Category: 2016

Pride is like a subconscious superpower gone bad.  Instead of saving other people, it tries to save each of us from situations where it thinks we are in trouble or just not showing our greatness enough.  I picture it as a little character in my brain, like in the movie Inside Out.  An enemy of the moment – whether that be a friend, my mom, anyone – starts talking about something my brain doesn’t want to accept, like someone I know getting my dream job.  All my emotions are sitting there listening, but then my little pride character busts in with a shield saying “Don’t worry, I’ll kill this idea, it’s not really true, and of course, you are better than them!”  It takes over my other thoughts and emotions and off it goes to fight using words or maybe even actions against what really isn’t even an enemy at all.  I suddenly start spewing out what me, my family, or friends have done that is better or minimizing what someone else has done.  The few “victories” I have make my pride character think that she can defeat anything and convince her I need her help.

It’s scary to me how quickly she can pop up and how hard I have to use my other powers to fight her off.  A lot of times I won’t even realize my pride is present until a situation turns bad and I’m reflecting on why the conversation became so off.  I certainly haven’t mastered this in the moment and wonder if you ever really master this as you age.  Lately though I’ve been more worried about how pride may be impacting me in the bigger picture, preventing me from moving on from bigger things, like a job.  My daily meditation app Calm.com had a great quote the other day that stuck with me about when to push back versus when to accept a reality you can’t change.  It said “wisdom is knowing when to surrender.”  As I think about pride specifically, I wonder how much of our inability to accept and move on comes from our ability to not accept defeat.

Some people might think defeat feels like a strong word – I agree, I think it is.  I don’t think not getting a job, deciding to end a relationship, even deciding you can’t stick with a diet is always defeat.  I think what makes accepting that outcome hard though is because we feel defeated.  We internalize not reaching our goal as failure or defeat, and that’s where our pride comes in.  Because we have such a negative association with these words, we don’t like to walk away.  We try to push through when maybe, it’s just not meant to be.  But what if we thought of each of these as just an outcome – if we forgot about the past, how we got here and evaluated where we are today as just today.  We didn’t criticize ourselves for not doing enough or the right thing before and just looked at whether we still want what we set out to do now.  Would we still think about our situation as defeat?  And would we walk away today or continue to push an outcome to change?  Sometimes you do have to push through – a lot of marriages are saved when people do just this – but just make sure you are pushing through for the right reasons, not because you don’t want to admit the answer to what you want is ‘No.’

There are a million things to get distracted by these days, and it’s exhausting!  Last weekend I watched Dazed and Confused #alrightalrightalright – aside from being shocked at little Ben Affleck, I couldn’t help but notice the simplicity of it all.  When they were out with their friends, they were just out with their friends – no posting or tweeting about what they were doing because they had no cell phones.  Someone told me recently that Friends is making a comeback amongst high school students for the same reason – high school kids are intrigued by the 90s when there were landlines and no social media.  While it’s amazing to be able to see friends or family halfway across the globe, technology, specifically our phones, can overstimulate us to the point where it literally becomes too much to handle.  I have days where I’m just on overdrive, switching between so many apps and programs that I get anxious when I try to go to bed and slow down.  As an older millennial who has already lived during a time when things were a lot more simple, I get why younger people are intrigued by this time and don’t think it’s a hopeless goal.

When I hear people reminiscing for simpler times, I’ve mostly hear older generations trying to force millennials to go back to the way it was before, the live the way they grew up – folks say ‘you need to talk to people in person more’ or ‘you need to stop taking pictures of your every move’… as if they would have listened to their elders say that when the computer came out.  I had this conversation with someone in his 60s recently who said that their 20-year-old needs to just give up the texting and learn how to call people.  I can’t say I disagree that sometimes texting isn’t the right approach (which I am patiently reminded of by my boyfriend), but I do think trying to convince people that they shouldn’t take advantage of the latest in technology is a lost cause.  Instead, we need to help people see that they DO have a choice on whether to engage in the areas that are making their life feel more complex.

