How to Defeat your Fear?

 

 How to Defeat your Fear? -- Saikumar

A very first question, I want to ask you before began to work on Idea. “What is fear”? It seems very stupid question but have never ending answers. I believe “Fear occurs due to lack of knowledge”. Suppose you are into the exam room and after see the question paper you saw some unexpected questions at that time, why the fear occurs? Due to lack of knowledge, when you are into the office and deadline on your head. Due to uncompleted work, again your fear occurs because you don’t know how to handle these circumstances and what will happen? If you would loose your job?
Sometimes fear occurs due to some bad experiences .After the study of thoughts, many researchers have cleared that we can determine our own outcome. Even if things go apparently wrong there is always a positive experience and lesson to be learned, which will make the next experience more enriching.
Faiths never show us the path of fear of god but it always reminds us that future holds whatever we desire.

So, if we live with fearful mind, so be it. Same as well happened on opposite manners too.By the metaphysics concept energy of thought influences the energies of life. Be it simply stated that fear based on how one sees the past and the future, can be terminated. It is just the matter of changing point of view for instance a person stand upon a mountain top and the vast city below looks like an insect colony but it doesn’t mean city has shrunken but person perspective towards city has changed.

You can move fear by different viewpoint and your fear will become interesting lesson. Like I mentioned on started, fear paralyzes due to lack ness of knowledge. To remove fear sees it by different point of view and make it more interesting thing to learn.

Reaching Your Potential ( To be the best out of the best )

The Idea in Brief
Despite racking up impressive accomplishments, you feel frustrated with your career--convinced you should be achieving more. You may even wish you had chosen a different career altogether.
These feelings often stem from a common error: buying into others' definitions of success. To reach your potential, Kaplan suggests taking a deeply personal look at how you define success:
Begin by recognizing that managing your career is your responsibility. Then, follow these three steps:

Know yourself by identifying your strengths and weaknesses and the activities you truly enjoy doing.
Excel at the activities critical to success in your desired role.
Demonstrate character and leadership by putting the interests of your company and colleagues ahead of your own.
The Idea in Practice
Kaplan offers these guidelines for reaching your potential at work:

Know Yourself
Write down your 2-3 greatest strengths and weaknesses. If (like most people) you struggle with identifying key weaknesses, solicit the views of people (peers, direct reports, trusted friends) who will tell you the brutal truth. Ask for very specific feedback ("How well do I listen?" "What is my leadership style?"). Be receptive to the input you receive.
Then figure out what you truly enjoy doing. What's your dream job? Resist the lure of a hot field: If you go into it without a strong enthusiasm for the actual work, you may waste a number of years before you admit it's the wrong job for you. Once you've chosen your ideal job, you'll have to start from scratch. But choosing a field you love gives you strength to weather the inevitable setbacks and long hours needed to reach your full potential in any career.

Excel at Critical Activities
Identify the 3-4 activities essential for success in your desired or current role. Then develop a plan for excelling in these activities.
A new division head at a large industrial company was struggling to grow sales and profits. Through interviews with staff and customers, he concluded that success in his business hinged on developing close relationships with top customers' purchasing managers, putting the right people in critical leadership positions, and staying at the cutting edge of product innovation. He began delegating activities less central to success so he could focus on raising the bar on the three success factors he had identified. Sales and profits improved.
Demonstrate Character and Leadership
Character and leadership make the difference between good and great performance. To demonstrate character:
· Put the interests of your company and colleagues ahead of your own, doing things for others without regard to what's in it for you.
· Adopt an owner's mindset, asking yourself what you would do if you were the ultimate decision maker.
· Be willing to make recommendations that will benefit your organization's overall performance, possibly to the detriment of your own unit. Trust that you'll eventually be rewarded. To exhibit leadership, speak up--even when you're expressing an unpopular view. Your superiors desperately want dissenting opinions so they can make better choices. If you play it safe instead of asserting your heartfelt opinions, you may hit a plateau in your career.

