Health and Personal Development of young adults

Something I have concentrated on developing throughout my career and also my personal life is to really try and see opportunity in everything. Now let me take a step back here and say that sometimes it is just not as easy as it sounds but I do still try.

I have tried really hard to instill this quality in my own daughters as well as the students I teach. Life throws at us many challenges and it is important that we are able to recognize the value that a challenges will bring to us. In fact a challenge will offer us the opportunity for personal growth, a new experience and also a new learning experience.
Sometimes when we are faced with a challenge another idea could surface that previously would not have come to the fore had we not had to stretch our mind and get creative in finding solutions to what we have in front of us .

Of course it is important for us not to ignore reality but we can learn the benefit of keeping a positive mindset especially when dealing with negative people and events around us.

When I returned from Spain this August I was able to return to my previous job at the college as they had kept the job open for me for 3 years just in case I decided to come back. I was extremely grateful for this opportunity as I enjoy the age group and the subjects I teach at the college.

What I noticed in my first few weeks back was the number of negative people who seemed stuck in a rut and had not changed from that scenario in the 2 years I had been away .

They are not happy with their jobs and have been there many years so in effect have lost the challenge and spark in what they do. In seems that the job has become something they do towards getting a pension in a number of years time.

This negativity is a daily challenge for me as I know it is easy to get sucked in and dragged down to the point of agreeing with them and joining the negative clan who move around the college moaning about everything.

I decided early that rather than let the negativity affect me  the opportunity in what I was doing would be  transferring my knowledge and experience onto my blog and building up my blog as an avenue to move forward when my daughters have finished school 2 years down the line.

For that reason I love what I do and see in the college a great opportunity for me to develop on my own. When I am faced with negative people I take it as an example of what happens when we fail to embrace change and see opportunity in what we do .

In fact we should really thank the challenging people who cross our path for teaching us about ourselves and also allowing us the opportunity to learn the benefits of keeping a positive mindset.

In my position as coordinator of health and social care in the college I am faced with challenges every day coming from all directions. I have students coming to me with their problems and unable to see a way out. When I sit with them and we discuss the angles around the problem it is mostly the student who comes up with the solution.I am just the facilitator who tries to help them see that there are other ways to look at the situation in front of them and see a way forward.

When it comes to the end of their two year course the only difference between the student who achieves distinctions and the student who manages to pass is the ability to take on a challenge and not see it as a set back. All of us are faced with challenges throughout our lives and it is our decision on how we approach them as an opportunity to learn or we use them as a reason not to try.

As tonight brings us into 2013 we must remember that what ever way our life unfolds will depend on how we respond to the challenges and roadblocks which come our way and they will be there I can assure you.

Rise up and face them head on, recognize the value in what they offer you and have a wonderful year ahead !

Just last week in college I reflected on an incident that occurred as regards a computer room .

The college where I work is in a relatively new building less than 5 years old . Since moving into the building the class and course numbers have grown and so there is a lot of pressure for rooms and especially computer rooms.

This scarcity has led to a kind of “Rabbit Burrow “mentality where people are very protective over the room or space they have managed to acquire. It was an aspect of working in the college that I noticed very quickly on my return from Spain in September this year

On this particular day I had an Anatomy class for a 3 hour stint and made a decision to teach the first half and have the students type up their work the second half.As there were various classes out on trips I had been informed by my senior colleague that a certain computer room would be free for the day.

When we arrived at the room at 1.15 there was a member of staff there who also was not usually booked into that room and also who had been there since 9.00 am in the morning. Seeing as it was now 1.15 I explained that we would like the room for 1 hour to complete the students work. I presumed that since the lecturer had also taken advantage of this free computer room but had already been there for 4 hours with one class then there would not be a problem.

I was wrong.

I was informed by this lecturer that the students were settled and working and she did not want to move them and intended staying there until 3.00 that afternoon.

At this stage I had to step back, take a deep breath and reflect on where this person was in their life right now and where they were headed.

This also happened in front of 25 students waiting outside the door and so I knew they would be watching my reaction.

We moved off to another non computer room and I proceeded to start a lesson on personal development and the ways in which we attract success in our lives.

Just how many of us need to make that crucial shift and stop selfishly looking around our world for ways to make things better for ourselves and instead look around our environment and discover ways in which we can help others to get what they want.

As the late and great Zig Ziglar said “The more people you help to get what they want, the more people will help you to get what you want”

I believe that when you turn your focus away from yourself towards others or a cause bigger than yourself, you open your mind up to possibility. This shift helps you to invite meaning and fulfilment into your experience and allows you to live according to your highest and most joyful purpose.

Would I have given up the computer room?

Absolutely!

