Marcia Sirota's Blog, page 20

Workplace Success Comes Down to Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence

When you’re trying to be successful in your career, it’s not enough to simply show up, work hard and persevere. It’s not even enough to take risks, think outside the box or be creative and innovative.

There’s an essential part of work that must be mastered if you want a high level of achievement. Without it, success will be elusive. What I’m talking about is emotional intelligence.

According to Wikipedia, “Emotional intelligence… is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goal(s)”.

The advantages of emotional intelligence

When you have emotional intelligence, you have a tremendous advantage in the workplace, compared to someone who is lacking in it. You’re able to know how you feel about people and situations, and this empowers you to take the best action.

You’re also able to understand where your colleagues, employees and supervisors are coming from, and with this information, you’re empowered to deal with them in the most strategic manner possible.

Whether you’re one of hundreds in a crowded workplace or part of a very small team, how you interact with the people around you is a crucial part of your success story.

Even if you work alone, you’re still going to have to interact successfully with other people if you want to reach your goals.

Being talented, driven, confident, curious, creative, courageous and ambitious are all necessities if you want to be a success in any field, but these attributes are never enough. The interpersonal component can make or break even the most promising career.

The bottom line is that if you have challenges dealing with other people it will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve lasting success in your career.

Studies have shown that people who have a high degree of emotional intelligence are more successful than those who don’t, and that the higher up the person is in their organization, the more crucial this is.

Forging strong alliances

One major aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to forge strong alliances with others, within companies and between organizations.

When you create strong connections with other people at work, you create win-win situations in which everyone benefits; you learn and grow from each-other and you support each-other in creating mutual success.

On the other hand, when you can’t connect with people; when you can’t see a different point of view or make meaningful compromises, it doesn’t matter how smart or talented you are. Without these skills, it’s more likely that someone else will be assigned the key projects and that you’ll be passed up for a promotion or maybe even let go.

Connecting with others

Individuals and businesses value personal loyalty, and will reward it with a raise, a contract or a promotion. They value reasonableness, a positive attitude, a pleasant demeanor and a cooperative nature. These attributes will enable you to take your career to the next level.

Even if you’re not that high up in your field, being able to connect with your colleagues is essential if you want to advance as opposed to moving backward.

Making positive connections with the people at work gives you other advantages: people will open up to you and as a result, you’ll have access to strategic information.

Connections create opportunities

With good workplace relationships, people will vouch for you if a problem arises and you’ll develop an excellent reputation which will make everyone trust you more and in a pinch, give you the benefit of the doubt.

When you have good connections at work, people will choose you to work on their teams and to take on more responsibility; you’ll discover so many more opportunities.

Your supervisors will believe in you more when you’re seen as someone who gets along with their co-workers. People who are more isolated or disconnected in the workplace don’t inspire the same trust or confidence as those who have strong social connections.

Connections improve the quality of your work life

This doesn’t mean that you should be using your workplace as the source of your friendships, but rather that you should recognize the importance of establishing positive and supportive professional connections.

Just the other day, I was speaking with a potential guest for my podcast series, and she complimented me on how pleasant and agreeable my assistant was. In this case, my assistant’s ability to connect reflected well on both her and me.

Having good connections at work makes the days more pleasant. It’s always more enjoyable to have people to chat with on your breaks. The days go by more quickly and the stress is mitigated when you feel a sense of connection with the other people at work.

Good work connections will also protect you. If your boss is angry at you, others will come to your defense; if you make a mistake, people will stand up for you; if you want to advance, others will speak positively on your behalf.

Good connections have no downside and multiple benefits. So, if you’re hoping to be successful in your career, you should never underestimate the importance of emotional intelligence at work.

Please sign up here for my free monthly wellness newsletter. April 2020 is all about self-transformation for spring.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

 

 

Six Tips for Creating Workplace Success

The workplace can be a real minefield of challenging interpersonal dynamics, so I’ve updated this article for 2020.

Here are six helpful tips for being more successful at work:

1: Take responsibility for yourself. No-one respects a colleague or employee who blames others for their problems or mistakes. No-one trusts this type of person either. If you want to be put in positions of greater responsibility and look more like a leader, you’ll need to demonstrate that you can take responsibility for your actions.

