g. the meeting is in the office = el reunión es en la oficina. However, otherwise describing the locations of places, objects and people, always uses estar.For example:Where are the scissors? ¿Dónde están las tijeras?orI am in Lanzarote at the momentEstoy en Lanzarote por el momentoTo finish, estar is used when talking about being in agreement/disagreement.For example:We agree with youEstamos de acuerdo contigoFor a complete guide to GCSE Spanish, learning the easiest ways to score 100%, check out our brand new GCSE Spanish is Easy revision guide. For more GCSE Spanish reso urces, check out BBC Bitesize. This entry was posted in Education, Revision. Bookmark the permalink. Henry Hunter Training Contract for Solicitors â€" Application AdviceLNAT: Sample Questions And Answers