How to get unstuck at work and move forward

– The number one crucial step is to get where you want to be

Linda is my best friend.

After she graduated from a university in pharmaceutical with a Master degree, she landed a nice job with the largest State owned pharmaceutical company in China. After eight years, she became the youngest senior engineer in the company and was assigned with an international project to work in Tokyo in a Nobel Prize Winner’s laboratory.

Linda completed her project in two years in Japan, published her research results on a peer-reviewed international journal…

She applied grant after returning from Tokyo. She was pumped with energy and excitement with her new learning and research capability after coming back to her company. She wanted to contribute more…

However, her grant application got denied.

Linda was back to where she was two years ago.

How do you feel if you were Linda? Disappointed? May be.

But, life moves on.

Would you stay where you are if you were Linda?

The reality was that being in a state owned pharmaceutical company is like that you already have your golden bow for the rest of your life, with the nice salary and benefits. And Linda’s family and friends were around as well…

Linda was frustrated, not satisfied with her situation at work…

Time passed by… one week… one month… three months…

Linda was not happy, and she noticed that she developed shoulder pain, and neck pain… The pains became so sever that she had to see her doctor…

She had medication, acupuncture and message treatments…

Six months passed by her pains were still lingering around…

She went to an international conference to present her research in Japan. A professor from Canada was very interested in her research and came to her asking questions. The discussion went for a while… and Linda was encouraged to apply for a Ph.D study in his lab.

So she did,

Linda followed her heart – the internal craving for growth, bravely with clear determination. And her pains mysteriously disappeared soon after.

Person growth is the number drive for our happiness. If you are not satisfied with your situation, look internally and pay attention what makes you tick.

Very often, what makes us tick, makes us burst to sing, usually reflects our personal value, and what is meaningful for us.

So become more aware of those signals. Become more clear with what you want and why you want it.

Once you are clear what you want, you are half way to your success.

Go deep to find what you want today. Clarity is the key.

What is chasing you?

We are in a very dynamic and turbulent world now. Things are constantly come and thrown to us.

How can we find a peace of mind, keep focusing on our priority and do things confidently and efficiently?

What I found that works for me is to keep asking three questions:

Where do I want to go?
What is chasing you?
What future do I want to create?

First, “where do I want to go” gives me the sense of direction. This includes the goals I want to achieve, milestones to reach etc.

I need to be clear on this and align me actions to the goal every day. This goal is my filter of doing my work or living my life.

Second, “what is chasing you” let’s me having an internal dialogue with myself. Why I feel the way I’m feeling now? What makes me feel this way?

When I was in elementary grade one, I was chosen to be in a musical band. The musical teacher said I have the natural figures for Erhu (one Chinese music instrument), therefore I should be in the band.

Being in the band means I had to go practice after school. I hated. I began to escape the practice. Many times later, my band teacher went to my home talking to my parents about it.

I felt the shame of escaping the band and became very sensitive to criticizes and rejections at work.

Only after many years at work, I realized how the childhood experience had been chasing me for what I did and how I behaved in the past.

Now I have become much better in handing rejections and critiques. But the childhood experience had chased me many many years.

After recognizing my “trauma” and it’s impact on me, I have becoming more conscious my emotional experience and not let it being on my way.

Third, “what future do I want to create” has huge impact on my life. This is the light house of our journey.

If you can picture what do you want to create for you, you can live the future in your NOW. This is a very powerful initiative for me. It is the reason why I get up every morning from the bed and pumped up.

Summary:

These three powerful questions can change your life. And they can create a sense of self peacefully and happily do what your calling requires you to do.

Ask yourself the three questions and put your answers into action. I hope you can stand tall and still in this chaotic world.

Recognization is the first step going to confidence

My hands are shaking. My palms are wet. I am standing on a stage to start my first public speech in a club.

My brain is blank. What I have prepared last night is no where to be found…

I am frozen.

Time passes by. It feels like hours long.

No one laughs at me. No one makes fun at me. They look at me with smiles, expectations and encouragement,

One begins to applaud. Another one joins in. Then another, another one…

Everyone is applauding now.

I feel warm, safe, loosed up, my body circulation backs on. I an mot frozen any more.

I begin to speak.

I don’t know what I have said any more. But the whole experience has stacked with me forever.

I recognize that with a safe environment I can regain my confidence. If this happens to me once, it can happen to me again. My experience can be repeated.

We learn knowledge from schools with hope that we can recognize the situations where we can use it (repeat the knowledge) someday.

The purpose of the education is to prepare us to gain cognitive experience other people have for our future benefits. So that we can recognize them for our gains in life and career. Therefore, we may be able to repeat the success others have.

