Well, the first thing you can do is accept that you can’t change the way things are. The worst case scenario is your sweetheart is leaving to make a break-up easier. You will soon know if that’s the case. Or, more likely, your love is off to school/university in another city or to work in another country. This is an opportunity for you to see the distance as holding you together rather than pulling you apart. Yes, it’s a test of your love.

It can be painful at first. You’ll feel it most in the dark hours of the night.

So, how do you WORK IT to make it work?

Communicate, but not obsessively. Saying good morning and good night every day is a must. Try sending pics or voice notes about your day; make it interesting or creative, even if nothing much happened.

Stay honest Talk about stuff you’re feeling. Don’t bury your feelings or your fears. If you try to hide your insecurities, worries or jealousies they will swallow you up. Talk it out – you need to support each other.

Show the world that you care Commit your feelings on your partners social media walls. Like their pics or comments. It is a comfort knowing that your partner declares often and publicly that he/she loves you and misses you. It’s a commitment. When you post pics of where you are or what you’re doing, tag your sweetheart; say ‘wish you were here” publicly. It keeps them feeling involved in your life far from home.

Send gifts Whether it’s a surprise photograph or really funny and relevant emoji on your phone or an actual gift to be delivered, it’s the thought that counts.

Avoid dangerous situations If your partner knows you’re going out clubbing with a group of friends and alcohol is involved, be careful to tell your partner beforehand. Remember, your partner might be stressed out and feel powerless knowing you’re drinking and dancing and meeting new people. If you know that you get a little “flirty” after a few drinks, rather don’t go. You don’t want to wake up with life-changing regrets.

Try to avoid hanging out too often with the same person of the opposite sex. You might think it’s just an innocent coffee and chat but it could become more. Check in with your heart and your head. Do you want it to become more? Think of your distant partner; think of your love for each other and let that be the filter you use to find the answers.

Do things together Technology allows us to be creative with our time spent separated from our loved ones. We can watch movies together. We can go for walks at the same time, sharing real-time video. We can sing to each other on Skype.

Be positive Yes, it can hurt a lot sometimes when you’re apart for long periods of time. Try and focus on the good things, the little things. The last time you laughed together. The last picture you received or the last words of love and reassurance you shared. Be thankful for those small things and they will bring more positivity into your life.

Don’t overthink Don’t go digging up stats on the survival rates of “remote romances”. Just let it all go. Live your life. If you are meant to be together, you will both do what’s necessary. Don’t get lost in all the “maybe’s or what-ifs”. Trust in your love. And trust in each other. Communicate daily, with honesty.

But most importantly, love yourself every day; it will make you more loveable too.

Sleep deprivation negatively impacts worker health and productivity and has ended up costing the South African economy billions.

Employees who don’t get enough sleep typically have trouble focusing on their work due to mental exhaustion. A tired mind has slower processing speeds, lowered multitasking ability, shorter memory, and decreased ability to collaborate with teammates.

These effects can severely lengthen the amount of time it takes to complete a task. In fact, a 2011 research study found that bad sleeping habits cause eleven days-worth of lost productivity for the average worker.

On a small scale, this can stall production levels within a company. When the majority of workers lack focus, however, significant slowdowns accumulate and cause less money to be poured back into the economy from workers and businesses alike.

Sleep doesn’t just affect mental power, either. Physicians recommend that the average adult gets eight hours of sleep a night because getting too little has been linked to serious health issues and even fatal diseases like cancer and stroke. When workers are sick or leave work, their employers often have to scramble to compensate for their missed assignments. This can draw attention away from other important tasks and quickly become expensive, especially with the cost it takes to hire and train replacements.

If a company is continuously working to battle absenteeism, they might not be able to pay their employees as much or keep up with an evolving economy.

Do your part to protect the economy: make sure you’re getting enough sleep.

 Luckily, there are several ways to ensure you’re getting healthy levels of rest. Here are three tips on how to get enough sleep every night:

• Separate your work and home life, especially at night. It’s important to clear your head before bedtime in order to de-stress and fall asleep. Try to avoid working in your bedroom and instead allow it to be a sleep sanctuary. Replace your lap desk and bright reading lamp with cozy pillows and sleep-protective red lamp in order to relax and fall asleep on time.
• Start taking a midday nap. A quick, 20-minute nap has been shown to restore focus and improve alertness. Plus, you don’t necessarily need to work from home to be able to get in a midday snooze. As long as you don’t nap within three hours of bed, you can sleep before dinner or during your lunch break.
• Increase your melatonin levels. Melatonin is the hormone that balances your sleep rhythms and can be supplemented with nutritional bedtime snacks. Broccoli, grapes, and oats are all excellent, natural sources of the hormone.

