Category: Questions … Fri

Question Fridays

What do you do when someone doesn’t respect what’s yours?

Posted on by Senia

Hi, welcome to Question Friday. I get this question sometimes so I thought I would put it to you. Whether in working with a person who doesn’t “get” what value you’ve added, or whether passing off something you own to another person to hold on to, or whether you share an idea that you believe is just about sacred and you get it stamped out… What do you do when something you are very much attached to is treated without respect? Please add your suggestions in the comments.

Q: What do you do when someone doesn’t respect what’s yours?

More detail: What do you do when you think something has a lot of value, a lot of potential, but then someone else doesn’t treat it that way? What do you do when you pass a project on, and it is not treated well by the new owner? And what do you do if it makes you sad to have been part of the project before? What do you do when you’ve worked really hard on something, and your effort is absolutely unrewarded?

First thing in the warm weather?

Posted on by Senia

We’re all a little like the Tin Man once the winter is ending … uncreaking, derusting, getting moving.

What’s the first thing you’ll do in the warm weather?!

Here are some of mine:

  • Walk around!
  • Breathe
  • Enjoy the morning sun
  • Plan some weekend outdoors things – biking, walking by the water
  • Drive with the sun roof open!

It’s Question Friday. Come on in and chat in the comments!

Q FRI: How would you write your quote bio?

Posted on by Senia

Hi, Welcome to Question Friday. I receive daily quotes by email, and below the quote, there is a brief summary of the person’s life.

It’s not easy to summarize our own bios from five sentences to one or two, and here, whole lives are summarized and in a wonderful way too! If you were writing the bio to appear underneath some of your quotes, what would you want the quote bio to say?

Q: How would you write your quote bio?

Here are some examples, and my italics of some great phrases in them:

About Richard Bach
Richard Bach, the American pilot and author, became hugely successful with the publication of the slim novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull a spiritual quest about a bird who loved to fly rather than seeing flight as a means to an end. He was born in Illinois in 1936, a descendant of composer Johann Sebastian Bach. He has been an Air Force Reserve pilot, a flight instructor, and a barnstormer; most of his books involve flight either directly or as a metaphor.

About Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams was the pen name of Thomas Lanier Williams, the multiple-award-winning Southern Gothic playwright best known for his plays Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie. He was born in 1911 in Mississippi, where he had a difficult childhood with an abusive father, a smothering mother, and a schizophrenic sister. His emotionally honest plays often feature sensitive souls who don’t fit into a confining culture. He spent most of his adult life in New York City. He died in 1983.

About Virginia Satir
American psychotherapist Virginia Satir played a central role in shaping family therapy. She was born in Wisconsin in 1916. While working as a teacher, she became deeply involved in the lives of her students and their parents. This led to graduate school and a career change. She took on the mission of inspiring therapists to work with families. She cofounded the Mental Health Research Institute in California, where she held the first-ever family-therapy training program. She died in 1988.

What’s your quote bio?!
BTW, do not be intimidated by the fact that these bios above are of well-known people. Write yours as just that – yours!
p.s. Brag! :)

Best,
Senia

QUESTION FRIDAY: How do you celebrate steps towards a goal?

Posted on by Senia

This week, we talked about the exponential power of daily action and taking daily action steps to gain the 10,000 hours of expertise!

Question: When you’re working toward a goal, how do you celebrate the steps along the way to that goal?

celebrate

Here, on Positive Psychology News Daily, Nicholas Hall gives a summary of some ways to celebrate steps. He breaks out possible celebrations along two axes: body-mind-spirit and pleasure-engagement-meaning. Some suggestions:

  • Go dancing (Body and Engagement)
  • Learn something you’ve always wanted to (Mind and Meaning)
  • talk to a friend (Mind and Engagement)

What is your list of small celebrations?!
Thanks!
Great weekend!

I’d love to hear your answers. Feel free to leave anonymous comments. My answers are in the comments also.
Image: fireworks.

What are your newest GOOD Constraints?

Posted on by Senia

Hello, welcome to Question Friday!
What are some of your recent, newest GOOD Constraints?

* What are you doing that’s great for yourself?
* Are you keeping to an exercise schedule?
* Are you keeping to a sleep schedule? (The single most important thing to a healthy life, IMHO)
* Have you set a new rule for yourself recently?

Q: What are some of your recent, newest GOOD Constraints?

My answers are in the comments. Look forward to reading yours also!

Technorati keywords: habit, goals, new year’s resolutions, resolutions.

Q: What’s your recent self-challenge?

Posted on by Senia

Welcome to Question Friday! We’ve been talking about self-regulation and about streeeetching yourself toward a challenge.

Where are you excitingly pushing yourself? Where are you going to grow? Where are you most alive? Where are you challenging yourself enough to create that “healthy stress” that I love so much – that combination of anticipation and what-if-ness.

Q: What’s your recent intense self-challenge?

I actually think today’s question may be too personal to post an answer as a comment (or you can always post anonymously and just use my email address for the required field – it’s in the upper right under “Email.” If you find it too personal to answer outloud, simply skip the comments section this Friday. Just ponder it for a moment.

