#busyness #activity #happiness #ActiveLife #work #jobs
We have a love/hate relationship with busyness.
In his article, “Is Life Better When You Are Busy,” Scott H. Young says he’s happiest when he’s “ever –so-slightly too busy.”
Young talks about the scale from boredom to burned out. He says some seem happier when closer to “relaxed,” while others require more activity for happiness. “Different people seem to have dials set differently for the optimal level of stimulation,” the article says.
Busyness can be a convenient excuse for saying no to something or someone. Don’t want to visit your mother-in-law? Say you are too busy. Don’t want to volunteer for a worthy cause? Say you are too busy.
Busyness, in other words, gives your “no” a cover.
If you are indeed busy, are you busy doing the right things? Leadership expert Darren Hardy asked preacher Joel Osteen what the most important part of his service/TV show was. Osteen replied that it was the 20 minutes he took to give his sermon or homily.
Hardy advised him to spend most of his time preparing for those 20 minutes, and delegate other tasks to other people.
Other companies/employers want their workers to concentrate on the most productive – read, money-making for the company – activities.
But, you may know some employees who find other activities to stay busy, so they can avoid the most productive tasks.
So, all this begs the questions: How busy are you? Are you happiest when you are the busiest? Are you so overwhelmed with tasks that you fear a meltdown coming? Are the things that keep you busy worth the effort in the scheme of your life?
Young’s essay offers three ways to make the busyness of your life more fulfilling. First, adjust your expectations. “Expecting too much from yourself (or too little) is a stress,” he writes.
Second, find more satisfying work, friends and hobbies. “If you spend a lot of time doing things that don’t satisfy you … it can feel like you have too little time,” he writes.
Third, create more filters and constraints. “When the flow of upcoming opportunities is a trickle, we feel restless and bored,” he writes. Conversely, when the flow is a waterfall, one can feel overwhelmed, he says.
In short, we are happiest when we do things. Even on vacation, we feel better with more recreation than rest. We love activities that make us happy.
Make your busyness count. Concentrate on activities that produce the life you want. Do things that, even if they seem tedious now, will pay off later. That’s goal-setting.
There are tasks we can’t really avoid, short of paying someone else to do them. Housecleaning may be one of those for you. But try to make a conscious effort to spend the bulk of your time on rewarding tasks, and you are certain to stay happy.
Active might be a better word than busy here. Stay active. Stay happy.
Peter
Monthly Archives: January 2022
TODAY’S ADS: DO THEY MAKE YOU WANT TO BUY?
#ads #advertising #marketing #BuyingDecisions #AdsAndTheEconomy
There are some TV ads of the past that were so good, you remember them to this day, but don’t remember what they were advertising.
If you look at today’s insurance ads on TV, for example, you can remember the company name, but do they make you want to buy the insurance?
Insurance is something most people buy based on the best deal, and/or the appropriate coverage. Sometimes, over time, as insurance companies raise premiums, one shops around. If one doesn’t want to bother shopping around, he or she stays with the same company – higher premiums and all.
It’s hard to conceive one choosing an insurance company based on a TV ad. One can pass judgment on the entertainment value of the ads, but they are hardly persuasive in terms of you buying what they are selling.
Cigarette companies, when they were allowed to advertise on TV, also had entertaining ads. So did automakers. But it would be hard to believe that either of those entities could correlate purchases with ads.
Marketing is a tough business. Marketers first aim for name recognition for the client, and cute ads can achieve that.
But just because one knows a company’s name doesn’t mean he or she buys the product(s) they are selling.
Most of us buy based on price and result, which, together, equal value. We learn that one company’s products may not fit everyone.
Most of us do our own research when looking for a car, or insurance policy etc. Sometimes, one goes to a specific agent, or dealer, who help him or her decide which product would best suit him or her. Do the TV ads get people through those agents’ doors? Perhaps some. But most of us, if we go through an agent or dealer, choose that person based on local knowledge, or a friend’s recommendation.
