Three weeks ago i wrote about 5 of the 10 skills that are hard to master, but will inevitably pay off handsomely. In this article we continue the second part with the other 5 skills.

SKILL #6 Stop Whining

Whining is the ultimate display of weakness. It is a complete waste of your energy that you should otherwize use in a more productive manner.

What is whining? Whatever you think it is. just stop doing it!

A good exercise is to set a no whining week day. Iyanla Vanzant promotes a method she calls the No Whining Wednesday! And she breaks it down into three rules that you have to abide by on every wednesday:

• No Whining
• No Complaining
• No Criticizing

If you whine, complain, or criticize at all on that day you must put a quarter in a jar. If you have no quarter you can put a dime, nickel, or penny. Of course, this is optional. The idea is to hold yourself accountable and to maintain self-control. If that means investing a few quarters then do that. Maybe you can deny yourself that favorite snack. Just make it fun when doing so.

If you stick to the plan, you will start reaping the rewards as soon as the first wednesday comes in. Less stress, a happier and overall greater appreciation for all things and all people in your life. People will also be happier around you; especially on wednesdays :)

SKILL #7 Staying Present

If you’re living in the past, you are going to be depressed, because you are re-hashing (Not blockchain hashing — pun intended) things that happened to you, that are not going to happen again. If you live in the future however, you are going to be anxious, because you are anticipating what is coming, or ar wishing for things that aren’t happening yet.

Being in the Present is where the Gold is!

Being in the present moment is where you will have the greatest control, where you will feel the most at ease, and where your happiness flourishes.

There is a super tight connection between happiness and the ability to live in the present moment. A lot of people believe that happiness is tied to the things that happen to them, Not so at all! In fact, as a professor of positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman, who is one of the founding fathers of the movement, and have been studying happiness for decades, frequently found in his research that 40% of our happiness levels are preset by genetics! the other 60%, we are in complete control of. One other thing that he discovered through research was that it doesn’t matter what happened to you in the past. In fact, some people that have experienced the worst situations ever, some who experienced genocides, are among the happiest and most grateful people in the world.

Happiness, comes down to your MIND! It comes down to your thoughts, to your mindset, to your attitude. You are 100% in control of what you are thinking. You may not be in control of how you feel in the moment, but you can always be in control of what you think, and that will change how you are feeling.

So if we get back to the question of How do you be Present? The answer is literally nothing more than the skill of having your thought be in this moment. Not in the past, not in the future, but right here and now.

The way to teach yourself on how to do that, is by catching yourself the moment you get distracted drifting to the past or the future. That moment holds tremendous power because you basically just woke up! You just realized you are not here in this particular moment. Use that wakeup call, count 5..4..3..2..1.. and ground yourself in this moment. Look for something that you can savor (defined in psychology as description of what happens when you find something in this moment to focus on and appreciate). When you do that, you’re not only going to be present, but you will also feel more grateful while getting a little boost of happiness.

SKILL #8 Being Consistent

Success is not a destination. People usually label a person as successful because they had a great career or a successful project. That however is not entirely accurate. Success is a journey. You have to be consistently successful. That is when you are really successful, because otherwise, you’ll be remembered for your last failure.

While failing can be crushing , it is only really successful people who can offset this failure by getting up and running towards that next success. The more time it takes you to mourn that failure (check SKILL #6) is the exact amount of time you are delaying your next success. Pick yourself up, dust off and move on. People who are truly successful are not one hit wonders, they worked HARD and failed a lot but their successes offset their failures.

Look at some of the most prominent success stories out there:

• Sony: They started with the creation of a rice cooker that burned the rise!
• Bill Gates: His first business was Traf-O-Data which went nowhere!
• Colonel Sanders: His secret recipe was rejected over a 1000 times before the first restaurant accepted it!
• Evan Williams: Before Twitter, he founded Odeo, a podcasting service that was rendered obsolete once Apple added podcasting to iTunes.
• Richard Branson: Have you heard of Virgin Cola or Virgin Vodka? The fact that you don’t recognize them says it all.
• Walt Disney: Disney was fired by an editor because, “he lacked imagination and had no original ideas.” His first animation company went bankrupt and it’s said that he was turned down hundreds of times when he sought financing for Disney World.

We all know where it went from there, and that holds true for most if not all the big names out there in ANY domain.