Be well, great weekend,
S.

What’s your best organizing tip?

Posted on by Senia

Q: What’s your best tip for organizing? What do you do well in organizing that you think works great?

My answers:

  • My biggest new find is Backpack! Love it. The free, 5-list version works great. This is like a to-do list on drugs! It’s so easy and so useful to have everything laid out simply. A lot of people have raved about Backpack, including Kathy here and Dave here and Jeff Bezos here. I’m a new convert!
  • I plan the night before (mainly!) so that during the day I can spend time doing, not planning.
  • There are some things that I always do – there is no no-doing (a la Yoda). These are the constants – such as exercising a certain number of times per week and replying to emails within 24 hours and completing at least three important things every day. Because I have these rules for myself, it helps me organize everything else!
  • I use Dave Seah’s tools, especially the Emergent Task Tracker (Flash version) to do things faster within the day.

What are your best tips for organizing? Would love to hear them. The more tips, the better. This is Question Friday. Looking forward to reading your thoughts! Thanks and great weekend.

Best remedy for warding off a cold BEFORE it happens?

Posted on by Senia

Would really like to know.

Here are some things I’ve tried:
* Oil of Oregano – a tried and true favorite
* Airborne – the vitamins, electrolytes, and amino acids tablet that tastes like fanta when you put it in water
* Wellness vitamins/herbs/aminoacids
* Hyland’s homeopathic anti-flu tablets

Here are some things suggested online:
* Dress warmly when you go outside – cover hands, head (and nose?). And get as much sunlight as posisble to build your immune system.
* Gargle daily with water (just simply gargling once a day with water, and keeping hands washed regularly), some Japanese researchers show, but other researchers attribute the effect to placebo.
* Make sure to get outdoors for part of the day and get some sunlight (don’t spend all day indoors).
* Multivitamins are a good idea (many sources all over the web)
* Ginseng supplements may be a good idea
* Drink lots of fluids, gargle with saltwater to make the throat feel better, be in a place with more humidity, and (ta-ta!) chicken soup (I like this article)
* Most importantly, water, fluids, soups, liquids – to hydrate your body so that it can repair faster

Update (2-13-06):
* Lots of Vitamin C and chicken soup (also potentially cold-eeze and homeopathy)
* Suggestions from you guys: lots of sleep (Virginia), ginseng (Toby), ummm, bourbon (thanks, Scott). :)

What do you suggest?
Q: What’s your best remedy for warding off a cold BEFORE it happens?

Friday is Question Friday. Would love to know what you suggest! Thanks.

Q: What are the best web applications you’ve seen?

Posted on by Senia

That’s it. Since we talked about Web 2.0 briefly today, the question is:

What are the best web applications you’ve seen recently?

Some of my answers:
* www.nowthen.com – Collect your history starting from today by emailing the site cell phone pictures of yourself and short text messages.
* I like myspace for musicians.
* Blogs, blogs, and more blogs. I’m a fan of great blogs. Dave Seah, Kathy Sierra, Evelyn, Alvin, Chris, Dave Shearon, Anna, Seth, Logic+Emotion, ConsumingAmbitions, news at PPND, SharpBrains, Cognitive Daily, photo of the day.

What do you think?!?! :)

What are your steps to exercise success?

Posted on by Senia

Well, it’s about a month into the new year. How’re you feeling about exercise these days? What steps could you take right now – today – if you wanted to ensure your exercise success?

I read a sheet on this recently from a health club. Here is what they recommend. What would you recommend?

Five Steps to Exercise Success

  1. Make it personal – What works for you: for your lifestyle, time constraints, budget, likes, dislikes?
  2. Make it fit – Schedule time every day or whatever your frequency is. Work blocks of exercise into your schedule.
  3. Set some goals – Set a long-term goal and break it into weekly or monthly targets (amount of weight to lose, amount of weight to benchpress).
  4. Reward your efforts – Celebrate successes! Reward your commitment to improving your health. Try to make the reward not food.
  5. Get back on track – Anything can get you off track (a trip out of town, cold weather, a bit of a cold) – how will you get back on? Can you plan to restart, maybe with lower weights or half the exercise time to readjust.

Ok, and what would I recommend as my steps to success in exercise?

My Steps to Exercise Success

  1. Get to the gym – Decide how many times a week, and go those times hell or highwater.
  2. Play and Have Fun – Vary your routine sometimes or go with a friend or go to a weights or cardio class to play around with it and see what you like. Say hi to other people at the gym, get curious, enjoy it.
  3. Push yourself (e.g. Interval train) – go mild, then increase and go hard, then go mild, then increase and go hard (Body for Life has a good description of this). Interval training has a faster effect on your body, and it keeps you in the moment more about the exercising, doesn’t allow your mind to wander – it must be focused on the exercise.
  4. Reward yourself sporadically but often – Set yourself incremental goals like as one or two pounds per week weight loss or particular increase in weight, and reward yourself by getting on the phone with a good friend or by stopping by a goodwill and getting anything you like.

    What do you think?
    Q: What are your steps to exercise success?