As I've matured, I have often witnessed relationships that were "perfect" reduced to people hating each other and hoping that the other person would die. It seems funny but this truly does happen from time to time and I've asked myself what could be the root cause of it. While I'm not sure of all the causes, there is one that I think actually causes this more than anything else - WE HOLD ONTO RELATIONSHIPS FOR TOO LONG. This could be comparable to how an investor may hold onto a stock that is going in the wrong direction (i.e. Apple) for too long because he/she feels that it has to come back to the greatness (high) of where it was, as opposed to cutting the losses and leaving with some profit rather than nothing. In relationships, we are so entranced of how things were when they were "perfect" that, when they begin to go south, instead of considering that maybe it is time to move on and part ways, we instead desire to hold on to some dream that things will return to the way they were and everyone will be happy. This a natural human tendency and sometimes hard to overcome. However, there is a way to overcome this illusion and allow yourself the freedom to move on to the next stage in your life: Accept and embrace the concept of Seasons of Life.
Seasons of Life are times in your life in which you meet or interact with someone for a finite amount of time. This person is there to teach you some life lesson, help you grow and develop, or just have some damn fun. You should enjoy your time with that person, appreciate the laughs and memories that person has created in your life and then feel comfortable allowing that person to move on with his/her life to do the same for someone else, while you do so as well. This doesn't mean that you don't care for the person anymore or ever speak to the person again. As time progresses, however, we often naturally change. Due to these changes, we are sometimes no longer as compatible with this other person as we were before but we desire to continue to try to make the relationship work because we feel we have to. What often happens in these situations, however, is that the two people continue to hold onto the relationship even though they both know it just isn't what it used to be and they begin to resent and hate each other because of it. This could lead to someone betraying the other because of the consistent "unhappiness" and then they eventually end up hating each other and wiping away all of the good thoughts and memories of that other person.
To prevent this, we need only be honest with ourselves in various relationships that seem to be going in the wrong direction. Ask yourself, is this something that can get better and, if so, how? If you don't think it can't, let the other person know and move on. If you think it can, talk to that other person about how you are feeling and ways to make it better. Once you think of some ideas that will improve the situation, try to them out. If that doesn't work, try out some more. After 2-3 attempts, however, you have to start considering that maybe this is just a season of your life and it's time to move on to another one to help you grow and discover other parts of the world and who you are. By doing this, you can hopefully manage to still keep this great friend in your life in some capacity instead of the seething hate that you see many relationships end with these days. Who knows? By ending it this way, you leave a much better chance of revisiting it down the road when perhaps the season has changed back to where you two are compatible again. Life can be "funny" that way.
Ken Middleton is an Account Executive at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Buckets of Friends - How to Maximize Your Growth and Development During Your Leisure Time.
Those who know me are probably well aware that I have always attempted to be as loyal to my friends as possible when it comes to staying in contact and trying to remain friends. We often grow up and change as we have different experiences in life but I always felt that you shouldn't ever forget "where you came from" and part of not "forgetting" was to continue to nurture these relationships as time progressed. What I have identified as an unfortunate byproduct of following this strategy, however, is that it has the unintended negative consequence of stagnating one's personal growth and development. It is not maliciously that friends will hold you back but it just happens naturally if you continue to hang with them for a inordinate amount of time. A great example would be that friend who had the occasional marijuana habit when you were younger which has now turned into a daily habit and is offering nothing in the way of true value to your life other than a good laugh here and there. For that reason, I suggest that as you grow, you should begin to put your friends in different "buckets" to give yourself the best chance of success going forward.
What are friends buckets? Simply they are organizational, descriptive units that you should use to categorize your relationships with different groups of people. Everyone's buckets may be different but I have learned that a good segmentation can be made up of three areas: 1.Casual friends. 2.Professional Friends. 3. Casual and Professional Friends.
Casual Friends
These are generally the individuals you may have known for most of your life. You probably grew up with these people and have so many memories with them that it's easy to get together and kill hours talking about the good old times. You enjoy your time with them and your life is richer from continuing to have a relationship with these people to some extent. The problem with these relationships, however, is often the direction in which they are taking their lives. It is said that most people earn within 20% of their closest friends' annual income. The reason for this is simple: As you spend time with someone who has a certain mentality and approach to life, you cannot help but to be influenced by that person directly or indirectly. A direct influence could be that their negative views and approaches to life can begin to rub off on you and you find yourself questioning the importance of hard work and dedication. While the more dangerous indirect influence could be their subtle influence to encourage you to slack on your work to hang with them or their influence to have you keep up with the Joneses by always buying the latest clothing, car, etc. I wouldn't suggest to cut these relations off all together, but I would suggest to relegate about 10-15% of your overall leisure time with these individuals if possible.