However, advertising is large part of the overall economy. So many businesses depend on companies wanting to advertise.
Yet, in the case of many ads we all see, it’s tough to envision them translating into sales for the company that bought the ad.
Many of us love to buy things. Most of us hate to be sold things.
Some products are bought because people are shown the value, and they see it.
No fancy ad. No big-time pitch. No convincing. No coercion.
Person X has a product, shows it to Person Y. Person X would love Person Y to see the value in the product, then buy. But, Person X doesn’t care if Person Y doesn’t see the value, or doesn’t believe it’s for him or her. Person X knows that if he or she keeps looking, they will find the right people.
So, the next time you watch, or read, an ad, ask yourself: is it making me want to buy what they are selling? Chances are, if you NEED or WANT what they are selling, you’ll not buy based on the ad alone. But if it gets you to do research whether that product or service is right for you, then the ad was a success.
Know, too, that the show or publication that featured that ad is benefiting from that ad being there. If you enjoy the show, or publication, be thankful for those ads.
Peter
SOME THINGS AGE WELL; OTHERS, NOT SO MUCH
#age #GettingBetterWithAge #HumanBody #athletes #singers
Some things get better with age.
Wine and whiskey immediately come to mind.
The human body usually does not.
If you do physical work, generally, there will come a time when you will no longer be able to.
More often, though, if you do something physical, your body will tell you when it’s time to stop. But the question becomes, will you listen to your body?
Or, will you keep going, thinking that you can still do it, even when you can’t?
Let’s use the examples of athletes and singers. If you are a good athlete, you figure on a career that will last, hopefully, 20 years or so, barring injury.
As an athlete, it’s up to you to notice when your skills are fading. By the way, kudos to the athletes who can still play competitively well beyond their prime. Advances in training, treatments etc., along with some good luck, have kept some athletes hanging in, even doing well, after a couple of decades of competition.
Generally, though, an athlete knows, or should know, when it’s time to retire. Sometimes, those decisions are made for them. But, usually, athletes have enough pride in their games that they do not want to embarrass themselves by playing on too late in life.
Many singers, however, do not know when to stop. Even when it’s clear to the average observer that a singer, who may have been really good decades ago, can no longer sing, as he or she did, they keep singing.
Fans, perhaps those who don’t want these singers out of the picture yet, continue to pay large sums to see these old singers perform, even if the songs don’t sound quite the same as they remember.
As long as people pay, they’ll keep singing. Some of that might be pressure from their advisers and handlers, who still want to keep making money off these singers. But, here’s the question: if you were once a great singer, and you no longer sound the same after 30, 40 or even 50 years, do you have enough pride – certainly you should have enough money, if you’ve had many hits – to stop performing?
Perhaps you should find a tribute performer(s) to carry on your legacy. Sure, the fans won’t pay the same money for tribute performers, but they will sound more like you than you do now.
It must be difficult to have achieved fame and a following, and have to give it up. Both athletes and singers face the same decision at some point.
But, at least for some fans, it can be torture to listen to someone you’ve admired for years not being able to hit the notes he or she once hit easily. It’s also difficult to watch a singer, whose songs you know note for note, cheat his or her way through a concert by substituting lower notes.
If your God-given talent and endless work has made you good at something physical, remember that your body will tell you when it can no longer do what you want. Listen to your body. Avoid embarrassment. Let the younger talent in your trade carry on.
Peter
SUCCESS NOT A MATTER OF LUCK
#success #luck #BadLuck #opportunity #effort
Have you ever met someone who is envious of a successful person?
They are so lucky, that person thinks.
Then, they wish they had the same luck.
Not knowing anything about what the person had to do to become successful, they just presume the person was just lucky.
And they, of course, are unlucky for not achieving the same success.
Success, no matter how one defines it, is available to anyone.
The difference between the successful and the unsuccessful is a combination of opportunity – not luck – and effort.