2: Get along with the people in your workplace. This is as important as, and sometimes even more important, than productivity. The last thing your supervisors want is to have to deal with your interpersonal conflicts. They’ll like you more and respect you more if you have cordial, productive working relationships.

3: Practice defensive working. Just like with defensive driving, where you literally steer clear of the dangerous drivers, you need to identify the problematic person or people in your workplace and engage with them as minimally and strategically as possible. You don’t want to let these people drag you down into their dramas.

4: Make your boss look good. If your boss sees that you’re an asset to their reputation, they’ll want to keep you around and even reward you. You become their promoter, which could translate into better working conditions, a better salary, and even a promotion.

5: Don’t draw attention to your mistakes. If your boss comes to you with a problem, do admit your part in it and don’t be defensive. However, you don’t have to fall on your sword, either. You needn’t go out of your way to draw their attention to your mess-up. It’s hard enough to get ahead. Own your part in things but you don’t have to incriminate yourself.

6: Your workplace is not your home, and the people you work with aren’t your friends or family. It’s not the job of your boss or colleagues to build your self-esteem, so there’s no point in trying so hard to “prove” yourself to them and get validation from them. Look within yourself for self-love and self-worth, let the people at work off the hook, and your workplace relationships will be much easier.

Success in the workplace comes down to hard work, perseverance, creativity, and also, emotional intelligence. Hopefully, these reminders can help you boost your performance in your current workplace or help you do better in a future position.

Sign up here for my free monthly wellness newsletter. April 2020 is all about self-transformation for spring.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

Every Entrepreneur Needs a “Digital Sabbath”

Out of balance?

Recently, I interviewed entrepreneur and author, Nir Eyal for my Ruthless Compassion podcast. He talked about how technology is an absolute necessity but that like anything else we find helpful and enjoyable, we can find ourselves out of balance when using it.

We don’t even realize how many hours a day we spend, hooked up to our technology. Whether it’s looking at our phones, working on the computer or listening to music or podcasts, we’re almost never tech-free.  I’m constantly seeing couples out on a date, both of whom are spending most of their time looking at their phones.

For entrepreneurs it’s especially difficult, because technology is the medium to grow and maintain our businesses. I know that I’m using so much more technology to run my Ruthless Compassion Institute than I ever would have imagined in the past.

However, when we get too caught up in technology we can lose sight of the human factor. We can get sucked down the rabbit hole of work and forget that we have friends, a family, and loved ones who care about us and need our time and energy. When we’re out of balance with our technology, our personal relationships can suffer.

 

The “Digital Sabbath”

Nir has a solution. He proposes that we take a “digital Sabbath;” one day a week free from technology that we can spend reconnecting with our family and our friends. We can pull our eyes away from the seductive glow of our screens and focus instead on the faces of our loved ones.

Every year in mid-February, we enjoy Family Day in Ontario and ideally, it’s a day dedicated to spending time with the people we care about. Unfortunately, I know of many people who’ll be spending the day at their keyboards, catching up on work.

It’s especially hard for working parents who are entrepreneurs. For them, every day is a potential work day. I’ve certainly discovered that since I started working from home, I don’t have any set days off. I could work most days of the week; even when I’m on vacation.

Entrepreneurs and work-life balance

And unfortunately, when people know that I’m an entrepreneur, they don’t tend to respect the typical nine-to-five schedule that so many working people observe. I get texts, emails and phone calls at all times of the day and night and often on the weekends. I’m sure that I’m not alone in this.

I’m certainly not complaining because like most entrepreneurs, I love what I do and it doesn’t really feel like work, most of the time. In fact, I’m partly to blame, because I choose to respond to many of those calls and texts and emails, even when they come in at 11:30 at night.

For an entrepreneur with a young family it can be especially difficult to balance work-life and family life. How do you know if the next 11:30 pm text will turn out to be your big break? Still, if you never turn away from your technology, your family might start turning away from you. In my podcast, Nir Eyal described how he experienced a crisis in his marriage brought on by being overly distracted by his work.

He was able to avert the crisis by choosing to carve out more family time and turn off his technology, one day every week. I think that he’s on to something.