I have never been on Facebook but am on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.  Facebook came out when I was a third year in school and my school was one of the first ten schools to get access to Facebook.  Sure, over the past 12 years, there have been times when I debated joining because I didn’t want to miss out on what everyone else was doing.  Recently I’ve debated joining because it’s become such a crucial forum for marketing.  The reason I’ve never done it though is mostly because of time – in the scheme of what I want to spend time on, I just don’t have time for it.  I bring this up because even though social influences may make you feel otherwise, I think it’s up to you to make a choice.  I chose to limit myself to certain social media platforms because I thought my head might explode if I joined more.  If you are craving more simplicity, you can find ways to make your life more simple, like the olden days.  Maybe it’s by removing certain things on your phone so you aren’t so addicted.  Maybe it’s putting your phone away for an hour every night so you can relax without the pressure of tweeting or texting.  Technology is incorporated into so many areas of our life now so we can’t go exactly to the way things were, but we don’t have to chain ourselves to it… if we want to feel more free.

There’s a point in your twenties when you no longer have the same priorities, desires, or time as your friends.  When we’re younger, we generally experience similar life phases as our friends: going to school, graduating from school, heading to college, and getting our first job.  Most of our phases are set time periods that we don’t control so as a result, we experience things together, at the same pace.  We might have some aspects of life we differ on – relationships, sports, family – but our foundation is usually very similar.

This changes in your twenties – people start to get married, move multiple times, and find who they are.  All of this introduces complexities in our friendships and while exciting can also make us feel uncomfortable, confused and lonely, especially when we aren’t the one changing.  The first time this happened, I found it to be a tough adjustment.  When my first close friend got married and started to have kids, she was determined to still prioritize her friends the same.  Even with this dedication though, things changed, and the reality was that with another person to take care of, she just can’t give the same time to her friends.  At the time, I was in/out of relationships and felt very disconnected from her.  It was the first time in our friendship of over 15 years where we couldn’t exactly relate.  This reality made me sad and I realized that our friendship was probably never going to be the same.

This was only the beginning of multiple friendships that would change over the years, some so much so that we aren’t friends anymore.  Like the old song, you make new friends and sometimes keep the old.  If you are experiencing that now, just know that it does get easier, and you learn more about who you are as you evolve with your friendships.  I think this played a huge role in helping me discover what I want in life.  The evolution doesn’t stop in your twenties though.  I’ve noticed in my thirties that finding friends is different, and the friendships that change or dissolve don’t always get replaced as easily or at all.  I don’t think it’s a factor of options but more a reflection of what I now want.  Now that I have changed, I find it harder to find other people who want the same things out of life and friendship.  I develop friendships that I can hang out with in specific capacities and for specific amounts of time, based on where we connect and both our personalities, but don’t necessarily feel the broader connection as some of my “be all” friends from when I was younger.

Facing this and admitting this is happening is hard because it can leave you feeling dismal.  It’s not fun to admit that it’s harder to make friends and definitely can be internalized as a reflection of you.  Am I difficult or just picky?  Am I being selfish by not trying to invest more with specific people or do I just know more of what I need?  Am I only looking for friends who add some value to my life or am I just more aware of how to balance who I’m friends with?  I’ve reflected on these questions a lot and decided that it’s an ongoing process.  With some people, I may just be less willing to invest to get to know them because I don’t have time to learn to appreciate our differences.  For others, we just might not be a good fit, and I realize this now that I know myself better.  I don’t know if this is just a 30-something phase but imagine that like my 20s, when I look back, I will be all the more happier for experiencing it.

A friend and I were recently talking about how her boyfriend has no idea where his money goes each month and doesn’t save any money.  She, working in finance and checking each individual transaction on her credit card statement against its receipt, could not fathom not knowing about her spending and not putting away money each month.  A few days later, I saw an article that pretty much said the same thing as my friend’s boyfriend.  The article stated 7 out of 10 Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, and this isn’t just folks who are low or middle income.

7 out of 10 Americans have less than $1,000 in savings

Over a third of folks making over $100,000 a year have less than $1,000 in savings as well.  In addition, the US personal savings rate (i.e. the percentage of your income after taxes that goes into savings, investments, etc.)  is down to half of what it was 50 years ago and is lower than almost all other developed countries.  It seems like a large percentage of the country is either unable to save or not prioritizing it which reminds me of my 20s.

When I started making money out of college, I didn’t want to know where my money went and savings was a small priority.  Instead of making a budget, I just took what I was making each month, deducted my rent, and hoped for the best.  For the most part, this system worked out pretty well, and I have my parents to thank #shoutout.  My parents were very strict when I got a credit card at 18 years old, threatening to cut up my credit card (that was NOT in their name) if they found out I had a balance.  It really annoyed me that they were keeping such a close eye, but over the years, it started to make sense.  My parents wanted to instill in me an ability to know when I can spend and when I can’t, what’s been coined “mental accounting.”  I would never have labeled it this myself, but it’s definitely what I would do.  I had created a subconscious system about how I spend my money that was based on my assessment:  Is something worth the price?  Will I regret if I don’t spend money on this?  Do I have the money now or should I wait for a future paycheck?  I would ask myself these questions in the moment and keep a semi-running mental list of where my expenses were for the month.  I would target putting away a certain amount each month and if my mental math worked out, I got to save a little.  The months where I didn’t really track well and went buck wild, I didn’t save.