This collection offers strategies for changing course if you feel dissatisfied with your life's direction:
If you're putting in longer hours, only to become less productive and more exhausted, read the suggestions for reviving four types of personal energy in "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time," by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy. For example, replenish emotional energy by viewing upsetting situations as learning opportunities. Free up physical energy by setting an earlier bedtime and reducing alcohol intake.
· If you're making trade-offs between your professional and personal obligations, consider making small changes that benefit multiple dimensions of your life, as Stewart Friedman recommends in "Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life." For instance, join a club with coworkers. You'll forge closer friendships with them, strengthening your sense of community and improving on-the-job collaboration.
· If you've lost touch with what matters most to you, explore "Do Your Commitments Match Your Convictions?" by Donald N. Sull and Dominic Houlder. They recommend a disciplined process for articulating your deepest values, determining which are receiving insufficient time and energy from you, and closing gaps.· If you want to know your strengths, weaknesses, and desired work environment better, read Peter F. Drucker's "Managing Yourself." He presents a way to clarify five aspects of your professional identity and recommends seeking job opportunities and environments that fit that identity most closely.

Design Your Life: What Would You Do If You Had Nothing To Do?

What would you be doing tomorrow if you retired today?
Let’s say you had a blank day staring at you. You didn’t have to work. You could do anything at all (although money is still a limiting factor). What would your perfect day be like?
These questions are more than just hypothetical questions to ask for fun or idleness. It’s an exercise meant to get you thinking about designing your life.
How do you design your life? Well, let’s assume that your life is under your control. Sure, not everything is under your control, but let’s assume that much of your life is yours to do with as you please. Even if that’s so, many of us go through life doing what we do because a series of events have made our life what it is today. We continue to do what we do without giving it much thought, because it’s easier that way.
Designing your life isn’t easy. You first have to dare to ask yourself these questions. You then have to dare to imagine that it can come true. And then comes the difficult task of changing your life so that it is what you want it to be.
Perhaps your life is already just how you like it — if that’s the case, you are to be congratulated. But I submit that many of us, while generally happy, have a life not of our own design — at least not a conscious design.
So today let’s take a look at one way to consciously design your life. It’s not the only way, but it’s a path to happiness that I’d recommend.
Here’s the process:
1. What’s important? Ask yourself what is most important to you. Regular Zen Habits readers know that I ask this question in many articles, but that’s because any process should start with this, whether it’s a process of simplifying, of productivity, of frugality, or of becoming happier. What do you love doing? Who do you love spending time with? Make a short list of 4-5 things.
2. What is your passion? What do you love doing the most? Can it be a way you make your living? If you can make a career out of doing something you love, you will love your day. Dare to imagine that this could come true.
3. Design your day. Start with a blank slate, and design your perfect day. Incorporate the short list of 4-5 most important things above, to ensure that you are spending your day doing what’s most important to you. Also include time spent working at your passion (from item #2). Include an ideal routine, including a morning and evening routine, and everything in between. What time would you wake up and go to bed?
4. Figure out how to get there. What changes would you need to make in your life to make that perfect day a reality? Be willing to consider drastic changes if necessary. Come up with a plan to get there. It might be a plan that will take 6 months, a year, two years or 5, but you can get there eventually, if you want it enough. Dare to make it a reality.
5. Start making some changes immediately. Some of the changes can be done right away, especially if the changes are under your direct control. The time you wake up and go to bed, for example, are probably under your control. Your morning and evening routines are another example of things you can probably change immediately. Spending time doing the 4-5 important things on your list might also be an immediate possibility. Notice the things you normally do that aren’t on the list of 4-5 important things — consider eliminating or minimizing the time you spend on the non-important things to make room for the important things.
6. Start making long-term changes now. Longer-term changes might include things like doing your passion for a living, or where you live, or getting out of big commitments that don’t contribute to your happiness or are not on your short list of 4-5 things. But while these kinds of changes might take longer, they can still be done. Start on them today, set them in motion, and dare to believe that you can change these things. Make a plan, and set it in motion.
7. Keep the end in mind. Print out your perfect day, and keep that in mind as you begin to make changes. This is the life you designed, rather than the one you’ve fallen into. You are in control of your life, and you can have that life, if you want it enough.