Lately, I’ve been noticing that even with the best of intentions, not to mention looming deadlines, I’ve needed to take at least one day off work each week.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or maybe it’s because my intuition knows something that my head hasn’t yet caught on to. Either way, I’ve been taking my “digital Sabbath” to rest, recharge, and reconnect with loved ones. I highly recommend it.

Family Day vs. Business as Usual

If you live in Ontario, you might want to think about how you spent your Family Day this year. Did you take time to be with your loved ones, or was it “business as usual?” Was your spouse outside tobogganing with the kids while you were indoors, staring at a screen? Maybe it’s time to take Nir’s suggestion of a digital Sabbath more seriously.

It’s great to be ambitious and to work at becoming more successful, but at what expense? For Nir Eyal, it was almost at the expense of losing his family. For many of us entrepreneurs, it’s easy to get sucked into our technology and keep on working until the consequences start piling up.

Observing the Sabbath?

Many religious people have observed the Sabbath for thousands of years, but as people have become more secular, the idea of taking one day each week for rest, reflection and connection has fallen by the wayside. Whether or not you’re religious, you can still observe the Sabbath. You can have a digital Sabbath.

Whatever you did this year on Family Day, consider the option of creating your own Family Day one day a week. Unplug your technology and connect with the people you love. Your business will most likely benefit from your relaxed and refreshed mind, and the return-on-investment in terms of a happy, connected family will be priceless.

Sign up here for my free monthly wellness newsletter. March 2020 is all about strategies for workplace success.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

 

Five Ways Single People Can Have Have More Love on Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day will soon be here and for some singles, it can be an uncomfortable reminder that there’s no-one in their life to buy them flowers, take them out for dinner, massage their shoulders or listen to them complain about their bad day.

For many single people, Valentine’s Day is something best ignored, or perhaps self-medicated with ice cream, alcohol, a binge of their favorite Netflix show or all of the above.

But there’s something else that single people everywhere can do to bring more love into their lives on Valentine’s Day. If you’re single, instead of thinking about the love you don’t have, you can think about the love you can give, both to yourself and to others.

Here are the five ways you can bring more love into your life on Valentine’s Day:

1: Spend time tuning into yourself. Give yourself more affirmation, validation, soothing and nurturing.

2: Do nice things for yourself. Take a walk in nature, read a good book, have a professional massage or cook yourself a delicious, nutritious meal.

3: Be kind to strangers. Sharing a smile, a kind word or a helpful gesture with someone at the store, on the bus or in the street will create loving feelings within both of you.

4: Visit a neighbor. Spending an hour or two with an elderly or infirm neighbor will make them feel loved and cared for, and their gratitude and appreciation will warm your heart.

5: Love up your pets. They might not be people, but they love you unconditionally. Take a moment to give them cuddles, and to soak up their limitless adoration.

Sign up here for my free monthly wellness newsletter. March 2020 is all about strategies for workplace success.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

In 2020, You Can Be Your Own Valentine

As Valentine’s Day approaches, some single people are feeling that familiar sense of dread. They’re thinking, “Another year without a Valentine’s Day date. Another year without a romantic partner.”

If you’re one of these people, you might be wondering how you’re going to get through the day, or even the month, given that the ads for Valentine’s day gifts and dinners are already flooding the internet.

If the idea of being alone on Valentine’s Day makes you miserable, please know that it doesn’t have to be that way. Regardless of your relationship status, you can have love on Valentine’s Day in 2020. You can be your own Valentine.

We live in challenging times. Despite our profound desire to connect, it feels harder than ever to find a close friend or a romantic partner. Loneliness has become a silent epidemic that’s plaguing Canadians. The former US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has called loneliness a serious public health issue for that country.

People are increasingly isolated, doing more and more of their working, shopping and dining from home. As a result, it’s that much harder to build meaningful friendships. And what with all the cat-fishing and deceit surrounding internet dating today, it’s even more difficult to find a romantic partner. It can get discouraging, unless we recognize that we can still have more love in our lives.

You may already have loving relationships with your family, some friends, your children or other people’s children, even one or more pets. You need to invest more energy into these relationships so that you get the most out of them. You also need to work on having more self-love.