It wasn’t the worst process, but I never reflected on where my money was going and wasn’t prioritizing saving.  I never asked myself the question “Am I spending my money where I want to be spending it for now and the future?”  As a result, at the end of some months, I would be frustrated that I couldn’t do or buy some of the things I wanted because the budget had run dry by the time these things popped up (which also really annoyed my friends when I made promises I couldn’t keep).  What I was missing was a planning component – the part of mental accounting where I figure out where I want to spend and overlay that into my decisions, the dreaded process of BUDGETING.  I think the word budget scares people (and me) because it implies work – thinking, calculating and ongoing assessment.  Thinking about your priorities, divvying up the money you make, and then following up on yourself.  If you are an Excel lover, you may love this – nothing like sitting down on a Saturday morning with a coffee and a color coded, Excel spreadsheet.  For the rest of us though, facing our expenses doesn’t give us the same high so we put it off… and if you are like me, for a few too many years.

I finally started budgeting in my late 20s, and I’m a lot happier with my finances as a result.  I don’t think I would have been able to save money without budgeting.  It took me a little while to figure out my system – I didn’t want to build a robust Excel spreadsheet so I decided to start by looking at graphs of my historical spending by category.  This may sound hard to do but credit card companies actually do this for you now so all you have to do is look at your online account.  I looked at how my spending was for two different years and whether it felt “right” for me.  I then did the math on how that breaks out by paycheck so I would know generally how much I can spend on each category: food, clothing, rent. etc.  Over time, as my income has changed, I’ve adjusted what buckets should be increased or decreased.  If a big trip or wedding pops up, I can decide which bucket to adjust to pay for the expense.  When I spend, I have a sense of this in my head and still keep a semi-running mental list of each categories balance.  If I go over in one, I know I’m making a trade-off in another and can decide if it’s worth it.

This may feel like a lot of work to but at the end of the day, finances are a big part of our life and saving isn’t always easy.  It’s like delicious french fries staring at you from the table but deciding not to eat them because you want ice cream later.  It feels easier to ignore finances but our decisions earlier in life usually come back to impact us later on, positively or negatively.  Unfortunately, for most people, a lot of our decisions are impacted by our finances.  If you’ve never made a budget, I encourage you to think about it today – find a system that works for you and start spending your money how you want to spend it… and don’t forget to save a little!  As Jon Stein founder of Betterment shared on last week’s episode, $1 invested today can turn into $20 to $40 later in life!  Don’t miss out!

I’m not someone who often feels regrets or plays the ‘what if’ game about what could have happened if one little thing in a situation had been different.  I think I don’t feel regrets because I’ve had to get behind my decisions from a fairly young age.  I started out my career in consulting which required me to make a lot of recommendations with very little experience.  At the beginning it felt very much like ‘fake it til you make it.’  I learned how to make decisions quickly, with just the information at hand, and be confident in those decisions.  Because I was often presenting these recommendations back to clients, I learned how to be very confident and get behind a recommendation even if I felt that what I was recommending was only slightly better than another option.  It’s made me confident about making decisions in my other parts of life which I think ties to regrets – I can make a decision and know that what I made was the best for that version of me, at the time.  Sure, future me may make a different decision if put in the exact same situation – but for who I was at the time, I trust my decision to choose that path.

Even though I haven’t really felt regrets, I didn’t realize how much happier I could be until I quit my job in April.  For a little over two years, I consistently disliked my job, but I didn’t quit because I felt that quitting wouldn’t lead me to a happier place.  I knew people who quit their job and moved on to the next and weren’t much happier.  I also didn’t have an idea of what I would do if I left – I had spent my career in various consulting and financial services companies and got the same itch to leave each job after a couple of years.  Moving again, in my head, wouldn’t have made a difference, and I had to find what inside me was driving the unhappiness.  I was very grateful for my job, at the same time, as I had family members and friends who were struggling to find jobs during the time so I knew I was fortunate to have anything.  I also didn’t believe that you should only do a job that you love and needed to pay back my school debt.  Sometimes, your priority has to be to survive and survival involves working in a job that you don’t love.  So I stuck with my job, not enjoying it, and got more frustrated with myself and visibly at work, as I struggled to figure out what to do next.