A healthy economy depends on productive, alert workers, so it’s important for you to look after your wellbeing and sleep schedule. Make sure you’re getting proper rest so you can return to work each day mentally and physically prepared to achieve success and support the economy.

What is stress?

If you are alive, you experience stress. Stress is the natural reaction to something in our environment or in our selves.  It helps us to cope.  A certain level of stress is good.  Too much can kill you.

When you become aware of danger, you either avoid it (which is not always possible) or find a way to cope with it. The primitive part of the brain functions FAST: You have a flight, fight or freeze reaction sometimes even before you become fully awake to the situation.

Threats come in many forms:

• Physical safety – walking down a dark road at night, violence when you have to get to work during a bus strike, floods and mudslides, crime, drugs and intimidation by gangs, domestic abuse, service delivery protests, childbirth, drunken drivers, xenophobic attacks, extreme weather conditions such as drought or snow, difficult  work conditions and long  work hours.
• Intellectual challenges – a new job, fear of change, writing exams, rapid developments in technology, education gaps or inadequate training in your job, lack of time to study.
• Emotional strength – lack of sleep because of a sick child, noisy neighbours and worry reduce emotional stability. People that suffered cruelty or neglect as children are insecure in new situations. Modern life puts pressure on us to be independent and achieve material success, so we do not ask for help when we need it or are ashamed of poverty. The death of a loved one, illness in the family, a handicapped household member, old age, divorce and losing your job – all affect your state of mind.
• Financial problems – debts, inability to pay school fees, transport, groceries, home repairs, suitable clothing. Big changes – like a new baby, a car crash, health problems, bond and rates payments on acquiring a house, funeral expenses, having a computer, cell phone or car stolen, losing a train ticket that has been paid in advance – all add up to stress.

What happens in your body?

You release chemicals, like adrenaline, that help you cope with the immediate “danger”:

• Your heart rate increases
• You breathe faster
• Your blood pressure goes up

This, in turn, moves more oxygen-rich blood to your brain and muscles:

• You think quickly (to defeat the danger)
• Your muscles are stronger (to perfom better)
• You have lots of energy (more glucose and fatty acids in the blood )

BUT

Everything else in your body shuts down. During an emergency, the brain releases other chemicals to stop unnecessary functions. And this is where the long-term damage of stress happens. Cortisol keeps blood pressure and blood sugar high if the danger does not last. This is fine, but what if the stress continues?

The hormone that brings down cortisol levels after a stressful time does not function if the threat is on-going.  Some people see threat everywhere. Others cram their lives full of challenges.
For example, the so-called adrenaline junkies that do extreme sports or enthusiastically climb the corporate ladder.  Some people choose to reduce certain normal functions (like reproductive health or cell growth.  For example, some gymnasts, dancers, and jockeys do not want to gain weight or do not mind if they stop menstruating).

However, for most people it is not a matter of choice.  Living circumstances are life-threatening (people that live in a war zone like Syria for years) or hard (the problems of clean water and child safety that a mother in a squatter camp solves daily) so that we are often on high alert.

Long-term damage

Constant heightened flight/fight/freeze eventually creates a lifetime of stress.

This has serious consequences:

• Increased fatty acids in the blood can cause a heart-attack (This is known as the disease of people in high-powered job, especially when combined with lack of exercise and an unhealthy diet. However, ordinary people that suffer from on-going stress are also at risk.)
• The immune system is compromised. The body cannot defend itself against germs. This means you get sick. (Research shows that refugees, prisoners, groups after natural disasters like earthquakes and tidal waves, are likely to get diseases. Diseases are often blamed on lack of hygiene, but are equally caused by stress.)
• Brain functioning is damaged. The hippocampus (this is easy to remember – just picture a campus where hippos are playing) is the part of the brain where memories are stored. It also makes the hormone that stops cortisol. Too much cortisol damages this part of the brain and makes it less able to produce the hormone that reduces cortisol. Memory loss is the result!