If you develop more self-love you’ll immediately start to feel happier and more fulfilled. Whether you’re single and looking, single and content, part of a happy couple or in a challenging relationship, everyone can benefit from more self-love.

Self-love is having the same tender emotions toward yourself that you might have toward a child or a pet. It’s valuing yourself, accepting yourself and caring for yourself.

Self-love can be broken down into a few components, including self-acceptance, self-affirmation, self-compassion and self-forgiveness.

 

Self-acceptance is feeling that you’re okay, no matter what. It’s unconditional positive self-regard.

 

Self-affirmation is believing in yourself, despite any mistakes you’ve made or failures you’ve experienced.

 

Self-compassion is being understanding and uncritical toward yourself, feeling entitled to good things and wanting them for yourself.

 

Self-forgiveness is giving yourself permission to be fallible and imperfect.

 

Even if you’re part of a loving couple, you’ll always benefit by having more self-love. Being loved by another person will add happiness, meaning and value to your life, but it won’t make up for a lack of self-love. Everyone needs both. We all need to be loved by others and we all need self-love.

On this Valentine’s day, whether you’re at home watching TV and eating ice-cream, or having a candle-light dinner with the person of your dreams, remember that in 2020, you can take advantage of the opportunity to love yourself more and give yourself more acceptance, affirmation, compassion and forgiveness.

You can value, appreciate and care for yourself. You can fill your heart with so much self-love that it overflows outward onto your loved ones, showering them with more loving-kindness. Because the thing is, being your own Valentine is a gift that keeps on giving.

Sign up here for my free monthly wellness newsletter. March is about developing strategies for workplace success.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

 

Will fear of Coronavirus keep you at home on Valentine’s Day?

Valentine’s date or no date?

The most difficult night of the year to get a dinner reservation is on Valentine’s Day. It’s the most popular night for dining out. But I wonder how many couples in Canada and the US will be choosing to stay home this year from the fear of catching the novel coronavirus.

Some of us want to go out and have a cozy, candle-lit dinner, but we worry that while enjoying our romantic evening out, someone at the next table could start coughing and sneezing. We wonder how we’d deal with such an occurrence.

Fear of infection is spreading faster than the disease

Even though there is no current evidence that the virus is prevalent in North America, a lot of people are worried about catching it, and their behavior is starting to reflect this.

At a Toronto private school made up entirely of Chinese international students, teachers were staying home for fear of becoming infected, even though none of their students had been shown to have contracted the disease. This is a classic example of our tendency to imagine the worst-case scenario.

Panic over the virus is growing by the day. It’s now flu season and everywhere we go, we can’t help but run into people who exhibit the symptoms of a respiratory tract infection. Of course, this only increases our anxiety. We can’t tell whether the person with a bad cough has the common cold or something that’s potentially more deadly.

Putting the flu into perspective

One thing we need to do is to put things in perspective. According to the most recent statistics from the CDC, approximately 80,000 Americans died of influenza in 2017. Here in Canada, there are between 2000 and 8000 deaths from the flu and its complications each year.

 

Even so, nobody in North America walks around freaked out about catching the flu. That’s because we’re used to the typical flu that comes around each year. We know the signs and the symptoms and we’ve learned to live with it. It’s not a new, mysterious ailment that we don’t understand, and I think that it’s this fear of the unknown that’s making North Americans most anxious about the coronavirus these days.

Although at this point the virus seems to be well-contained within the borders of mainland China, with only 7 confirmed cases in Canada and only 12 in the entire US as of this writing, we’re still feeling stressed. That’s because it’s human nature to worry over unfamiliar micro-organisms. Germs are invisible and their mechanism of contagion can be confusing. When a new virus arises, we’re unsure whether or how it will affect us, and this makes these new viruses all the more terrifying.

Learning to live with scary new things

All of the hype around the novel coronavirus brings me back to a different type of threat. It was the time just after 9/11 and people were terrified, wondering when the next horrific attack was coming. I remember that the media was fueling the flames of our fears, going on about how terrorist attacks were going to become the new normal. I also remember making a conscious decision not to dwell on the fear of the next attack or stop living my life.