A company reorganization and breakup later, I woke up to what was driving my unhappiness.  I was so focused on fixing my job by answering questions like ‘what are the day to day aspects of my job I like?’ and ‘what are the skills I bring to a job?’ that I failed to think about how my job was impacting and controlling other aspects of my life.  My problem was that I didn’t really care about what I was doing in my job, in the big scheme of things, yet this was all I was doing.  My job had gotten so stressful and time consuming that it ate up all of my energy.  I couldn’t step back from it because I didn’t want to let others around me down yet the stress it was adding to my life was making me a worse person.  I think if I had felt passionate about the cause, then I would have felt less stressed because I would have been making an impact.  But for me, hearing about all the things in the world and doing what I was doing were a big disconnect, one that because it took up so much of my time, I basically reached a breaking point.

So, I quit my career because I realized I couldn’t devote all of my time and energy to something that wasn’t allowing me to enjoy my life everyday.  I decided to pursue a new career that I’ve always wanted to do and get a side job to make money.  It isn’t easy – I’ve had to really think about my priorities and trade financial freedom for flexibility.  I’ve sometimes had to disappoint people and say no to things I want to do because I can’t afford it or don’t have time.  But I couldn’t be happier.  My general mood and attitude are moving in a positive direction versus the negative direction I felt before.  I feel like I can breathe and relax again.  Which brings me to my point – I’ve realized over the past few months and after attending a funeral last week for my friend’s dad who was only 66 years old, that the cliche expression “life is short” carries so much meaning.  If you recognize that something needs to change within yourself or your life, don’t ignore it and think big picture of how it could be impacting you.  You don’t want to reach the point of regrets or in some cases, never be able to change it because it’s too late.  Don’t put off what you want be it big or small, whether it’s having a family, reading a book, doing something you enjoy.  The other side might be way better than you expected, or like in my case, beyond what you ever dreamed.

When I did my first few man on the street episodes, a few people asked me if it was hard to get people to talk for the episodes.  My answer was no, and honestly, I hadn’t really thought about that being an issue at all going into it.  Man on the street episodes are done for various networks so I figured there wouldn’t be an issue with approaching people to be on camera.  Then, in June, I did an episode on dating a robot where I wanted to interview both millennials and non-millennials to see whether there was a difference in response based on generation.  For this episode, I was surprised when I couldn’t get anyone above (my guesstimate) the age of 45 to participate in the episode.  I had to change the episode to just be about dating a robot versus how various ages responded.  This week, I interviewed folks about their ‘Secret Single Behavior’ – otherwise known as the things you do when no one else is around.  After my experience filming the robot episode, I wondered if this topic was going to be too personal to get folks to participate.  But, even this very intimate topic was no issue.  People shared not only what they do on their own, but one person shared a never been told secret!  As much as I would like to say its because of my oh-so-welcoming host demeanor, I know that I can’t claim total responsibility for getting folks to open up.  So the question is, why then are millennials so willing to share all for the camera?  Here’s my theory.

We feel special.
In grade school, our gym teacher sometimes allowed us to pick teams for sports.  Everyone in the class would line up and then two captains would choose who they wanted on their team.  It wasn’t always a fun activity, because of the risk of being picked last, but when you got picked within the first few students, it felt so good.  When it happened to me, I felt desired and valuable.  I think being asked to speak on camera is similar.  You see someone walking around with a microphone, looking for who to film, and they come up to you, out of all the other people around.  It makes us feel like they think we’ve got something to offer that’s of value, something special.  In our 20s and 30s, we’re still very much figuring out what we bring to society, what value we have to offer.  Talking on camera affirms that someone else thinks that we have it, even if we haven’t figured out what “it” is yet.

We feel connected.
Vulnerability is a funny thing.  It can make us feel super uncomfortable and want to crawl into a hole, but it can also make us feel the most connected to people.  I think deep down we need to feel vulnerable to create human connections so look for opportunities, consciously or subconsciously, to feel that way.  Sometimes it can manifest itself in situations we aren’t expecting.  I remember having a break up conversation with a guy and thinking, wow, we’ll probably get back together because I feel so close to him right now.  He was telling me that he wasn’t sure how he felt about me, yet, his honesty and vulnerability made me feel closer to him than ever!  Other times we seek it out.  I watched a prison documentary once which said inmates in solitary confinement would rather be beaten by a guard then face days of no contact with anyone.  In today’s world, because we often interact behind a screen of our phone, we have to create opportunities to connect with people in a vulnerable way.  Finding these opportunities can take effort but if you get asked to share your thoughts on a show, it’s an easy way to get this connection.  We may not be aware of why we have the desire to share, because it isn’t necessarily comfortable, but I think we are pulled into participating because it breeds a real, authentic connection that we all crave.