Moral of the story: If you fail, and you will, Learn and Adapt. Success is 90% failure.

SKILL #9 Get Enough Sleep

Okay, Okay! I know. Some of my peers will attack me for this. Guilty as charged! But, it took me many years to adapt to this lifestyle and adjust my bio clock to accept less than 6 hours of sleep time a day. I actually never planned or intended on doing it, my work and lifestyle were different and most of the time I was forced into sleeping less due to demanding deadlines and over-involvement in some projects. That said, I have to include this as an important skill.

This might sound impractical, but to master this skill, you will have to say NO to things that you have to do. It’s a hard skill to get used to (Unless you are lazy by nature), but once you master the skill of sleeping enough, you will start seeing the positive impact almost immediately. Less grogginess, no lag time, amazing wake up euphoria and just a healthy mindset. You will be full of energy, in complete focus and more productive at everything you do. Besides; you get a plethora of health benefits out of getting that quality sleep your body is craving for.

Now you might think that you are getting enough sleep everyday, but it’s not about the hour count, it’s about the quality of that sleep. To aid you in doing that, try to use most or all of the following steps:

• Try to spend some time outdoors every day.
• Plan your physical activity for earlier in the day, not right before you go to bed.
• Stay away from caffeine (including coffee, tea, and soda) late in the day.
• If you have trouble sleeping at night, limit daytime naps to 20 minutes or less.
• If you drink alcohol, drink only in moderation. This means no more than 1 drink a day for women and no more than 2 drinks a day for men. Alcohol can keep you from sleeping well.
• Don’t eat a big meal close to bedtime.
• Quit smoking. The nicotine in cigarettes can make it harder for you to sleep.

Things that can fortify the steps above might include a quiter sleeping environment, a dark bedroom, keeping your electronic devices AWAY from where you sleep or even listening to low tuned isochronic tones if you believe in it’s effectiveness.

SKILL #10 Having Empathy

Empathy is defined by researchers as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

There are two types of empathy that you should be aware of:

• Affective Empathy: refers to the sensations and feelings we get in response to others’ emotions; this can include mirroring what that person is feeling, or just feeling stressed when we detect another’s fear or anxiety.
• Cognitive Empathy: or perspective taking, refers to our ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions.

Paul Ekman referred to the first type as Identical Resonance, or the ability to resonate with others feeling of pain or anguish, and actually physically experiencing it as if you are in the same situation. But, when you say “Oh, you poor baby, i’m so sorry you are feeling that way. What can i do to help you?”, that he calls Reactive Resonance, which basically means you don’t feel their pain, but you have an emotional response to their pain.

A good example of affective empathy or identical resonance is when you feel that choke, or wet obstruction while watching a sad scene in a movie. While this is a trait that most humans enjoy, some still struggle with it, be it because of a condition like autism or a personal preference. However; it is Cognitive Empathy, perspective taking or reactive resonance that we need to consider for the purpose of this article. It is a very mysterious and valuable resource for any professional in any domain (unless you are a professional hugger). Affective empathy is a thing that most physicians, soldiers, stock traders, journalists, politicians and venture capitalists must suppress in order to work most efficiently. Can you imagine a trauma surgeon employing affective empathy in the E.R for 10–12 hours a day? he or she will burn out on their first day!

Don’t get me wrong, affective empathy have its place and importance and it’s never less important that its cognitive counterpart, but NOT in the workplace! Here, you need Cognitive Empathy all the time, instead of trying to mirror your colleagues, try to understand how they feel and divy up a solution if it’s a problem. Be compassionate, cognitively , so you can manipulate the situation to best serve the purpose of why that person showed you their feeling in the first place.

This might sound like the hardest skill of all 10 skills, but it’s really about understanding how you respond to a situation. In fact it is only hard because it requires employing all the other skills prior to mastering it, because without being able to speak properly, being honest to self, listening well, being timely, resisting whining, staying present, being consistent, while staying focused (if you had a quality sleep :)) you can’t possibly be cognitively empathetic!

Empathy is the engine that powers all the best in us. It is what civilizes us.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as i did writing it.

If you read something that really resonates with you, please leave a comment below as it’s much more likely to stick with yourself.

Peace. Love. Cheers. And, thank you for reading.

— Median Rawashdeh // 06.24.18

— Follow me on twitter @MedianiTTo