Opportunity is not something that comes by accident. Opportunity is sought. In other words, the luck comes to those who prepare for it by taking an opportunity that is presented to him or her.
Certainly, one has to know an opportunity when he or she sees it. The successful person will always look for an opportunity. The unsuccessful person will usually pass on an opportunity for various reasons including: too much work, too much to invest, they would never do such a thing, they would never consider such a thing etc.
These are excuses, for lack of a better term. If an opportunity is good enough, the successful person will overcome all of those hurdles mentioned above and find a way to get in.
Certainly, not every opportunity is for everyone. But if the desire for success is inside you, you will look at all opportunities until you find the right one for you.
In fact, someone you know, or perhaps someone you don’t know, may present something to you that you may have never considered before. If your desire for success is strong enough, you will check it out anyway.
Those who don’t look for opportunities have reached a stage of contentment with their lives. Whether they are indeed content may be debatable, but they don’t want to do what they would need to do to advance their lives further.
Still others are not content with their lives, but blame circumstances for their hardship. These folks “know their place” in life, and are envious of others who’ve achieved more. They blame others, or things, for their lack of achievement.
In short, everyone has the ability to be successful. Your education, experience or background may not matter, unless your idea of success involves a bunch of education and experience.
If you have the ambition, and are not the type to blame someone or something for your lack of achievement, there are opportunities out there for the taking.
You just have to be open-minded enough to look for them
Peter
UNFULFILLED AMBITIONS
#ambition #UnfulfilledAmbition #goals #achievement #HardWork
Harry Chapin’s song “Taxi,” talks about unfulfilled ambition.
Or, it talks about fulfilling ambition in a different, less desirable way.
The Chapin character in the song wanted to be a pilot. Instead, he’s driving a cab.
His passenger, an old friend from childhood he hadn’t seen in years, wanted to be an actress. Instead, she married someone rich and is a homemaker.
The two ended up fulfilling their ambitions, sort of, the song says. She is “acting happy inside her handsome home. “ (If you don’t know the song, she did leave him a nice tip). He’s flying high, on drugs, presumably when he’s not driving a cab, the song says.
The song came out in 1972, but its lessons may apply today.
Do you have a worthy ambition? Are there things in the way of you fulfilling that ambition?
Ambitions come in all shapes and sizes. They also come with many pathways, some difficult or expensive, to get there.
In the Chapin song, the cab rider who wanted to be an actress might have found a difficult path to get there. She may have found stiff competition – how many folks want to act as a career? Given those pathways, one has to admire anyone who slogs through the pathway and becomes successful.
Perhaps the cab rider found true love, or just found a “sugar daddy,” and abandoned the path. Perhaps she tried acting and didn’t break through. The song never says.
The Chapin character would have had a rigorous path to becoming a pilot. Not everyone can do it. The song never says how far he’d gotten toward that goal.
The point is that ambition is all well and good. But if you are unwilling to do what it takes, or you don’t get the breaks you need to become successful, you may not achieve them.
So, what if there was a way to achieve your ambitions, just by your effort alone? What if your ambition involves an extensive and expensive education, that may or may not pay off for you, financially, in the end?
Some such ambitions are certainly noble, and would do the world some good. They just may not personally enrich you.
But there are programs out there that, by investing a few, part-time, off-work hours a week to start, can potentially help you over some financial hurdles.
These programs don’t require specific education, experience or background. They merely require an open mind to check them out (they may or may not be for you), and a willingness to be coached.
To learn about one of the best such programs, message me.
Meanwhile, having an ambition, or a goal, is better than having none at all. Be mindful of the pitfalls of pursuit, but don’t necessarily let those pitfalls deter you.
You shouldn’t have to settle for something less, if you don’t want to. Try not to rationalize settling as achievement.
Some ambitions take longer than others. You may have to redesign ambitions to suit circumstances, but if you really want something, go for it, no matter what it may take.
Peter