(I’m not in a position to speak to the darkest seasons of depression or chronic anxiety. The best gift you can give yourself if such pervasive darkness or fear handicaps your life is to seek a professional counselor or therapist.)

Here are a few suggestions that I find helpful when I struggle to stay in the game.

Build in some personal achievement benefits to your job. Learn a new skill. You might learn a bit of html so that you can communicate better with your IT department. You might learn how to read a financial statement so that you can better understand how your performance affects the bottom line.

Set a secret objective. In addition to reaching your sales goals, increase the caliber of client you’re seeking. Besides solving the disgruntled customer’s problem, try sending them away thrilled and thanking you like you’re a hero.

Do something refreshingly kind. Treat everyone to ice cream or  a bottle of specialty soda. Offer to complete an unpleasant chore for a struggling co-worker.

Contribute to building a healthier office culture. Write an article for the company newsletter. (Or start a company newsletter!) Publicly and personally thank co-workers for a job well done. Communicate and coordinate work flow changes more quickly and more often.

The main characteristic of all these tips is that they get your mind off of your foul mood and onto your interests, aspirations, co-workers and office culture. In each of these small actions you experience that you are worthwhile, have something valuable to offer, and that your choices make a difference.

If you had a hard time getting going today, try one new thing tomorrow. Experiment. Discover what helps shift your focus, fosters a different attitude, or offers a fresh perspective to you. 

Instead of waiting for a massive mood change, try making a small action change.

On your side,

- Karl Edwards

Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

Samuel Lover

Trouble ignored is potential breakthrough denied.

Karl Edwards

Some of us function well in cluttered environments. Others of us go crazy with frustration.

I once worked with a gentleman whose office was piled from corner to corner with files, books, and rolls of construction drawings. He knew where everything was. I still feel bad for the young intern who thought she was doing him a favor by cleaning it all up one year while he was away on vacation.

In this week’s podcast discussion, web developer Jorge Rosas and I look at these two desktop worlds of wood and pixels, and do some thinking about clutter.

One of the issues in whether we can find what we need. The other issue is whether the cluttered desktops are making it difficult to focus and be productive.

In other words, can you recognize how clutter affects your ability to find things or to get work done?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Choosing to communicate via phone, text, email, or social network is not only a matter of personal preference, but must take into account the recipients preferences as well.

Calling someone who never answers their phone is worse than futile. 

Leaving a long phone message for a busy person is almost a form of cruelty.

A new form of clutter clouds our focus with so many communication options available to us. Not only are there more means of communication than ever before, each person’s communication preferences vary.

In this week’s podcast discussion, web developer Jorge Rosas and I discuss the problem of keeping track of this exploding world of communication options. What used to be a simple conversation can now be anything from a live video chat to an abbreviated text message.

How do you keep track of who responds best to a text message and who responds best to a personal call? How do you know which messages need to be delivered in person and which messages can be published on a public social network?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Margot Fonteyn

We are surrounded by dramatically new, increasingly fantastic, ever-changing tools. When do the new options propel us forward and when do they confuse, distract or paralyze us?

In this week’s podcast discussion, web developer Jorge Rosas and I take a look at the myriad new technology tools which are available to us.

Each new tool has the potential to create as many problems as it solves.

Some of us thrive with new tools and some of us get overwhelmed.

It wasn’t that long ago that a telephone had a single, very focused capability while a desktop computer had a different capability and purpose.

Now they are almost completely interchangeable. We can surf the web on our phones and talk to family in Asia on our computers.

For some the new tools have dramatically increased our effectiveness. For others the new tools have only increased the confusion and mess.

How many contact lists do you keep for phone numbers, email addresses, messaging user names, and residence addresses?

What are you carrying today? Your phone? Your tablet? Your laptop? All three? 

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Commitment inspired by receiving second chance.

Karl Edwards

Personal news, corporate offerings, family pictures, and myriad invitations fill our inbox, our friend stream, and our messaging windows.

Contact comes from people we want to hear from and also from many we don’t really care to know so much about.

What’s one to do?

In this week’s podcast discussion web developer Jorge Rosas and I discuss all those social networks and the new form of clutter they can create for us.

How many social networks can one person belong to and still participate in any of them in a meaningful way?

How many streams of information can be flashing before one’s eyes before one cannot see any of them? Talk about potential distractions to someone trying to focus on getting work done!

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

I am not referring to our foibles, mistakes, flaws, errors, shortcomings, or crimes.

I am referring to our unwillingness to forgive ourselves for those foibles, mistakes, flaws, errors, shortcomings, and crimes.

Sure, mistakes are costly. No doubt about it.

But mistakes can be corrected and serve as a learning opportunity. In other words, there is a future worth pursuing on the other side of most problems we cause.

If we beat up on ourselves for being less than perfect, feel we need to punish ourselves, or—worst of all—attribute negative or derogatory judgments about our characters, then we make it almost impossible to move forward, get going again, or jump back into the game with energy, determination and poise.

The key is to notice whether we focus on the error and its solution, or we focus on ourselves and our deficiencies.

In one case we participate powerfully in the creation of a constructive learning opportunity out of which we can adjust, experiment, and grow. In the other case we spin helplessly in a self-imposed quagmire of self-condemnation, perpetual second-guessing, and plummeting self-esteem.

If you have messed up recently, even if in a big way, the way forward will not be found in beating up on yourself.

The way forward lies in forgiving yourself. Only then will you be free enough inside to shift your focus constructively to the learning, adjusting and changes that will result in a new way forward.

On your side.

- Karl Edwards

Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.