Since 9/11 most of us have gotten used to living with the threat of terrorism. We don’t like it, to be sure, and we’re doing all we can to address it, but we accept it as our new reality. There have been numerous terrorist attacks or aborted attacks in North America since 2001, from both domestic and external sources. Even so, our degree of fear around such attacks has diminished. We’ve learned to live with the threat. It’s become part of the new world order.

We did the same thing when SARS first appeared on the scene. First, we were terrified, and this terror was demonstrated by our behavior. But then when we learned more about the disease and we became used to it being part of our new reality, we also learned to live with it. We calmed right down.

I heard an infectious disease expert on TV the other day talking about how we’re going to have to learn to live with the novel coronavirus as well. Of course, first we’re going to have to learn much more about it. We’re going to have to understand how it’s transmitted, how serious an infection it is, and how to protect ourselves from it. Most likely, there will be a vaccine for the virus available shortly. Most likely, there will be some specific treatment available as well.

Right now, there might be a few empty tables at our favorite Toronto restaurants on Valentine’s Day, as people stay home out of fear of becoming ill, but I imagine that next year, when Valentine’s Day rolls around, it’ll be just as impossible to get a reservation.

Sign up here for my free, monthly wellness newsletter. March is all about strategies for workplace success.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

 

Will Your Fears of Catching the Coronavirus Keep You at Home on Valentine’s Day This Year?

The most difficult night of the year to get a dinner reservation is on Valentine’s Day. It’s the most popular night for dining out. But I wonder how many couples in Canada and the US will be choosing to stay home this year from the fear of catching the novel coronavirus.

Some of us want to go out and have a cozy, candle-lit dinner, but we worry that while enjoying our romantic evening out, someone at the next table could start coughing and sneezing. We wonder how we’d deal with such an occurrence.

Even though there is no current evidence that the virus is prevalent in North America, a lot of people are worried about catching it, and their behavior is starting to reflect this.

At a Toronto private school made up entirely of Chinese international students, teachers were staying home for fear of becoming infected, even though none of their students had been shown to have contracted the disease. This is a classic example of our tendency to imagine the worst-case scenario.

Panic over the virus is growing by the day. It’s now flu season and everywhere we go, we can’t help but run into people who exhibit the symptoms of a respiratory tract infection. Of course, this only increases our anxiety. We can’t tell whether the person with a bad cough has the common cold or something that’s potentially more deadly.

One thing we need to do is to put things in perspective. According to the most recent statistics from the CDC, approximately 80,000 Americans died of influenza in 2017. Here in Canada, there are between 2000 and 8000 deaths from the flu and its complications each year.

Even so, nobody in North America walks around freaked out about catching the flu. That’s because we’re used to the typical flu that comes around each year. We know the signs and the symptoms and we’ve learned to live with it. It’s not a new, mysterious ailment that we don’t understand, and I think that it’s this fear of the unknown that’s making North Americans most anxious about the coronavirus these days.

Although at this point the virus seems to be well-contained within the borders of mainland China, with only 7 confirmed cases in Canada and only 12 in the entire US as of this writing, we’re still feeling stressed. That’s because it’s human nature to worry over unfamiliar micro-organisms. Germs are invisible and their mechanism of contagion can be confusing. When a new virus arises, we’re unsure whether or how it will affect us, and this makes these new viruses all the more terrifying.

All of the hype around the novel coronavirus brings me back to a different type of threat. It was the time just after 9/11 and people were terrified, wondering when the next horrific attack was coming. I remember that the media was fueling the flames of our fears, going on about how terrorist attacks were going to become the new normal. I also remember making a conscious decision not to dwell on the fear of the next attack or stop living my life.

Since 9/11 most of us have gotten used to living with the threat of terrorism. We don’t like it, to be sure, and we’re doing all we can to address it, but we accept it as our new reality. There have been numerous terrorist attacks or aborted attacks in North America since 2001, from both domestic and external sources. Even so, our degree of fear around such attacks has diminished. We’ve learned to live with the threat. It’s become part of the new world order.

We did the same thing when AIDS was new. First, we were terrified, and this terror was demonstrated by our behavior. But then when we learned more about the disease and we became used to it being part of our new reality, we also learned to live with it. We calmed right down.