We want to be Reality TV stars.
Reality TV lowered the bar for becoming famous.  While some reality TV shows are about people with talent, like Chopped or Fixer Upper, some shows are just about the drama of people who haven’t really done anything aside from open up their lives to being on TV.  Reality TV is addicting because we can use that as an outlet to compare those people to our lives – either be grateful that we aren’t like that or watch enviously wishing we had the life of the Kardashians.  Either way, because a lot of these stars are just average people (or were when they started), we relate to these shows and think it’s attainable to be one of them.  As millennials, we grew up in this age of Reality TV so crave this ‘stardom’ more than other generations.  Being in a YouTube video brings us one step closer to potentially making that desire a reality which is why I think it makes millennials in particular more willing to participate.  While I know there are probably a lot of people who would say they don’t want to be famous, I think deep down there’s something in all of us that does crave the affirmation of desire that comes with being famous.

Whatever the motivation, it is evident that we as millennials are much happier to spill ourselves on screen then generations before. While I appreciate this for my show, I think it’s important to more consciously think about why we are like this. And next time you’re approached on the street, speak up!  Because who knows, you may just be the next reality star.

I recently took a liking to Taylor Swift’s song “New Romantics” and decided Taylor Swift is THE millennial of millennials.  Even though she hangs out with models and fun celebs and posts amazing pictures on Instagram, she writes and sings about the struggles of being young – what its like to grow up during this unique time of opportunity, total transparency and instant gratification.  Her lyrics speak to this and give us a sense of relatability, an understanding that she, too, knows the struggle is real!  But what’s interesting about this song in particular is that the lyrics seem depressing when you read between their catchiness.  Because I have a history of always thinking songs are the wrong words (yes, I thought the Thong song was the Dong song), I looked up the lyrics just to make sure I heard correctly.  With the exception of one or two words (who wouldn’t think the opposite of love was anger?), what I heard was true.  But are we really as Tay Tay describes?  Let’s explore – here’s a link to her song lyrics since I am legally not allowed to quote her directly: http://www.metrolyrics.com/new-romantics-lyrics-taylor-swift.html.

After reflecting on the song, I definitely find myself having experienced or experiencing of a lot of what she talks about.  Her verse on being tired… This was the THEME of my 20s, and lately, I’ve had so many conversations with younger friends or coworkers wanting to switch their job, switch their apartment, switch their roommate, after just a few months… because it’s just not working.  Her lyrics on no show trains… I’ve definitely sought out perfection most of my 20s and didn’t settle for anything less, making myself pretty miserable in the process.  The line about going for danger… Um, yeah, who hasn’t dated the semi-jerk because if we can just win him over, then he must really like us.  The phrase on dancing… Does she mean dancing or the distractions we surround ourselves with to not face reality which only then end up hitting us in the face and “knocking us off our feet?”

I can’t speak for you, but in my opinion, I think the song sums our generation pretty well.  For better or worse, T Swift isn’t some distant, removed celeb, but she’s one of us.  She’s is BEING millennial.  But I think “New Romantics” isn’t meant to offend but to reinforce and point out what we all need – things we’ve learned, things we’re still learning, and things we need to learn.  I hope each time you listen to this song you will think about what this means to you, even if you are busy dancing.

This week was big for Periscope and Facebook Live.  Earlier in the week, the Democratic sit-in over gun control was not able to be filmed via C-SPAN, the usual filming mechanism for House of Representative sessions.  C-SPAN can only be filmed when the House is in session and when it was adjourned, the cameras were shut off.  Instead, C-SPAN leveraged the Periscope and Facebook Live accounts of two different representatives who were filming via their feeds.  Folks throughout the country could see what was going on “behind the closed doors” of the House of Representatives.  The news reports are saying that this coverage was educational for many folks in the country who had never heard of these apps, increasing visibility from just celebrities and younger generations to the broader nation.