An evil cycle in the hippocampus:

The good news

You CAN protect yourself against stress

• Do not take on tasks that are not essential to your job or private life.
• Think carefully about what really matters to you? Maybe you are trying to please people whose opinion you do not really value, or competing for a job you do not really want. Maybe you think it is important to buy a new car, not because you need it but because you want to impress somebody. Do you need the horror of debt?
• Do things that bring you joy. Crafts and handwork, recreational sport, art, gardening etc are therapeutic and reduces the feeling of being overburdened.
• Get enough sleep in a well-ventilated place. Do not sleep with earplugs while listening to music. Your body and your mind need “time-out.” Do not watch unpleasant movies until just before bedtime. It invades your subconscious and the flight-fight attitude continues.
• Brain cells can be grown. YES! It is true. By learning something new regularly, your brain forms cells that store the new information. You do not have to accept that forgetfulness is permanent.

• Your skills (what you are good at)
• Your educational background (what qualifications you have)
• Your interests (what you enjoy doing)
• Your values (what would give you satisfaction in your career)
• Your personality (what kind of person you are).

The word SWOT is an easy way to remember the four steps involved:

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

By answering key questions, you can:

• Set your PERSONAL GOALS
• Make important DECISIONS
• Put YOUR PLAN into ACTION.

The 4 Stages involved:

1. Strengths

• What do I do well?
• What resources can I draw on?
• What do others see as my strengths

2. Weaknesses

• What could I improve about myself?
• Where do I have fewer resources than others?
• What are others likely to see as weaknesses

3. Opportunities

• What opportunities are open to me?
• How can I turn my strengths into opportunities

4. Threats

• What threats might harm me?
• What is the person competing for the same job as I want doing about it right now?
• What threats do my weaknesses expose me to?

‘I’ve trained myself to illuminate the things in my personality that are likable and to hide and protect the things that are less likable.’ – Will Smith

There are, however, strategies and tactics you can apply to direct your own process of self-discovery, leaving little to chance or luck.

Don’t be afraid to accept compliments

Sometimes it feels uncomfortable to agree with someone who compliments us. We tend to go naaa, I’m not that good, or change the subject. Don’t! Be aware of your own strengths; it is the foundation of your self-confidence.

“Listen” to your emotions

When you are deeply happy with something you are doing, or feel connected to someone or something, pay attention. These are clues to who your true self might be. Even bad emotions can steer you toward your own truth; if something makes you angry or afraid, these are things you might need to confront, or change, or accept. Self-discovery is about paying attention to the things that make you feel.

What are you thinking?

Mindfulness. Yes, It is a new buzzword, but it is rooted in solid truths. It’s about paying attention to what you think and how you react to everything in your every day. Knowing how you feel about situations that arise at any given moment creates a better understanding of yourself.
You can practice mindfulness by maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and the surrounding environment.
Research has proven that being connected to your thoughts and feelings at all times reduces stress and helps prevent depression. So next time you go for a walk, or a drive, or are in the classroom, stay in the moment! Appreciate and absorb everything!

Mistakes are your friends.

Making mistakes is a fundamental part of learning. Even in the animal world (and in our own distant past) learning how to avoid blundering is an essential survival tool. In fact, we simply cannot learn or grow, unless we make mistakes and work out how to avoid doing the same thing next time. That’s life. So make friends with your mistakes. They’re going to be around for a long time to come!

When emotional intelligence first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70% of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the sole source of success—IQ. Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack.

Image: Travis Bradberry

Image: Travis Bradberry

Source: WEF
Writer: Travis Bradberry, President, TalentSmart
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

‘If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.’ – Marcus Tullius Cicero

Self-confidence refers to the belief in yourself and your own abilities. Self-confidence is extremely important in every aspect of life and people who lack it may find it difficult to be successful.

A proposal or idea being presented by an unconfident person may find little or no support, whereas one which is presented by someone who speaks clearly, holds their head high and answers questions assuredly, will be easily supported.

Self-confident people inspire confidence in others and this is one of the important ways of commanding success.

Self-confidence can be learnt and built upon through deliberate and dedicated effort.

How to build self-confidence

Building self-confidence takes time, however the good thing is, that it’s an achievable task. The things you do to build self-confidence will also build success as they constitute its essential pillars.

STEP 1 – Digging the Foundation

• Look at what you have already achieved – make a list of the things which you have achieved so far.
• Think about your strengths – take a look at who, and where you are in terms of your strengths and weaknesses.  Do a SWOT Analysis.
• Think about what is important to you and where you want to go – what is important to you and what do you want to achieve in life.
• Start managing your mind – learn to notice negative self-talk which works against your confidence and work towards being more positive.
• Commit yourself to success – make a clear and strict promise to yourself highlighting your commitment to the cause of self-confidence.

