Do You Have Problems to Concentrate?

Almost all of people may lose concentration sometimes. You may plan to read a book today, but after reading several pages, you start to surf the Internet. Or when you work on your project, you may make mistakes because you lose focus.  

All of the situations above are quite usual, and you don’t need to worry a lot if you lose focus sometimes. But if there’s an urgent project, whose deadline is tomorrow, and you still can’t focus and just daydream with a bunch of work at hand, that may be an issue. Frequent absence of mind may bring make your life disordered. You can use the link below to check whether lack of concentration is a problem to you? And I will give some suggestions in my further post.

http://psychologytoday.tests.psychtests.com/bin/transfer?req=MTF8MTMzNnwxOTQ2MjgwfDF8MQ==&refempt=

How to deal with negative feelings

There are always some days, in which you feel empty, uncomfortable, and irritable. In most of the cases, people just ignore these feelings and think it will pass in several days. But in some cases, if you don’t take any measure, you will find that you are slowly trapped by these feelings and lose interest and focus of other things.

 Here are some tips:

1. Develop some interests. A people having more interests usually feels less negative. This is because their life are fulfilled with many meaningful things that delight them. It’s the emptiness not busyness which make you feel depressed. In workday, you always have a lot to focus. But once you have a long holiday, you just don’t know how to kill the time. Like my mom’s colleague, when they are going to retire from their jobs, they prefer to stay because they feel something is missing. Don’t let one thing possess all your life. Give yourself some spaces to hold your interest that no one can take away from you.
2. Turn to your friends. When you feel that you’re controlled by negative feelings, you can turn to your friend. Not cry on their shoulders but hang out to play basketball, or see a movie. Try to make fun and regain the positive attitude from your real life! You can be depressed sometimes, but not all the time. Try to get rid of it as soon as possible!

How to Gain Someone’s Trust

In your daily life and your social network, you build a lot of connections with people like your families, your friends, and your colleagues. And a healthy relationship is always based on mutual trust.

Here are some ways to gain someone’s trust:

1. Be honest and sincere. Honesty plays an important role in any relationship. Once people find out that you lie to them, it’ll damage their impression of you and it’ll be hard to earn that back. You might make mistakes. Try to explain to others. You’ll be surprised to see that people are more tolerant than you think. Also be sincere to others. Say the words out of your heart instead of adulation. People may always want hear compliment. But they can tell the difference whether you truly mean that.
2. Focus more on others. Do you have the situation that someone always talk about themselves and ignore others’ feeling? Actually it’s very easy to be like this. All people wanna to be the center. But if you act in this way when people turn to you for help and you just turn the topic on yourself, you’ll soon lose others’ trust. If you don’t know what to say, you just simply listen and see how people react and you’ll know what others need and what you should say to build connection with others.
3. Never gossip behind people’s back. Sometimes you’ll find many good staff can’t offset the impact of one thing wrong. You might share a lot of good memories with someone. But when something awful happens, even all those good past can’t save the relationship. So never do it at the first place.  And one thing fits all is never gossip behind people’s back. If you think there’s something wrong, tell them. Focus on the thing rather than people. It’s easier for them to accept from you rather than hear your opinion from others. 

How to Deal With Post-Holiday Syndrome

Guess many of you just came back home from travel. How is the break? I heard from my friend that she felt so depressed and stressful because of work next week. Do you feel the same? You may think that after break, you should be more energetic on work. But the truth is opposite. This is post-holiday syndrome, which is same as monday syndrome. 

When you are at weekday, you are highly tense. Once there is a break, you soon get totally relaxed and changed all your daily schedule. And when you are back to work, you don’t adjust yourself to the working environment, thus making you feel tired and stressful.

Here is what you can do. Tell yourself that you are now fully prepared for next week and change your schedule back to normal. Make a to-do-list to avoid that you rush to school and office without ideas of what to start. Also create some fun on Monday. Like having a talk with your classmates and colleagues during lunchtime about your trip.

Now get you a good sleep and prepare for next week to make sure that you won’t have a meltdown like Garfield!

Don’t Give Up Halfway

When I started to playing the piano, I was five. And my parents told me that “If you truly want to take the piano lessons, you can’t give up!”  I didn’t realize what that was supposed to mean at that time. Like all the other children, I quickly lost my curiosity and interest after practicing basic skills day after day. But I still stick to it until now. Of course part of the reasons is that my parents push me so hard. And I’m so grateful they did that. But there’s more, which may  of some help when you consider giving up.

1. Think of the positive side. For me, after learning piano, I can play the songs I like (it feels totally different if you just listen that in you Ipod) and I love the feelings when I play a piece of music that I feel so connected. So think of the moments that make you happy when you meet the difficulty.

2. Think of the difference. Learning the piano gives me new vision of the music. I’m more sensitive to the music and notice more details than before.  So think of how does the thing you work on change your life and what have you learnt.