Managing the Support Center with Emotional Intelligence

Intelligence comes in many packages, sizes and shapes. We all possess many types of intelligence. The best known intelligence is our cognitive ability, which is measured by our Intelligence Quotient or IQ score. This is unfortunate because our IQ, although important, is not the best predictor of how successful we are in life. A much better indicator is our level of Emotional Intelligence, which encompasses how well we understand and manage our own emotions, and how well we interact with others. The most successful Support Managers are both aware of their own Emotional Intelligence and work to improve it daily.Why is it so important for Support Managers to possess advanced Emotional Intelligence skills? There are two answers to that question

1. The Leader casts a long shadow - and that shadow influences the effectiveness of the group.We know that emotions are contagious. All humans possess an open-loop emotional system in our brain that allows us to perceive and be affected by other’s emotional states or moods. This is the mechanism that allows a mother to soothe her crying baby, or for a giggle to infect a roomful of people. You can bet that as manager of the support center, all employees’ eyes are on you as you show up for the day. They are wondering, either silently or aloud, “Is he in a good mood today? What does that frown on her face mean? Watch out - he’s got that look that means we’re going to have heck to pay around here today.” Your mood and emotions set the pace for the whole group. You, therefore, must be very mindful of your emotions and manage them well, because they quickly affect the entire team.Recently, psychologists have shown that a 1% improvement in emotional climate creates a 2% increase in revenues. Yes, as the leader, you set the emotional climate of the entire group, which influences the effectiveness of your group and ultimately the profitability of your company.

2. Employees join companies but leave managers.As I talk to support professionals about Emotional Intelligence, I am struck by the number of stories that confirm the premise that employees join companies but leave managers. Whether it’s the manager who did not control her anger toward an employee or one who humiliated an individual in public, the immediate result of an emotionally un-intelligent episode is a backwash of animosity and bad feelings toward the manager. The ultimate reality is usually a lost employee. The humiliated employee successfully seeks another position due to the lingering bad feelings about that incident or because of a string of similar incidents that has poisoned the relationship. Even in a sluggish economy in which it is relatively easy to hire new employees, the cost of losing a good employee is very high. No company can afford to lose good talent unnecessarily.How can you be an Emotionally Intelligent Support Manager? Developing Emotional Intelligence is a process that takes time and patience. It’s like climbing a very large set of stairs in slow motion. The four areas of competencies in Emotional Intelligence can be visualized thus:

DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE – THE STAIRCASE OF STEPS

Like most processes, the first step is the most important. The first step in developing Emotional Intelligence is to be aware of your own emotions (Self-Awareness). Without awareness of your own emotions, it is not possible to develop more advanced competencies. Most of us are not in touch with our emotions – in fact, we’ve been taught to ignore them. I recently saw a movie with my pre-teenage daughter that illustrated this point. In the movie, Freaky Friday, the mother, a psychologist, and her daughter, a rebellious 15 year old, have changed bodies for a day, thanks to dramatic license. The daughter (in the mother’s body) must go to work and see her mother’s patients that day. The daughter is distraught, “What do I say to all your patients, Mom?” The mother (in the daughter’s body) replies, “Just keep asking them, “How do you feel about that?” This is most certainly a gross oversimplification of the psychological profession, but the point is that psychologists are constantly reminding us to identify our feelings – because we are not accustomed to doing so.You can increase your Self-Awareness by constantly asking yourself, “How do I feel about this?” I know that I need to identify an emotion when I notice a physiological reaction in my body, such as butterflies in my stomach or tense shoulders. “OK, what is that I’m feeling that’s making my stomach quake?” I’ll say to myself. Usually, I’m feeling nervous about some event or task I need to perform. The physical reaction can be a tip-off that you need to identify the feeling that is causing it.The second step in developing Emotional Intelligence is Self-Management. Self-management is controlling your knee-jerk reactions to emotional triggers in your life. With some reflection, you can identify certain situations that are guaranteed to “push your buttons” – perhaps a certain employee really makes you mad when they whine, or a customer who talks in an accusatory tone really sets you off. It is our goal as mature adults to stop, take a deep breath and deal with the situation without losing our cool. Most techniques for handling these trigger situations are a variant on the tried-and-true “count to ten” advice, but you can also mentally rehearse your reaction to common situations. Sit quietly with your eyes closed, visualizing a potentially reactive situation. Recreate the scene in your mind using all five of your senses – how does it look, smell, sound, etc. – and then imagine yourself choosing a calmer, most effective response. Our emotional brains are slow to learn, but practice, whether it is an actual or mental rehearsal, is the best way to train ourselves to change an habitual response.In a Support Center, the manager’s self-management skills will not only set the tone for the whole department, but also for all your employee’s interactions with customers. Remember that we said the leader casts a long shadow? If you, as the manager, lose control of your emotions and raise your voice, employees might consider that acceptable behavior and use a raised voice in dealing with customers. How you treat your employees will be reflected in how they, in turn, treat your customers.In the third step, we are attuning to other’s emotions and acting accordingly. The competencies of Social Awareness include awareness of the mood of your group, empathy toward both your customers and your employees, political awareness of your organization as a whole, and an attitude of service. Support Managers must be aware of how the Support Center is viewed in the overall political landscape of the organization. Is your support function viewed as ancillary to your business, or are you seen as a primary contributor to the company’s strategic direction? Most Support Managers today are concerned about their function being outsourced. Managers who exercise mature Social Awareness competencies are actively engaged in aligning their center with business goals, are marketing the value of their Support Center to upper management, and are seeking cost-cutting measures before being asked to. Social Awareness leads to action when a need is identified.The last step in developing Emotional Intelligence is Relationship Management. This cluster of competencies revolves around teamwork: how we get along with others, how we handle conflict, how we influence and persuade others, how we consider the feelings of others as we interact with them. It includes how effectively we get things done in organizations. Support Managers are constantly managing both up and down the organization – managing their boss and managing their team. In decision making, it is very important to consider the people and relationships, both up and down the org chart, that are affected by your decision. Here is a checklist of questions to consider that will increase your Emotional Intelligence in making a politically loaded decision or planning a change:

· Who is affected by this?
· Who needs to know about this and who doesn’t? Do I need to communicate more often? Do I need to involve them?

· How are the organization’s political insiders going to be affected by this? What will they think, feel and do? Is there a way that I can gain one as an ally in this situation? Could I ask them to help communicate?

· Who has some ego involved in this, and what might their goal be?
· How can I be aware of their emotional needs but get what I want, too?
· What don’t I know about this situation? What might surprise me?
· What are some possible actions to take?

· After creating a plan of action, consider the possible consequences of that plan. How would others react to this plan? What are the ramifications of this action?
Increasing your Emotional Intelligence will increase your effectiveness as a Support Center manager. Be easy on yourself – change comes slowly with emotional habits, but persistence and practice will create results in time. The benefits you reap from your efforts will improve your support center’s efficiencies and your career path.

Successful Delegation

Using the Power of Other People's Help
Even "Super-You" needs help and support. There is no shame in asking for assistance. Push aside the pride and show respect for the talent others can bring to the table.And, remember that there is no such thing as a single-handed success: When you include and acknowledge all those in your corner, you propel yourself, your teammates and your supporters to greater heights. - Author Unknown.

Do you feel stressed and overloaded? Or that your career seems stalled? If so, then you may need to brush up your delegation skills!

If you work on your own, there’s only a limited amount that you can do, however hard you work. You can only work so many hours in a day. There are only so many tasks you can complete in these hours. There are only so many people you can help by doing these tasks. And, because the number of people you can help is limited, your success is limited.

However, if you’re good at your job, people will want much more than this from you.
This can lead to a real sense of pressure and work overload: You can’t do everything that everyone wants, and this can leave you stressed, unhappy, and feeling that you’re letting people down.

On the positive side, however, you’re being given a tremendous opportunity if you can find a way around this limitation. If you can realize this opportunity, you can be genuinely successful!

One of the most common ways of overcoming this limitation is to learn how to delegate your work to other people. If you do this well, you can quickly build a strong and successful team of people, well able to meet the demands that others place.

This is why delegation is such an important skill, and is one that you absolutely have to learn!