Professional Friends
These originally start as your friends at work or school. As you progress in a job, you often have the opportunity to establish friendships with many different people within the organization. To be successful in any company, you should often seek out friendships with those who have a proven track record within the organization and have the ability to mentor and develop you to help set you up for the highest chance of success. These are people who you may not have a great number of things in common but there is a sense of respect and appreciation between you two that allows you to enjoy each other's company and appreciate how you can help each other be better professionals and individuals. As you begin to progress in your career, you will also begin to meet these type of individuals at various networking events. Increasingly, networking is becoming more important into the overall scope of someone's career. The adage that it isn't what you know but who you know is no truer than it is today in 2013 and without networking, you will put yourself at a great disadvantage to those who have taken advantage of the numerous opportunities out there to do so. Your ability to make many professional contacts here could lead to numerous personal and/or professional opportunities in the future. You should spend about 15-25% of your leisure time with these individuals to help build your social network and influence throughout your industry and geographic region.
Casual and Professional Friends
These are the group of friends who have proven highly successful in their current jobs and you have a natural overall good personal relationship with them. These are individuals who have your best interest in mind from a career standpoint and are highly motivating to you from their professional success and their overall focus in life. These people are the ones who will often encourage you to make the sacrifices needed to be successful but will also help you blow off a little steam to party after a hard week of work. The difference between these friends and your just casual ones is that they encourage the use of limitations and will often help you get back on track if they see you veering to the side of too much entertainment and pleasure. The difference between this person and your just professional friends is that their is a deeper level understanding by this person that will allow them to be more honest with you and help you identify areas of improvement and growth by their closeness to your world and you. These individuals are truly valuable in your life for professional and personal development and you should try to spend as much as 60-75% of your leisure time with them if possible.
As you mature, you should change from the person you were when you were a teenager and, unless your friends are growing and developing with you, you should begin to reevaluate the influence of each on your life. You only get so much time on this earth to be great and EVERY SECOND matters. Make sure you are spending the majority of your time with the people who you will help you achieve your dreams rather than those who will just keep dreaming them with you.
Ken Middleton is an Account Executive at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN
What are friends buckets? Simply they are organizational, descriptive units that you should use to categorize your relationships with different groups of people. Everyone's buckets may be different but I have learned that a good segmentation can be made up of three areas: 1.Casual friends. 2.Professional Friends. 3. Casual and Professional Friends.
Casual Friends
These are generally the individuals you may have known for most of your life. You probably grew up with these people and have so many memories with them that it's easy to get together and kill hours talking about the good old times. You enjoy your time with them and your life is richer from continuing to have a relationship with these people to some extent. The problem with these relationships, however, is often the direction in which they are taking their lives. It is said that most people earn within 20% of their closest friends' annual income. The reason for this is simple: As you spend time with someone who has a certain mentality and approach to life, you cannot help but to be influenced by that person directly or indirectly. A direct influence could be that their negative views and approaches to life can begin to rub off on you and you find yourself questioning the importance of hard work and dedication. While the more dangerous indirect influence could be their subtle influence to encourage you to slack on your work to hang with them or their influence to have you keep up with the Joneses by always buying the latest clothing, car, etc. I wouldn't suggest to cut these relations off all together, but I would suggest to relegate about 10-15% of your overall leisure time with these individuals if possible.
Professional Friends
These originally start as your friends at work or school. As you progress in a job, you often have the opportunity to establish friendships with many different people within the organization. To be successful in any company, you should often seek out friendships with those who have a proven track record within the organization and have the ability to mentor and develop you to help set you up for the highest chance of success. These are people who you may not have a great number of things in common but there is a sense of respect and appreciation between you two that allows you to enjoy each other's company and appreciate how you can help each other be better professionals and individuals. As you begin to progress in your career, you will also begin to meet these type of individuals at various networking events. Increasingly, networking is becoming more important into the overall scope of someone's career. The adage that it isn't what you know but who you know is no truer than it is today in 2013 and without networking, you will put yourself at a great disadvantage to those who have taken advantage of the numerous opportunities out there to do so. Your ability to make many professional contacts here could lead to numerous personal and/or professional opportunities in the future. You should spend about 15-25% of your leisure time with these individuals to help build your social network and influence throughout your industry and geographic region.