I have learnt a long time ago that by extending myself towards the spirit of giving, I am able to shift the stress and attention off myself and look around my world with a calm and easy set of eyes.

.I know that I am never looked at as a person who is looking to profit at any cost, even at the expense of others and I also know that when we become like this then people mirror our behaviour and we are supported in return.

We remove our ego from the situation and instead of it being all about me it is about us.

People see you genuinely offering service without any expectation of receiving anything in return. The only reward you should ever expect for your giving, is the good feeling, giving itself brings to you.

This good feeling, which comes from giving freely of yourself, is far better than the discomfort and distress, which comes from focusing exclusively on yourself, always selfishly looking around your world, for “what’s in it for me”.

When we foster and nurture kindness towards others, everything in my world changes for the better. As my mind is focused on compassion, exactly that is what I receive from others in return and this allows me to live in a far friendlier world.

Remember that you attract success by the person you become and that you also live in a world, which is a reflection of who you are.

So if you want any level of success in your life and you want to live in a wonderful world with meaning and fulfilment, you can never get what you want, you can only get what you are.

I think the students got the message!

In this last couple of weeks I have become a victim of  the exact behaviours I  caution against  and just tonight I surfaced for Air and wondered where the heck I had been!

Let me explain.

I just cannot keep count of the number of times I have talked to  students  and young adults to be careful and not get  wrapped up in “the doing” just to survive the day where we create the illusion of motion to fill our days .

In those days we lose our inspired action where we have meaning and focus and that fire that drives us which comes from within.

 Our energy comes from our WHY.

 Instead we plod our way through work and lose the ability to remain task focused and mission driven, where we make prioritised action daily to move us towards our dreams.

Inspiration is a drive, which comes from within. It is essential that we are  absolutely clear about what success looks like and also  know exactly what we  want from our lives.

We need to know our WHY

The WHY is our internal stimulus that drives us and gets us out of bed each morning ready to take action we need to take to succeed?

These last few weeks I lost the WHY.

Why we had come back to the UK when we wanted to stay in Spain.

The reason WHY is unique to everyone and their own personal circumstances. For us it was a decision made to allow our daughter to complete their A levels in subjects of their choice. It was a two year decision after which we would once again leave the UK and return to Spain.

The price we were paying now had a promise in the future and it was this promise that was the drive to propel us forward to take the daily action to succeed even when we did not feel like it.

My daily action was to work on my health blog and add more information on teenagers but I had lost my way over the last 2 weeks. The success habits of posting every few days had floundered among a maze of “doing things” and  only today did I realise I had lost my focus.

Today I am back on track with a renewed energy to keep my dreams alive with passion and inspiration.

There is no place for Regret!

Always remember your WHY

I love Quotes!

 Yes I do and I use them all the time with my classes.

I find that quotes are a wonderful way to start  a topic in personal development as they usually get the creative thinking started and  open up the discussions in the classroom.

 Lets take for example the subject of discipline. This is a skill that we talk about as being essential towards achieving the grades and the goals we have set in our course. An earlier article I wrote talked about the small steps of discipline we need to do on a daily basis to move us towards these goals.

To start this topic I could use the following quote

 "We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons."

- Jim Rohn

We can use this analogy with past exams. Was there any subject that you just failed and if you had just disciplined yourself to do that little bit of work you may have just passed.

Lets look at this from another angle …our diet.

In class last week we were talking about our diets and I was listening to  many of the class tell me about the amount of salt they take with each meal. They sit down at the table and shake salt all over their food before they even taste it. Now unless all of us have been living under a rock we should know the problems with too much salt…heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke etc and  in the supermarkets the processed food that is available already has a high level of salt  in them to increase storage life and make them taste better.

 When we discussed this issue I was assured by the students that it would just not be possible to reduce the salt they put on their food as it would just not taste the same.

Well not initially I informed them….  but it only takes a few weeks for your taste buds to adjust ( teacher has an answer for everything)

So lets look at me. (for a change)

  I have been taking sweeteners in my coffee for some time, I do not know when or why I started but I do know that it is something I should not do. So last week I stopped.

Did my coffee taste the same?.......No…..but I kept having my normal daily coffee and I persevered with the no sweeteners.

  Viola ……today 10 days later I did not even notice the taste….just a nice cup of coffee.

 So back to the salt.

 Just like the quote says we can go through the temporary pain of discipline in adjusting our tastebuds to a new taste of less salt or we can not discipline ourselves to make that change and  take the risk of possible effects on our health  later and regret we never made the changes.

The choice is ours …..simple

 Remember: 

 If you are like me and enjoy quotes then I have found  a  book  of "300 top quotes" and placed it on my site  here.

 …enjoy!