Why People Don’t Delegate
To figure out how to delegate properly, it’s important to understand why people avoid it. Quite simply, people don’t delegate because it takes a lot of up-front effort.
After all, which is easier: designing and writing content for a brochure that promotes a new service you helped spearhead, or having other members of your team do it?
You know the content inside and out. You can spew benefit statements in your sleep. It would be relatively straightforward for you to sit down and write it. It would even be fun! The question is, “Would it be a good use of your time?”
While on the surface it’s easier to do it yourself than explain the strategy behind the brochure to someone else, there are two key reasons that mean that it’s probably better to delegate the task to someone else:

First, if you have the ability to spearhead a new campaign, the chances are that your skills are better used further developing the strategy, and perhaps coming up with other new ideas. By doing the work yourself, you’re failing to make best use of your time.

Second, by meaningfully involving other people in the project, you develop those people’s skills and abilities. This means that next time a similar project comes along, you can delegate the task with a high degree of confidence that it will be done well, with much less involvement from you.

Delegation allows you to make the best use of your time and skills, and it helps other people in the team grow and develop to reach their full potential in the organization.

When to Delegate
Delegation is a win-win when done appropriately, however that does not mean that you can delegate just anything. To determine when delegation is most appropriate there are five key questions you need to ask yourself:

Is there someone else who has (or can be given) the necessary information or expertise to complete the task? Essentially is this a task that someone else can do, or is it critical that you do it yourself?

Does the task provide an opportunity to grow and develop another person’s skills?
Is this a task that will recur, in a similar form, in the future?

Do you have enough time to delegate the job effectively? Time must be available for adequate training, for questions and answers, for opportunities to check progress, and for rework if that is necessary.

Is this a task that I should delegate? Tasks critical for long-term success (for example, recruiting the right people for your team) genuinely do need your attention.

If you can answer “yes” to at least some of the above questions, then it could well be worth delegating this job.

Other factors that contribute to the delegability of a task include:
The project’s timelines/deadlines.
How much time is there available to do the job?

Is there time to redo the job if it’s not done properly the first time?
What are the consequences of not completing the job on time?
Your expectations or goals for the project or task(s), including:
How important is it that the results are of the highest possible quality?
Is an "adequate" result good enough?
Would a failure be crucial?
How much would failure impact other things?

That being said, having all these conditions present is no guarantee that the delegated task will be completed successfully either. You also need to consider to whom you will delegate the task and how you will do it.

The Who and How of Delegating
To Whom Should You Delegate?
The factors to consider here include:

The experience, knowledge and skills of the individual as they apply to the delegated task.
What knowledge, skills and attitude does the person already have?
Do you have time and resources to provide any training needed?

The individual’s preferred work style.
How independent is the person?
What does he or she want from his or her job?
What are his or her long-term goals and interest, and how do these align with the work proposed?

The current workload of this person.
Does the person have time to take on more work?
Will you delegating this task require reshuffling of other responsibilities and workloads?

When you first start to delegate to someone, you may notice that he or she takes longer than you do to complete tasks. This is because you are an expert in the field and the person you have delegated to is still learning. Be patient: if you have chosen the right person to delegate to, and you are delegating correctly, you will find that he or she quickly becomes competent and reliable.

How Should You Delegate?
Use the following principles to delegate successfully:
Clearly articulate the desired outcome. Begin with the end in mind and specify the desired results.

Clearly identify constraints and boundaries. Where are the lines of authority, responsibility and accountability? Should the person:

Wait to be told what to do?
Ask what to do?
Recommend what should be done, and then act?
Act, and then report results immediately?
Initiate action, and then report periodically?

Where possible, include people in the delegation process. Empower them to decide what tasks are to be delegated to them and when.

Match the amount of responsibility with the amount of authority. Understand that you can delegate some responsibility, however you can’t delegate away ultimate accountability. The buck stops with you!

Delegate to the lowest possible organizational level. The people who are closest to the work are best suited for the task, because they have the most intimate knowledge of the detail of everyday work. This also increases workplace efficiency, and helps to develop people.
Provide adequate support, and be available to answer questions. Ensure the project’s success through ongoing communication and monitoring as well as provision of resources and credit.
Focus on results. Concern yourself with what is accomplished, rather than detailing how the work should be done: Your way is not necessarily the only or even the best way! Allow the person to control his or her own methods and processes. This facilitates success and trust.
Avoid “upward delegation”. If there is a problem, don’t allow the person to shift responsibility for the task back to you: ask for recommended solutions; and don’t simply provide an answer.
Build motivation and commitment. Discuss how success will impact financial rewards, future opportunities, informal recognition, and other desirable consequences. Provide recognition where deserved.