Casual and Professional Friends
These are the group of friends who have proven highly successful in their current jobs and you have a natural overall good personal relationship with them. These are individuals who have your best interest in mind from a career standpoint and are highly motivating to you from their professional success and their overall focus in life. These people are the ones who will often encourage you to make the sacrifices needed to be successful but will also help you blow off a little steam to party after a hard week of work. The difference between these friends and your just casual ones is that they encourage the use of limitations and will often help you get back on track if they see you veering to the side of too much entertainment and pleasure. The difference between this person and your just professional friends is that their is a deeper level understanding by this person that will allow them to be more honest with you and help you identify areas of improvement and growth by their closeness to your world and you. These individuals are truly valuable in your life for professional and personal development and you should try to spend as much as 60-75% of your leisure time with them if possible.
As you mature, you should change from the person you were when you were a teenager and, unless your friends are growing and developing with you, you should begin to reevaluate the influence of each on your life. You only get so much time on this earth to be great and EVERY SECOND matters. Make sure you are spending the majority of your time with the people who you will help you achieve your dreams rather than those who will just keep dreaming them with you.
Ken Middleton is an Account Executive at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Prevent the WPL syndrome - The Power of Actually THINKING
As we grow up, we often try to figure out the best path for our lives. We look at the lives of others and those who came before us and then make an attempt to orchestrate our success by basing our focus and future goals on what we see as that which is "worthy" of attaining. We desire to impress our family, friends, and co-workers by doing those things which society has deemed as respectable of the average citizen, i.e. getting married, having kids, going to college, without truly thinking if this is what we truly desire for our lives. Most don't stop to think why they have adopted these goals. Some say that these are the rules of life and we have to adhere to them without truly considering if this, in fact, is the case. Most never think about the fact that every "rule" that we have today was created by someone before us who decided this was the best path for our lives. There is no mandate for anyone to adopt it and if you take a minute to access what this means, this can be truly liberating.
Many people decide to go to college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, blah, blah, blah, without ever considering if this is truly what they desire. As children this has been so ingrained in us that few people ever stop to think WHY they desire to do these things. What occurs as the end result is that many actually achieve what they set out to do and then realize one day that they are not truly happy. They wake up one day when they are 40 and look at their lives and feel that they have let so much time go by without truly experiencing the things in life that now their heart is telling them they should have. I hypothesize that this is caused by an adaptation of the White Picket Fence syndrome (WPF). The White Picket Fence syndrome is known as a condition in which someone holds onto a notion of perfection in their lives and family when that is simply just not the case. My adaptation of this is the White Picket Life (WPL) syndrome.
The White Picket Life syndrome is a disorder is one in which an individual bases many of his/her goals in life and milestones of achievement on what he/she deems is acceptable by society as opposed to true desires and individual characteristics. As teenagers, we begin to rebel somewhat against this but many are bought back to "reality" when we get to college and get back on the WPL path. It is only when many are older and truly have had enough life experiences to actually reflect on their lives that many wake up one day and realize they have suffered from this disorder their entire life and then begin to try to make up for the lost time of their youth by "re-engineering" their lives. However, this epiphany often only leads to another psychological disorder we often refer to as a Mid-Life Crisis.
So how can you prevent this from happening in your life? It is very simple: THINK. It is something that most people feel that they are doing on a day to day basis, and they are to some extent. The problem, however, is that many are simply running on autopilot thinking for many of their life decisions and not realizing it. This is similar to when you drive to work without actually "thinking" about the turning and braking of the car. You have done it so many times that you don't truly think at all because it is conditioned in your brain. This is how many have "thought" about their lives by simply adopting the conditioned thoughts that have been taught for so many years by so many outside influences of what is and isn't acceptable.
A simple exercise that should help you realize if you suffer from this or not is to write down the top 10 goals for your life: personal and professional. For each of those goals, ask yourself two questions. 1.Who says that this HAS to be a goal for my life? 2.What would I do if this WASN'T a goal in my life? For some, this exercise will be a confidence booster of their ability to orchestrate their lives based on their true individual desires up to this point. While for others, this could be the beginning of a true wake-up call to reassess your life's direction and make the necessary changes to make sure that you are living a life that you will truly be happy with. As the saying goes, "Life isn't a dress rehearsal." You have to make this ONE count.
Ken Middleton is an Account Executive at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and sales. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN
Many people decide to go to college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, blah, blah, blah, without ever considering if this is truly what they desire. As children this has been so ingrained in us that few people ever stop to think WHY they desire to do these things. What occurs as the end result is that many actually achieve what they set out to do and then realize one day that they are not truly happy. They wake up one day when they are 40 and look at their lives and feel that they have let so much time go by without truly experiencing the things in life that now their heart is telling them they should have. I hypothesize that this is caused by an adaptation of the White Picket Fence syndrome (WPF). The White Picket Fence syndrome is known as a condition in which someone holds onto a notion of perfection in their lives and family when that is simply just not the case. My adaptation of this is the White Picket Life (WPL) syndrome.