3. Sense of achievement. The thing that I get most praise is my piano skills (come on, everyone like the praise~~). And when I feel frustrated, I will always think of the praise and the award I’ve got. So do believe yourself that you’ll get through the difficulty. Think of “Pygmalion effect”, psychological suggestion plays a key role in success.

My guess is that few people stick to something without even considering giving up. But you can make it if you think the whole process in a positive way. And the results will never let you down!

How to Relieve Your Pressure

If  you always feel stressed out, here’s some tips:

1. Refresh your mind. Sometimes people may think too much under pressure while the real situation isn’t that worse. Base your judgement on the objective facts rather than your own feelings.

2. Time management. I also mentioned this in the issue of procrastination. Record what you’ve done every day and check whether you waste too much time on one thing like surfing the Internet. Then make a time schedule and prioritize things by importance and deadline.

3. Learn to say “NO”. Many people always act to be too nice and can’t turn down others’ requirement.  Don’t bring yourself too much issues that you can’t handle. Learn to say “no” to others while it’s out of your limit.

Are You Stressed Out?

Do you have difficulties to fall asleep because there are too many things in your mind? Do you always stay up late since you feel that time is limited for you? You may be stressed out! Use the link below to have a check!

http://www.lessons4living.com/stress_test.htm

People are now facing more stress. This can lead to problems for your mental and physical health. I will post some tips in my next post about how to cope with stress.

Attached is a video clip of “Songs From A Secret Garden” performed by Secret Garden. Hope it can help to relive your stress.

If You Just Believe

Believe in what you feel inside and give your dreams the wings to fly. You have everything you need, if you just Believe.                                 ~~Lyrics of “Believe” from “Polar Express”

Have you got a feeling that you have something in mind that you really wanna make it but you can’t after several trials. At least I’ve had this situation sometimes. And the interesting part is, this rarely happens before entering senior high school. Talking with my friends, they have the same thoughts.

Why things are much more difficult now? Here are three possible reasons.

1. You care more about the result now. You’re afraid that the result disappoints you and hesitate to push yourself to have a try.
2. You don’t judge yourself totally based on your own view, but partly based on others.
3. You become more rational now. And you will no longer only focus on your strength, but also your weakness.

Based on these fact, here might be some useful tips.

1. Think of the result. What might be the worst result? If I fail, can I try again? People tend to be afraid of things that they can’t predict. And sometimes we may exaggerate the reality. But keep in mind, you can never made it if you never try out!
2. Ignore useless words from others. No one knows you better than yourself. Trust yourself and don’t distract by the mean judgement around you.
3. Think about your successes before. Of course we all have weaknesses. But we still succeeded before with our weaknesses. So focus on your strength and think of what you can do.
4. Don’t be afraid to lose. People who make greater success are those who experience more failure. Think about Lincoln. You still have the chance to win.

Just like the boy who finally believe in Santa in Polar Express, hope you can also find your ringing bell!

Tips for Stopping Procrastination

You may delay, but time will not.  ~Benjamin Franklin

You might have the same situation as I did. I always thought: I don’t wanna be a procrastinator any more. I plan to start doing something tomorrow. And it ends in vain. So why don’t we start now?

Here are some  tips that I once tried out and thought useful!

1. Don’t always check your email and Facebook/Twitter. There has been a while that once I hear “ding”, I will rush to check my mailbox and Renren (similar to Facebook in China) no matter what I was doing. Now, I have fixed time to check my e-mails and be more focused.

2. Make plan. Write a list of things you need to do and prioritize these by importance and deadline. Don’t put the hardest job at last. Post you calendar at house or set alarms on your phone planner. Before you go to bed, check whether you finish all your task.

(image from Pottery Barn)

3. Keep adding things in your calendar but leave spare time/reward time also. Leave the enough time so that you are confident about the whole process instead of in a rush. Also reward yourself if you finish all of your work. But don’t reward yourself too much if you only finish one small piece of work!!

4. Also add things that interest you into the plan so that you won’t feel stressed all the time. Thinking about that, I haven’t practice my piano for  a couple of months. And now it is in my plan. What about you? Do you always have a dream you wanna realize? Start now and don’t say I’m too busy! It’s a long-term investment. Keep going!

Really hope these tips can do some help! And now I need to start my school homework.

Do you have procrastination?

Do you always hand over your reports minutes before the deadline? Do you have a lot of housework that you should have done weeks before? Do you often try to find excuses to get out of duties? But later on, you will feel guilty that you haven’t finished the stuff on schedule?

According to the research, about 20 percent of people procrastinate regularly. And among students, the proportion is much higher, about 80 to 95 percent of college students procrastinate. They choose to hang out with friends, sleep rather than finishing the work on hand.

Are you one of them? You may like to click the link below to take the test by Psychology Today!

http://psychologytoday.tests.psychtests.com/bin/transfer?req=MTF8MTMzM3wxODc0Nzc4fDB8MQ==&refempt

I’m not proud to say that, but the test result shows that I’m somewhat of a procrastinator. And now I try to beat my problem. If you have the same problem as I do, please take a look of my later post about the reasons and solutions of procrastination. Hope it will do some help!

Thank you!