Establish and maintain control.
Discuss timelines and deadlines.
Agree on a schedule of checkpoints at which you’ll review project progress.
Make adjustments as necessary.
Take time to review all submitted work.
In thoroughly considering these key points prior to and during the delegation process you will find that you delegate more successfully.

Keeping Control
Now, once you have worked through the above steps, make sure you brief your team member appropriately. Take time to explain why they were chosen for the job, what’s expected from them during the project, the goals you have for the project, all timelines and deadlines and the resources on which they can draw. And agree a schedule for checking-in with progress updates.

Lastly, make sure that the team member knows that you want to know if any problems occur, and that you are available for any questions or guidance needed as the work progresses.
We all know that as managers, we shouldn’t micro-manage. However, this doesn’t mean we must abdicate control altogether: In delegating effectively, we have to find the sometimes-difficult balance between giving enough space for people to use their abilities to best effect, while still monitoring and supporting closely enough to ensure that the job is done correctly and effectively.

The Importance of Full Acceptance
When delegated work is delivered back to you, set aside enough time to review it thoroughly. If possible, only accept good quality, fully-complete work. If you accept work you are not satisfied with, your team member does not learn to do the job properly. Worse than this, you accept a whole new tranche of work that you will probably need to complete yourself. Not only does this overload you, it means that you don’t have the time to do your own job properly. Of course, when good work is returned to you, make sure to both recognize and reward the effort. As a leader, you should get in the practice of complimenting members of your team every time you are impressed by what they have done. This effort on your part will go a long way toward building team member’s self-confidence and efficiency, both of which will be improved on the next delegated task; hence, you both win.

Key Points:
At first sight, delegation can feel like more hassle than it’s worth, however by delegating effectively, you can hugely expand the amount of work that you can deliver.
When you arrange the workload so that you are working on the tasks that have the highest priority for you, and other people are working on meaningful and challenging assignments, you have a recipe for success.

To delegate effectively, choose the right tasks to delegate, identify the right people to delegate to, and delegate in the right way. There’s a lot to this, but you’ll achieve so much more once you’re delegating effectively!

Stress Managment :New ways of being

Guys here I am providing the good example for How to remove the stress its all nothing but the stress management …. Work out on it ! Definitely it will work for u. u can do wonders …thunders
It’s a real time experience for me /

A lecturer of mine (during engineering days ) when explaining stress management to me and my friends , Raised a glass of water and asked "How heavy is this glass of water?"
Answers called out from us was ranged from 20g to 500g. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem.,If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry out burdens all the time, sooner or later, As the burden becomes increasingly heavy, We won't be able to carry on." "As with the glass of water, You have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden." "So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, Let them down for a moment if you can." So, my friends , Put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. Don't pick it up again until after you've rested a while.