I heard an infectious disease expert on TV the other day talking about how we’re going to have to learn to live with the novel coronavirus as well. Of course, first we’re going to have to learn much more about it. We’re going to have to understand how it’s transmitted, how serious an infection it is, and how to protect ourselves from it. Most likely, there will be a vaccine for the virus available shortly. Most likely, there will be some specific treatment available as well.

Right now, there might be a few empty tables at our favorite Toronto restaurants on Valentine’s Day, as people stay home out of fear of becoming ill, but I imagine that next year, when Valentine’s Day rolls around, it’ll be just as impossible to get a reservation.

Sign up here for my free, monthly wellness newsletter. March is all about strategies for workplace success.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

 

Our Anxiety Over Novel Coronavirus May Be Worse Than the Disease

The hysteria we’ve been feeling lately over the arrival in North America of the novel coronavirus reminds me of the fears that we had around the SARS crisis in Toronto in 2003 and the Ebola virus in 2014.

If you lived through either of these times you can probably recall how freaked out people were during these outbreaks. Many Canadians over-reacted to situations that turned out to be not nearly as bad as they’d thought.

With the latest infectious outbreak appearing to originate in Wuhan, China, some people are once again falling into hysteria. Some are even beginning to vilify people of Chinese origin. In Canada, Chinese New Year banquets are being cancelled and acts of racism are starting to happen here and elsewhere.

In psychological terms, when people are frightened of something that they don’t fully understand and when they feel a lack of control over such a situation, they want to blame someone,  looking for a scapegoat against whom to direct their fear and anger. The problem is that acting out against Chinese-Canadians or anyone, for that matter, has no effect on the actual spread of the virus or on keeping anyone safe.

The media is a double-edged sword when it comes to disseminating information. It can be helpful in updating us on the latest news but there’s always the question of fear-mongering. It’s hard to know the accuracy of the information that we’re receiving and how much misinformation is being spread around.

One thing that is clear right now is that the threat of the virus appears extremely small in North America. There have been only a handful of cases identified so far and to date, no-one in this region has succumbed to the virus. The lessons learned from the SARS outbreak in Toronto seem to have prepared Canada for this new outbreak and it appears that so far, everyone involved is doing everything right.

Another aspect of human psychology is the tendency to panic over new infectious diseases. Eugene Beresin, writing in Psychology Today about mass hysteria around the Ebola virus argues that the media plays a major role in amplifying our fears about such outbreaks.

According to Mr. Beresin, “we as a society think about germs a lot. Hollywood… knows we think about germs a lot.” He adds that movies provide “fertile ground for our imaginations when real diseases emerge. In fact, sometimes the tail seems to be wagging the hysterical dog. The news coverage starts to look like the movies themselves.”

People often are driven by their emotions more than by logic and reason. Many of us have a tendency to indulge our fears rather than focusing on the facts but the fact is that we still don’t know enough about this new infection for us to be indulging our worst fears.

Although the World Health Organization has declared the novel coronavirus a global public health emergency, it’s still unclear how transmissible the virus is and what the actual mortality rate is. Now is the time to be gathering more data, not to be freaking out.

Anxiety is the number one mental health issue for Canadians and it affects how they view a variety of stressors. According to Statista, in 2018 approximately 41% of adults between the ages of 18-29, 36% of adults between the ages of 30-44 and 31% of adults between the ages of 45-59 suffered from an anxiety disorder. When any new stressor, such as an infectious disease outbreak comes along, people who suffer from anxiety are far more likely to over-react.

People with anxiety want to feel a sense of control over their world and they become distressed when they feel “out of control”. The problem is that we can’t really control anything. All we can do when dealing with a possible pandemic or any other stressful situation is to make informed, rational decisions given the information we have in the moment.

When I work with psychotherapy patients who have problems with anxiety, I always remind them that worrying doesn’t protect them from anything; it doesn’t prepare them for anything, and it doesn’t prevent anything from happening. All it does is make them feel miserable; as if the bad thing they fear had already happened, even when it hadn’t happened and might never happen.

Another thing I tell my patients is that they can combat anxiety by developing trust in themselves and in others. When it comes to infectious outbreaks, I remind my patients to trust that they’re able to learn the facts of the situation and then do what’s necessary to take the best possible care of themselves and their loved ones. They also need to trust that the people in positions of responsibility are doing everything they should in order to protect the public.

