The Positive Professional

When a person suffers from a mental health illness, such as depression or anxiety, the first-line treatments are usually mental therapies and medicines. What isn't always talked about are the variable lifestyle choices that affect our mental health. Making beneficial life choices can be uplifting. While time and financial constraints may restrict a few people's capacities to make such choices, we all can make small but significant changes. This episode provides five lifestyle choices to get you started.

Confidence is vital for supporting the health, success, and happiness that you deserve to find. How you approach troubles, goals, and even new experiences are all impacted by the level of belief that you have in yourself. Thankfully for everyone, confidence isn’t just a trait that you’re born with, it’s a muscle that you train. Taking the time now to nurture your self-worth will reap benefits for your personal and professional life for years to come. This episode explains 10 of those benefits you will find while building confidence.

Self-respect means you believe in yourself – in your ability to achieve, contribute, and learn. You believe your opinions, ideas, and feelings are as important as everyone else's opinions, ideas, and feelings. It's a state of mine and it's one that allows you to celebrate strengths, challenge weaknesses, and have an overall positive feeling about who you are and what you're doing.

So, what are the greatest benefits of self-respect? There are many, but I've narrowed it down to ten in this episode.

Life is a balancing act and most of us aren’t great at channeling our inner Simone Biles. From our personal lives to the office and all the way back home to our communities, the bad news is that it’s hard to be all and do all. The good news is that no one expects you to! Life balance is a journey, not a destination, this episode provides a few of these tips to enjoy the ride.

Each day brings with it its own set of new possibilities and choices. But we shun many of them for fear of risking leaving the familiarity of your comfort zone, or that you’d rather not rock the boat and that your life is just fine the way it is now. But what if these opportunities could be what you need to be happier and live better lives? To reach somewhere you’ve never been, you have to do something you’ve never tried before. You may fail, true, but either way, you’ll come out on top because something will have happened to your character, a change for the better. You may not see it at first, but it’s there. And with each new eye-opening challenge, you’ll believe more and more in your abilities and inner strength than ever before. You’ll finally realize that you can break through that glass ceiling hovering over your head - that there are no limits to what you can accomplish.

As you face new challenges, you become stronger and more excited by the prospect of life itself. This episode provides tips on how you can get started.

For many of us, the mere thought of setting goals and then subsequently achieving those goals successfully can be overwhelming and intimidatingly daunting because of the fear of the possibility that we might fail at the task of accomplishing our aspirations efficaciously, however, the concept of setting goals need not be so exhausting, as long as we remember to set realistic expectations for ourselves and not become overly ambitious or set goals that are ultimately unattainable. The process of setting goals can be achieved through organized thinking and through a “baby step” style of approach where smaller goals are set first, and our confidence builds with each goal that is realized successfully. Alternatively, the endeavors embarked upon that did not succeed can be viewed as learning opportunities rather than esteem diminishing failures. This episode provides tips on how to set goals in such a way as to optimize your success.

Your comfort zone. It’s your safe haven from the crazy outside world. You’d be insane to leave that, right? Wrong. While being in our comfort zone is important, it won’t really lead you anywhere but right there in the same place you’ve always been; safe, but not really going anywhere. And while that may be fine with some people, others believe they owe it to themselves to break through the glass ceiling and find their true potential. It’s how you respond to these ups and downs that is a measure of your character and inner strength. Ideal situations do not test your resilience. Then when the tides are against you, that’s when you must have an inherent desire to prevail, motivation, and a strong sense of self. This episode provides some lessons you will gain once you step outside your comfort zone.

Being in your comfort zone isn’t a bad thing, provided that you are able to move out of it when advantageous. Moving outside of your comfort zone isn’t always necessary, but sometimes it can allow you to see or take advantage of new opportunities. Sometimes it can be hard to tell when you are just resting in your comfort zone and when you are stuck there. This episode explains 5 reasons why you may be stuck.