A Guide to Cultivating Compassion in Your Life, With 7 Practices

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” - Dalai Lama
“My message is the practice of compassion, love and kindness. These things are very useful in our daily life, and also for the whole of human society these practices can be very important.” - Dalai Lama
I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.
The key to developing compassion in your life is to make it a daily practice.
Meditate upon it in the morning (you can do it while checking email), think about it when you interact with others, and reflect on it at night. In this way, it becomes a part of your life. Or as the Dalai Lama also said, “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
Compassion is an emotion that is a sense of shared suffering, most often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another; to show special kindness to those who suffer. Compassion essentially arises through empathy, and is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for.
Compassionate acts are generally considered those which take into account the suffering of others and attempt to alleviate that suffering as if it were one’s own. In this sense, the various forms of the GOLDEN RULE Share clearly based on the concept of compassion.
Compassion differs from other forms of helpful or humane behavior in that its focus is primarily on the alleviation of suffering.
Benefits :
Why develop compassion in your life? Well, there are scientific studies that suggest there are physical benefits to practicing compassion — people who practice it produce 100 percent more DHEA, which is a hormone that counteracts the aging process, and 23 percent less cortisol — the “stress hormone.”
But there are other benefits as well, and these are emotional and spiritual. The main benefit is that it helps you to be more happy, and brings others around you to be more happy. If we agree that it is a common aim of each of us to strive to be happy, then compassion is one of the main tools for achieving that happiness. It is therefore of utmost importance that we cultivate compassion in our lives and practice compassion every day.
How do we do that? This guide contains 7 different practices that you can try out and perhaps incorporate into your every day life.
7 Compassion Practices
1. Morning ritual. Greet each morning with a ritual. Try this one, suggest by the Dalai Lama: “Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.” Then, when you’ve done this, try one of the practices below.
2. Empathy Practice. The first step in cultivating compassion is to develop empathy for your fellow human beings. Many of us believe that we have empathy, and on some level nearly all of us do. But many times we are centered on ourselves (I’m no exception) and we let our sense of empathy get rusty. Try this practice: Imagine that a loved one is suffering. Something terrible has happened to him or her. Now try to imagine the pain they are going through. Imagine the suffering in as much detail as possible. After doing this practice for a couple of weeks, you should try moving on to imagining the suffering of others you know, not just those who are close to you.
3.Commonalities practice. Instead of recognizing the differences between yourself and others, try to recognize what you have in common. At the root of it all, we are all human beings. We need food, and shelter, and love. We crave attention, and recognition, and affection, and above all, happiness. Reflect on these commonalities you have with every other human being, and ignore the differences. One of my favorite exercises comes from a great article from Ode Magazine — it’s a five-step exercise to try when you meet friends and strangers. Do it discreetly and try to do all the steps with the same person. With your attention geared to the other person, tell yourself:
Step 1: “Just like me, this person is seeking happiness in his/her life.”
Step 2: “Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life.”
Step 3: “Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair.”
Step 4: “Just like me, this person is seeking to fill his/her needs.”
Step 5: “Just like me, this person is learning about life.”

4. Relief of suffering practice. Once you can empathize with another person, and understand his humanity and suffering, the next step is to want that person to be free from suffering. This is the heart of compassion — actually the definition of it. Try this exercise: Imagine the suffering of a human being you’ve met recently. Now imagine that you are the one going through that suffering. Reflect on how much you would like that suffering to end. Reflect on how happy you would be if another human being desired your suffering to end, and acted upon it. Open your heart to that human being and if you feel even a little that you’d want their suffering to end, reflect on that feeling. That’s the feeling that you want to develop. With constant practice, that feeling can be grown and nurtured.

5. Act of kindness practice. Now that you’ve gotten good at the 4th practice, take the exercise a step further. Imagine again the suffering of someone you know or met recently. Imagine again that you are that person, and are going through that suffering. Now imagine that another human being would like your suffering to end — perhaps your mother or another loved one. What would you like for that person to do to end your suffering? Now reverse roles: you are the person who desires for the other person’s suffering to end. Imagine that you do something to help ease the suffering, or end it completely. Once you get good at this stage, practice doing something small each day to help end the suffering of others, even in a tiny way. Even a smile, or a kind word, or doing an errand or chore, or just talking about a problem with another person. Practice doing something kind to help ease the suffering of others. When you are good at this, find a way to make it a daily practice, and eventually a throughout-the-day practice.

6.Those who mistreat us practice. The final stage in these compassion practices is to not only want to ease the suffering of those we love and meet, but even those who mistreat us. When we encounter someone who mistreats us, instead of acting in anger, withdraw. Later, when you are calm and more detached, reflect on that person who mistreated you. Try to imagine the background of that person. Try to imagine what that person was taught as a child. Try to imagine the day or week that person was going through, and what kind of bad things had happened to that person. Try to imagine the mood and state of mind that person was in — the suffering that person must have been going through to mistreat you that way. And understand that their action was not about you, but about what they were going through. Now think some more about the suffering of that poor person, and see if you can imagine trying to stop the suffering of that person. And then reflect that if you mistreated someone, and they acted with kindness and compassion toward you, whether that would make you less likely to mistreat that person the next time, and more likely to be kind to that person. Once you have mastered this practice of reflection, try acting with compassion and understanding the next time a person treats you. Do it in little doses, until you are good at it. Practice makes perfect.