While I was at the gym yesterday, news broke on a gunman in a movie theater in Germany.  I watched MSNBC report on it and try to give as much information as the event was unfolding.  Like many breaking news stories these days, information they were receiving was from non-news sources, one of which was again Periscope.  What was interesting to me about this coverage though was the emphasis put on the Periscope footage not being live.  MSNBC stressed that all footage was previously aired footage and that they would never air live footage because like the folks watching at home, a gunman could, too, have access.  Airing footage of security being set up outside or specifics could potentially give away information that would end up hurting the folks inside.  While obvious after they said it, the point being made by MSNBC was not one I had thought of, and I’m wondering if I’m not alone.

Transparency is all the rage these days and while I can see the benefits of live video, I wonder if we are smart enough to handle it.  Stories have popped up the past couple months about live streaming gone bad which is an obvious risk of any live show, like news.  What’s not quite as obvious is when live filming could reveal too much and the short and long term implications of it.  In the past, the folks who have access to live streaming are trained and limited, i.e. reporters, film crews, etc.  While I do think the filtering of what people see has gone too far in some news publications, the risk of information getting into the wrong hands is at least less likely.  Terrorist organizations would love to continue violence against Westernized nations who tend to be the most technologically connected and potentially the most likely to overshare.  Filming harmless events may prove to just be that, but could they also be used to find out information that, in the past, was harder to find or impossible to know in a given moment?  I think the MSNBC coverage proves it has that potential.  I don’t necessarily have the answers to whether live streaming apps should be limited.  We’ve seen the harm in different news sources picking and choosing what to report so filtering these apps might be worse.  But I do think our generation needs to at least think before they stream… Who has access to the information you are sharing, and what might they do with it?  What secrets might we be revealing in the moment that can be used then or down the road to lead to more violence?  What information is better left a mystery to the broader world?  Food for thought as we approach the holiday weekend next week and you are tempted to share all with the world.

There are some days where you wake up refreshed and feel excited and passionate to take on the day!  And then there are the other days where you don’t really want to get out of bed.  You wish you had gotten a little more sleep and hadn’t stayed up to watch the last episode of Bloodline.  You wish your boss was on vacation because his attitude yesterday just cannot be tolerated again today.  You also wish you hadn’t sent that late night text to your girlfriend because now you aren’t sure if she is still your girlfriend.  The other days kind of feel like what it would be like if Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day wrote an adult version of his life.  So what do you do on the other days?  You could be like Alexander and think about moving to Australia, but unfortunately, we know that it’s probably just going to lead to bigger problems, like… er… losing your job (which can sound appealing but probably best not to decide in this moment).  Instead, I’ve found it’s helpful to breathe, focus on today and what motivates me.

Breathe
When we are rundown or not 100%, we can often feel the pressure of not feeling 100% when we would like to be.  We sense ourselves being a little off, so we try to make up for what we are feeling by forcing ourselves past our mood.  We exert extra energy into how we are acting which can sometimes backfire and makes us feel even more off.  If forcing yourself past your mood works, then more power to you.  For me, this only ends up taking it’s toll in the long run (if you need a visual, just picture Crutchy in Newsies shredding the newspapers).  Instead of trying to fight the reality of where I am, I’ve found it helpful to start off the day with some deep breaths.  Taking deep breaths, down into your stomach, is shown to physically relax our bodies and help fight any of the anxiety or stress we may feel about taking on the day.

Focus on Today
I struggle with anxiety so it’s easy for me to want to add to my problems when I feel any.  When I’m feeling overwhelmed by today, my natural tendency is to let myself get overwhelmed by today and tomorrow.  Keeping yourself in check about what you need to get done today, and not tomorrow, is important because it allows you to exert your energy on what’s necessary, not what’s a nice to have.  Don’t stress yourself by adding more to your plate when you don’t need to.

Focus on What Motivates You
It’s amazing how much motivation is related to energy.  If you are doing something that energizes you, then your ability to stay motivated during a task can remain longer than it would otherwise.  It seems obvious but wasn’t something I realized until last year when I took an energy assessment.  What energizes you has less to do with what you are doing and more to do with how you are doing it.  For me, I’m motivated by relationships so if I’m doing a task to promote someone or work with someone, I’m going to be more motivated.  For others, it could be the ability to feel accomplished into a certain time period so checking off completed steps is motivating.  If you woke up with your energy level low, then the easiest way to counteract that is to find out what makes you motivated and incorporate that into your day.

I’ve felt my mood and attitude change just by taking these three steps.  But if you don’t, you can always move on to option b… moving to Australia.