This principle applies to you is to gain your recognition when you have a life experience where you are scared, feel defeated, feel on the peak your life and career, and remember those moments.

When you are not confident facing a situation, reflect one of your past experience that you think you can “repeat” in a way giving enough energy to move forward.

Confidence is an experience.

You can be confident anytime if you can recognize your situation and choose to move on anyway.

Confidence is a choice.

Confidence is a working progress.

Confidence is a practice.

You can be confidence if you have done it once in your life.

Suggestion for you:

1. prepare your precognition by reflection your life experience and knowledge.

2. When you feel not confident, take a deep breath and moment to find your precognition, repeat what you have prepared.

3. Take an action forward

A toast to 2019

1. Successfully survived with many learning, experience and more connections.

2. Successful relocation.

3. More clear with who I am.

4. I appreciate all the people I have met in 2019. They are all my good teachers.

5. A year of growth in a hurry.

6. A year of confusion world wide politically, led by the UNited States. No more politics in 2020.

7. A year of yoga.

8. A of self care.

9. A year of reading.

10. A year of awaking.

The choices make us who we are

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you will get.

Someone said this to me long time ago. My interpretation was that our life is colorful, welcome whatever comes to your way.

But, today when this same saying comes to me again, I have new interpretation: we do have choices to choose which chocolates we want to eat.

We do have choices.

We can make our own choices in life.

Scenario one: We face challenges, losses, setbacks. We can choose to face them or to hide them

When we don’t allow ourselves to grieve our losses, wounds, and disappointments, we are doomed to keep reliving them. We do not set us free.

Freedom lies in learning to embrace what happened. Freedom means we muster the courage to dismantle “the prison”, brick by brick. To strengthen our muscles by facing our wounds and vulnerabilities.

Courage is a choice.

Scenarios two: In our daily life, we are hungry for approval, attention, affection. We are hungry for the freedom to embrace life and to really know and be ourselves.

Live a life with presence and appreciation is a choice.

There are many choices in life. We are driving the car of life. Life is beautiful, colorful and tasty. The choices we made become who we are.

Confidence is a choice

One of my friends Ying, who is a coach now, has made seven transitions in her career. She was a consultant, a finical analyst, a startup entrepreneur, a business partner, a freelancer, a general manager. In 2018, she chose to become an executive coach.

When people asked her, were you scared to switch from one industry to another industry? Why you are so confident to move from one career to another?

Ying said, “I look back. What I see is someone pursuing her passion, following her heart, finding meanings in her life. She makes choices that give her energy, give her meaning and get her out of the bed everyday.”

Does this mean Ying’s life has been smooth? It is nothing like that.

Ying has many sleepless nights. And those nights also gave her many rewards to learn, to experience and to grow.

All those years of life experience has made who she is today.

Ying had times when she was intimidated by unknown, by the exposure of her vulnerabilities.

How did she handle these down times?

Ying told me during those periods that she bites her teeth tightly and asked herself to make one small step or one thing each day to make herself feel good about herself. She limited her thinking to make a small progress each day and focused on small wins each day. Surprisingly after a few days she saw improvement.

These began her cycles of upward spiral structural psychology. Whenever she has the churning stomach feeling, she asks herself quietly to go back to the spiral structure. And this has been her secret weapon and source of her confidence.

Confidence is an option we can choose to have.

Confidence is to face our vulnerability, admit, learn from others and move forward.

We are born with confidence. Confidence is us. Confidence is our potential. We have unlimited confidence in us. It’s matter of choice for us to be confident.

I have many ideas and assumptions

Yesterday there are two bright and smart new graduates came to my house for dinner.

I asked them what are their plan after graduation. One has solid plan and plan B for her next step. The other one, claimed with charismatic personality, has a lot to talk.

He talked about his views on the world economic development, what technology can do for the world and it might go. It seems glamorous and grandiose.

Then I asked him, “How these development are related to you, to your situation?”

He seems stumbled with the question.

He is not alone. Many of us including me have many ideas and assumptions. These ideas and assumptions create little value till we form assertions and test them in life.

When we are confident to do things, we know we can test our confidence in action. We do things through trials and errors to get where we want.

Having ideas and assumptions are actually a good start. It may be your step one.

Step two is to form an assertion with them.

Step three is to bring the assertion to test in action.

For example, my assertion is: with the fast pace of technology development, our life becomes busier and may be stressful. People may be stressed out and lost their sense of direction, or even self. Therefore, business coaches or life coaches will become highly demanding in the next decade.

How do I test this assertion?

I will join various networking groups to check the feedback and their needs. Next step is to fine tuning to understand which areas are really people need help for.

With the above knowledge, I can form some tests and go back to the groups for further feedback.

I even can test my assertion online and through social network.