STEP 2 – Laying the Foundation

• Build the knowledge you need to succeed – develop skills and competencies which are aligned to your goals/targets.  This is will be your ‘Skill Set’.
• Focus on the basics – remember that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, enjoy doing simple things successfully and well.
• Set small goals and try to achieve them – get in the habit of setting goals, achieving them and celebrating the achievement.
• Keep managing your mind and thoughts – stay positive, celebrate and enjoy your successes.

STEP 3 – Build (Grow)

• Make your goals bigger
• Increase your commitment
• Extend and integrate your skills and experience

Goal-Setting is the most important skill towards the improvement of self-confidence!

Written by Blessing Mabuto

It is also one of the most misunderstood afflictions in our modern society. Often, sufferers are told to cheer up, or snap out of it.

A person does not choose to feel depressed. It happens. And before they realize it, depression takes over their life and even their ability to react to the problem itself in the most severe cases.

What are the causes?

Depression can be triggered by an event. The loss of someone close is a reason for deep sadness. Other triggers are violence, financial difficulties, solitude or unexpected life changes. It always strikes without prior notice and strikes hard.

Depression is also linked to lifestyle and dietary habits. Individuals deal with it in different ways, but there are general approaches that prove to be helpful in most cases.

What are the symptoms?

The same way that its causes vary from one patient to another, the symptoms of depression are not always the same. As a rule of thumb, though, one should be aware of:

• feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
• loss of interest in daily activities
• loss of energy
• sleep changes
• unexplained aches and pains

What is the treatment?

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to depression. The cure is related to its causes which again, varies widely from one patient to another, but some steps may ease the suffering.

Information

As not all depression is the same, it’s important to collect as much information as possible about it. By understanding the condition and learning about its potential triggers, treatment can be facilitated. While some cases can be controlled by lifestyle changes, medical treatment might be necessary.

Support system

The first, most important, and sometimes the hardest step towards overcoming depression is getting help. It is important to break the communication barrier and overcome taboos.

Patience

Because depression is a unique condition, it may not always be easy to find the most appropriate treatment at first. While everyone hopes for a fast solution, recovery might take some time.

Lifestyle

While medication and therapy are well-known ways to treat depression, some changes in lifestyle can also contribute to a fast and long-lasting recovery.

Exercise

Exercising is an excellent opportunity to interact with others and break the isolation status of depression. It also boosts serotonin, endorphins, and other feel-good brain chemicals. It also triggers the growth of new brain cells and connections, just as antidepressants do.

Nutrition

Balanced meals are key to maintaining energy levels and avoiding mood swings. An imbalance in the ratio of the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids may be responsible for some symptoms. The lack of the amino acids tyrosine and tryptophan is also associated with low mood. Vitamins B2 and B6 have also been found to improve mood.

Sleep

Depression may cause sleep problems and sleep problems may cause depressive disorders. Sleep deprivation worsens irritability, moodiness, sadness, and fatigue. At the first signs of a change in sleep pattern, either insomnia or oversleeping, make sure to investigate its cause.

Stress management

The increase in the levels of cortisol caused by stress is responsible for the reduction of serotonin and dopamine. This reduction has been linked to depression. In addition to traditional treatment, alternative and complementary techniques prove themselves effective in the control and recovery from depressive states. Reiki, Yoga, and meditation can be extremely helpful.

Vigilance

In extreme cases, depression may lead to suicidal behavior.

If you notice the first signs of depression in yourself or someone close to you, ask for help. Some cases can be dealt with family support and lifestyle changes. Others, however, more serious, may require psychological treatment (with or without medication).

Remember that the journey to depression relief doesn’t have to be a lonely one. Neither the sufferers or those close to them should feel guilty or responsible for the condition. There is no one to blame. The only thing that is important is building a support system that eases the healing process.

HELP IS AVAILABLE:

Should you or a loved one need trauma counselling or support please contact Lifeline: on
National Counselling line: 0861 322 322 

In addition to the telephone counselling offered by a number of centres around the country, the national counselling line receives an average of 200 calls a day, allowing callers to discuss a range of challenges from trauma and suicide to relationship issues.

This line operates 24 hours / 7 days per week – feel free to call for more information and/or counselling.