The White Picket Life syndrome is a disorder is one in which an individual bases many of his/her goals in life and milestones of achievement on what he/she deems is acceptable by society as opposed to true desires and individual characteristics. As teenagers, we begin to rebel somewhat against this but many are bought back to "reality" when we get to college and get back on the WPL path. It is only when many are older and truly have had enough life experiences to actually reflect on their lives that many wake up one day and realize they have suffered from this disorder their entire life and then begin to try to make up for the lost time of their youth by "re-engineering" their lives. However, this epiphany often only leads to another psychological disorder we often refer to as a Mid-Life Crisis.
So how can you prevent this from happening in your life? It is very simple: THINK. It is something that most people feel that they are doing on a day to day basis, and they are to some extent. The problem, however, is that many are simply running on autopilot thinking for many of their life decisions and not realizing it. This is similar to when you drive to work without actually "thinking" about the turning and braking of the car. You have done it so many times that you don't truly think at all because it is conditioned in your brain. This is how many have "thought" about their lives by simply adopting the conditioned thoughts that have been taught for so many years by so many outside influences of what is and isn't acceptable.
A simple exercise that should help you realize if you suffer from this or not is to write down the top 10 goals for your life: personal and professional. For each of those goals, ask yourself two questions. 1.Who says that this HAS to be a goal for my life? 2.What would I do if this WASN'T a goal in my life? For some, this exercise will be a confidence booster of their ability to orchestrate their lives based on their true individual desires up to this point. While for others, this could be the beginning of a true wake-up call to reassess your life's direction and make the necessary changes to make sure that you are living a life that you will truly be happy with. As the saying goes, "Life isn't a dress rehearsal." You have to make this ONE count.
Ken Middleton is an Account Executive at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and sales. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
You can follow his daily quotes of inspiration and motivation on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIN
Sunday, January 6, 2013
The Power of Being Nice Instead of Angry in "Challenging" Situations
When I was in college, I was lucky enough to land a job at a restaurant waiting tables at the age of 19. I did this for the next seven years until I was 26 and cannot begin to tell you the number of lessons I learned on the job in relation to life. Seems weird, but entirely true. It's amazing how many observations you can make about the human race when you have to interact with them in relation to their food. LOL!
One of the keys observations I made that has always stuck with me is the power of being nice instead of angry when a situation occurs in which you feel like you've been wronged. You would often see a marked difference in how two people would handle the exact same situation in two totally different manners. When one person's steak was overcooked, one individual would fly off the loose end and demand to speak to the manager while the other would not let it bother him, get a refill on his drink and continue to enjoy the company and conversation. From this, I surmised that being nice and respectable to people regardless of the situation is generally the way to go for numerous reasons.
IS GETTING MAD GOING TO MAKE THE SITUATION BETTER?
99 times of of 100 the answer to the question is no. Getting mad or upset often doesn't allow one to think as clear as he/she would like and the individual ends up saying or doing something stupid. By just having patience and understanding the circumstances were not created on purpose, we will often have a much better chance of improving the situation than by the opposite reaction. As the saying goes, "You can catch more flies with sugar than vinegar." This is often true in life when faced with a difficult situation. By being nice and understanding, the opposite party is way more likely to do whatever it takes to make the situation better.
IT'S BETTER FOR YOUR HEALTH
In a study done by the American Heath Association, it was proven that individuals who experienced heightened episodes of angers were 16.7 times more likely to experience hearth arrhythmia than individuals who did not report moments of anger. Couple this with the feeling of being flustered and having noticeable shortness of breath, and it is apparent this is something we should avoid as much as possible to keep our heart and health strong. There are so many different things in life outside of our control that could harm our health, it is very important to take heed to those things which we can.
IT SETS A BETTER EXAMPLE FOR OUR YOUNG ADMIRERS
While we often think that getting mad in the appropriate situation is justified based on the circumstances, the young people in our lives that look up to us for guidance and behavior modeling often do not have this sense of discernment. They only see our reaction, and, as with everything else, will probably try to duplicate it in their day to day interactions. This could lead to them reacting to seemingly trivial situations at school or home in a similar manner because they saw mommy or daddy do this at the store/restaurant.
I'm not saying I am a saint by any means and will always voice my opinion in a situation in which I feel that an injustice has been done. However, when it comes to being calm, poised, and intellectual in my protest as opposed to angry, loud, and belligerent, I'll choose the former any day of the week.
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