With the review I can get from my tests, I might be able to move some where and get some work done.

You will not have happiness everyday and all the time

When you are happy, what exactly you feel?

You feel content, you feel you want to hold the moment forever, you feel you don’t want anything to disrupt and change this moment.

You want to preserve the moment, the state.

“Happiness is simply absence of desire.” James Clear said.

However, happiness is a fleeting. Because we are human. We always have desires and wants.

When we have desire, we have struggles, challenges and failure. We want more, we want to achieve more. As human, it’s natural for us to have desires all the time. It’s in our DNA.

Desires move us from happiness to worries, hope, stress, joy and satisfaction.

We live in a dynamic world.

When we are happy, we need to preserve the treasured moments. Because happiness the space between our desires. They do not last and may not come easy.

This does not mean we should not have happiness. It simply means that happiness is a state. Happiness is not a goal.

Happiness is dynamic. It moves from time to time. It depends on the environment and context you may experience different degrees of happiness.

For example, when you had your first chocolate, you may fall in love with its taste and fell so happy. You become in love with chocolates. You like it. But the degrees of happiness each time you have one chocolate may be different depending on when, where, and with whom you have it.

You will not be happy all the time and everyday. But, you certainly can create more moments in your life to appreciate any happy moments you have.

Here are a couple of tips for creating more happy moments in your life:

1) when you are happy, savor it with your heart, your spirit and your body. Remember how this happiness makes you feel, smell and taste.

2) reflect the peak moments or happy moments you have had when you are down and feel flat. See how can you “repeat” or regenerate it. This can bring you more happy feeling and release some frustrations in your life.

With these two tips, have a happy day!

I have issues with adjustment…

I am very good at adjustment, so as I felt about myself for sure one month ago.

I have moved biggly several times in my life. I say biggly, it’s because I moved from one city to another city, one country to another country, one continent to another continent, one region of the world to another region of the world… I love meeting new people, new world and gaining new experiences.

During as these moves, I have adjusted myself fairly well. These because it has been me making all the choices to move around. I have been on the driver seat. Even though I have faced many challenges for each movement, I have been super excited to embrace each movement. I attribute these as I am good at adjustment for a new environment.

What if I have to move to another city, another country, or another continent, and it is Not my choice? What if I have to move, to leave, and I have to accept it?

This happened to me one month ago. I was bought out by the company.

This is the life.

Life happens while I am busy to make other plans.

This time I was not the driver. This time I moved to another continent, another country, which is a one I used to live, it is a one I was familiar with seven years ago, it is a one many many people hope if they can pay a visit in their dreams.

I was not in a good mood to do a good adjustment this time for two weeks!

I stopped doing everything I usually was doing from that point on, including my daily blogging.

This is not me.

I am someone who is agile, mature, and resilient… so I have been reminded by my family and friends, my loyal supporters in my life.

I became feeling better in week three.

I became more sensible in week four.

I actually moved forward in week five. I physically moved out the country and back to “civilization”.

When the first astronaut landed on moon, we know his one step on moon means a giant leap in human history.

Somehow I feel that my one step move from continent to another means a giant leap for my life. I am free. I am in good hands. Sounds contradicting… yet I feel this way.

Today I appreciate that I feel content. I appreciate that I am back to one of the best parts of the world. I appreciate that my family has been with me on every step along the road. I appreciate that I can access the abundant resources easily. I appreciate that I have likeminded people around me. I appreciate that I have clean air to breath, clean water to drink, nice gym to work out…

I am grateful for where I am today.

But, I am not sure I can call this is a good adjustment as comparing many moves and adjustments I’ve done in my life. Because this time is different from any other moves I made. This move is not a typical moves for me.

I bet many people have had dramatic changes happened to their lives as well. These may not involve physical moves for one country to another country. However, big changes in anyone’s life are challenging.

Take a moment and make an inventory for what you have in your life when big changes happen in your life.

Think what you can appreciate at this moment.

You can make a whole lot difference for your life and the life people around you.

Life is beautiful. It has all flavors: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty. Enjoy them fully.

set yourself free

When people say you are not qualified doing what you are doing, which is what you love to do, what would be you reaction?

Do you wonder if you have done things right? Do you doubt about what you do?

I had those moments of doubting and worrying. It felt awful. I felt not myself. I could not direct me to focus on other more important things for a while.

Then,

Some one said to me: “your life’s quality is decided by your courage, not by your fear.” We only have one life, live it without regret, live it fully.

I took one step to live for myself by redirecting to the question to myself: is this what I want?

By asking this question, I can feel my body’s reaction. If it feels free, feels specious, feels growing, then I will go for it. And it sets me free, I am a happy person.

Believe in yourself.

Set yourself free.

Live your happy life.