7. Evening routine. I highly recommend that you take a few minutes before you go to bed to reflect upon your day. Think about the people you met and talked to, and how you treated each other. Think about your goal that you stated this morning, to act with compassion towards others. How well did you do? What could you do better? What did you learn from your experiences today? And if you have time, try one of the above practices and exercises.
These compassionate practices can be done anywhere, any time. At work, at home, on the road, while traveling, while at a store, while at the home of a friend or family member. By sandwiching your day with a morning and evening ritual, you can frame your day properly, in an attitude of trying to practice compassion and develop it within yourself. And with practice, you can begin to do it throughout the day, and throughout your lifetime.
This, above all, with bring happiness to your life and to those around you.

Do you have experience in practicing compassion? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

Understanding The Cycle of Change, And How People React To It

Managers often make the mistake of assuming that once a change is started, that employees will see that it is going to take place, and get on side. This is rarely the case. Because change causes fear, a sense of loss of the familiar, etc., it takes some time for employees to a) understand the meaning of the change and b) commit to the change in a meaningful way. It is important to understand that people tend to go through stages in their attempts to cope with change. Understanding that there are normal progressions helps change leaders avoid under-managing change or over-reacting to resistance.
As we go through the stages, you will probably find many similarities with the process a person goes through with the loss of a loved one.
Stage I: Denial

Stage II: Anger & Resistance
Stage III: Exploration & Acceptance
Stage IV: Commitment
Below I have mentioned about the each stage in detail ..

Stage I: Denial

An early strategy that people use to cope with change is to deny that it is happening, or to deny that it will continue or last. Common responses during this stage are:
"I've heard these things before. Remember last year they announced the new customer initiative? Nothing ever happened, and this will pass."
"It's just another hair-brained idea from the top."
"I bet this will be like everything else. The head honcho will be real gung-ho but in about six months everything will be back to normal. You'll see."
"I'll believe it when I see it."
People in the denial stage are trying to avoid dealing with the fear and uncertainty of prospective change. They are hoping they won't have to adapt .
The denial stage is difficult because it is hard to involve people in planning for the future, when they will not acknowledge that the future is going to be any different than the present.
People tend to move out of the denial stage when they see solid, tangible indicators that things ARE different. Even with these indicators some people can remain in denial for some time.

Stage II: Anger & Resistance when people can no longer deny that something is or has happened, they tend to move into a state of anger, accompanied by covert and/or over resistance. This stage is the most critical with respect to the success of the change implementation. Leadership is needed to help work through the anger, and to move people to the next stage. If leadership is poor, the anger at this stage may last indefinitely, perhaps much longer than even the memory of the change itself .
People in this stage tend to say things like:
"Who do they think they are? Jerking us around"
"Why are they picking on us?"
"What's so damned bad about the way things are?
"How could [you] the boss allow this to happen?
Actually people say far stronger things, but we need to be polite.

Stage III: Exploration & Acceptance
This is the stage where people begin to get over the hump. They have stopped denying, and while they may be somewhat angry, the anger has moved out of the spotlight. They have a better understanding of the meaning of the change and are more willing to explore further, and to accept the change. They act more open-mindedly, and are now more interested in planning around the change and being participants in the process.
People in this stage say things like:
"Well, I guess we have to make the best of it." "May be we can get through this."
"We need to get on with business."

Stage IV: Commitment
This is the payoff stage, where people commit to the change, and are willing to work towards making it succeed. They know it is a reality, and at this point people have adapted sufficiently to make it work. While some changes will never get endorsement from employees (downsizing, for example) employees at this stage will commit to making the organization effective within the constraints that have resulted from the change.
Concluding Points
Let's conclude with some key points:
1) The change process takes a considerable amount of time to stabilize and to work. Don't undermanage by assuming it will "work itself out" and don't over-react when faced with reasonable resistance.2) Worry if there is no resistance. If the change is significant it means that people are hiding their reactions. Eventually the reactions that are not dealt with will fester and can destroy the organization.