While we’re still in the early, information-gathering stages of this new outbreak, we need to recognize that our anxiety may be getting the better of us. We might be suffering more from our panic than we’ll ever suffer from the disease. Instead of going to the worst-case scenario, we need to focus on the facts, not the fear-mongering.

We’re going to learn a lot more about the current outbreak over the next few weeks and months, and with this added information we’ll be empowered to do what we can to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. In the meantime, let’s all heed the words of the great bard, Taylor Swift, taken somewhat out of context but still wholly applicable to this case when she says, “you need to calm down.”

Sign up here for my free, monthly wellness newsletter. February is about creating great relationships and finding true love.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.

8 Tips for Beating the Bad-Weather Winter Blues

 

They say that November is the cruelest month but I’m putting in my vote for January as a close second. All across Canada and the United States, a harsh and gloomy winter is upon us. Ontarians have been experiencing an unseasonably mild winter suffering pelting rains that have flooded many an unsuspecting basement, while British Columbia and Newfoundland are having record-breaking snowfalls. In Florida, frozen iguanas are falling out of trees.

So how can a person survive the long, hard winter? I can think of 8 tips for getting through the season with your health and your sanity intact:

 

Be prepared:

Listen to the weather forecast. If a storm is coming, stock up on supplies, make sure you have plenty of animal-friendly ice-melter and a solid shovel, and stay off the roads.

Deal with your feelings:

If you’ve got the winter blues, you might want to talk to someone about what you’re going through. You might need to use a light box if you have Seasonal Affective Disorder. You might need medication for depression. There’s no shame in having a mental health condition, and the sooner you deal with it the sooner you’ll start to feel better.

Come together as a community:

In Newfoundland after the recent massive dump of snow, everyone has been helping each-other out doing anything from sharing food, shoveling out driveways, and visiting the elderly. They’re a role model to the rest of us for cooperation and kindness.

Help the critters:

Here in Toronto, I’ve put up shelters in my yard for the feral cats that have a hard time getting through the coldest months of the year. I also put out food every day for the cats and the birds, and the food is shared by all the other wildlife living nearby, including bunnies, opossums, squirrels and skunks, and rumors of the odd fox. It feels good to do good.

Think globally.

Australia is on fire. China is under coronavirus lockdown. Iranians across the globe are mourning their losses from the recent Ukraine flight 752 disaster. While you’re grumbling about your crummy local weather patterns, consider helping out these communities through volunteering or donating to charity. As bad as you’ve got it, someone else might have it worse.

Enjoy what you’ve got.

After the huge dump in Newfoundland, people posted pictures of kids snowboarding down the streets of St. John’s. Like these kids, you can take advantage of your local weather. If it’s mild out, you can enjoy going for a brisk walk. If it’s been snowy, try going tobogganing or hitting the ski slopes. Fresh air and exercise will improve your mood, regardless of what rotten weather you’ve been dealing with.

Cuddle up at home.

If you can’t get out because of the inclement weather, this is a great time to hang out with your loved ones. You could cook meals together, play board games or have some heartfelt conversations; maybe you could get romantic. Statistics show that nine months after a massive storm like the one Newfoundland just had, there’s always an equally impressive surge of babies being born.

Write your great Canadian novel/screenplay/memoir.

When you’re stuck at home because of terrible weather, it might be the perfect time to sit down at the keyboard and finally commit to the brilliant piece of writing you’ve been promising yourself you’d get to. Being creative is hard and a lot of people avoid it for as long as they can. In crappy weather, though, you have the perfect opportunity to finally face down your demons and see what kind of masterpiece you can come up with.

For many of us in North America, winter is a brutal inevitability, but you don’t have to just sit there and take it. If you follow the eight tips I’ve laid out here, you might just find that January becomes your favorite month of the year.

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The Trick to Actually Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions

The New Year is here again and it brings to mind a former patient – let’s call her Jody. Every year, toward the end of December, Jody would read me her list of New Year’s resolutions and then a week or two later she’d show up at my office with a downcast look and her shoulders hunched over in shame. She was despondent and embarrassed because yet again, she was unable to keep even one of her resolutions.

Whether it was going on a diet, starting an exercise program, clearing out her clutter or following a budget, Jody was notoriously awful at keeping her New Year’s resolutions. Even so, she’d embark on the same process at the end of each year thinking that maybe this time, it would be different.

Does this story remind you of anyone you know? Maybe it reminds you of yourself. Like Jody, too many of us are great at making New Year’s resolutions but terrible at following through with them. What’s with that?

 

We all want to be happy and fulfilled and one of the ways to do this is by making positive changes in our lives. We can give up the old habits that aren’t working for us and adopt  new habits that are likely to be more successful.

We can let go of the attitudes, beliefs or expectations that don’t serve us and open our minds to new ways of seeing things.

We can look at the people in our personal and professional lives and consider which of them are supporting us in becoming our best self and which are holding us back. And we can foster the positive relationships and walk away from the less positive ones.

Making New Year’s resolutions can be a good way to jump-start these changes but unless we go about it in the right way, just like Jody, we’ll be wasting our time.

As another New Year arrives, many of us have planned out our resolutions for 2020. Despite our best intentions, however, most of us will be abandoning these plans before the end of week one. We want to be happy and have a better life, so why can’t we keep our New Year’s resolutions, no matter how hard we try?

 

There are five reasons why people like Jody can’t keep their New Year’s resolutions:

Too many resolutions: When we have too many ideas for all the changes we’re supposed to make, this becomes overwhelming. Piling on too much change at one time makes it impossible to create any change at all.
Superficial resolutions: If we make resolutions about shallow things like looking better, being richer or having more followers online we’ll know that deep down inside, these things don’t really matter and we won’t be motivated to keep these resolutions.
Pressure to perform: We’re going to have a lot of ambivalence about resolutions based on things we feel we “should” do, or resolutions that arise out of guilt or obligations. These put too much pressure on us and they’re almost impossible to keep.
Unrealistic expectations: When we aim too high we set ourselves up to fail. Making resolutions that are too difficult to accomplish is an exercise in futility. In their article, The False Hope Syndrome: Unfulfilled Expectations of Self-Change, authors Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman say that “when unreasonable expectations for self-change are not met, people are likely to feel frustrated and despondent, and to give up trying to change.”
Resistance: Change is hard and if we push ourselves too much, there’s going to be a push-back. If we want to keep our resolutions, we have to be kind to ourselves and we can’t force ourselves into creating change.

 

I have a family member – let’s call him Ben – who always keeps the goals he sets for himself. He’s a real inspiration to me because he never wavers. If he has a goal, he keeps it, no matter what.

Whether he’s making a New Year’s resolution to get out and walk more or just deciding in February to lose 10 pounds and improve his blood sugar levels, Ben will always follow through with his plans. What is Ben doing right that the rest of us don’t understand?

Ben isn’t particularly special. He’s just figured out the secret to achieving his goals. There are a few simple things that differentiate people like Ben from people like Jody.

Ben, and people like him, are making choices that enable them to in follow through with their New Year’s resolutions and with all their goals and plans.

There are five reasons why people like Ben can keep their New Year’s Resolutions:

They keep it simple: They stick to one or two resolutions. Keeping the numbers down prevents them from becoming overwhelmed by all the changes they’re supposed to make and it facilitates positive change.
They keep it meaningful: They go for the things that are most likely to bring them real happiness and success in life. This maintains their motivation to go after their goals.
They focus on their wants: They get in touch with what their heart truly desires and they don’t cave in to any guilt, obligation or “shoulds.”
They keep it do-able: They choose resolutions that they’re capable of achieving, so they’re much more likely to stick with them in the long run.
They go easy on themselves: Resolutions should be positive steps, not an exercise in self-abuse. When people don’t push themselves too hard, they make their goals more achievable.

Now that it’s clear why we succeed or fail in keeping our New Year’s resolutions, we’re all empowered to be more like Ben and less like Jody and to make the best choices for moving forward in the New Year.

Happy New Year to everyone and Happy New Year’s resolutions!

Sign up here for my free, monthly wellness newsletter. February is about creating great relationships and finding true love.

Click here for my latest online course on How to Handle Difficult People, Once and For All.